You are on page 1of 321

Fusion Centers

Notes
There are two different versions of the affirmative.

The first version of the affirmative says that fusion centers are targeting the
#BlackLivesMatter movement; we think thats bad.

The second version of the affirmative says that fusion centers over-saturate
law enforcement with information that trades off with counter-terrorism
efforts and stops cloud computing.

If you are reading the terrorism advantage, a lot of the terrorism mechanics
are in the Terror DA toolbox.

Fusion Center FYI


Here is what Fusion Centers Do
Justin Lewis Abold, Ray Guidetti, and Douglas Keyer June 2012
Strengthening the Value of the National Network of Fusion Centers by
Leveraging Specialization: Defining Centers of Analytical Excellence The
Journal of the NPS Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Fusion centers are multiagency task forces designed for receiving, gathering,
analyzing, and disseminating information and intel ligence among constituencies
that have a law enforcement, counter terrorism, public safety, or homeland
security mission or focus.3 The purpose of a fusion center is to aid law enforcement,
homeland security, public safety, and private sector entities in better
understanding their environments as they relate to the risk and threat of
crime, terrorism, and other crises. Additionally, fusion centers are intended to
serve as the primary focal point for information sharing among broad
jurisdictions where multiple entities reside , such as a state or Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI)
region. The catalyst behind the concept of fusion centers stemmed from the general
admission, following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, that the nations law
enforcement communitys information sharing and intelligence capability
necessary to inform decision-makers about the threat of terrorism was both ineffective and
inefficient.4 The fusion center concept started as grassroots efforts in jurisdictions like Arizona, Georgia, New York,
and the Los Angeles region to fill the void of combining information and intelligence sources at the local level to ferret out
terrorist activity, thereby underpinning a national effort to share information that could be used in overall preparedness

Today, there are seventy-seven fusion centers designated by governors


across the nation that integrate all aspects of public safety information .5 While
their origin may have been rooted in counter terrorism, state and local
officials have come to find fusion centers to be of equal importance for
assessing crime and other homeland security trends or issues. The federal
efforts.

government quickly realized the significance of the fusion center as a keystone in its national effort to share information
needed to guard against terrorism and respond to national crises. The National Network of Fusion Centers was erected to
bolster this much-needed capability.6 While the identification of the network itself may have stemmed from an informal
designation given to the collaboration among federal interagency partners with state, local, tribal, and territorial partners,
today it is used to formally recognize this national partnership. Moreover, it is this formal recognition that underpins a
programmatic effort by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis (DHS I&A) to follow
guidance derived from the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) established by the United States Intelligence Reform
and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Under that authority, DHS I&A in cooperation with the Department of Justices (DOJ)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provides coordinated support to recognized fusion centers in a given area across the
nation. DOJ has recognized the usefulness of fusion centers for identifying terrorist and criminal trends and processing
suspicious activity reports in state and local jurisdictions. It is the recognition of these two federal departments that has
fueled the growth of fusion centers since the concept first came to the fore early in the millennium. The National
Network of Fusion Centers has been embraced by the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice as a focal point of

the 2010
National Security Strategy of the United States specifically cites fusion
centers as a central element in preventing future acts of terrorism . Simply put,
this decentralized and organically developed network is a national asset, and
sustainment of that asset is a shared responsibility across all levels of
government. In the absence of fusion centers, there is no other nationwide
mechanism for leveraging the breadth and depth of more than two million
public safety practitioners in every corner of the country for homeland
security purposes. Notably, as seasoned intelligence experts and information analysts from all levels of
collaboration in support of federal counterterrorism efforts and other homeland security priorities. In fact,

government will concede, some of the most important information and actionable intelligence that we depend on to

protect the country flows up, not down the knowledge is collected at a granular State or local level and then fused to
permit all levels of government to act decisively in the protection of Americans. That is a central purpose for the fusion
centers, and one that has been well-served by their existence. 7 Despite the fact that state and local law enforcement
and homeland security professionals mainly staff fusion centers, these centers are also comprised of personnel and
systems from the federal government. The DHS and FBI footprints within fusion centers serve as gateways to the
intelligence community for state, local, and private sector entities. State and local fusion center analysts conduct
assessments and produce intelligence products related to state and local level threats and risks that otherwise would not
be addressed by federal authorities. This information is shared nationally, and provided to the federal government and the
intelligence community to answer standing information needs related to homeland security. While each fusion center
enterprise may differ on how they refer to their respective intelligence product frameworks ,

the key
assumption is that finished intelligence informs state and local decisionmakers about the threat environment in a manner that supports planning,
operations, resource allocation, and trainin g. Achieving this dynamic requires
fusion centers to answer four very important questions for their consumers:
What has happened? What is happening? What is about to happen? What
could happen?8 In answering the above four questions, fusion centers across
the network likely arrange their intelligence products in four distinct
categories: investigative support/research products, situational awareness
reports, analyses, and forecasts.9 Investigative support/research products focus on past and current
events and issues that require additional information for decision makers and investigators to better understand or to
assist with the describing evidence of a crime. Situational awareness reports aim specifically at answering the question of
what is happening in a particular environment or what is about to happen. Analytical products go a step further and
determine the impact of an event, threat, or issue on a particular environment or constituency. Finally, forecasting
products seek to answer the question of what may happen in the future that will require a policy decision, operations
response, or resource allocation. Each fusion center is responsible for determining who within their area of responsibility
(AOR) requires information and intelligence products that address threat and risk related to crime, counter terrorism, and
homeland security. These constituencies include law enforcement, public safety, emergency management, government,
and private sector personnel and organizations. While the intelligence and information products created are based on the
needs of the requestor, the decision maker individual fusion centers aim to inform runs the gamut from line level police,
investigators, fire, and EMS personnel to mayors and governor; from attorney generals and homeland security advisors to
state police superintendents to municipal police chief; from private sector security managers to emergency management
and risk mitigation planners.10 Each of these decision makers requires a different type of product or service from the
fusion center to inform them about threat, risk, and problems within the environment.

PLAN TEXT
Plan: The United States Federal Government should defund fusion centers.

Plan: The United States Federal Government should substantially curtail


surveillance by defunding fusion centers.

Solvency

1AC

Contention ___ : Solvency


Fusion Centers Oversaturate Organizations with too
much information this makes the effective utilization of
that information impossible
Jesse Walke, Author Extraordinaire, 10/3/2012, "Fusion Centers: Expensive,
Practically Useless, and Bad for Your Liberty," Reason,
http://reason.com/blog/2012/10/03/fusion-centers-expensive-practically-use
fusion centers pepper the lawenforcement landscape shadowy intelligence-sharing shops
heavily funded by the federal Department of Homeland Security.
When a report's recommendations include a plea for the DHS to "track how
much money it gives to each fusion center," you know you're dealing with a
system that has some very basic problems After reviewing 13 months' worth
of
output
the centers' reports were "oftentimes shoddy,
rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act
protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and
more often than not unrelated to terrorism." One report offered the vital
intelligence that "a certain model of automobile had folding rear seats that
provided access to the trunk without leaving the car,"
Others highlighted illegal activities by people in the Terrorist Identities
Datamart Environment (TIDE) database, which sounds useful until you hear
just what those people did that attracted the centers' attention. One man was
caught speeding. Another shoplifted some shoes. TIDE itself, according to the
Senate report, is filled not just with suspected terrorists but with [and] their
"associates," a term broad enough to rope in a two-year-old boy. Nearly a
third of the reports
contained no useful
information
"overstepped legal boundaries" in disturbing ways:
"Reporting on First Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to
violence or criminality; reporting on or improperly characterizing political,
religious or ideological speech that is not explicitly violent or criminal; and
attributing to an entire group the violent or criminal acts of one or a limited
number of the group's members."
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has just released a report [pdf] on the "

" that

--

run on the state and local level but

It is a devastating document.

the fusion centers'

, Senate investigators concluded that

a feature deemed notable because it "could be useful to human

traffickers."

were not even circulated after they were written, sometimes because they

, sometimes because they

(One analyst, for example, felt the need to note that a Muslim community group's list of recommended readings

included four items whose authors were in the TIDE database.) Interestingly, while the DHS usually refused to publish these problematic reports, the department also retained them for an "apparantly indefinite"
period. Why did the centers churn out so much useless and illegal material? A former employee says officers were judged "by the number [of reports] they produced, not by quality or evaluations they received."
Senate investigators were "able to identify only one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his mistakes." Specifically, he had to attend an extra week of

. Other issues identified in the Senate report: Some of the fusion centers
touted by the Department of Homeland Security do not, in fact, exist.
Centers have reported threats that do not exist either. An alleged Russian
"cyberattack" turned out to be an American network technician accessing a
work computer remotely while on vacation. DHS "was unable to provide an
accurate tally of how much it had granted to states and cities to support
fusion centers efforts." Instead it offered "broad estimates of the total amount
of federal dollars spent on fusion center activities from 2003 to 2011,
estimates which ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion."
A center in San Diego "spent
nearly $75,000 on 55 flat-screen televisions," according to the Senate report
officials said they displayed calendars, and were used for
training

When you aren't keeping track of how much you're

spending, it becomes hard to keep track of what that money is being spent on. All sorts of dubious expenses slipped by.

"When asked what the televisions were being used for,

'watching the news.


2010 assessment of state and local fusion centers conducted at the request
of DHS found widespread deficiencies in the centers' basic counterterrorism
information-sharing capabilities,"
DHS did not share that report with
Congress or discuss its findings publicly. When the Subcommittee requested
the assessment as part of its investigation, DHS at first denied it existed, then
disputed whether it could be shared with Congress, before ultimately
providing a copy.
'open-source monitoring.' Asked to define 'open-source monitoring,' SD-LECC officials said they meant

'" The report is also filled with signs of stonewalling. A

"

for example. "

" And then there's the matter of mission creep. Many centers have adopted an "all-crime, all-hazards" approach that shifts their focus from stopping terrorism and onto

a broader spectrum of threats. You could make a reasonable case that this is a wiser use of public resources -- terrorism is rare, after all, and the DHS-driven movement away from the all-hazards approach in the

At any rate, the DHS


should stop citing the centers as a key part of America's counterterrorism
efforts if those centers have found better (or easier) things to do than trying
to fight terror.
early post-9/11 years had disastrous results. Unfortunately, the leading "hazards" on the fusion centers' agenda appear to be drugs and illegal aliens.

Defunding fusion centers is key to end unnecessary


tracking of social movements
Suraj Sazawal is the Communications/Research Coordinator for the Charity
and Security Network May 27, 2014, Time To Close Fusion Centers
http://www.defendingdissent.org/now/news/time-to-close-fusion-centers/
a new
report from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) reveals how the Department of
Homeland Security coordinated with local law enforcement across the
country to monitor the Occupy movement in 2011 and 2012. Based on thousands of
government emails and documents the PCJF obtained through freedom of information requests, the
report describes a nationwide, coordinated effort by federal and local officials
along with military agencies and private security contractors to monitor all
manner of peaceful and lawful political activity that took place during the Occupy
movement, from protests and rallies to meetings and educational lectures. Numbering almost 80
across the country, fusion centers were created in the wake of the September
11, 2001 attacks to address concerns that local, state and federal authorities
were not effectively sharing information about potential terrorist threats. Over a
decade later, they have become bloated centers, lacking a clear
mandate and sufficient oversight. Despite receiving upwards of $1.4 billion
in state and federal Homeland Security funds, a bipartisan Senate investigation
found that the intelligence they produce is of uneven quality oftentimes
shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens civil liberties . And
now theres more evidence of them collecting intelligence on peaceful
protesters. [find links to additional reports below] Take Action ButtonWere partnering with
Adding to the long list of troubling intelligence-collecting activities carried out by fusion centers,

RootsAction to petition Congress to take action to close Fusion Centers. Please add your voice, and share!
The documents, many of which are partially redacted, reveal a surprising degree of coordination between
local authorities and fusion centers. For example, the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center, acting on
a request from police chiefs to identify, research and document trends or activities that may threaten
public safety, produced a bulletin detailing the tactics and strategies employed by Occupy activists
nationwide. Included in this bulletin were reports about Las Vegas activists staging sit-ins and free
speech protesters in Long Beach, California being arrested for staying in a park past its 10pm closing time.
The report also notes that Occupy activists had momentarily interrupted a speech by President Obama in
November of 2011. According to the New York Times, among the most active centers tracking Occupy
activities was a Boston-area fusion center which issued scores of bulletins listing hundreds of events
including a protest of irresponsible lending practices, a food drive and multiple yoga, faith & spirituality
classes. Law enforcement in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, New York,

Oakland, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., participated in similar monitoring activities.

U.S. Fusion Centers are using their vast counter-terrorism resources to


target the domestic social justice movement as a criminal or
terrorist enterprise, PCJF Executive Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard said in a press release.
This is an abuse of power and corruption of democracy. In one of the
The

more bizarre examples of mission creep revealed by these documents, the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency (DTRA), whose official mission is to address the entire spectrum of chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear and high yield explosive threats, was tracking and sharing intelligence on Occupy
activities. According to PCJF: This Pentagon agency that exists to counter threats from weapons of mass
destruction circulated material on Occupy including, for example, one document with the subject line: FW:
Alert Update! Chicago What Police Should Be Learning From The Occupy Protests. This document shows
in an email chain that this article was initially circulated through the subscription website activistmap.com,
which is billed as the Domestic Terrorism Tracking System. The keywords associated with this Domestic
Terrorism Tracking System include: anarchist(s), animal rights, environmentalist, protesters, socialist(s),
communist(s), civil disobedience, social justice and global justice, among others. (emphasis added)
[T]he Fusion Centers are a threat to civil liberties, democratic dissent and the social and political fabric of
this country, said Carl Messineo, PCJF Legal Director. The

centers to be defunded.

time has long passed for the

Extensions

Defund Fusion Centers Solves


Fusion centers must be defunded and ended
Hilliard, Messineo 14 [May 23, 2014, GlobalResearch, Mara
Verheyden-Hillard cofounder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense
& Education Fund, Attorney for the International Action Center, Anti-war
activist, Carl Messineo cofounder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Legal
Defense and Education Fund; The Hidden Role of the Fusion Centers in the
Nationwide Spying Operation against the Occupy Movement and Peaceful
Protest in America, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-role-of-thefusion-centers-in-the-nationwide-spying-operation-against-the-occupymovement-and-peaceful-protest-in-america/5383571]
Until now the role of the Fusion Centers in their application of anti-terrorism authority and resources has
been shrouded in secrecy. In 2012,

the Senate issued an investigative report on the Fusion


Centers that The Washington Post described as revealing pools of ineptitude, waste and
civil liberties intrusions. The Department of Homeland Security immediately dismissed and
condemned the report and defended the fusion centers, saying the Senate investigators relied on
out-of-date data, from 2009 and 2010, and prior years of materials. The public was not privy to the
records underlying that investigation, however, the documents that the Senate reviewed predated the

newly
released documents show that the Department of Homeland Securitys representations
were far from true, that the conduct of the Fusion Centers continued unabated. The American
people can now see for themselves how the U.S. government and the Department of
Homeland Security are spending hundreds of millions of dollars of their money
in Fusion Center operations. These documents, along with materials previously
documents that the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has obtained and made public. The

released by the PCJF that exposed the FBI and other domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies

reveal a U.S. surveillance-industrial apparatus charging


forward in willful disregard for the fundamental civil liberties and
political freedoms of the people. Targeting a peaceful social justice movement as
a criminal or terrorist enterprise is incompatible with a constitutional democracy. These documents
show that the Fusion Centers constitute a menace to democracy . This
gross misuse of U.S. taxpayers money also demonstrates that the
Fusion Centers are a colossal rat hole of waste. The Fusion Centers
should be defunded and ended immediately. Coinciding with the publication of
these new documents and this report, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has initiated
a nationwide campaign to End the Fusion Centers ! The campaign includes a mass email
targeting of Occupy,

and letter-writing effort to President Obama and all members of Congress calling on them to defund and
end the Fusion Centers. As part of the End the Fusion Centers campaign and to broaden awareness of the
dangers posed by the Fusion Centers, the PCJF has also made the new documents fully available to the
public and to the media in searchable format at BigBrotherAmerica.org. Although the Fusion Centers
existence is justified by the DHS as a necessary component in stopping terrorism and violent crime, the

documents show that the Fusion Centers in the Fall of 2011 and Winter of 2012 were
devoted to unconstrained targeting of a grassroots movement for social
change that was acknowledged to be peaceful in character.

Getting Rid of Fusion Centers Key


Getting Rid of Fusion Centers solves, government would
eliminate a waste of time, money, and resources

Walker 12 "Fusion Centers: Expensive, Practically Useless, and Bad for


Your Liberty." Reason.com. N.p., 03 Oct. 2012. Web. 22 June 2015.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs has just released a report [pdf] on the "fusion centers" that
pepper the law-enforcement landscape -- shadowy intelligencesharing shops run on the state and local level but heavily funded by
the federal Department of Homeland Security. It is a devastating
document. When a report's recommendations include a plea for the DHS to "track how much money
it gives to each fusion center," you know you're dealing with a system that has some very basic
problems. After

reviewing 13 months' worth of the fusion centers'


output, Senate investigators concluded that the centers' reports
were "oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering
citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally
taken from already-published public sources, and more often than
not unrelated to terrorism." One report offered the vital intelligence that "a certain model
of automobile had folding rear seats that provided access to the trunk without leaving the car," a feature
deemed notable because it "could be useful to human traffickers." Others highlighted illegal activities by
people in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database, which sounds useful until you
hear just what those people did that attracted the centers' attention. One man was caught speeding.
Another shoplifted some shoes. TIDE itself, according to the Senate report, is filled not just with suspected
terrorists but with their "associates," a term broad enough to rope in a two-year-old boy. Nearly a third of
the reports were not even circulated after they were written, sometimes because they contained no useful
information, sometimes because they "overstepped legal boundaries" in disturbing ways: "Reporting on
First Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to violence or criminality; reporting on or improperly
characterizing political, religious or ideological speech that is not explicitly violent or criminal; and
attributing to an entire group the violent or criminal acts of one or a limited number of the group's
members." (One analyst, for example, felt the need to note that a Muslim community group's list of
recommended readings included four items whose authors were in the TIDE database .)

Interestingly, while the DHS usually refused to publish these


problematic reports, the department also retained them for an
"apparantly indefinite" period. Why did the centers churn out so
much useless and illegal material? A former employee says officers
were judged "by the number [of reports] they produced, not by
quality or evaluations they received." Senate investigators were "able to identify only
one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his
mistakes." Specifically, he had to attend an extra week of training. Other issues identified in the Senate
report: Some of the fusion centers touted by the Department of Homeland Security do not, in fact,
exist. Centers have reported threats that do not exist either. An alleged Russian "cyberattack" turned

DHS "was unable to provide an accurate tally of how much it had


granted to states and cities to support fusion centers efforts." Instead
it offered "broad estimates of the total amount of federal dollars
spent on fusion center activities from 2003 to 2011, estimates which
ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion." When you aren't keeping track of how
out to be an American network technician accessing a work computer remotely while on vacation.

much you're spending, it becomes hard to keep track of what that money is being spent on. All sorts of
dubious expenses slipped by.

A center in San Diego "spent nearly $75,000 on

55 flat-screen televisions," according to the Senate report.

"When asked
what the televisions were being used for, officials said they displayed calendars, and were used for 'opensource monitoring.' Asked to define 'open-source monitoring,' SD-LECC officials said they meant 'watching

A "2010 assessment of
state and local fusion centers conducted at the request of DHS found
widespread deficiencies in the centers' basic counterterrorism
information-sharing capabilities," for example. "DHS did not share that report with
the news.'" The report is also filled with signs of stonewalling.

Congress or discuss its findings publicly. When the Subcommittee requested the assessment as part of its
investigation, DHS at first denied it existed, then disputed whether it could be shared with Congress,
before ultimately providing a copy." And

then there's the matter of mission


creep. Many centers have adopted an "all-crime, all-hazards"
approach that shifts their focus from stopping terrorism and onto a
broader spectrum of threats. You could make a reasonable case that this is a wiser use of
public resources -- terrorism is rare, after all, and the DHS-driven movement away from the all-hazards
approach in the early post-9/11 years had disastrous results. Unfortunately, the leading "hazards" on the

At any rate, the DHS should


stop citing the centers as a key part of America's counterterrorism
efforts if those centers have found better (or easier) things to do
than trying to fight terror.
fusion centers' agenda appear to be drugs and illegal aliens.

2AC AT: Cant Stop Collection


Even if the affirmative cant stop data collection, the plan
is key to prevent federal agencies from passing on intel to
local law enforcement
Kayyali 14 [April 7, 2014, Nadia Kayyali former 2012 Bill of Rights
Defense Committee Legal Fellow, board member of the National Lawyers
Guild S.F. Bay Area chapter, member of Electronic Frontier Foundation
activism team, Why Fusion Centers Matter: FAQ, Electronic Frontier
Foundation, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centersmatter-faq]
While NSA surveillance has been front and center in the news recently, fusion
centers are a part of the surveillance state that deserve close scrutiny. Fusion
centers are a local arm of the so-called "intelligence community," the 17
intelligence agencies coordinated by the National Counterterrorism Center
(NCTC). The government documentation around fusion centers is entirely
focused on breaking down barriers between the various government agencies
that collect and maintain criminal intelligence information. Barriers
between local law enforcement and the NSA are already weak. We
know that the Drug Enforcement Agency gets intelligence tips from the NSA
which are used in criminal investigations and prosecutions. To make matters
worse, the source of these tips is camouflaged using parallel
construction, meaning that a different source for the intelligence is
created to mask its classified source. This story demonstrates what we
called one of the biggest dangers of the surveillance state: the
unquenchable thirst for access to the NSA's trove of information by other law
enforcement agencies. This is particularly concerning when NSA information
is used domestically. Fusion centers are no different. In fact, in early 2012,
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved the sharing of raw
NSA data with the NCTC. The intelligence community overseen by the
NCTC includes the Department of Homeland Security and FBI, the main
federal fusion center partners. Thus, fusion centersand even local law
enforcementcould potentially be receiving unminimized NSA data.
This runs counter to the distant image many people have of the NSA, and it's
why focusing on fusion centers as part of the recently invigorated
conversation around surveillance is important.

Fusion Centers Key to Data Collection


Fusion centers key to data collection
OHara 12 [OHara, Michael. DHS fusion centers portrayed as pools of
ineptitude and civil liberties intrusions. October 2, 2012.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/dhs-fusion-centers-portrayedas-pools-of-ineptitude-and-civil-liberties-intrusions/2012/10/02/100144400cb1-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html]
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a nationwide "homeland security"/"counter
terrorism" apparatus emerged. Components of this apparatus include the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center, and
state/regional "fusion centers." Fusion centers, by and large, are staffed with personnel working in "counter
terrorism"/ "homeland security" units of municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/public
safety/"counter terrorism" agencies. To a large degree, the "counter terrorism" operations of municipal,
county, state and tribal agencies engaged in fusion centers are financed through a number of U.S.

fusion centers were intended to be


intelligence sharing partnerships between municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law
enforcement/"counter terrorism" agencies, dedicated solely to the dissemination/sharing
of "terrorism"-related intelligence. However, shortly following the creation of
fusion centers, their focus shifted from this exclusive interest in "terrorism,"
to one of "all hazards"-- an umbrella term used to describe virtually anything
(including "terrorism") that may be deemed a "hazard" to the public, or to
certain private sector interests. And, as has been mandated through a series of federal legislative
Department of Homeland Security grant programs. Initially,

actions and presidential executive orders, fusion centers (and the "counter terrorism" entities that they are comprised of)
work-- in ever closer proximity.

Fusion centers collect massive amounts of data


Electronic Privacy Information Center 7 [ National Network of
Fusion Centers Raises Specter of COINTELPRO. June 2007.
https://epic.org/privacy/surveillance/spotlight/0607/#_ftn3]
A fusion center, according to the Department of Justice, is a mechanism to exchange information and
intelligence, maximize resources, streamline operations, and improve the ability to fight crime and
terrorism by analyzing data from a variety of sources, which includes private sector firms and anonymous
tipsters.[3] When local and state fusion centers were first created, they were purely oriented toward

over time and with the escalating involvement of federal officials, fusion
centers have increasingly gravitated toward an all-crimes and even broader
all-hazards approach.[4] The expansion of fusion center goals and increasing
interaction with federal and private sector entities leads to a massive
accumulation of data, raising questions of possible misuse or abuse . The
counterterrorism, but,

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeks to create a national network of local and state fusion
centers, tied into DHSs day-to-day activities . This national network combined with the
Department of Homeland Securitys plan to condition grant funding based on fusion center compliance

inculcates DHS with enormous domestic


surveillance powers and evokes comparisons the publicly condemned
domestic surveillance program COINTELPRO. Fusion centers collect an
enormous amount of data from law enforcement agencies, public safety
components, including fire, health, transportation, agriculture, and
environmental protection, and private sector organizations.[5] A few state fusion
with the federal agencys priorities

centers had begun operations before September 11, 2001, but afterward, the number of centers grew
rapidly.

Fusion Centers Are Key Data Collection Centers


Stone 15 Stone, Adam, January 23, 2015 National Fusion Center Model Is
Emerging, Fusion centers are evolving into horizontal communication hubs
between states, http://www.emergencymgmt.com/safety/National-FusionCenter-Model-Is-Emerging.html
Denial-of-service telephone attacks on 911 centers in Louisiana arent typically the sort of thing to make
alarm bells ring in Kentucky. Yet thats exactly what happened in one recent episode, when bad actors
started blocking emergency calls and analysts in Louisianas fusion center quickly passed the word to their
counterparts in Kentucky. We got that out to our 911 centers in the next hour, and almost right away we
started hearing that our 911 centers were experiencing the same thing, said Mary Cope Halmhuber,
director of the Kentucky Intelligence Fusion CenterThat swift heads-up from a neighboring state helped the
Kentucky fusion center contain what might have been a big problem. This kind of interstate cooperation
typifies todays emerging fusion center. Initially formed after 9/11 as a means to coordinate local, state

fusion centers have increasingly become hubs for


cooperative information-sharing, not just vertically from states up to
federal authorities but also horizontally, with data moving between states.
and federal intelligence,

While some interstate efforts have existed from the start, lately there has been a push to formalize these
ties. This is most visible in the 2014-2017 National Strategy for the National Network of Fusion Centers,

Fusion centers came into being as


a way to ensure that security information could percolate up from the local
level to federal authorities. At the same time, these centers have broken ground in
their ability to share information from state to state a trend that has
become increasingly visible. Consider a few recent accomplishments, as reported in the
published recently by a collaborative of interested groups.

Department of Homeland Security 2013 Fusion Center Success Stories: The Immigration and Customs
Enforcement office in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., brought in the Central Florida Intelligence Exchange on a case
involving an individual wanted for production of child pornography. The exchange notified the Tennessee
Fusion Center and Georgia Information Sharing and Analysis Center, and the suspect was arrested by the
Georgia State Patrol.

2AC AT: Fusion Centers Good / Effective


DHS response to Senate attacks is a lie
Smith 12 [Oct 3, 2012, Network World, Ms. Smith Senior Director of
Circulation citing Senate report on fusion centers, Fusion centers don't
find terrorists, filled with 'crap' that violates privacy,
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223243/microsoft-subnet/fusioncenters-don-t-find-terrorists--filled-with--crap--that-violates-privacy.html]
The Senate report continually blasted DHS fusion centers. A spokesman
for Napolitano immediately blasted back , calling the report "out of date, inaccurate and
misleading." Oh really? Let's follow the moneynot that it's easy to do since no one seems to
know exactly how much has been dumped into fusion centers. The Senate investigation revealed that in

the Homeland Security's counterterrorism mission, it spent between


$289 million and $1.4 billion in state and local fusion centers. They are
primarily operated through grants provided by DHS' Federal Emergency Management Agency.

However, FEMA officials say they have no mechanism in place to accurately


account for the total amount of grant funding spent toward fusion center
support. That's not the only confusion since one chapter is devoted to how some DHS-recognized
fusion centers don't even exist! A case study was conducted on some fusion centers that used DHS grant
funds for what DHS called "must-have" basics for intelligence. Without constantly throwing dollar amounts

here's a tiny portion of what the federal money (your tax dollars at work)
purchased. According to the Senate investigative report, fusion center funds were spent: In
Arizona: Chevrolet Tahoes which were later given away to other agencies
in Arizona; a surveillance monitoring wiretap room; 42" flat-screen TVs In Cleveland, Ohio, the
fusion center spent $15,848 to buy the medical examiner "ruggedized
Toughbook laptop computers." When asked why, the fusion center
"responded that the laptops were for processing human remains in
the aftermath of a mass casualty event in the Cleveland area." In San
at you,

Diego, fusion center funds bought: a covert, wireless audio/video recorder with a "shirt-button camera"; an
ultra-low-light "pinhole" VGA camera; an ultra-low-light shirt-button camera "with interchangeable tops."
But because that surveillance equipment was "simply too complicated for our customers to use," the San
Diego "fusion center received other undercover surveillance devices," including: "A camera hidden in a hat

Software, LCD monitors and computers would seem


perhaps a reasonable intelligence sharing expense, but the San Diego fusion center
purchased: 116 computers, monitors and related equipment, even though
there are only 80 full-time employees. That was topped by buying 55 flat-screen
TVs supposedly justified because they "displayed calendars" and were used
for "open-source monitoring" which they later admitted was also
called "watching the news." The D.C. fusion center ripped through $2.7 million in Homeland
and one disguised as a water bottle."

Security grants to upgrade: an electronic records management system; data mining software; and an
Automated License Plate Recognition system (LPR system). But wait, it was not for the fusion center; it was
purchased for the local cops. The LPR system was later dropped, in favor of buying: more "analytic
software;" "sophisticated cell phone tracking devices;" and "handheld citation issuance units and
accessories" all to enhance the capabilities of the D.C. police department. That doesn't count the money
spent on computers, laptops, LCD Status Boards, CCTVs or paying cellular provider fees. Regarding
"troubling" reports that some fusion centers may have violated the privacy and civil liberties of U.S.
citizens: DHS personnel "are prohibited from collecting or maintaining information on U.S. persons solely
for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the U.S. Constitution, such as the First Amendment
protected freedoms of religion, speech, press, and peaceful assembly and protest. The Privacy Act
prohibits agencies from storing information on U.S. persons' First Amendment-protected activities if they
have no valid reason to do so. Yet of all those SARs because you might be a domestic terroist if, the Senate

panel wrote, "The apparent indefinite retention of cancelled intelligence reports that
were determined to have raised privacy or civil liberties concerns appears contrary to DHS's own policies

with a Homeland
Security official who said "the department has made improvements to the fusion centers and that
the skills of officials working in them are 'evolving and maturing'." Not
matured, after nine years and hundreds of millions, if not billions of
dollars later? This was only a fraction of the 141-page Senate investigation
report which basically concluded that fusion centers are filled with 'crap'
suspicious activity reports that are not helping the counterterrorism mission
one little bit, but that are violating Americans' civil liberties and privacy.
and the Privacy Act." After promising the condition of anonymity, NBC News spoke

*** Fusion Centers Version


#1

Black Lives Matter


Advantage

1AC

ADVANTAGE ____ : Black Lives Matter


The Black Lives Matter Movement is Growing
Paschel 14 (Tianna, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, The Making of a
Grassroots Movement against Anti-black Racism in Insurgency: The Black Matter(s) Issue Dept.
of African American Studies | University of California, Berkeley
http://www.thediasporablackmattersissue.com/ December 23, 2014
First, the

recent waves of protest from Ferguson to Oakland to New York represent


the emergence of a grassroots movement against anti-black racism, unprecedented in
recent decades. Beyond the sheer size and number of protests, their locus has also been somewhat surprising given what we
know about social movements. Rather than emerging from established civil rights organizations or black political elites that have long
considered themselves the spokespersons of the black community, this

movement has radiated out from the


outraged and grieving families and communities of the black men killed by the
police. In taking their struggle to the streets, these communities have targeted state
institutions as well as ordinary Americans who have passively watched as black
people experience racialized violence. What is most remarkable about the protests in
Ferguson, in particular, is how collective pain and indignation itself has called so many
people to the street, night after night, in the face of an increasingly militarized police
force and largely outside of respectable black middle class institutions. Indeed, while in some cases, traditional civil rights
institutions have helped to shine a spotlight on these injustices, their involvement has largely happened after mobilization was well
underway. Moreover, amidst debates on the right as to whether these deaths were racially motivated at all, some traditional black
leaders have tried to discipline protesters and emphasize personal responsibility as a potential remedy to the ills facing black
communities. This was best captured in Al Sharptons eulogy at Mike Browns funeral, which spoke not only about racialized state
violence, but the need for blacks to clean up their communities and embrace being successful. The family of Akai Gurley, another
unarmed black man gunned down by the NYPD in a dark stairwell, refused to let Sharpton speak at his memorial service. In this
sense, recent mobilization must be understood as having its roots in spontaneous, grassroots action that has become increasingly

The second root of such organizing both on the streets and on the internet
is black youth-led social movement organizations and networks such as Black Lives
Matter, We Charge Genocide and Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), to name a few. All of them have emerged in
recent years around the question of racialized police violence as well as other issues
facing black people. In so doing, they have not only mobilized and raised visibility
around these issues, but have also produced important written analyses of the
situation. They have insisted that we understand these murders as systemic rather
than episodic, as endemic rather than aberrations to an otherwise post-racial society
and state apparatus. These organizations have also been emphatic about
contextualizing these horrific events along a spectrum of state violence that black
people, and particularly poor black people experience every day in the form of
surveillance, hyper criminalization and mass incarceration.We Charge Genocide a grassroots
coordinated.

Chicago-based organization that emerged in the wake of the killing of Dominique Damo Franklin and that works to equip
individuals and communities to police the police took its name from a 1951 Petition with the same name. Originally submitted to
the UN General Assembly submitted by the Civil Rights Congress, the petition documented 153 racial killings and was signed by
W.E.B. Dubois and Paul Robeson, among many others. Its authors held that the oppressed Negro citizens of the United States,
segregated, discriminated against and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent, conscious,
unified policies of every branch of government. In a similar vein, the youth organizing with We Charge Genocide, along with the
parents of Mike Brown made similar statements on state violence against black communities in front of the UN Committee on Torture
in Geneva in November of this year. The parallels between these two moments of black resistance in both domestic and international
space are many. These similarities caution us to resist the temptation to demarcate the current moment as constituting a new kind of
racial violence.The third aspect of this movement that is important to underscore is that it is not a white movement. If you have
participated in recent protests, or even seen footage of them, you have likely noticed that many of those organizing for racial justice
and against anti-black racism are not black. In fact, a great deal of the images circulating in the newspapers in cities like New York
and in the Bay Area show a great deal of white, likely middle class liberal whites marching and dying in. On the one hand, it is
significant moment when whites chant black lives matter. This is especially the case when we consider that much of the racialized
violence perpetuated against black people (though not all) has happened at the hands of white police officers who refuse to see black
people as fully human. Having participated in some of the protests myself, I have to admit that watching black people being joined by

other people of color and white people yell black lives matter gave me a little bit of renewed hope about the possibilities of breaking
through the ideological force of post-racial America.
On the other hand, the participation and visibility of white protestors has been highly problematic. Social Justice Blogger Tam
highlighted this best in a recent post entitled Dear White Protesters: As a Black person in this country, I am well aware that the
streets belong to white people. I am not empowered or made more safe by hundreds of white people chanting that the streets belong to
them. The street in Ferguson where Mike Brown was murdered and lay dead for 4.5 hours should have belonged to him, but it didnt.
Hes dead. Hes not coming back. Thats because the streets belong to white people. Indeed, the impulse of many white protestors
throughout the United States has not been to simply stand in solidarity with black communities and others affected directly by
racialized state violence, but to appropriate that suffering, to give voice to black people, to be at the center of the movement.These
tensions were accentuated in a recent protest organized by black students at the University of Chicago where students called on
everyone to march, but only allowed black students to die in. This was a strategic decision that was an important one because it
reaffirmed the fact that it is blackness itself that made Eric Garner and Mike Brown susceptible to what Achille Mbembe calls
necropolitics or the contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death that profoundly reconfigure the relations
among resistance, sacrifice, and terror. Yet

while it is important that black bodies remain at the


center of this movement, it makes sense that we would not necessarily be there.
Indeed, the same de-facto mandate of the police to serve and protect white people
(and perhaps more importantly, white property) that led to the deaths of these black men is what
makes whites so comfortable showing their outrage in public spaces, that affords
them the privilege of feeling relatively safe while protesting, that prompts them to
taunt police. As such, while broad-based cross-racial solidarity can certainly shape the sustainability and outcomes of this
movement, there must also be a critical reflection among white protestors, as well as the movement more generally, about the ways in
which whiteness is being articulated in it.Finally, it is important to note that while many protestors have made it clear that this is about
black lives mattering, in much of the actual discourse and political practices, a concern for black mens lives have eclipsed that of
black people on the whole. This has led to a de-emphasis of the ways that racialized state violence affect black women. More
importantly, the effective erasure of black girls and women from the popularized slogan black lives matter has also rendered
invisible the stories of black women such as Tarika Wilson, Miriam Carey and Yvette Smith, all of whom were also brutally killed by
the police. As a result, we have to ask ourselves why the stories of black men are the only ones that compel people to march, why their
names are the only ones that are remembered. Ultimately,

we are experiencing a special moment in


black resistance. While the dynamics of mobilization that have coalesced under
#blacklivesmatter are still somewhat nascent, they arguably started with
mobilization around the deaths of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin years before.
Of course, the racial violence to which they speak has an even longer and deeper
history. What one senses as people have taken to the streets is a cumulative and
collective sense of pain and outrage over the continual disrespect of black life and
suffering. The haunting expression I cant breathe that Eric Garner whispered
while being choked to death by the NYPD has had deep resonance with black people
as a metaphor to our suffering. It expresses a collective awareness that behind the
brutal killing of Mike Brown are hundreds of other black women and men that
black people have yet to be guaranteed the basic rights to life and dignity. The
media has disparagingly called some of the mobilization around Ferguson as riots.
While I do not share this analysis entirely, it makes sense that a people who feel like they cant breathe might turn to riots, a strategy
some scholars have aptly argued is the last weapon of the truly dispossessed.

However, The Department of Homeland Security is Using


Fusion Centers to Track leaders and members of the
movement
Daniel Rivero, Journalist Extraordinaire, 4/16/2015, "Counter-terrorism
police might be tracking your #BlackLivesMatter tweets," Fusion,
http://fusion.net/story/121695/counter-terrorism-police-might-be-trackingyour-blacklivesmatter-tweets/
counter-terrorism officials have been called on to monitor Black
Lives Matter
The emails and other documents
illustrate specific internal communications
Reminder for Tonight and this week: Do Not Advise Protesters That We Are
Newly released emails show that

protests in California.

, released by the Bay Areas East Bay Express,

between the California Highway Patrol and its Terrorism Liaison Officers.

Following Them on Social Media,


We want to
continue tracking the protesters as much as possible. If they believe we are
tracking them, they will go silent,
Oakland police flagged a local church
situational awareness tag for state authorities to potentially monitor
read the subject line of an internal email obtained by the publication.

the note read in part. Other emails show that counter-terrorism officials were at times embedded with protesters in

Oakland. Another shows

visit by Michael Brown Sr., father of the late Ferguson, Mo. teenager, with a

. The obvious should

be stated. If you publish something on social media that is publicly viewable, then people will view it and take it into account, including officers of the law. The assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn last
December was announced over social media before it occurred, and authorities took notice. If you see something on social media that is a threat against a police officer, call 911 immediately, New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio said after the incident. We cannot take this lightly, he said. Oakland protest in December, after a grand jury did not indict police for the death of Eric Garner in NYC. Photo: Getty Images Oakland protest
in December, after a grand jury did not indict police for the death of Eric Garner in NYC. Photo: Getty Images But many things remain unclear about social media monitoring programs like the one in California. We
dont know as much about the [California] program as we should, Nadia Kayyali, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the East Bay Express. We dont know what their standards are, their policies

did not have any policies regarding its


monitoring of social media
they search for any and all open source, or
publicly available, information related our public safety assessments
Its the
coordination [of the tracking] thats disturbing,
Everythings totally
fusion center-oriented and the information is going very high up Fusion
centers are real time receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threatrelated information hubs, whose stated purpose is to facilitate
communication between local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies
in the event of a major terrorist attack or catastrophic natural disaster,
according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
with respect to limits and privacy. A California Highway Patrol official told the Express that it
, but that

. The paper also with

some of the activists it found counter-terrorism officials were tracking, like Twitter user @DomainAwareness, a digital privacy activist who asked not to be identified.
the Twitter user said.

. DHS grants fund the centers equipment and facilities,

though operations are often left in control of local officials. Several of the emails released from East Bay Express originated inside of the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a fusion center which the
paper says connects police agencies from Monterey County to the Oregon border.

tremendous resources,
Black Lives Matter protests

Theyve built this big network and they have


use of the fusion centers to monitor

commented @DomainAwareness about the

. Unfortunately, at least one alleged terrorist plot has been planned in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests. In November, two

members of the St. Louis chapter of the New Black Panthers were busted by the FBI when they allegedly bought pipe bombs from undercover agents, which they planned to use against people, buildings, vehicles
and property during the unrest that was sweeping the region at the time. The duo was formally indicted for the alleged plot in early April. They have both pleaded not guilty. Three days after they were arrested, a
grand jury made its announcement not to press charges against former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. Riots and violence spread through St. Louis
and the city of Ferguson after the announcement. Richard Callahan, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, said that the disruption of the plot saved some lives of both protesters and law
enforcement.

That Deters Mass Mobilization

Bondgraha 15

"Counter-Terrorism Officials Helped Track Black Lives


Matter Protesters." East Bay Express. N.p., 15 Apr. 2015. Web. 22 June 2015.
On December 9, 2014, at 4:48 p.m., an internal email with the subject line, "Reminder for Tonight and this
week: Do Not Advise Protesters That We Are Following Them on Social Media," circulated among dozens of
California Highway Patrol commanders. The message read: "A quick reminder ... as you know, our TLO

officers are actively following multiple leads over


social media." The note continued, "this morning, we found posts detailing protesters' interaction
[Terrorism Liaison Officers]

with individual officers last night. In the posts, protesters are stating that we (CHP) were claiming to follow
them on social media. Please have your personnel refrain from such comments; we want to continue

In
recent years, police agencies throughout the United States have
scoured social media as part of criminal investigations. But the
police are also watching social media to spy on political protesters,
especially those they suspect will engage in acts of civil
disobedience. During the recent Black Lives Matter protests, local
and state police agents monitored protesters on social media and
activist websites. Several hundred CHP emails obtained by the Express show that
social media is now a key source of intel for the police when
monitoring political protests. But the emails raise serious questions,
say civil libertarians and some of the activists whose posts were
harvested as intel. How do police monitor social media? Do they store data
tracking the protesters as much as possible. If they believe we are tracking them, they will go silent."

or track particular people? Are agencies over-reacting and wasting resources? And why are counter-

terrorism police involved? The TLOs tasked by the CHP with monitoring Black Lives Matter protesters on
social media are employed by different local agencies and serve as points of contact for matters regarding
terrorism. The role was created after 9/11, and the officers communicate through networks coordinated by
fusion centers, such as the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, or NCRIC, which connects
police agencies from Monterey County to the Oregon border. "We don't know as much about the TLO
program as we should," said Nadia Kayyali, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We don't
know what their standards are, their policies with respect to limits and privacy." The Twitter user
@domainawareness, whose tweets were collected by the police and used as intel, reviewed some of the
CHP emails that we obtained. "It's the coordination that's disturbing," said @domainawareness, whom the
Express has agreed to not identify. "Everything's totally fusion center-oriented and the information is going
very high up." An email sent on December 12 illustrates how counter-terrorism officials working out of
fusion centers helped CHP monitor protesters. At 12:12 p.m. that day, Elijah Owen, a senior intelligence
advisor with the California State Threat Assessment Center (Cal STAC) sent CHP officer Michael Berndl a
copy of a protest flier calling for a speak-out and march against the CHP the next day. "Just so it's on your
folks' radar," wrote Owen. Cal STAC officers appear in other CHP emails as sources of information, or
recipients of intel gathered by the Oakland Police Department, Alameda County Sheriff's Office, and other

"There
are CHP officers in the center, but it's a task force environment. We
assess threats. Transnational crime. Terrorism." Hopkins said Cal STAC is
a fusion center like NCRIC, except that its main focus is assessing
strategic threats to the state of California. Hopkins said he could not
comment on any emails sent by his subordinate because he hasn't
seen them. "They've built this big network and they have
tremendous resources," said @domainawareness about the involvement of fusion centers in
monitoring the Black Lives Matter protests. "But they don't have enough to do, so
they're using this to watch political protesters. It's mission creep ."
agencies. "We are not the CHP," Matthew Hopkins the deputy commander of Cal STAC told me.

Kayyali added: "There's this mystique around doing surveillance and intel-gathering, and they're not really
thinking about the usefulness of what they're doing, and why they're doing it." Another email circulated
among CHP commanders on December 11 included a two-page brief on the department's undercover
operations in Oakland and Berkeley in which at least four CHP officers were "[e]mbedded with protesters."
According to the brief, these were Terrorism Liaison Officers from CHP's Investigative Services Unit (ISU).

"Up to this point, ISU TLO officers obtained intelligence on protesters


through social media regarding dates, times, and locations of
planned protests and of intentions to disrupt Bay Area freeways,"
explained the CHP brief. The document includes screenshots of tweets, including three from East Bay
resident Noura Khouri who took part in the protests. Khouri had tweeted two days before, "Since were
dreaming @thehoopoe how about the bay bridge shut down + port shut down + general strike
#shutitdown <3." On December 9 Gareth Lacy, a press officer with Caltrans forwarded to CHP
commanders a similar tweet composed by @reclaimuc which stated: "may 2, 1992: UC berkeley and
berkeley high students occupy bay bridge after acquittal of cops who beat Rodney king." Records show
that CHP interpreted social media postings like these as evidence that the Bay Bridge was going to be shut
down by protesters. Acting on this fear, on December 12, CHP Assistant Chief Paul Fontana wrote his
commanders requesting special response teams from other divisions. "I would also like to request SWAT,"
wrote Fontana, referring to the heavily armed special weapons and tactics team. In an interview, Khouri
characterized the reaction of CHP to the protests as extreme and ironic. "These protests initially formed as
a direct result of police abuses," said Khouri. "I personally have stopped using Facebook for my political
expression because of my deep concern for privacy, and law enforcement using it as a tool of political
repression." The

CHP emails show that police were monitoring almost


anything related to the Black Lives Matter movement. For example, Maria
Dominguez helped organize a "Human Rights Day Vigil" with the nonprofit Ella Baker Center of Oakland on
December 10 at the Alameda County Administration Building. "I posted our event on Indybay," said

"We're always cautious of not putting anything


online that would raise interest of law enforcement." Dominguez was
surprised when she got a phone call from the Alameda County
Sheriff's Office. "When organizers get a call, it is chilling ," said Dominguez.
Dominguez in an interview.

"The unsaid thing was, 'warning there's going to be a lot of police there, so if you're planning anything out
of line, watch out.'" Other police agencies flagged Dominguez's event as a threat. In an email with the

subject line "RE: Social Media Update," CHP Investigator Timothy Randall emailed half a dozen other
officers on December 10, including CHP Chief Avery Browne, and included a screenshot of Dominguez's
event posting from Indybay. "Supposed to be just a 'vigil' but it is occurring in Oakland," wrote Randall. I
asked Dominguez why law enforcement might single out her event. "Maybe

it's a virtual version

of stop and frisk,"

said Dominguez. "My name is Maria Dominguez. I'm a Latina, and the Ella
Baker Center, it's racialized it's named after a Black woman." The Oakland Police Department also
monitored the Twitter accounts and Facebook postings of Black Lives Matter protesters in December. One
"situational awareness" update that OPD sent to the CHP listed a candlelight vigil by Lake Merritt, a
Berkeley City Council meeting, and a visit by Mike Brown, Sr. to a San Francisco church as events to
monitor. I called Sergeant Randal Bandino, one of the OPD officers sharing these emails, to ask about how
OPD monitors social media. Bandino said he personally isn't involved and can't speak to OPD's practices
and policies. But he added, "It's nothing special. What we're looking at is what's open to the public."
Deputy Alameda County Sheriff David Darrin also said he couldn't speak about how his agency monitors
social media, referring me instead to the sheriff's official spokesperson. Darrin is also an intelligence officer
with the NCRIC fusion center. On December 7, Darrin shared Facebook events advertising upcoming
marches "to protest the police riot in Berkeley" with his NCRIC colleague Nicholas Silva. Silva, a CHP
officer, forwarded the information on to CHP investigators. CHP spokesperson Brandie Dressel wrote in an
email to me that the CHP has no policies governing the monitoring of social media, but that officers
"search for any and all 'open source,' or publicly available, information related our public safety
assessments." According to Dressel, the CHP doesn't keep any of this data. As to why Terrorism Liaison
Officers were leading the CHP's effort to monitor Black Lives Matter protesters, Dressel wrote, "CHP TLOs
can at times be assigned to gather intelligence and provide logistical support for a reasonable and clearly
articulated law enforcement purpose." The emails obtained by the Express from CHP were originally part
of a Public Records Act request made by San Francisco resident Michael Petrelis. Petrelis said he asked for
the records because he was concerned about CHP's use of less-than-lethal weapons and armed undercover
agents. Petrelis also said he is not surprised to see the extensive monitoring of social media by the police.
"I come out of Act Up in NYC," said Petrelis. "The cops came to our meetings and they picked up all the lit.

"In the Tech Age,


you have to always think the cops are reading this."
"My experience in organizing is that cops are watching you," he continued.

Independently, Surveillance of This Movement Reinforces


Social Hierarchies in the United States and Perpetuates
Violence
Malkia Amala, Activist Extraordinaire, 3/30/2015, "Black America's State of
Surveillance," No Publication,
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-statesurveillance
Ten years ago
my mother, a former Black Panther, died from
complications of sickle cell anemia Weeks before she died, the FBI came
knocking at our door, demanding that my mother testify in a secret trial
proceeding against other former Panthers or face arrest. My mother, unable
to walk, refused. The detectives told my mother as they left that they would
be watching her
My mother died just two weeks later
Files obtained
during a break-in at an FBI office in 1971 revealed that African Americans
didnt have to be perceived as dissident to warrant surveillance
just had to be black
the same philosophy
use of
surveillance technologies
across the United States.
, on Martin Luther King Jr.s birthday,

. They didnt get to do that.

. My mother was not the only black

person to come under the watchful eye of American law enforcement for perceived and actual dissidence. Nor is dissidence always a requirement for being subject to spying.

, J. Edger

Hoovers largest target group,

. They

. As I write this,

is driving the increasing adoption and

by local law enforcement agencies

Today, media reporting on government

surveillance is laser-focused on the revelations by Edward Snowden that millions of Americans were being spied on by the NSA. Yet my mothers visit from the FBI reminds me that, from the slave pass system to

black people and other people of color have lived for


centuries with surveillance practices aimed at maintaining a racial hierarchy
We need to understand that
data has historically been overused to repress dissidence, monitor perceived
laws that deputized white civilians as enforcers of Jim Crow,

. Its

time for journalists to tell a new story that does not start the clock when privileged classes learn they are targets of surveillance.

criminality, and perpetually maintain an impoverished underclass

. In an era of big data, the Internet

has increased the speed and secrecy of data collection. Thanks to new surveillance technologies, law enforcement agencies are now able to collect massive amounts of indiscriminate data. Yet legal protections and

Targeted surveillance
is an obvious answerit may be discriminatory, but it helps protect the
privacy perceived as an earned privilege of the inherently innocent. The
trouble is, targeted surveillance frequently includes the indiscriminate
collection of the private data of people targeted by race but not involved in
any crime
we are watched, either
as criminals or as consumers
policies have not caught up to this technological advance. Concerned advocates see mass surveillance as the problem and protecting privacy as the goal.

. For targeted communities, there is little to no expectation of privacy from government or corporate surveillance. Instead,

. We do not expect policies to protect us. Instead, weve birthed a complex and coded culturefrom jazz to spoken dialectsin order

to navigate a world in which spying, from AT&T and Walmart to public benefits programs and beat cops on the block, is as much a part of our built environment as the streets covered in our blood. In a recent
address, New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton made it clear: 2015 will be one of the most significant years in the history of this organization. It will be the year of technology, in which we literally will give
to every member of this department technology that wouldve been unheard of even a few years ago. Predictive policing, also known as Total Information Awareness, is described as using advanced technological
tools and data analysis to preempt crime. It utilizes trends, patterns, sequences, and affinities found in data to make determinations about when and where crimes will occur. This model is deceptive, however,

In a racially discriminatory criminal justice system,


surveillance technologies reproduce injustice.
because it presumes data inputs to be neutral. They arent.

Instead of reducing discrimination, predictive policing is a face of what author Michelle

Alexander calls the New Jim Crowa de facto system of separate and unequal application of laws, police practices, conviction rates, sentencing terms, and conditions of confinement that operate more as a

This approach to
policing places an undue focus on quality of life crimeslike selling loose
cigarettes, the kind of offense for which Eric Garner was choked to death
predictive policing is just high-tech racial profiling
indiscriminate data collection that drives discriminatory policing practices
system of social control by racial hierarchy than as crime prevention or punishment. In New York City, the predictive policing approach in use is Broken Windows.

. Without

oversight, accountability, transparency, or rights,

. As local

law enforcement agencies increasingly adopt surveillance technologies, they use them in three primary ways: to listen in on specific conversations on and offline; to observe daily movements of individuals and
groups; and to observe data trends. Police departments like Brattons aim to use sophisticated technologies to do all three. They will use technologies like license plate readers, which the Electronic Frontier
Foundation found to be disproportionately used in communities of color and communities in the process of being gentrified. They will use facial recognition, biometric scanning software, which the FBI has now rolled
out as a national system, to be adopted by local police departments for any criminal justice purpose. They intend to use body and dashboard cameras, which have been touted as an effective step toward
accountability based on the results of one study, yet storage and archiving procedures, among many other issues, remain unclear. They will use Stingray cellphone interceptors. According to the ACLU, Stingray
technology is an invasive cellphone surveillance device that mimics cellphone towers and sends out signals to trick cellphones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information. When used to
track a suspects cellphone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby. The same is true of domestic drones, which are in increasing use by U.S. law
enforcement to conduct routine aerial surveillance. While drones are currently unarmed, drone manufacturers are considering arming these remote-controlled aircraft with weapons like rubber bullets, tasers, and

They will use fusion centers


become the local arm of the intelligence community

tear gas.
instead

. Originally designed to increase interagency collaboration for the purposes of counterterrorism,

these have

. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation, there are

currently seventy-eight on record. They are the clearinghouse for increasingly used suspicious activity reportsdescribed as official documentation of observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational

These reports and other collected data are often stored in


massive databases like e-Verify and Prism
Just as stop and
frisk legitimized an initial, unwarranted contact between police and people of
color, almost 90 percent of whom turn out to be innocent of any crime
fusion centers target communities of color
This is the future of policing in America, and it should
terrify you as much as it terrifies me
the most terrifying aspects of high-tech
surveillance is the invisibility of those it disproportionately impacts
planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity.

. As anybody whos ever dealt with gang databases knows, its almost impossible to get off a

federal or state database, even when the data collected is incorrect or no longer true. Predictive policing doesnt just lead to racial and religious profilingit relies on it.

, suspicious activities

reporting and the dragnet approach of

. One review of such reports collected in Los Angeles

shows approximately 75 percent were of people of color.

. Unfortunately, it probably doesnt, because my life is at far greater risk than the lives of white Americans,

especially those reporting on the issue in the media or advocating in the halls of power. One of

. The NSA and FBI have

engaged local law enforcement agencies and electronic surveillance technologies to spy on Muslims living in the United States. According to FBI training materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau taught
agents to treat mainstream Muslims as supporters of terrorism, to view charitable donations by Muslims as a funding mechanism for combat, and to view Islam itself as a Death Star that must be destroyed if
terrorism is to be contained. From New York City to Chicago and beyond, local law enforcement agencies have expanded unlawful and covert racial and religious profiling against Muslims not suspected of any crime.
There is no national security reason to profile all Muslims. At the same time, almost 450,000 migrants are in detention facilities throughout the United States, including survivors of torture, asylum seekers, families
with small children, and the elderly. Undocumented migrant communities enjoy few legal protections, and are therefore subject to brutal policing practices, including illegal surveillance practices. According to the
Sentencing Project, of the more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, more than 60 percent are racial and ethnic minorities. But by far, the widest net is cast over black communities. Black people
alone represent 40 percent of those incarcerated. More black men are incarcerated than were held in slavery in 1850, on the eve of the Civil War. Lest some misinterpret that statistic as evidence of greater
criminality, a 2012 study confirms that black defendants are at least 30 percent more likely to be imprisoned than whites for the same crime. This is not a broken system, it is a system working perfectly as intended,
to the detriment of all. The NSA could not have spied on millions of cellphones if it were not already spying on black people, Muslims, and migrants. As surveillance technologies are increasingly adopted and
integrated by law enforcement agencies today, racial disparities are being made invisible by a media environment that has failed to tell the story of surveillance in the context of structural racism. Reporters love to
tell the technology story. For some, its a sexier read. To me, freedom from repression and racism is far sexier than the newest gadget used to reinforce racial hierarchy. As civil rights protections catch up with the
technological terrain, reporting needs to catch up, too. Many journalists still focus their reporting on the technological trends and not the racial hierarchies that these trends are enforcing. Martin Luther King Jr. once
said, Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. Journalists have an obligation to tell the stories that are hidden from view. We are living in an incredible time, when migrant activists have
blocked deportation buses, and a movement for black lives has emerged, and when women, queer, and trans experiences have been placed right at the center. The decentralized power of the Internet makes that

We can help black lives


matter by ensuring that technology is not used to cement a racial hierarchy
that leaves too many people like me dead or in jail Our communities need
partners, not gatekeepers. Together, we can change the cultural terrain that
makes killing black people routine
We can change the story on surveillance to raise the voices of those
who have been left out
possible. But the Internet also makes possible the high-tech surveillance that threatens to drive structural racism in the twenty-first century.

. We can counter inequality by ensuring that both the technology and the police departments that use it are

democratized.

. There are no voiceless people, only those that aint been heard yet. Lets birth a new norm in which the technological tools of the twenty-first century

create equity and justice for allso all bodies enjoy full and equal protection, and the Jim Crow surveillance state exists no more.

Absent the Success of the Movement, Anti-Black Violence


Makes Reconciliation Impossible
Brady 12 [Nicholas Brady, activist scholar, executive board member of
Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, BA in philosophy from Johns Hopkins, PhD
student at the University of California-Irvine Culture and Theory program, 1026-12, The Flesh Grinder: Prosecutorial Discretion and the Terror of Mass
Incarceration,
http://academia.edu/2776507/The_Flesh_Grinder_Prosecutorial_Discretion_an
d_the_Quotidian_Terror_of_Mass_Incarceration]
The recent murder of Trayvon Martin brought the national conversation back
to a topic that had been repressed for the myth of a post-racial America
propagated since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency: the
fundamental openness of the black body to wanton and excessive abuse and
premature death (Gilmore, 28). That the national narrative around Martins
death, even the narratives built by black political and civil leaders, only had
Emit Till to compare his death to is example par excellance of the complete
lack of any language we have to discuss the machinations that make a
phrase such as black death into a redundancy. Trayvon Martin was not a
singular case but was one of 120 black people killed extra-judicially (by police
officers, security officials, and vigilante justice-seekers) in 2012 between January and July .
That every 36 hours on average a black life is taken extra-judicially means
that Trayvon Martin is not exceptional, but we do not have a language to deal
with either the exceptional or the quotidian . Into the abyss, though the demand for justice,
something productive happened: the rallying cry for justice made an invisible and ethereal part of the

The call to arrest and charge George


Zimmerman brought our attention to the role of the Prosecutor in the criminal
punishment system. After the protests, statement from the President, and daily media blitzes, a
justice system into something a little more material.

special prosecutor was assigned to the case to meet the calls for justice. Angela Corey would become the
face for an area of the law that is both ubiquitous and unthought. It seems she understood this for her
statement, before officially giving the charge, set up a context for evaluating prosecutors, The Supreme
Court has defined our role as Proscutors [as] not only ministers of justice but seekers of the truth.
Every single day our prosecutors across this great country handle difficult cases and they adhere to that
same standard: a never ending search for the truth and a quest to always do the right thing for the right
reason. There is a reason cases are tried in a court of law and not in the court of public opinion or the
media. Because details have to come out in excruciating and minute fashion. Detail by detail, bit of
evidence by bit of evidence. And it is only then, when the Trier of fact whether judge or jury, gets all the
details that then a decision can be rendered. Corey is laboring to legitimize a system that took weeks to
actually arrest George Zimmerman, yet this labor represses her own case history, for example the case of

Marissa Alexander. Alexander is a mother who was convicted of attempted


murder because she shot a warning shot at the father of her children who has
admitted to beating her on several occasions before. Alexander was arrested
on spot and charged within days in a case where the stand your ground
defense was also being called upon . This supposed contradiction of methods that meet
different bodies is the norm of the criminal punishment system, and this paper will attempt to string out
some parts of the structure that make it so. In many disciplines there has been renewed attention given
to mass incarceration. Yet, in spite of the growing level of multidisciplinary scrutiny on police surveillance
and violent gulags, a major actor has slipped through virtually untouched in the humanities' attention to
prisons. This major actor, regularly described in criminology and legal scholarship as the most powerful
agent in the criminal punishment system, is the Prosecutor. The office of the prosecutor exists in a place
where matter doesn't matter. Or put differently,

the prosecutors agency is assembled

where black matter no longer matters and where what matters, the
happenings of the human and the quest for civil justice, can only be produced
through the quotidian grinding and destruction of black flesh . This paper will seek
to shine a light, or better yet a shadow, on the white knights of the justice system. While one would think
they know the job of a Prosecutor given its ubiquity on television crime dramas and movies, the
mundaneness of their actual day-to-day activities are mystified by television's fascination with the drama
of the trial, whether fictional or "real." In fact, it is rare that you will find a prosecutor who takes even 10
percent of their cases to trial. Over 90 percent of cases are settled through a plea bargain where the
defendant will agree to plead guilty usually for the guarantee of less time, parole, or a lighter charge. As
one law professor put it, the plea bargain is not an addendum to the criminal justice system, it is the
criminal justice system (Scott and Stuntz, 1912). In spite of its centrality, there is little literature on the
inner-workings of the plea bargain outside of schematic analysis in criminology. Instead of focusing on the
theatrics of the trial, this paper will analyze the day-to-day grind of the plea bargain in order to explicate
the quotidian terror that lies at the heart of prosecutorial discretion. From day-to-day a Prosecutor can be
working on anywhere between 20 to 100 cases at a time (Heumann, 98). While a Prosecutor is given wide
discretion to charge a case the way they want, there are hierarchies that determine the norms and
procedures of each office. There are the district attorneys that the general population votes into office and
the deputy attorneys that answer directly to him or her. Underneath them are the line prosecutors who
work on the majority of the cases but whose decisions generally follow the established protocols of the
veteran prosecutors and deputies. New prosecutors often come straight from law school with lofty dreams
of becoming courtroom heroes only to learn that their job is much more akin to assembly-line justice. Legal
scholar Abraham Blumberg describes this as the, emergence of bureaucratic due process, consist[ing]
of secret bargaining sessions [and] employing subtle, bureaucratically ordained modes of coercion and
influence to dispose of large case loads (Blumberg, 69). While each office is different from the next,
there is a stunning amount of unity at the procedural level. Deputy district attorneys will reject thirty to
forty percent of cases the police send to them on face. The remaining 60 percent are considered suspects
that are, according to the evidence provided, conclusively guilty. For the Prosecutor, these cases would be
slam-dunk wins in front of a jury (Lewis, 51). This begs the question: What is the dividing line between
cases that are charged and cases that get dropped by Prosecutors? Some statistics on the racial

In terms of drug crimes, according to


a comprehensive report by Human Rights Watch, blacks are 14 percent of
drug users, but are 37 percent of people arrested for drug possession, and
are anywhere between 45 to 60 percent of those charged . These strings of
numbers reveal an anti-black trajectory: the cases that the Prosecutor
overwhelmingly pursues are black cases, the ones he drops are
overwhelmingly non-black. A defense attorney called these for-sure-guilty
cases born dead. This is a curious phrase, but when considering the historic
connection between blackness and crime dating back to the inception of the
national polity through slavery, the defense attorneys phrasing gets us to a
much more paradigmatic argument. Walt Lewis, a Los Angeles prosecutor, describes
a criminal justice continuum where bodies are transformed from being
free to being incarcerated (Lewis, 20). One is first arrested by the police and
becomes a suspect. If the prosecutor decides to charge, then you go from
being a suspect to a defendant. Finally if you are found guilty, you go
from being a defendant to a convict. This process describes a temporality
that transforms the human into the incarcerated inhuman. As violent as
this process can be, the blacks fate is fundamentally different and more
terrifying. The black is arrested, charged, and convicted at disproportionate
rates because we were never actually suspects or defendants. Instead,
we were always criminals, always already slaves-in-waiting. Instead of a
continuum, the black body floats in a zone of non-being where time and
transformation lose all meaning. Cases involving black bodies do not need to
be rock-solid in terms of facts for their bodies have already been marked by
the law as criminal (Fanon, 2). Thus cases involving black bodies are always forcomponent of sentencing might lead us to an answer.

sure victories, are always already born dead.

In an interesting case that made it all


the way to the Supreme Court titled United States versus Armstrong, a group of black defendants levied a

A group of black men were brought on charges


of possessing 50 grams of crack cocaine . Unlike a normal defense where the details of the
states accusation would be called into question, the defense instead argued that the
prosecution selectively charges black people in cases involving crack cocaine .
critique similar to this papers argument .

The first argument of the defense was that the majority of crack cocaine users in California are actually
whites, not black people. The second argument of the defense used testimonies from government lawyers
to prove that of all 841 cases the state brought against people possessing crack cocaine, all of them were
black. Using these two claims, the defense said there was adequate proof to show that prosecutors were
using unconstitutional means, racial markers, to select who would be charged and who wouldnt be
charged. According to past rulings by the Supreme Court, if selective prosecution can be proven then that
is adequate grounds to vacate the sentence, even if the defendants were caught red-handed. Against
this defense, the prosecution counter-argued that it does not selectively prosecute based on race, but
instead on fact and circumstance. The district court that initially heard the appeal ruled that the state
should turn over records of the 841 cases in question to prove who was right in the dispute. The state
refused to reveal its documents and instead appealed the decision all the way up to the Supreme Court.

the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the


prosecution for a few reasons. The first reason Rehnquist gave was that it is not in
the best interest of the governments war on crime to monitor prosecutors.
Rehnquist argued that the prosecutor must have the freedom to operate in the way she sees fit. The
second and most important reason Rehnquist gave was by far the most
explicitly racist and I will quote it in full: quote a published 1989 Drug
Enforcement Administration report concluded that "[l]arge scale, interstate
trafficking networks controlled by Jamaicans, Haitians and Black street gangs
dominate the manufacture and distribution of crack. [and] the most recent
statistics of the United States Sentencing Commission show that: More than
90% of the persons sentenced in 1994 for crack cocaine trafficking were
black. . The Supreme Court answered the defendants accusation of selective prosecution by arguing
Overturning the district and federal circuit court,

that such a prosecution strategy is legitimate because it can be verified through statistics that black

the Supreme
Court ruled that it was in the states interest to terrorize black communities
because we are the most heinous drug users in the country. To be black is to
be marked as a danger that must be controlled, seized, and incarcerated .
Prosecutors act within and perpetuate this matrix of violence that precedes
discourse. When a Prosecutor sees a case with a black body, he knows the
same statistic the Supreme Court quoted and he knows, if not consciously
then unconsciously, that this case is already done, already guilty, already
born dead.
people are the major users and distributors of crack cocaine. To word it differently,

The Success of the Movement is key because it represents


an opportunity to reshape the way individuals understand
racial dynamics in the status quo instead of viewing
violence against minority populations as isolated
moments, the plans empathetic politics would help create
an understanding of how these moments are part of a
larger narrative of prejudice in the United States
Strabuk 14 (Alexa, Media analyst from The Student Life Pomona Opinions
Editorial Board and Opinions Editor, 12-5-14, Responding to Misleading

Media Narratives in the Wake of Ferguson, Staten Island,


http://tsl.pomona.edu/articles/2014/12/5/opinions/5845-responding-tomisleading-media-narratives-in-the-wake-of-ferguson-staten-island)
Last week, a Missouri grand jury voted not to indict police officer Darren
Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown. This week, a grand jury in New York
voted not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the killing of Eric Garner.
None of these incidents was an isolated event. The deaths of these
men and the decisions not to indict their killers are a manifestation
of systemic social problems in the United States. In Claremont,
students organized a march as a sign of solidarity with the Ferguson
community and as a call to action against the broader problem of
institutionalized racism in the United States, as Jazmin Ocampo reports (See
News, page 1). We applaud those students for acting on their beliefs: for not
remaining in silence, or limiting dissent to Tweets and Facebook posts. While
social media does provide a venue for raising awareness, we believe that
change will require much more effort. As part of that effort, we
should all do what we can to keep educating ourselves about what
happened and is happening in Ferguson and in New York and the
reality of institutionalized racism in the United States. Self-education
has not been made easier by unprofessional media coverage of Ferguson.
One of the most common trends in major news organizations'
coverage of this issue has been the overemphasis on incidents of
violence and theft and the downplaying of peaceful protests. At best, we
consider this coverage to be underinformed; at worst, it is
irresponsible and dangerously misleading. As student journalists, we
believe in the value of thorough and objective reporting. But navigating the
modern deluge of hastily written and re-reported news can be daunting. For
those seeking quality reporting on the events in Ferguson, or on national
issues like structural racism and police militarization, we encourage you to
look beyond the dominant headlines and seek out diligent, on-the-ground
reporting. We also recommend turning to organizations that emphasize the
perspectives and experiences of people of color because too many news
organizations are overwhelmingly white. As the attention span of the national
media wanesand it is already waningfind the authors, the publications
and the websites that give context to these momentary events. Whatever
articles you read, question them. Attune yourself to sensational buzzwords,
hasty generalizations and simple narratives. These are complex issues that
deserve complex treatment, and we must use our capacity for understanding
to its fullest, especially when the narratives involved have too often been
silenced or ignored. Beyond education, we hope that students continue to
take action within this community, and we challenge others to aid in tackling
the problems that pervade our nation. And we hope that those who have
been moved by these events will not allow time or diminishing media focus to
obscure the ways that national problems become individual tragedies. There
are many lessons to be learned from the deaths of Michael Brown

and Eric Garner. Only through perseverancein observation, in


education and in actionwill we truly learn.

Current Educational approaches to the topic of slavery


often times overlook its influence on the broader
institution of our nations story instead, status quo
academia tends to treat it as an isolated event that we
can bury
Chandler and McKnight 9
(Prentice Chandler Ph.D from the University of Alabama, Assistant Professor
of Social Studies Education and Critical Race Theory, and Douglas McKnight Ph.D. Louisiana State University, professor of Educational Leadership, Policy
and Technology Studies and Social and Cultural Studies, The Failure of Social
Education in the United States: A Critique of Teaching the National Story from
"White" Colourblind Eyes, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, v7 n2
p217-248 Nov 2009)
studies, given its disciplinary inclusive nature, has from its inception as an academic field in the late 1800s, the potential to
a critical tool to explain how attitudes and beliefs about race have often
led to anti-democratic exercises, such as the marginalization and oppression
of non-whites within the US (Bell, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Nelson & Pang, 2001; Parker, 2001; Santora, 2001). To
view the field in such a way precludes teachers, especially white teachers, from hiding behind the belief
that they are but telling a neutral, factual story of historical events. This neutral
The social
become

narrative actually privileges a monocultural perspective (Geher, 1993) that makes itself visible (i.e. Anglo-European culture) and all other

These peripheral forms of


existence that counter the dominant white culture are considered a threat
against true Americans (white, conservative, patriarchal, heterosexual, etc) and are to be warred
against, as evident in US cable television shows such as OReilly Factor and Hannity (both on Fox News Channel) and both of which have
large audiences. Within the institution of schooling and in the academic research,
social studies has historically tended to ignore the theme of race in relation to
the national narrative, specifically glossing over how some members of society not
part of the Anglo-European, middle class, protestant temperament (Greven, 1977)
have been silenced or relegated to victim status in the telling of the story . An effect is that
races other than white (i.e. African-Americans, Native Americans) are
depicted as groups acted upon by the forces and personalities of history
rather than as actors within history . Simply, the white male character is
preserved as the main protagonist of the national story, which is presented
within the curriculum and in textbooks as a chronological, linear story of great moral,
political, technological, economic and even spiritual progress . However, an analysis of the
perspectives invisible or visible only on the periphery as a warning to the dominant culture.

social studies field has exhibited a dearth of research into how race permeates how the national story is told in the curriculum and classroom
(Chandler, 2007). In effect, mainstream social studies research perceives race in terms of a series of cause and effect events rather than as a
persistent subtext of the whole narrative that has to a large degree defined US society and perpetuated a condition of being white as a form of

Social studies
tends to approach race in US history as a problem dealt with and
solved during the past, such as the Civil War (white man as the great
liberator) and again in the Civil Rights era (with the curriculum privileging the peaceful, or sanitized,
version of the African-American voice, such as civil rights leader Martin Luther King, instead of the more
property that provides special privileges (Harris, 1993; McIntosh, 1990; Solomon, Portelli, Daniel, & Campbell, 2005).
as a discipline

After each event, race disappears within the textual


landscape of the American story and so from the minds of students, making social studies a poor resource for
threatening voice of Malcolm X).

enabling students to develop a discourse of contemporary race and ethnic relations that addresses institutional racism, structural inequality,

interactions
between groups of people are hidden in plain sight, removed from the
narrative and from analysis (Wills, 2001). In an effort to address these issues, this article will explore the lack of
and power (Wills, 2001, p. 43). In constructing the social studies and the story of the US in this way, the important

research on the issue of race in social studies research and textbooks in relation to the US. We do not attempt to draw conclusions beyond the
US because of our focus on national narratives and how those narratives play out in a racialized context, hence, precluding any claims beyond
that particular context. We will interrogate the possible reasons why race, which should be an emphasized area of US social studies research
and curriculum in both schools and in teacher preparation, is subsumed within a colour-blind framework rather than from a critical race theory
(Harris, 1993) or critical multiculturalism (McCarthy, 1994) perspective that interrogates the racial component in Since its inception as a

Social
studies, in the broadest sense, is the preparation of young people so that they posses
the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for active participation in society
formal field of study, the expressed goal of the social studies has been that of citizenship education (Shaver, 1981).

(Ross, 2001, p. 21). This preparation involves the creation of narratives within social studies that carry certain moral goals of directing

The
success of the monocultural ideal was closely tied to the emerging role of the
United States as a hegemonic power. This is expressed ideologically in the common pronouncement that the
students to a model of what their relationship to the greater society should look like (Morrissett, 1981). As Geher identifies:

United States unified the West, completed the course of Western development, and set global standards of civilization in fierce rivalry with the
Soviet Union (1993, p. 509). In essence, the national narrative has always embodied some form of progress toward some great end or

The archetype of US exceptionality brings forth the following ideas social studies teachers
pedagogy: (1) God is on our side, (2) civilization has been created from the wilderness, (3) Europeans have created order where
perfection.

disorder existed before, and (4) hard work, merit, and virtuous character pay off (Loewen, 1995). For these unexcelled blessings, the pupil is
urged to follow in the footsteps of his forbears, to offer unquestioning obedience to the law of the land, and to carry on the work begun

Hence, the history written has been a form of mytho-history


constructed for individuals to embody (Geher, 1993; McNeill, 1986). For the colonial Puritans, it was the
(Pierce, 1926, p. 113).

errand into the wilderness and a city upon the hill (Bercovitch, 1975); for the next era it was Enlightenment Progress; then Manifest

The theme of US
exceptionalism, and its subsequent protection of all the material rewards that
its people feel they deserve, undergirds all of the mainstream stories as told
through the social studies. However, conflict arises over the responsibility of social studies educators beyond that point:
Destiny; to the more recent belief in the US as the moral arbiter and protector of the world.

whether such narratives need to be merely recited, as in a history teachers lecture pulled directly from a textbook or from pre-packaged
curricula resources; or to tell the story, analyze it historically and interpret to what degree it has and continues to match concrete reality.
Shaver (1981) defines the basic dilemma in this way: How can the school contribute to the continuity of the society by preserving and
passing on its traditions and values the telling of the national narrative. while also contributing to appropriate social change by helping youth
to question current social forms and solutions (p. 125)? Given Shavers (1981) acknowledgement of such foundational concerns, it is difficult
to explain why social studies research has largely ignored race as a major persistent theme within the national story (Marri, 2001; Marshall,
2001; Pang, Rivera, & Gillette, 1998; Tyson, 2001). In fact an excellent recent work that appears to be an exception to the problem of race in
relation to education in general in the US, Ross & Pangs (2006) edition of Race, Ethnicity and Education, actually confirms the problem. Those
involved in the social studies scholarship in these important volumes have removed themselves from the mainstream of NCSS -- given its
complete resistance to any such discussion of race -- and are now situated on the periphery so as to find any space to inquire into such
controversial issues. Mainstream social studies research has failed to confront directly the issue of race in any meaningful way. Telling is a
review of the social studies literature from 1973 to the present in the premier US social studies research journal, Theory and Research in Social
Education (TRSE), subsidized by NCSS, reveals a lack of scholarly inquiry into the different issues of race. Noticeably absent are the issues of
race as a subject matter in the social studies curriculum, as well as how race shapes the classroom as a cultural space in which whiteness is
privileged. In Ehmans (1998) extensive review of TRSE from 1973-1997, only 6% dealt with social problems and controversial issues, of
which race would be a part. An analysis of the years after 1997 to the present found the same persistent lack of research in general
confronting controversial issues in TRSE, and in specific lack of racial analysis (Chandler, 2007). Nelson & Fernekes (1996) found that NCSS
has a long history of not taking stands on significant social conflicts between those privileged within the dominant culture and those oppressed
by it: The National Council for the Social Studies record on civil rights can only be characterized as negligent at best and indifferent at worst.
NCSS largely ignored the civil rights movement and in the process demonstrated indifference toward a social crisis of immense significance,
one that challenged the very basis of democratic institutions and posed difficult questions for educators who daily had to confront the gap
between the stated ideals and social experience. (p. 98) Two recent volumes of social education research are instructive in how race is either
situated on the margins or is sanitized and hidden within the large framework of colour-blind multiculturalism and diversity (further examined
below). Critical Issues in Social Studies Teacher Education (Adler, 2004) and Critical Issues in Social Studies Research for the 21st Century
(Stanley, 2001) present race as a topic on the periphery of social studies thought and research. Of the 33 chapters that constitute these two
volumes, written by the foremost scholars in the field of social studies research, five address the issue of race mostly as a subset of either
urban and/or global education or as just one piece of multicultural education. The one chapter that examines race as an unavoidable thematic

socially
constructed notions of race and whiteness define what the dominant culture
believes is normality, which in turn perpetuates the privileging of
whiteness within education. Santoras analysis complements Nelson and Pangs (2001) findings of how within the
within the national narrative is Santoras (2001) work on cross-cultural dialogue. From this perspective, she addresses how

social studies curriculum the national narrative fails to match the material reality of social studies classrooms. They identified that while the
root ideas of liberty, justice, and equality (Nelson & Pang, 2001, p. 144) were spoken the actions of teacher and student betrayed the
sentiment by failing to interrogate the contradictions that existed between words and deeds. This is a sobering and disquieting scenario, one
that illustrates

that justice and equality are not the standards of US society, no

matter the credo (Nelson & Pang, 2001, p. 144). While the mainstream social studies is quick to transmit the story of colonial
resistance, the virtues of republicanism, superiority of American culture and Manifest Destiny, race and its central role in the creation of the

The danger of this is that a failure to


confront the legacy of race in the US will preclude students from
understanding how racial injustice continues even as legislative attempts at
redress, such as affirmative action, are struck down as unnecessary in the present age. This leads to an
absence of examining race within the social studies as an important
determinant of US past, present and future. In fact, Nelson & Pang (2001) found in
examination of the social studies curriculum and practice a field characterized by dullness,
vapidity, absolutism, censorship, and inaccuracy in the promotion of patriotic
nationalism and conservative social values (p. 152) that fails to interrogate claims of US moral certitude
US is disregarded (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Lybarger, 1991).

and self-righteousness. This is even more problematic given the broad and powerful critique by Critical Race Theory (CRT), revealing how

US history is a story of racialization in which the freedom of some was


preserved through the enslavement and oppression of others through legal
means (Dixon & Rousseau, 2005; Harris, 1993; Roithmayer, 1999). Domestic and foreign policy of the US
have been predicated on racial notions; from Native genocide, to African enslavement, to Jim Crow legislation, to Manifest Destiny (i.e. empire

the history of the US is tied to the manifestation of racism and


racist regimes (Howard, 2001). Also missing is any analysis on the interaction between the races. The social studies is the one
building),

discipline that could provide students with a language to develop a discourse of contemporary race and ethnic relations that addresses
institutional racism, structural inequality, and power (Wills, 2001, p. 43). Instead, the social studies mentions certain groups of people (i.e.
women, Native Americans, African Americans) without any reference to the superstructure of oppression that causes their situation and/or

This gives the impression that either oppression does not exist or
that nothing can be done about it because history is perceived as predetermined and progressive. In fact, case studies with white high school social studies teachers found that these
respective actions.

teachers tended to mention certain facts involving those of non-Anglo European backgrounds (e.g. Civil Rights, Slavery, battles with Native
American tribes). However, no context was ever provided concerning the tension of how race and racial attitudes generated a condition in
which those groups claiming to celebrate and represent the best of US identity (e.g. equality, individual freedom, liberty, democracy) could in
the same moment engage in acts of oppressing others who, while non- Anglo, wanted to embody the same national identity (Chandler, 2007).

Racism is an A Priori Impact


Memmi 2000, Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ Unv. Of Paris 2000,
Albert-; RACISM, translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission,
without remission, probably never achieved, yet for this very reason, it is a
struggle to be undertaken without surcease and without concessions. One
cannot be indulgent toward racism. One cannot even let the monster in
the house, especially not in a mask. To give it merely a foothold means to
augment the bestial part in us and in other people which is to diminish what
is human. To accept the racist universe to the slightest degree is to
endorse fear, injustice, and violence. It is to accept the persistence of
the dark history in which we still largely live. It is to agree that the outsider
will always be a possible victim (and which [person] man is not [themself]
himself an outsider relative to someone else?). Racism illustrates in sum, the
inevitable negativity of the condition of the dominated; that is it illuminates in
a certain sense the entire human condition. The anti-racist struggle, difficult
though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to
the ultimate passage from animality to humanity. In that sense, we cannot
fail to rise to the racist challenge. However, it remains true that ones moral
conduct only emerges from a choice: one has to want it. It is a choice
among other choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its
consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice to conduct

oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order for
which racism is the very negation. This is almost a redundancy. One cannot
found a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on racism because racism
signifies the exclusion of the other and his or her subjection to violence and
domination. From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious
language, racism is the truly capital sin.fn22 It is not an accident that
almost all of humanitys spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for
orphans, widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of theoretical counsel
respect for the weak, for orphans, widows or strangers. It is not just a
question of theoretical morality and disinterested commandments. Such
unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such
sentiments. All things considered, we have an interest in banishing injustice,
because injustice engenders violence and death. Of course, this is debatable.
There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the assault on and
oppression of others is permissible. But no one is ever sure of remaining the
strongest. One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All unjust society
contains within itself the seeds of its own death. It is probably smarter to
treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect. Recall, says
the bible, that you were once a stranger in Egypt, which means both that
you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself and
that you risk becoming once again someday. It is an ethical and a practical
appeal indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be. In short, the
refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical morality.
Because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the political choice. A just
society must be a society accepted by all. If this contractual principle is not
accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot. If it is
accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace. True, it is a wager, but the
stakes are irresistible.

Fusion Centers Target Social


Movements

Fusion Centers Target The Black Lives Matter


Movement
Activist Groups, and African Americans in particular, are
considered domestic terrorist activities, and are heavily
monitored.
Lee Fang, Journalist Extraordinaire, 3/12/2015, "Why Was an FBI Joint
Terrorism Task Force Tracking a Black Lives Matter Protest?," Intercept,
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/12/fbi-appeared-use-informanttrack-black-lives-matter-protest/
Members of an FBI Joint

Terrorism Task Force tracked


a Black Lives Matter protest
The email from
the time and location of

December at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, email obtained by The Intercept shows.

last

David S. Langfellow, a St. Paul police officer and member of an FBI

Joint Terrorism Task Force, informs a fellow task force member from the Bloomington police that CHS just confirmed the MOA protest I was taking to you about today, for the 20th of DEC @ 1400 hours. CHS is a law

an FBI special agent and Joint Terrorism Task Force


supervisor
was CCd on the email.
The FBI characterizes them as our nations front
line on terrorism.
Our system
disproportionately targets, profiles and kills black men and women, thats
what we are here talking about,
We wanted to show
people who have the everyday luxury of just living their lives that they need
to be aware of this, too. According to an FBI spokesman, Langfellows
Confidential Human Source was a tipster with whom Mr. Langfellow is
familiar, who contacted him after the tipster had discovered some
information while on Facebook that some individuals may engage in
vandalism
There is no mention of potential
vandalism anywhere in the email chain, and no vandalism occurred
enforcement acronym for confidential human source. Jeffrey VanNest,
at the FBIs Minneapolis office,

The FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Forces are based in 104 U.S. cities and are made up of

approximately 4,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officials.

Activists had planned the protest at the mall to call attention to police brutality against African Americans.

organizer Michael McDowell told a reporter at the time.

at the Mall of America protest. Upon receiving the email, Bloomington police officer and task-force member Benjamin Mansur forwarded it to Bloomingtons then-Deputy Police Chief

Rick Hart, adding Looks like its going to be the 20th It was then forwarded to all Bloomington police command staff.

at the Mall of America

protest. The FBI spokesman emphasized that As for any FBI interest in the Black Lives Matter campaign, the FBI had (has) none, and makes certain its operational mandates do not interfere with activities
protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The spokesman acknowledged that vandalism does not fall under the Memorandum of Understanding establishing the parameters under which local

Asked why
, the
Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor, was CCd on Langfellows email, the
spokesman responded I dont know
The
fact that theyre spending resources in this manner reflects poor leadership
and is something that they should really take a hard look at.
FBI
connected
organizations such as Greenpeace and the Catholic Worker movement
as domestic terrorism cases
Joint Terrorism Task Force,
was in charge of a 2008 raid on the home of St. Paul activists ahead of that
years Republican Party Convention that led to a lawsuit that the city settled
for $50,000.
FBI engaged in well-known, ugly mistreatment of African
American activists in particular
FBI and law enforcement generally
of law enforcement agents seeing challenges to the status quo as threats to
security
FBI field office in 1971 showed the Bureau was
keeping literally every black student at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania
police officers are detailed to Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the task force mission of prevention, preemption, deference and investigation of terrorist acts.

VanNest

but speculated it was as a matter of courtesy. Clearly its inappropriate to be using the Joint Terrorist Task

Force to monitor activists [and] the use of a CHS seems extremely inappropriate, said Michael German, a fellow at New York Universitys Brennan Center for Justice and former special agent with the FBI.

The FBI has been criticized in the recent past

for its actions regarding domestic advocacy groups. A 2010 report by the Department of Justice Inspector General found the

opened investigations

to

that classified

possible trespassing or vandalism

. The report also found the FBIs National Press Office made false and misleading statements when

questioned by the media about documents obtained by public records requests. Langfellow himself, while working as a member of a

Further in the past, the

. Theres a long history in the

, said German. Documents stolen from an

under surveillance.

After the December 20 Mall of America protest, the city of Bloomington charged 11 protestors with six separate criminal misdemeanors, including unlawful

assembly, and is seeking thousands of dollars in restitution. Jordan Kushner, one of the activists defense attorneys, says the city has alleged $25,000 in police costs and that he also received a letter from the Mall of
America seeking $40,000 for mall security costs, raising overall restitution to $65,000. As reported by the Star Tribune, emails released earlier this week reveal apparent coordination between Sandra Johnson, the
Bloomington city attorney, and Kathleen Allen, the Mall of Americas corporate counsel. Its the prosecutions job to be the enforcer and MOA needs to continue to put on a positive, safe face, Johnson wrote to
Allen two days after the protest, encouraging the mall company to wait for a criminal charge from the city before pursuing its own lawsuit. Agree we would defer any civil action depending on how the criminal
charges play out, Allen wrote back. Thats pretty unprecedented to use a criminal proceeding for a corporation to collect their costs, costs for policing and protest, said Kushner. Its not like people stole from
them or damaged belongings. Nekima Levy-Pounds, a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and one of the Black Lives Matter defendants, said she found parallels between the conduct of law
enforcement in Minnesota and the tactics used against civil rights protesters a generation ago. I think its relevant, she said, adding that in both instances, officers attempted to curb nonviolent peaceful protests
and to violate peoples rights to free speech.

Fusion centers, with counterterrorism funds, are being


used to monitor the Black Lives Matter Movement
BondGraham 15 [Darwin, is a sociologist and investigative journalist in
California, Counterterrorism Officials Helped Track Black Lives Matter
Protesters, April 15, 2015]
On December 9, 2014, at 4:48 p.m., an internal email with the subject line,
"Reminder for Tonight and this week: Do Not Advise Protesters That We Are
Following Them on Social Media," circulated among dozens of California
Highway Patrol commanders. The message read: "A quick reminder ... as you
know, our TLO [Terrorism Liaison Officers] officers are actively following
multiple leads over social media." The note continued, "this morning, we
found posts detailing protesters' interaction with individual officers last night.
In the posts, protesters are stating that we (CHP) were claiming to follow
them on social media. Please have your personnel refrain from such
comments; we want to continue tracking the protesters as much as possible.
If they believe we are tracking them, they will go silent." In recent years,
police agencies throughout the United States have scoured social media as
part of criminal investigations. But the police are also watching social media
to spy on political protesters, especially those they suspect will engage in
acts of civil disobedience. During the recent Black Lives Matter protests, local
and state police agents monitored protesters on social media and activist
websites. Several hundred CHP emails obtained by the Express show that
social media is now a key source of intel for the police when monitoring
political protests. An email sent on December 12 illustrates how counterterrorism officials working out of fusion centers helped CHP monitor
protesters. At 12:12 p.m. that day, Elijah Owen, a senior intelligence advisor
with the California State Threat Assessment Center (Cal STAC) sent CHP
officer Michael Berndl a copy of a protest flier calling for a speak-out and
march against the CHP the next day. "Just so it's on your folks' radar," wrote
Owen. Cal STAC officers appear in other CHP emails as sources of information,
or recipients of intel gathered by the Oakland Police Department, Alameda
County Sheriff's Office, and other agencies.

Black Lives Matter represents a cry for broad based


reform, as well as a general cry for justice
Giroux 15 [Henry, is an American and Canadian scholar and cultural critic.
One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is
best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies,
youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002

Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the
modern period, The Fire This Time: Black Youth and the Spectacle of
Postracial Violence, May 26, 2015]
Pervasive police abuse and violence have become the foci of a number of
emerging social movements, from Black Lives Matter to a growing number of
rap groups and young Black militants. (20) And rightly so. As more and more
unarmed Black adults and youth are shot by White police officers, the cries
for an indictment of perpetrators and broad-based reform have been
superseded by a more general cry for justice. (21) Lawlessness functions both
to abuse the innocent and protect the guilty. And too many local police
departments have bought into this dreadful logic, indulging with impunity the
notion that war and policing have merged. Andrew Kolin argues that as the
police become more aggressive, they begin to "look increasingly like a civilian
branch of the military." (22) One indication of the emerging police state is not
only evident in the transition of the police into a civilian branch of the
military, but also in the transformation of the police into paramilitarized SWAT
teams, which are used disproportionately against people of color. The report
"War Comes Home" states that "50% of the people impacted by SWAT
deployments from 2011 to 2012 are black or Latino [whereas] Whites account
for 20%." (23) Inexplicably, although SWAT teams are used overwhelmingly to
investigate incidents in which people are "suspected of committing
nonviolent consensual crimes," too many encounters prove deadly.

Black Lives Matter represents a new and growing political


force
Giroux 15 [Henry, is an American and Canadian scholar and cultural
critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States,
he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies,
youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002
Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the
modern period, The Fire This Time: Black Youth and the Spectacle of
Postracial Violence, May 26, 2015]
The problems of Ferguson, Baltimore and others are not limited to those
cities; they are the United States' problems and demand a "transition from
protest politics to long-term, strategic movement building." (68) Recently
Black youth and other concerned Americans are making real strides in
moving beyond sporadic protests, short-lived demonstrations and nonviolent
street actions in the hopes of building sustained political movements. Groups
such as Black Lives Matter, Black Youth Project, We Charge Genocide, Dream
Defenders and others represent a new and growing political force, and are
not only connecting police violence to larger structures of militarism
throughout society, but are also reclaiming public memory in establishing a
direct link "between the establishment of professional police systems in the
United States with the patrolling systems that maintained the business of
human bondage in chattel slavery."

Fusion Centers Target Minorities


The nature of our surveillance system targets minorities
on social media
Fuchs 15 [Fuchs, Christian. Towards a theoretical model
of social media surveillance in contemporary society.
http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/surv.pdf 6/23/15 IH]
The focus on fighting and preventing terrorism and the creation of a culture of categorical

Social media contain


a lot of data about personal interests and social relations. The police and
secret services have therefore developed a special interest in being able to
monitor social media usage, as evidenced by the existence of the global PRISM internet
surveillance program. Police surveillance of social media in the situation of post-9/11
categorical suspicion can easily result in the constant monitoring of social media
activities of citizens and the police assumption that all users are actual or
potential criminals and terrorists until proven innocent. There is also the danger
that social media surveillance conducted by the police is especially directed
towards groups that already face discrimination in Western societies, like
immigrants, people of color, people of Arabic or African background, the poor,
the unemployed, or political activists, and that thereby stereotypes and
discrimination are deepened and reified. A second societal implication of surveillance
suspicion is one of the societal contexts of social media surveillance.

is the actual or potential fostering of social sorting as a specific form of discrimination. Oscar
H. Gandy (1993) has in this context coined the notion of the panoptic sort. It is a system of
power and disciplinary surveillance that identifies, classifies, and assesses (Gandy, 1993, p.
15). David Lyon (2003b) considers Gandys notion of the panoptic sort in relation to computers
and the internet as social sorting. In newer works, Gandy (2009) has pointed out the
connection of social sorting and cumulative disadvantages: Cumulative disadvantage refers
to the ways in which historical disadvantages cumulate over time, and across categories of
experience (Gandy, 2009, p. 12). Thus, membership in a targeted group as well as other kinds
of disadvantage become a dominant factor in determining future negative social outcomes:
People

who have bad luck in one area, are likely to suffer from bad luck in
other areas as well (Gandy, 2009, p. 116). 128 This means that if you have dark
skin, are poor, live in a deprived neighborhood , have become unemployed or
ill, etc., you are more likely to be discriminated against and flagged as a risk
group by data mining and other social sorting technologies. The arbitrary
disadvantages an individual has suffered then cumulate and result in further disadvantages
that are enforced by predictive algorithms which calculate based on certain previous behavior
that an individual is part of a risk group and should therefore be discriminated against (by not
being offered a service, being offered a lower quality service at a higher price e.g., in the

Once
they have been identified as criminals, or even as potential criminals, poor
people, and black people in particular, are systematically barred from the
opportunities they might otherwise use to improve their status in life (Gandy, 2009, p.
case of a loan or mortgage , by being considered as a criminal or terrorist, etc.).

141). Social media profiles are a historical accumulation and storage of online behavior and
interests. Social media tend to never forget what users are doing online, but tend to keep
profiles of personal data and thereby provide a foundation for the algorithmic or human
analysis of who belongs to a so-called risk group and should be treated in a special way.
Commercial social media surveillance uses specific data from social media profiles for
targeting advertising and providing special offers. As a result, privileged groups tend to be
treated differently than the poor and outcast. Another effect of commercial social media
surveillance is that consumer culture and the fostering of a world that is based on the logic of
commodities has become almost ubiquitous on the internet. If state intelligence agencies

obtain access to social media profile data and combine such data with state-administered
records (such as databases covering crime, welfare and unemployment benefits, health
records, etc.), then discrimination based on cumulative disadvantages can be advanced. The
quality of social media to cover and store data about various social roles and social activities
that converge in social media profiles allows commercial and state surveillance to use social
media data for advancing discrimination that is based on algorithmic profiling and predictions

Data collection on commercial


social media is permanent, constant, totalizing , and works in real time and covers a
lot of activities in various everyday social roles of billions of humans worldwide. The
potential for unfair treatment and racist, classist, sexist, or other forms of
discrimination are thereby greatly enhanced .
as well as the networking of data from various sources.

Fusion centers use biased standards for suspicious


activity reporting, increase racial and religious profiling,
and further political repression
Kayyali 14 [April 7, 2014, Nadia Kayyali former 2012 Bill of Rights
Defense Committee Legal Fellow, board member of the National Lawyers
Guild S.F. Bay Area chapter, member of Electronic Frontier Foundation
activism team, Why Fusion Centers Matter: FAQ, Electronic Frontier
Foundation, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centersmatter-faq]
What is the National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative? NSI is an initiative to standardize suspicious

NSI was conceived in 2008, and started with an evaluation project


that culminated in a January 2010 report describing how NSI would encompass all
fusion centers. It appears significant progress has been made towards this goal. The evaluation
activity reporting. The

project included so-called Building Communities of Trust (BCOT) meetings which focused "on developing
trust among law enforcement, fusion centers, and the communities they serve to address the challenges of
crime and terrorism prevention." BCOT "community" events involved representatives from local fusion
centers, DHS, and FBI traveling to different areas and speaking to selected community representatives and
civil rights advocates about NSI. These were invite only events with the clear purpose of attempting to
engender community participation and garner support from potential opponents such as the ACLU. So

SARs do no meet legally


cognizable standards for search or seizure under the Fourth amendment. Normally,
what's wrong with Suspicious Activity Reporting and the NSI?

the government must satisfy reasonable suspicion or probable cause standards when searching a person
or place or detaining someone. While SARs themselves are not a search or seizure, they are used by law
enforcement to initiate investigations, or even more intrusive actions such as detentions, on the basis of
evidence that does not necessarily rise to the level of probable cause or reasonable suspicion. In other

while the standard for SAR sounds like it was written to comport
with the constitutional standards for investigation already in place, it does not. In
fact, the specific set of behaviors listed in the National SAR standards include
innocuous activities such as: taking pictures or video of facilities, buildings, or
infrastructure in a manner that would arouse suspicion in a reasonable
person, and demonstrating unusual interest in facilities, buildings, or
infrastructure beyond mere casual or professional (e.g. engineers) interest such that a reasonable
words,

person would consider the activity suspicious. Examples include observation through binoculars, taking

These standards are clearly ripe for abuse


of discretion. Do fusion centers increase racial and religious profiling? The weak standards
around SAR are particularly concerning because of the way they can lead to
racial and religious profiling. SARs can originate from untrained civilians as
notes, attempting to measure distances, etc.

well as law enforcement, and as one woman pointed out at a BCOT event people who might already be a
little racist who are 'observing' a white man photographing a bridge are going to view it a little differently
than people observing me, a woman with a hijab, photographing a bridge. The bottom line is that bias is

once an investigation into a


has been initiated, existing law enforcement bias can come into play; SARs
give law enforcement a reason to initiate contact that might not otherwise exist.
not eliminated by so-called observed behavior standards. Furthermore,
SAR

Unsurprisingly, like most tools of law enforcement, public records act requests have shown that people of
color often end up being the target of SARs: One review of SARs collected through Public Records Act
requests in Los Angeles showed that 78% of SARs were filed on non-whites.
An audit by the Los Angeles Police Department's Inspector General puts that number at 74%, still a

review of SARs obtained by the ACLU of Northern California also show


that most of the reports demonstrate bias and are based on conjecture rather than
articulable suspicion of criminal activity. Some of the particularly concerning SARs include titles like
"Suspicious ME [Middle Eastern] Males Buy Several Large Pallets of
Water" and "Suspicious photography of Folsom Dam by Chinese
Nationals." The latter SAR resulted in police contact: "Sac[ramento] County
shockingly high number. A

Sheriffs Deputy contacted 3 adult Asian males who were taking photos of Folsom Dam. They were evasive
when the deputy asked them for identification and said their passports were in their vehicle." Both of these
SARs were entered into FBI's eGuardian database. Not only that,

there have been disturbing

examples of racially biased informational bulletins coming from fusion centers . A


2009 "North Central Texas Fusion Center Prevention Awareness Bulletin" implies that tolerance towards
Muslims is dangerous and that Islamic militants are using methods such as "hip-hop boutiques" and "online
social networks" to indoctrinate youths in America. Do fusion centers facilitate political repression?

Fusion centers have been used to record and share information about First
Amendment protected activities in a way that aids repressive police
activity and chills freedom of association. A series of public records act requests in Massachusetts
showed: "Officers monitor demonstrations, track the beliefs and internal dynamics of activist groups,
and document this information with misleading criminal labels in searchable
and possibly widely-shared electronic reports." The documents included intelligence reports addressing
issues such internal group discussions and protest planning, and showed evidence of police contact. For
example, one report indicated that "Activists arrested for trespassing at a consulate were interviewed by
three surveillance officers 'in the hopes that these activists may reach out to the officers in the future.'
They were asked about their organizing efforts and for the names of other organizers."

Fusion centers racially profile the only solution is to


close them
Kellegrew 14. Matthew, April 22. Fusion centers perpetuate racial
profiling Matthew is a Legal Fellow for the Bill Of Rights Defense Committee
(BORDC). http://www.bordc.org/blog/fusion-centers-perpetuate-racial-profiling
April 10 saw protests, teach-ins and light brigade actions across the country as part of the national day of
action against fusion centers. The Day of Action sparked an internet dialogue about fusion centers that
shone much needed light on the centers which can often slip under the radar of the communities they

fusion centers endanger the


constitutional rights guaranteed to all people, however their effect is most
pronounced in politically vulnerable communities. These are most often communities of
color, those with political beliefs outside the mainstream, or both.
According to The Constitution Project: Recent reports from across the country bear
testament to the potential for problematic profiling at fusion centers,
operate in. Like most threats to civil liberties,

particularly regarding bulletins and intelligence reports circulated by fusion centers. These are a few
examples: The February 2009 Prevention Awareness Bulletin, circulated by a Texas fusion center,
described Muslim lobbying groups as providing an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish and
warned that the threats to Texas are significant.... ...A Missouri-based fusion center issued a February

2009 report describing support for the presidential campaigns of Ron Paul or third party candidates,
possession of the iconic Dont Tread on Me flag and anti-abortion activism as signs of membership in
domestic terrorist groups. The Tennessee Fusion Center listed a letter from the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) to public schools on its online map of Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity. The
letter had advised schools that holiday celebrations focused exclusively on Christmas were an
unconstitutional government endorsement of religion. The Virginia Fusion Centers 2009 Terrorism Risk
Assessment Report described student groups at Virginias historically black colleges as potential breeding
grounds for terrorism and characterized the diversity surrounding a military base as a possible threat."

abuse is high because there is virtually no oversight over


the actions of fusion centers. The city, county, state and federal departments represented
The potential for

in fusion centers do not have uniform guidelines, making it extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to
ensure that the constitutionally offensive practices of one department do not infect the investigations of
the others, tainting the whole. This near total lake of oversight leads to threat assessments, which direct
local law enforcement priorities, like this one, uncovered by the Texas Observer: A portion of the threat
assessmentstamped Law Enforcement Sensitive and part of a PowerPoint presentationwas
inadvertently sent to the Observer as part of a broader open-records request. Although the North Central
Texas Fusion System analysis has found no specific intelligence to indicate any threats to the Bell
Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl game, the assessment states, law enforcement officers should be on the
lookout for suspicious individuals, especially those of Middle Eastern appearance. Beyond racial profiling,
fusion centers are also used to target and profile political activists. A fusion center in Washington State was
the base of operations for a long-term domestic spying operation focused on peace groups. The operation
saw unprecedented cooperation between the U.S. Army, the FBI and law enforcement from every level
within the state. This targeting yielded no arrests, uncovered no plot and conclusively demonstrated that
law enforcements combined priorities focused on suppressing constitutionally protected First Amendment

Fusion centers pose a difficult challenge for


defenders of basic civil liberties. Because they are not governed by independent
oversight, they cannot be reformed through changes to public policy. The only way to ensure
that the immense investigatory powers they hold will not be used to violate the Constitution or
profile people because of their race or their political beliefs is to
shut the fusion centers down.
activity instead of public safety.

Fusion centers target minorities instead of surveilling


criminals
German 12 Michael Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative
Office, OCTOBER 3, 2012 | 4:32 PM, Fusion Centers: Too Much (Bad)
Information, https://www.aclu.org/blog/fusion-centers-too-much-badinformation
Back in 2007, when the ACLU began investigating the growth of these centers ,

there was little


public information available about where these centers were, who was in
charge of them, who participated, what information they collected or what
they did with it. Our first report highlighted excessive secrecy as one of the major problems with
fusion centers, recognizing that a lack of public accountability has too often in the past
allowed police intelligence operations to turn their focus away from suspected
criminals and toward political activists, racial and religious minorities, and
immigrant communities. In a 2008 follow-up report, we chronicled many of the early signs of
trouble in these institutions. Well today the Senate Homeland Security Committees permanent
subcommittee on investigations issued a comprehensive report that begins to
break down the wall of secrecy that surrounded fusion center activities,
revealing significant waste, mismanagement, and incompetence, as well as serial abuses of
civil liberties. The report found that while DHS lavishly funded fusion centers and publicly touted them

as a crucial component of federal anti-terrorism intelligence programs ,

they produced little


information of value and often overstepped laws designed to protect
Americans privacy. We commend the subcommittee on its diligence in conducting this two-year
investigation and producing a public report so that Americans can have a more informed debate about the
costs and consequences of creating this new security apparatus.

Government Spying on Social Movements


Numerous peaceful protests by peace activists have been
kept on the same lists as terrorists.
Heather Digby Parton, Journalist Extraordinaire, 3/19/2015, "A racial Big
Brother debacle: Why is the government spying on Black Lives Matter
protests?," No Publication,
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/19/a_racial_big_brother_debacle_why_is_the_g
overnment_spying_on_black_lives_matter_protests
Its comforting that we have the assurance of everyone from the president on down that the government has no interest in intruding on the lives of fellow Americans without cause as they did back in the bad old
days. After all, in these days of hyper awareness over the terrorist threat, it doesnt take much imagination to see how that sort of thing could get out of hand, so its important that they follow the rules. Now

there was a time when the cause of anti-communism required that we be


extra-vigilant because the Russians were coming and dissent was closely
monitored by police and the FBI
keep tabs on all those potential
commie infiltrators such as Martin Luther King and John Lennon
authorities had peace activists under surveillance in the wake of 9/11
CIFA was found last
month to contain reports on at least four dozen antiwar meetings or protest
Ten peace activists who handed out peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches outside Halliburtons headquarters in Houston in June 2004 were
reported as a national security threat So were people who assembled at a
Quaker meeting house
or protested military recruiters
The protesters were written up under a
program called Talon, which is supposed to collect raw data on threats to
defense facilities
The logic that peace activists must be in league with terrorists has
never been adequately explained, but it follows along the same line of
thought which leads conservatives to assume that decadent left-wing hippies
are natural allies of Muslim fundamentalists
in order that the government

. And even quite recently, it was found

that the

. The

Washington Post reported in 2006: A database managed by a secretive Pentagon intelligence agency called Counterintelligence Field Activity, or

s,

many of them on college campuses.

in Lake Worth, Fla.,

at sites such as New York University, the State

University of New York and campuses of the University of California at Berkeley and at Santa Cruz.
Pentagon

in the United States. CIFA, an agency created just under four years ago that now includes nine directorates and more than 1,000 employees, is charged with working to

prevent terrorist attacks.

. The great sage of late 20th Century conservative philosophy, Ann Coulter, said it best: We

need to execute people like John Walker [Lindh] in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors. She later clarified
that statement by saying, When I said we should execute John Walker Lindh, I mis-spoke. What I meant to say was, We should burn John Walker Lindh alive and televise it on prime-time network TV. My apologies

its hard
to know exactly what any of the agencies charged with keeping the terrorist
threat at bay are really doing because they are secret
NSA said outright that
the mission was to collect it all.
FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force tracked the time and location
of a Black Lives Matter protest
for any misunderstanding that might have occurred. Yes, she said we should burn him alive on television. The Pentagon ended the appropriately dystopian sounding program Talon, although

. Edward Snowdens revelations only involved the most

sophisticated of high tech government surveillance activities. It was shocking because of the sweeping nature of the programs and the fact that the

But perhaps the more prosaic forms of domestic surveillance activity should concern us as well. For instance, Lee Fang

reported this story at The Intercept: Members of an

last December at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, email obtained by The Intercept shows. The email from David S.

Langfellow, a St. Paul police officer and member of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, informs a fellow task force member from the Bloomington police that CHS just confirmed the MOA protest I was taking to you
about today, for the 20th of DEC @ 1400 hours. CHS is a law enforcement acronym for confidential human source. Jeffrey VanNest, an FBI special agent and Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor at the FBIs
Minneapolis office, was CCd on the email. The FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Forces are based in 104 U.S. cities and are made up of approximately 4,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The FBI
characterizes them as our nations front line on terrorism. It should be noted that this so-called threat happened months before the al-Shabab video vaguely implying a threat to the Mall was released in late
February. In this earlier incident, a confidential informant told the police that someone was preparing to vandalize the mall as part of the Black Lives Matter protest. An FBI spokesman told The Intercept they have
absolutely no interest in that campaign and that they make certain not to interfere with people exercising their rights under the First Amendment. They also noted that vandalism is not a crime that the Joint

Unfortunately, considering the


federal governments history of illegally spying on Americans for any number
of reasons, the burden to explain such activity belongs to them
Terrorism Task Force is authorized to track and had no idea why it would have been informed of this information.

. One thing to keep in mind is that there

is no prohibition against using information of other potential crimes gleaned during terrorism related investigations to pursue non-terrorism investigations. So perhaps its also useful to recall this expos from a
while back in which it was revealed that the DEA routinely lies about where it got information: A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps,

though these cases


rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show
that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such
investigations truly begin not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes
informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Al

from prosecutors and judges One of the ways they do that is by re-creating
the investigative trail to hide how they got the information
.

. This is routinely done to protect confidential sources

from being revealed in open court but the government has evidently decided that its secret surveillance activities now qualify for that designation as well. There is no evidence that anything like this happened in

Its not difficult to see how easy it is


that members of the joint terrorist task force, whether local or federal or both,
might be doing what these agencies have always done monitor the
peaceful activities of American citizens protesting their government under
the guise of keeping us safe from foreign threats.
this Black Lives Matter surveillance, but those stories illustrate just how incestuous all these police agencies are.

Whether their information comes from secret wiretaps or secret informants its

wrong. All that is part of an old story in American life and one which requires that civil libertarians be constantly vigilant in keeping an eye on them and pushing back wherever possible. But Fang reports that we
have gone to a new level of Big Brotherism with the Mall of America: As reported by the Star Tribune, emails released earlier this week reveal apparent coordination between Sandra Johnson, the Bloomington city
attorney, and Kathleen Allen, the Mall of Americas corporate counsel. Its the prosecutions job to be the enforcer and MOA needs to continue to put on a positive, safe face, Johnson wrote to Allen two days after
the protest, encouraging the mall company to wait for a criminal charge from the city before pursuing its own lawsuit. Agree we would defer any civil action depending on how the criminal charges play out,
Allen wrote back. This means that the city was working hand in hand with a private corporation, using the criminal justice system as the enforcer to help the corporation collect money in a civil action. Evidently
they felt it would look better in civil court if the protesters who were being asked to pay the costs of policing the mall during the protest had been charged. 11 of them were hit with misdemeanors, none of them
having to do with property damage or theft. But thats not the most chilling part. In a follow-up article, Fang revealed something even more insidious: Documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that security staff
at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used a fake Facebook account to monitor local Black Lives Matter organizers, befriend them, and obtain their personal information and photographs without their
knowledge. Evidence of the fake Facebook account was found in a cache of files provided by the Mall of America to Bloomington officials after a large Black Lives Matter event at the mall on December 20 protesting
police brutality. The files included briefs on individual organizers, with screenshots that suggest that much of the information was captured using a Facebook account for a person named Nikki Larson. Metadata
from some of the documents lists the software that created them as belonging to Sam Root at the Mall of America. A Facebook account for a Sam Root lists his profession as Intelligence Analyst at Mall of
America. The Mall of America corporation had been privately collecting dossiers on protesters of many kinds for months. In fact, one of the Facebook accounts used to stalk them online was created all the way

The Mall is quite proud of its counter-terrorism


For some strange reason,
they seem to have thought the Black Lives Matter campaign was worthy of
similar attention
the national Joint Terrorism Task Force, the local
police, the City Attorney and some clandestine corporate intelligence
operation
onitoring of the Black Lives Matter campaign which
is not a matter of terrorism, national security or criminal behavior. The only
known threat has to do with an unknown confidential informant who
allegedly told police (who then informed the FBI) the protesters planned to
vandalize the mall.
back in 2009.

unit called Risk Assessment and Mitigation, or RAM which is known

for its aggressive behavior toward patrons, especially those who look as though they just might be terrorists (whatever those patrons look like.)

. So what we have here are

for the Mall of America all involved in the m

We know that much of our national security surveillance work has been outsourced to private companies. But thats Eisenhowers military industrial complex

doing what its been doing for 50 years. Perhaps the domestic police agencies have come up with a more modern public/private partnership where the private corporation does the dirty work of stalking peaceful
protesters and then confidentially informs the police agencies who, as part of a Joint Task Force will keep the federal agencies in the loop. After all, it would be an infringement of the corporations individual
freedom to suggest they dont have a right to spy on anyone they choose, especially citizens protesting the police? Theyre just trying to keep a positive, safe face on the USAs single greatest achievement, the
shopping mall. What could be more patriotic than that?

The Federal Government is conveniently spying on


political activists to protect its own assets across the
United States

Parton 15

"A Racial Big Brother Debacle: Why Is the Government


Spying on Black Lives Matter Protests?" Saloncom RSS. N.p., 19 Mar. 2015.
Web. 22 June 2015.
One of the ways they do that is by re-creating the investigative trail to hide how they got the
information. This is routinely done to protect confidential sources from being revealed in open court but
the government has evidently decided that its secret surveillance activities now qualify for that
designation as well. There is no evidence that anything like this happened in this Black Lives Matter
surveillance, but those stories illustrate just how incestuous all these police agencies are .

Its not
difficult to see how easy it is that members of the joint terrorist task
force, whether local or federal or both, might be doing what these
agencies have always done monitor the peaceful activities of
American citizens protesting their government under the guise of
keeping us safe from foreign threats. Whether their information comes
from secret wiretaps or secret informants its wrong. All that is part of an old
story in American life and one which requires that civil libertarians be constantly vigilant in keeping an eye
on them and pushing back wherever possible. But Fang reports that we have gone to a new level of Big
Brotherism with the Mall of America: As reported by the Star Tribune, emails released earlier this week
reveal apparent coordination between Sandra Johnson, the Bloomington city attorney, and Kathleen Allen,
the Mall of Americas corporate counsel. Its the prosecutions job to be the enforcer and MOA needs to
continue to put on a positive, safe face, Johnson wrote to Allen two days after the protest, encouraging

the mall company to wait for a criminal charge from the city before pursuing its own lawsuit. Agree we
would defer any civil action depending on how the criminal charges play out, Allen wrote back. This

the city was working hand in hand with a private


corporation, using the criminal justice system as the enforcer to
help the corporation collect money in a civil action. Evidently they
felt it would look better in civil court if the protesters who were
being asked to pay the costs of policing the mall during the protest
had been charged. 11 of them were hit with misdemeanors, none of
them having to do with property damage or theft. But thats not the
most chilling part. In a follow-up article, Fang revealed something even more insidious:
Documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that security staff at
the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used a fake Facebook
account to monitor local Black Lives Matter organizers, befriend
them, and obtain their personal information and photographs
without their knowledge. Evidence of the fake Facebook account was found in a cache of
means that

files provided by the Mall of America to Bloomington officials after a large Black Lives Matter event at the
mall on December 20 protesting police brutality. The files included briefs on individual organizers, with
screenshots that suggest that much of the information was captured using a Facebook account for a
person named Nikki Larson. Metadata

from some of the documents lists the


software that created them as belonging to Sam Root at the Mall
of America. A Facebook account for a Sam Root lists his profession
as Intelligence Analyst at Mall of America. The Mall of America
corporation had been privately collecting dossiers on protesters of
many kinds for months. In fact, one of the Facebook accounts used
to stalk them online was created all the way back in 2009. The Mall is
quite proud of its counter-terrorism unit called Risk Assessment and
Mitigation, or RAM which is known for its aggressive behavior
toward patrons, especially those who look as though they just might
be terrorists (whatever those patrons look like.) For some strange reason, they
seem to have thought the Black Lives Matter campaign was worthy of similar attention. So what we have
here are the the national Joint Terrorism Task Force, the local police, the City Attorney and some
clandestine corporate intelligence operation for the Mall of America all involved in the monitoring of the
Black Lives Matter campaign which is not a matter of terrorism, national security or criminal behavior. The
only known threat has to do with an unknown confidential informant who allegedly told police (who then
informed the FBI) the protesters planned to vandalize the mall. We know that much of our national
security surveillance work has been outsourced to private companies. But thats Eisenhowers military

Perhaps the domestic police


agencies have come up with a more modern public/private
partnership where the private corporation does the dirty work of
stalking peaceful protesters and then confidentially informs the
police agencies who, as part of a Joint Task Force will keep the
federal agencies in the loop. After all, it would be an infringement of the corporations
industrial complex doing what its been doing for 50 years.

individual freedom to suggest they dont have a right to spy on anyone they choose, especially citizens
protesting the police? Theyre just trying to keep a positive, safe face on the USAs single greatest
achievement, the shopping mall. What could be more patriotic than that?

The government illegally surveils political activists, but


they also cause physical damage as well

Moore 15

"Why Some Black Activists Believe They're Being Watched by


the Government." Mic. N.p., 3 June 2015. Web. 22 June 2015.

The home of activist Patrisse Cullors was raided twice last year by
law enforcement in Los Angeles. During one raid, officers told Cullors
they were looking for a suspect who had allegedly fled in the
direction of her house. But neither time did Cullors believe the officers had
a strong rationale for invading her home. Instead, Cullors told Mic, she
believed the raids were devised by police in response to the public
campaigning of Dignity and Power Now, a grassroots organization
Cullors founded that advocates on behalf of incarcerated people in
Los Angeles. She also believes similar surveillance methods are used to
monitor many black activists today. "Surveillance is a huge part of
the state's role. Surveillance has been used for a very long time, but some of the means, like
social media account monitoring, are new," Cullors, who is also a cofounder of Black Lives Matter, told Mic.

"Local enforcement surveils by tracking the #BlackLivesMatter


hashtag, which allows law enforcement to show up at actions before
they begin." Mic has reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department for comment. Recent
statements by FBI deputy director Mark F. Giuliano may give credence
assumptions like Cullors that black activists are being watched. During a press
conference on May 21 prior to the acquittal of Michael Brelo, a white Cleveland police officer involved in
the shooting death of two unarmed black people, Giuliano addressed the potential for continued protests in
response to the verdict. "It's outsiders who tend to stir the pot," Giuliano said. "If we have that intel we
pass it directly on to the [Cleveland Police Department]. We have worked with Ferguson, we've worked with
Baltimore and we will work with the Cleveland PD on that very thing. That's what we bring to the game."
Mic has reached out to the FBI's Office of Public Affairs for comment.

The government purposefully targets political protestors


as well as ethnicities when dealing with illegal
surveillance

Cyril 15"Black America's State of Surveillance | The Progressive." Black


America's State of Surveillance | The Progressive. N.p., 30 Mar. 2015. Web. 22
June 2015.
As local law enforcement agencies increasingly adopt surveillance
technologies, they use them in three primary ways: to listen in on specific
conversations on and offline; to observe daily movements of
individuals and groups; and to observe data trends. Police departments like
Brattons aim to use sophisticated technologies to do all three. They will use technologies like license
plate readers, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation found to be disproportionately used in communities
of color and communities in the process of being gentrified. They will use facial recognition, biometric
scanning software, which the FBI has now rolled out as a national system, to be adopted by local police
departments for any criminal justice purpose. They intend to use body and dashboard cameras, which
have been touted as an effective step toward accountability based on the results of one study, yet storage
and archiving procedures, among many other issues, remain unclear. They will use Stingray cellphone
interceptors. According to the ACLU, Stingray technology is an invasive cellphone surveillance device that
mimics cellphone towers and sends out signals to trick cellphones in the area into transmitting their
locations and identifying information. When used to track a suspects cellphone, they also gather
information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby. The same is true of
domestic drones, which are in increasing use by U.S. law enforcement to conduct routine aerial
surveillance. While drones are currently unarmed, drone manufacturers are considering arming these
remote-controlled aircraft with weapons like rubber bullets, tasers, and tear gas. They will use fusion
centers. Originally designed to increase interagency collaboration for the purposes of counterterrorism,
these have instead become the local arm of the intelligence community. According to Electronic Frontier
Foundation, there are currently seventy-eight on record. They are the clearing house for increasingly used
suspicious activity reportsdescribed as official documentation of observed behavior reasonably
indicative of pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity. These reports and

other collected data are often stored in massive databases like e-Verify and Prism. As anybody whos ever
dealt with gang databases knows, its almost impossible to get off a federal or state database, even when
the data collected is incorrect or no longer true. Predictive

policing doesnt just lead


to racial and religious profilingit relies on it. Just as stop and frisk
legitimized an initial, unwarranted contact between police and
people of color, almost 90 percent of whom turn out to be innocent
of any crime, suspicious activities reporting and the dragnet
approach of fusion centers target communities of color. One review of such
reports collected in Los Angeles shows approximately 75 percent were of people
of color. This is the future of policing in America, and it should
terrify you as much as it terrifies me. Unfortunately, it probably doesnt, because my
life is at far greater risk than the lives of white Americans, especially those reporting on the issue in the
media or advocating in the halls of power. One

of the most terrifying aspects of


high-tech surveillance is the invisibility of those it disproportionately
impacts. The NSA and FBI have engaged local law enforcement agencies and electronic surveillance
technologies to spy on Muslims living in the United States . According to FBI training
materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau taught agents to
treat mainstream Muslims as supporters of terrorism, to view
charitable donations by Muslims as a funding mechanism for
combat, and to view Islam itself as a Death Star that must be
destroyed if terrorism is to be contained. From New York City to
Chicago and beyond, local law enforcement agencies have expanded
unlawful and covert racial and religious profiling against Muslims not
suspected of any crime. There is no national security reason to
profile all Muslims.

Evidence proves: the federal government now spies on


social movements and prosecutes political activists

Lazare 15

"Revealed: Police and FBI Spied On Black Lives Matter


Organizers Ahead of Mall of America Protests." Common Dreams. N.p., 13
Mar. 2015. Web. 22 June 2015.
Participants in a nonviolent Black Lives Matter protest at the Mall of
America last December were not only aggressively confronted by law
enforcement and heavily prosecuted by the Bloomington attorney's
office, but they were alsoas it turns outpreemptively spied on by
local police and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. Journalist Lee
Fang exposed the surveillance in an article published Thursday in The
Intercept, shedding light on an internal email he obtained: The email from David S. Langfellow, a St. Paul
police officer and member of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, informs a fellow task force member from the
Bloomington police that "CHS just confirmed the MOA protest I was taking [sic.] to you about today, for the
20th of DEC @ 1400 hours." CHS is a law enforcement acronym for "confidential human source." Jeffrey
VanNest, an FBI special agent and Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor at the FBIs Minneapolis office, was
CC'd on the email.

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces are based in 104


U.S. cities and are made up of approximately 4,000 federal, state
and local law enforcement officials. The FBI characterizes them as "our nations front
line on terrorism." Fang went on to explain: According to an FBI spokesman, Langfellow's Confidential
Human Source was "a tipster with whom Mr. Langfellow is familiar" who contacted him "after the tipster
had discovered some information while on Facebook" that "some individuals may engage in vandalism" at
the Mall of America protest. Upon receiving the email, Bloomington police officer and task force member

Benjamin Mansur forwarded it to Bloomingtons then-deputy police chief Rick Hart, adding "Looks like its
going to be the 20th..." It was then forwarded to all Bloomington police command staff. There is no
mention of potential vandalism anywhere in the email chain, and no vandalism occurred at the Mall of
America protest. The

protest, which took place December 20, 2014, saw an estimated


3,000 people flood the Mall of America, one of the largest such shopping centers in
the world, demanding an "end to police brutality and racial inequities
affecting Black and brown Minnesotans," according to a statement from the
Minneapolis chapter of Black Lives Matter. Police, many of whom donned full riot gear, responded to the

Twenty-five demonstrators
were arrested. Just days after the demonstration, Bloomington City
Attorney Sandra Johnson vowed to aggressively build a criminal case
against alleged organizers, in a bid to win restitution for money
allegedly lost by the mall during the partial shutdown, as well as by
the police and city. Eleven protesters have been charged with six misdemeanors, and the city is
protest by shutting down several areas of the mall for hours.

seeking thousands of dollars. Emails obtained by Black Lives Matter-Minneapolis through a public records
request, and reported by the Star Tribune earlier this week, reveal that Bloomington attorneys colluded
with mall officialswho pressed for stiff charges against the demonstrators. The revelations that
protesters were targeted on numerous fronts have not crushed organizing, but rather, have fueled ongoing
resistance. According to Black Lives Matter-Minneapolis, over 4,000 people have joined the chapter's call to
boycott the MOA, more than 40,000 have called for charges against the protesters to be dropped, and
community membersfrom clergy to professors to local politicianshave vigorously defended the
demonstrators.

Fusion Centers Focus on Movements


Fusion centers anti-terrorism efforts directed at peaceful
social movements
Hilliard, Messineo 14 [May 23, 2014, GlobalResearch, Mara
Verheyden-Hillard cofounder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense
& Education Fund, Attorney for the International Action Center, Anti-war
activist, Carl Messineo cofounder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Legal
Defense and Education Fund; The Hidden Role of the Fusion Centers in the
Nationwide Spying Operation against the Occupy Movement and Peaceful
Protest in America, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-role-of-thefusion-centers-in-the-nationwide-spying-operation-against-the-occupymovement-and-peaceful-protest-in-america/5383571]
This report, based on documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund,
provides highlights and analysis of how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-funded Fusion

used their vast anti-terrorism and anti-crime authority and funds to conduct a
nationwide and hour-by-hour surveillance effort that targeted even the
smallest activity of peaceful protestors in the Occupy Movement in the Fall and Winter
of 2011. It is being released in conjunction with a major story in the New York Times that is based on
Centers

sprawling,

the 4,000 pages of government documents uncovered by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF)

a two-year long investigation. The newly published documents reveal the actual
workings of the Fusion Centers created ostensibly to coordinate antiterrorism efforts following the September 11, 2001, attacks in collecting and
providing surveillance information on peaceful protestors. The new documents roll back
the curtain on the Fusion Centers and show the communications, interactions and emails
of a massive national web of federal agents, officials, police, and private
security contractors to accumulate and share information, reporting on all
manner of peaceful and lawful political activity that took place during the Occupy
Movement from protests and rallies to meetings and educational lectures . This enormous spying and
monitoring apparatus included the Pentagon, FBI, DHS, police departments
and chiefs, private contractors and commercial business interests. There is
now, with the release of these documents, incontrovertible evidence of systematic and not
incidental conduct and practices of the Fusion Centers and their personnel to direct their
sights against a peaceful movement that advocated social and economic
justice in the United States. It bears noting also that while these 4,000 pages offer
during

the most significant and largest window into the U.S. intelligence and law enforcements coordinated

only be a portion of what is likely many more tens of thousands


of pages of materials generated by the nationwide operation.
targeting of Occupy, they can

Fusion Centers are targeting social movements


Lazare 2014, Sarah Lazare (Writer for Common Dreams), Revealed: Gov't Used Fusion Centers to
Spy on Occupy, 23 May 2014, http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/05/23/revealed-govt-used-fusioncenters-spy-occupy. PE

"The U.S. Fusion Centers are using their vast counter-terrorism resources to
target the domestic social justice movement as a criminal or terrorist
enterprise," PCJF Executive Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard stated. "This is an abuse of
power and corruption of democracy ." "Although the Fusion Centers existence is justified by

documents show
that the Fusion Centers in the Fall of 2011 and Winter of 2012 were devoted
to unconstrained targeting of a grassroots movement for social change that
was acknowledged to be peaceful in character ," the report states. Police chiefs of major
the DHS as a necessary component in stopping terrorism and violent crime, the

metropolitan areas used the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center to produce regular reports on the
occupy movement. Furthermore, "The

Boston regional intelligence center monitored


and cataloged Occupy-associated activities from student organizing to
political lectures," according to the report. That center also produced twice-daily updates on Occupy
activities. The New York Times notes: The Boston Regional Intelligence Center, one of
the most active centers, issued scores of bulletins listing hundreds of events
including a protest of irresponsible lending practices, a food drive and
multiple yoga, faith & spirituality classes. Nationwide surveillance has
included extensive monitoring of social media, in addition to a variety of
spying methods used across Fusion Centers. "[T]he Fusion Centers are a threat
to civil liberties, democratic dissent and the social and political fabric of this
country," said Carl Messineo, PCJF Legal Director. "The time has long passed for the
centers to be defunded."

Surveillance to seek out terrorism actually seeks normal


citizens
Hussain & Greenwald 2014, Murtaza Hussain (journalist and political commentator.
His work focuses on human rights, foreign policy, and cultural affairs), Glenn Greenwald (journalist,
constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law), MEET THE
MUSLIM-AMERICAN LEADERS THE FBI AND NSA HAVE BEEN SPYING ON, 8 July 2014,
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under-surveillance/. PE
But a three-month investigation by The Interceptincluding interviews with more than a dozen current and

in the FISA processreveals that in


practice, the system for authorizing NSA surveillance affords the government
wide latitude in spying on U.S. citizens . The five Americans whose email
accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly exemplary
lives. All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and
none advocates violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in
any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the government and the press. Some have even
climbed the ranks of the U.S. national security and foreign policy
establishments. I just dont know why, says Gill, whose AOL and Yahoo! email
accounts were monitored while he was a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. Ive
done everything in my life to be patriotic. I served in the Navy, served in the
government, was active in my communityIve done everything that a good
citizen, in my opinion, should do.
former federal law enforcement officials involved

Fusion Centers Violate Liberty


Fusion Centers target mischaracterize innocent activities
as a way to unjustly track individuals
Thomas S. Neuberger, is a Wilmington attorney and a long-term board
member of the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the
defense of civil liberties and human rights April 16, 2015 Special to The
News Journal 2:10 a.m. EDT Delaware's Fusion Center poses threat to liberty
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/04/15/localfusion-center-poses-threat-liberty/25838549/
It is bad news for freedom here in Delaware now that the New Castle County police have their own

Fusion Center. Virtually every state now has one in operation or formation
after more than $1.4 billion dollars of Homeland Security money was spent to
create 77 of them nationwide to assist in the overstated war on terror. Their purpose is
to enlist local police and first responders (known as Terrorism Liaison Officers or TLOs) to
spy on fellow citizens and report back to interconnected government
agencies such as the FBI, CIA, NSA and multi-state police forces on
"suspicious activity" or movements, which we old timers used to consider normal everyday
activity. The local spies then report back to the "fusion centers" where the information goes
out to all the government computers now active nationwide in tracking our
movements, emails, phone calls, letters, Facebook posts, etc. to see if any
person is worth tracking down. Robert O'Harrow, an investigative journalist for The Washington
Post, concluded they are little more than "pools of ineptitude , waste and civil
liberties intrusions." In 2012 the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in a
bipartisan report concluded that these Homeland Security Department fusion centers achieve very little to
fight terrorism and suffer from a lack of oversight and wasteful spending of "hundreds of millions of
dollars," such as flat-screen TVs, $6,000 laptops and even SUVs used for commuting. DELAWAREONLINE

Many innocent constitutionally protected


activities are flagged by fusion centers for follow up by our new Big Brothers in the federal
intelligence community. David Rittgers of the Cato Institute reported in 2011 that among the many
innocent people and groups labeled suspicious and targeted for surveillance
are pro-choice advocates, pro-lifers, environmental activists, Tea Party
members, Second Amendment rally attendees, third-party voters, Ron Paul
supporters, anti-death penalty advocates, and antiwar protesters. Historically
black or Christian evangelical colleges, universities and religious institutions
also have been considered by fusion centers to be potential hubs of extremism
and terrorist activity. One report warned of a "Russian cyberattack" which turned out to be nothing
NCCo unveils high-tech incident response center

more than someone accessing his work computer remotely. Commentator John W. Whitehead has

"you're bound to end up with a few legitimate leads on 'terrorist'


activity if you classify unemployment as a cause for suspicion, which is
actually one of the criteria used by" fusion centers . "The problem with
tracking innocent behavior is that more often than not innocent people will be
investigated for heinous crimes." He gives the example of a police officer reporting a man
observed that

seen purchasing liquid chlorine bleach and ammonia on consecutive days. Up the fusion center chain of
command this suspicious activity went, but the subsequent investigation revealed that the man only was

The ACLU also has warned that the


partnership between local police and fusion centers skates alarmingly close
trying to kill gophers on a gold course with chlorine gas.

to illegal unreasonable searches, lacks transparency, and often just flouts the
Bill of Rights altogether. Last, it has been reported that officials at fusion centers lack
basic training in intelligence gathering, let alone protecting citizen civil rights
and liberties.

Fusion centers violate personal civil liberties


Patin 2012, Gregory Patin (B.A. in political science from U.W. - Madison and a M.S. in management
from Colorado Technical University), Fusion centers: Invading your privacy at your expense, 14 Oct 2012,
Examiner, http://www.examiner.com/article/fusion-centers-invading-your-privacy-at-your-expense. PE

Like so many post-9/11 surveillance laws passed under the vague guise of
national security, these fusion centers violate the civil liberties of ordinary
Americans that should be guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and other laws. An entire section of the
Senate report is dedicated to Privacy Act violations and the collection of information completely unrelated

The Senate report and the activity of


fusion centers makes it clear that these facilities are designed to spy on
American citizens, invading their privacy while doing nothing to stop
terrorism. With all the talk in the Presidential campaigns about frivolous
spending, perhaps these worthless facilities should be addressed, instead of
Medicare or Social Security
to any criminal or terrorist activity in the HIRs.

Surveillance Stops Movements

Surveillance Stops Movements


Unwarranted surveillance leads to fear and failure within
organizations
Starr et. Al 8 [Starr, A. "The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political
Assembly and Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis." The Impacts of State
Surveillance on Political Assembly and Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis.
Springer Science, 10 July 2008. Web. 22 June 2015.]
A number of legal cases have connected the right of association with the
right to be free from unwarranted government surveillance. In NAACP v.
Alabama, 357 US 449, 462 (1958), the Supreme Court held that compelled
disclosure of an advocacy groups membership list would be an impermissible
restraint on freedom of association, observing that the inviolability of
privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to
preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses
dissident beliefs. The Court recognized that the chilling effect of surveillance
on associational freedom may induce members to withdraw from the
Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of
their beliefs, (357 US at 463; also see Zweibon v. Mitchell, 516 F.2d 594 [D.C.
Cir. 1975]), a point echoed by the courts in subsequent decisions: Bates v.
City of Little Rock, 361 US 516 (1960) asserted that tapping a political
organizations phone would provide its membership list to authorities, which
is forbidden. Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 US 479 (1965) asserted that
organizations had been harmed irreparably when subjected to repeated
announcements of their 254 Qual Sociol (2008) 31:251270 subversiveness,
which scared off potential members and contributors. Judge Warren wrote in
USA v. Robel, 389 US 258, 264 (1967): It would indeed be ironic if, in the
name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion ofthose
libertieswhich makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile (Also see
Christie 1972). The difficulty with much of the litigation to date is
problematized in Laird v. Tatum 408 US 1 (1972). In that case, the plaintiff
objected to the chilling effect on First Amendment rights by the mere
existence of a government surveillance program, but did not allege any
specific harm to himself as a result of the program except t hat he could
conceivably become subject to surveillance and therefore have his rights
potentially chilled. In the recent case of ACLU v. NSA, F. Supp. 2d 754 (E.D.
Mich. 2006) (since vacated by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals), District
Judge Anna Diggs Taylor rejected the governments invocation of Laird in
defense of its warrantless domestic eavesdropping programs, noting that the
plaintiffs in that case (journalists, scholars, and political organizations) had
demonstrated actual and not merely hypothetical harm as the result of
unwarranted surveillance. We now know more about surveillance than how
victims feel about it; we also know a good deal about its intents. Cunningham
explains that intelligence operations can serve two goals, investigation of
federal crimes and (the more controversial) precautionary monitoring through
information gathering about organizations. Counterintelligence operations

may take a preventative goal, to actively restrict a targets ability to carry


out planned actions or may take the form of provocation for the purpose of
entrapment of targets in criminal acts. (2004, p. 6) Some of the normal
intelligence activities undertaken by the FBI outside of official COINTELPRO
which nevertheless have a preventative counterintelligence function are:
harassment by surveillance and/or purportedly criminal investigations,
pressured recruitment of informants, infiltration, break-ins, and labeling or
databasing which harms the groups reputation impacting its ability to
communicate with the media, draw new members, and raise funds,
exacerbat[ing] a climate in which seemingly all mainstream institutions
opposed the New Left in some way. In addition, infiltrators acting as agent
provocateurs is, inexplicably, a part of normal intelligence operations (pp.
180 214). Can these kinds of operations be understood as violations, not
only of individuals political rights, but against associations themselves? Since
associations and social movements work for decades, they have interests
separate from their participants. Previous literature shows that knowledge (or
fear) of surveillance and infiltration forces organizations to direct their
energies toward defensive maintenance and away from the pursuit of broader
goals. (Boykoff 2006; Cunningham 2004; Davenport 2005; Flam 1998;
Goldstein 1978; Marx 1970, 1974, 1979, 1988) Alternately, activists may
respond by turning from overt collective forms of resistance toward more
covert, individualistic forms of resistance (Davenport 2006, Johnston 2005,
Zwerman et al. 2000) or to the emergence of more militant, even violent,
factions (della Porta 1995). Organizations funding, relationships with other
groups, the press, and the public may be affected as well (Marx 1970, 1974,
1979, 1988; US Congress 1976; Theoharis 1978; Churchill and Vander Wall
1988; Davenport 2006; Klatch 2002; Schultz and Schultz 2001).

Surveillance hurts the effectiveness of advocacy


organizations
Starr et. Al 8 [Starr, A. "The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political
Assembly and Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis." The Impacts of State
Surveillance on Political Assembly and Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis.
Springer Science, 10 July 2008. Web. 22 June 2015.]
Surveillance impacts the culture of protest by reducing the quality and quantity
of political discourse: Were scared to be able to openly and honestly talk about issues in
our community, state using that info to crush legitimate movements. A middle-aged man in a
peace group told us my mom is scared to talk to me on the phone...What is she allowed to
say and not any more.

Another peace group reported that

before they found out

Now we
sometimes talk in code, more cryptic, share less information. We're all a bit more
reserved in terms of our speech . An activist explains I don't like even talking about
politics with them because I don't want to get either of us confused in each others business. If
someone is being watched for something i'm not being watched for, I don't
want to talk about politics with those people. Another activist the impact of
surveillance on the exercise of assembly rights. 9.17.07 . 17 says People are scared of
about the extent of surveillance they were under we used to be a lot closer.

the implications of just being radical . Theres almost no space that we


consider safePeople just stopped expressing those views entirely. We found
three distinct impacts of reduced discourse. The first is elimination of what is
called cross-pollination: It was nice to be able to tell stories of like I worked with this
organization and can I help you build... Heres what we did that you all might be able to do...

Now ...you cant help them out , you cant tell them stories of things youve done
before. Because if they were a snitch youd be in a really bad situation . A
second aspect of reduced discourse is secretive planning. As mentioned above,
organizations are communicating much less and across fewer media. There isnt that
constant discussion, which can be really beneficial. Then you get everybodys
opinion if you can talk to everyone. This interviewee went on to explain how discourse is
intentionally reduced as a protective measure : Here, we can only talk about whats
going on here. Next week we cant talk about this any more. And we cant talk about
something else until its sure whos going to be part of it.... Another interviewee summed it
up: secretive planning is a disaster in community building, we couldnt think
creatively. If actions cannot be discussed later on, then the strategy of the movement no
longer moves forward. The third aspect of reduced discourse is the lack of debriefing.
Secretive planning is just one of many dimensions of what activists call security culture.

Surveillance has in fact caused security culture to replace organizing culture ,


with devastating impacts. The hallmarks of organizing culture are inclusivity
and solidarity. The hallmarks of security culture are exclusion, wariness,
withholding information, and avoiding diversity . Its hard to build when youre
suspicious. Another activist jokingly described security culture as the icemaker, which has
replaced the icebreaker. S/he went on: Like handing out a signup sheet. If people feel like
thats going to get in the hands of the government that means that people are not only afraid
to sign up, but afraid of asking for it. A new activist described the experience this way:
Whats the opposite of unites? When Im suspicious or they are, it creates a tension,
conscious or not, about who people are and what their intentions are. Our

interviewees

were very conscious of the effects of the cultural shift . People perceived us as not
inclusive because we were so scared. An activist described their group as showing paranoia,
freakiness, and unwelcomingness that results from the fear... Another admitted Theres not
as many people involved, theres not as many voices in the decision making, theres not as
many people from different walks of life. An activist explained, with alarm, that security was
the first thing we talked about, even before our name or what we're going to do. Another

security culture has become so common that people


are using it for actions that dont need to be protected . Theres confusion over
interviewee pointed out that

what actions need to be clandestine and what doesn't. We noticed in implementing security
in this project that it took a lot of energy simply to distinguish when we needed to be secure
and when we didnt. Security culture also involves speaking in code, which, interviewees
joked, made communication nearly impossible in some circumstances, particularly when
organizers try to communicate with more peripheral people. Interviewees also described the
effect it has on themselves as organizers: I had to learn not to welcome people and not give
out information... Im interested in community building, and then youre taught to be
suspicious and not welcome people its antithetical to your theory of change. Another explains
when I see people I dont know I get excited. when I saw the undercovers I was amazed that
we had attracted folks that dont fit in, and I was sad when I found out they were the impact of
surveillance on the exercise of assembly rights. 9.17.07 . 18 undercovers. Another
interviewee described how people who fit too well are suspicious as well as people who dont
fit in. S/he described someone who has been softly excluded from the group: It makes me
suspicious of people who are potential friends and allies, in ways that don't make me
comfortable. Prior research has documented that inducing paranoia is in fact one of the goals
of surveillance [Churchill and Vander Wall 2002; Marx 197]. Its just constantWhen someone
new shows up, the whole meeting changes.

rights.

This is a limitation on association

Surveillance scares away activists


Starr et al. 06 Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez, Randall Amster, Lesley
Wood. The impact of surveillance on the exercise of political rights: an
interdisciplinary analysis 1998-2006
http://www.trabal.org/texts/assembly091707.pdf. Amory Starr is a Ph.D. in
Sociology (Political Economy) from the University of California, Santa Barbara
(advisors Richard Flacks, Mark Juergensmeyer) and a Masters in City Planning
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has written 4 books and
directed a documentary on the NAFTA.
current surveillance is an alarming threat to
mobilizations, and thus to the exercise of constitutionally protected rights to
assembly and association. Our findings about the post-Seattle era are consistent with studies of previous activist
We have seen that

eras. Current surveillance is both qualitatively and quantitatively comparable, with the enhancements of technology and
Congressional leniency apparent. In only one qualitative dimension does our data diverge from previous findings, which is
that we did not find the customary dualism in which hardcore activists become more militant while others become more
moderate. [Lichbach 1987, White 1989, Tarrow 1998, Zwerman & Steinhoff 2005]. Instead

we found signs of

pervasive pacification. In lieu of going underground to continue their actions [Davenport 2006;
Johnston 2005], activists are evading the surveillance net by dropping out
of social connections entirely while organizations are abandoning
grey area activities like civil disobedience and moving toward doing educational and permitted
activities. Nevertheless, many activists have in fact redoubled their efforts to promote social change through nonviolent
grey area methods, a sentiment reflected by Father Roy Bourgeois of the School of the Americas Watch: The spying is
an abuse of power and a clear attempt to stifle political opposition, to instill fear. But we arent going away (Cooper &
Hodge). In Arizona, a group of nonviolent activists who had been under surveillance by terrorism agencies went to the FBI
headquarters and turned themselves in as a symbolic act of defiance and as a demonstration of their unwillingness to
abandon their efforts (World Prout Assembly). Thus, while there may be a sense of fear among many activists, there is
also is a demonstrable spirit of rededication to the myriad causes that social movements undertake. We are interested in
the persistent attempt to rationalize surveillance and repression. Scholars of social movements should take note of the
implications for consciousness of the state and forms of repression. We observed age and class distinctions here. While
some organizations edit and re-edit their press releases, younger activists know you dont have to do anything at all to be
targeted. The lack of understanding from the elder progressive community has led to a rationalization of repression,
taking the form of blaming young people for their own repression (particularly for provoking police actions at protests);
limiting support for Green Scare defendants; and providing little collective concern for defending people from illegal
investigations, and absurd indictments, bonds, and sentences. Rationalization collaborates in the creeping criminalization
of dissent and political activity. However, conservative decisions on the part of activists and organizations are highly
understandable in light of the costs of surveillance to membership, fundraising, family life, and organizational resources.

An organization which was illegally searched spent more than 1500


hours of volunteer time dealing with the fallout for their membership and relations with other
organizations. They finally filled a lawsuit for damages, which took 5 years to resolve. Databasing increases information
collected, with no opportunity to purge, correct errors, or challenge interpretations. An interviewee notes that even
requesting to see your government file is treated as an admission of guilt. It will be the first entry in new files ive been
doing something that makes me believe that you may have reason to monitor me. Activists who viewed a lot of released
files noted that the redaction was deliberately inept, which has a further counterinsurgent function. There is no
mechanism of accountability for false accusations, improper or unwarranted investigations, or erroneous surveillance.
Entry of a presumed relationship between two organizations proliferates to everyone with even remote links. Rapid
information sharing between jurisdictions, (including internationally) exponentially increases the impact of tags. Cultural
changes resulting in the loss of history and process have major implications for social movements and the study of their

Driven by creeping criminalization (we do not know what will be


illegal next year), as part of security culture, organizations do not create archives and
do not take meeting notes, and activists often do not keep diaries. Moreover, our interviewees
processes and outcomes.

explained that strategic and ideological dialogue is greatly reduced. Not wanting to be implicated or to implicate others,
political actions are now planned and undertaken in a bubble of time never to be referred to again, with colleagues who
will scatter immediately, never referring to one another or what they learned from the action. In addition, people are
reluctant to discuss their political ideas, reducing the quantity and quality of political discourse and ideological
development. Surveillance of educational events also makes it more difficult to spread analysis and theory.

USFG surveillance on social reforms cripples social reform


Burkhart 2007

Laurie Burkhart, ethicapublishing.com, The Effect of Government


Surveillance on Social Progress,
http://www.ethicapublishing.com/confronting/5CH1.pdf, 6/22 acm
surveillance by government agencies can effectively stop (or hinder) the
chance of social and political change . The status quo has been set and history
has shown near-perfect success of infiltration and destruction of political and
social movements by a number of surveillance tactics and programs. United States history
Intensive

demonstrates the positive social effects that certain radical political groups have caused despite

With increasing technology and access to information, the


government has and continues to more effectively monitor radical political
and social groups while discouraging and halting free political participation of its
citizens as a result of the chilling effect. Without free political
participation social change becomes impossible. In order for a democracy to
government intrusion.

move forward it needs free ideology and radical movements to challenge the system and force social
change.

Not only does extensive government surveillance discourage political


participation through the chilling effect it also presents ethical violations .
Under the ethical frameworks of duty-based, utilitarian, and rights-based theories, the conduct of
government surveillance of the past and present is unethical. From duty and rights-based theories
government surveillance practices violate legal and social regulations of American society. Under utilitarian
theory, government surveillance takes away the ability to change and progress what the citizens believe to
be the greatest good for society.

Surveillance silences speech and furthers self-censorship


Shamas & Arastu 2011, Diala Shamas (Senior Staff Attorney working with the Creating
Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, and received her law degree from Yale
Law School) Nermeen Arastu (Nermeen Arastu is a Clinical Law Professor and Supervising Attorney in the
Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic), Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and Its Impact on American
Muslims, http://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/clinics/immigration/clear/Mapping-Muslims.pdf. PE

American Muslim interviewees stress that the ever-present surveillance chills


or completely silences their speech whether they are engaging in political
debate, commenting on current events, encouraging community mobilization
or joking around with friends. Political organizing, civic engagement and activism are among the
first casualties of police surveillance. Based on our research and interviews, it is clear that
the surveillance program has, in fact, quelled political activism, quieted
community spaces and strained interpersonal relationships . This
curtailment of free speech not only implicates individual liberties but also
reaches civic debate and the development of an informed electorate .
Knowledge of surveillance leads not only to self-censorship on many religious
and political topics, but also to an inability to discuss even the surveillance
itself, thereby deterring a pivotal constitutional rightthe discussion of
problematic government policies. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that speech
concerning public affairs is the essence of self-government.31 Though Americans, Muslim and non-Muslim
alike, rally and organize against expansive surveillance, many American Muslim organizations and
individuals hesitate to participate in protests, to lobby, and to speak out.

Surveillance of activists is fundamentally psychological


harassment
OHagen 12 [Ellie Mae O'Hagan is regular columnist for Comment is free.
She works with the Centre for Labour and Social Studies; a thinktank focusing
on working rights and inequality. She has also worked with several Latin
American organisations. Ellie writes mostly on trade unions, activism,
feminism and Latin America, A Life Under Surveillance, November 1, 2012]
Despite the peaceful nature of their actions, the simple act of protesting
means that activists' lives sometimes resemble that of Tony Soprano.
Surveillance, police intimidation and undercover officers are routine hazards
they must negotiate. As one environmental campaigner who has come into
contact with undercover officers puts it: "You don't have to be self-important
to suspect you're the victim of state surveillance. If you're politically active ,
it's simply a fact of life." Occasionally we read stories of undercover officers,
or police intimidating campaigners in their homes or sending threatening
letters; but rarely do we talk about the psychological toll this takes that a
feeling of constantly being watched is an invariable factor in the lives of
people who take part in protest. Often activists are depicted as being like the
mafia part of an underground coterie that is somehow separated from
ordinary life. It's a depiction that makes constant surveillance seem
acceptable, perhaps even justified. But activists are just ordinary people who
work, watch TV, and drink too much at the weekend, just like anybody else.
After police unlawfully visited me at my home following a protest to tell me
they were "watching me", I still jump every time my doorbell rings. More
seriously, I have female friends who are reticent about relationships in case
the men they are sleeping with are not who they say they are. One person
whose campaign group was infiltrated told me the reason it often takes
activists a while to spot undercover officers is denial. "It's just too horrible to
contemplate that every memory you've shared with that friend has been a
lie," she said. Consistently being treated like a criminal , even when you're not
doing anything illegal, excludes you from normal society as though that's
something you have to give up if you want to act on your political beliefs. The
officers who allegedly fabricated evidence at the battle of Orgreave or those
who slept with campaigners, to gain their trust, have never been disciplined.
The message is clear: if you participate in activism nothing is off limits and
you're on your own. Last April the foreign secretary, William Hague, called for
Syria to "respect basic and universal human rights to freedoms of expression
and assembly". What does the intrusive surveillance of activists mean for a
society that champions freedom of expression to the world? How can we
justify extending the net of surveillance so widely, unsettling the lives of so
many, and apparently for so little? The truth is that enduring this type of
psychological harassment for that's what it amounts to is not the domain
of paranoid fantasists or mobsters. It is a routine problem for anyone taking
part in even the most innocuous forms of dissent.

Protests Good

#BlackLivesMatter Key
The Black Lives Matter Movement is key to countering
racialized violence
Nasir14 (Nailah Suad, Associate Professor of African American Studies, Killing Us
Slowly: Slow Death by Educational Neglect in Insurgency: The Black Matter(s) Issue Dept. of
African American Studies | University of California, Berkeley
http://www.thediasporablackmattersissue.com/ December 23, 2014
This is an unprecedented moment in our nations history. 2014

marks an apex of unpunished, statesanctioned violence against Black people, and an historical moment where Black
communities all over the country, in the face of the murders of Michael Brown, Eric
Garner, Tamir Rice, and countless others, have stood up together in protests and
die-ins and boycotts to express our collective anguish. These deaths at the hands of
police violence have touched a nerve, in part because every Black person I know, rich or poor, young or old, men
and women, in all parts of the country have a personal story of police abuse and violence (whether it be symbolic
violence or physical violence). Being harassed and unfairly treated by police is an experience
that unites Black people domestically and globally, and the heart-breaking deaths
we have seen recently make dramatically salient the way that Black lives are
undervalued. The hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, is a rallying call to notice and resist
the multiple ways our society has undervalued Black lives.While the recent deaths
certainly underscore the unacceptable levels of implicit and explicit racism against
Black people globally, they are but one aspect of how our society communicates and
reinforces the message that Black lives do not matter. As a scholar of education, I find also appalling
the way our educational system dampens the spirits and potential of Black kids in daily mundane interactions in far too many schools
and classrooms.I was talking recently about this with a teacher at one of my childrens schools. My children attend Berkeley Public
Schools, which have a long history of being progressive with respect to school desegregation, and which are quite (purposefully)
racially and socio-economically diverse. However, like school districts across the country, opportunities to learn are not evenly
distributed across racial groups in the schools. At the school one of my children attends, the achievement levels (as measured by
standardized test scores) of Black and Latino students are lower than that of white and Asian students, as is the case in every school in
Berkeley and most in the Bay Area and the nation. This teacher made the point that if the achievement patterns were reversed, with
white students underachieving the school and the district would not stand for it. We reflected together on how schools have a
collective level of acceptance for the underachievement of Black students, but if white students were to underachieve at the same
levels, the system itself would certainly be declared broken. In other words, not doing well in school is only normalized for students of
colorwhen it happens to white students the very system itself is viewed as not doing what it is designed to do. This is a form of
acceptable death, the death of intellectual potential, which our society does not question and continues to perpetuate. It is active
educational neglect.One of the key processes that support systems of schooling that do not allow Black students to reach their full
potential are the overtly racist systems of discipline and punishment in schools. This is where the core concerns of the
BlackLivesMatter movement and my focus on schools align. Many have written about the multiple ways that Black students, boys and
girls, are more harshly disciplined, and are more likely to be kicked out of class, suspended, and expelled, most often for infractions
like disrespect or other ambiguous offenses. The

propensity to discipline Black children and


adolescents in schools is deeply tied to the anti-black racism prevalent in our society,
and the ways that such racism spawns explicit and implicit bias. The ease with
which teachers and administrators punish Black children, and the ease with which
we accept that some children (Black ones) are more likely to underachieve in
school reflect a set of assumptions and implicit biases that tend to go unnoticed and
invisible. It is the same implicit and explicit bias that causes police officers to be
comfortable attributing criminality to Black bodies, and for our criminal just
system to fail to punish the police officers that kill Black men and women. At the
root of both is a form of dehumanization that argues there is no value to be found in
Black life, or in Black minds.Thus, the BlackLivesMatter movement is a call to
rehumanization. It is a grassroots movement led by a generation that understands

that the call for acknowledging the humanity of Black people is far too important to
rest with one charismatic leader. And it is a movement that rests on more than a set
of action items. It is a massive effort to stir the consciousness of our nation, to wake
up to the brutality that continues in mundane and dramatic ways every single day.

Now is the Key Time


Now is the key time for the movement
Posted by Yanique Dawkins January 29, 2015 To Sustain Black Lives
Matter Movement, Younger and Older Activists Need to Learn From Each
Other http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/01/29/black-lives-matter-youthmilitancy-civil-resistance-part/
My front-row seat at the Hankston incident shaped my immediate response to the protests in the aftermath
of the Michael Brown shooting. I thought the protests would end or be corralled by Black leaders and that
the protesters would eventually go home. I was wrong. Instead of diminished protests, they continue to
spread throughout the country, including in places as dissimilar as New York and Alaska, as well as dozens

By all accounts, activists and communities at the


forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement have a policy window or
political opportunity to advance serious reforms of a broken criminal justice
system, and to connect these reforms to economic justice policies that can
improve the lives of the working poor. There is already evidence that the
resistance has made a difference. Moderate racial profiling measures are
currently being debated in state and local legislative bodies. Congress just
approved the Death in Custody Reporting Act, and the Justice Department
announced new rules to reduce racial profiling by federal law enforcement
officials.
of cities outside the United States.

Revolution Coming / Key


Revolutionary Politics are key to changing institutions of
power
The Amendment Gazette January 1, 2015 Standing on the Edge of
Next American Revolution
http://www.amendmentgazette.com/2015/01/01/sparking-third-americanrevolution/
This revolution has already begun for many, not most, people. The Next American
Revolution will not be a solitary journey; far from it. Demonstrations, protests, marches and
disruption of business as usual have already shaken the nation, but the
movement for racial justice has not yet reached the momentum and visibility
of either Occupy Wall Street or the tea party in their heydays. The list of critical
issues above strongly suggests that the United States is sliding toward fascism. Genuine
democrats and republicans who believe in self-government in a democratic republic must
support a revolutionary movement and come to distrust the elites in both
major parties who back the corporate interests (profit and survival) over the public
interests (peace, democratic policy making, keeping the Earth habitable, etc). What, then, will
spark a revolutionary movement to outlaw plutocracy, abolish the corporatestate, establish political equality and save the world from the ravages of war
and predatory, transnational corporate capitalism, i.e., the neo-liberal world order we
call corporate feudalism? That question is impossible to answer. It could come from an article on a blog;
but were it that simple, the Next American Revolution would have been sparked by Chris Hedges essays
on Truthdig by now. Perhaps it will be triggered by another Wall St.-induced financial crash. Perhaps a flood
of independent politicians will somehow manage to win office, including the White House, a pipe dream in
this era of legalized corruption and multimillion dollar campaigns. Perhaps a public space will be occupied
again (Occupy Congress?), or enough people will come to realize that the Framers republic has been
transformed into an oligarchic, corporate-empire and rise up in rebellion in time. Perhaps the left will learn
to work with the right on the issues of mutual agreement. (See first video in the Further viewing section

this revolution will be


waged is open to tactics employed by the dispossessed , the oppressed, the
disgruntled and the rest of those involved . The revolutionaries must be nonviolent, or else
below for elaboration on that version of the Next American Revolution.) How

they risk pushing the U.S. government into full-blown, fascist police state in reaction to them. In all

Revolutionary activists can use the


freedoms we still have left: assembly, petition, speech, theater, the ballot box
and civil disobedience all employing a variety of tactics. What Makes Nonviolent
likelihood, any violence will be initiated by the police.

Movements Explode? reviews the tactics of disrupting business as usual and need for personal sacrifice.
Will enough folks sacrifice some time they normally spend watching television, exercising, reading, etc? Its

Revolution must
become part of many more peoples lives until the American corporate-state
is returned to We the People.
worth taking the time to read as a companion piece to this call for civil participation.

Protests Solve Cause Rethinking (General)


Protest movements that are able to participate in
discourse expand the power of the imagination, critical
inquiry and thoughtful exchange
Giroux 12 [Henry, is an American and Canadian scholar and cultural
critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States,
he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies,
youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002
Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the
modern period, Why dont Americans Care about Democracy at Home?,
October 2, 2012]
Clearly, as the Occupy Movement and other youth movements around the
world have demonstrated, the time has come not only to redefine the
promise of democracy but also to challenge those who have poisoned its
meaning. We have already witnessed such a challenge by protest movements
both at home and abroad in which the struggle over education has become
one of the most powerful fulcrums for addressing the detrimental effects of
neoliberalism. What these struggles, particularly by young people, have in
common is the attempt to merge the powers of persuasion and critical, civic
literacy with the power of social movements to activate and mobilize real
change. They are recovering a notion of the social and reclaiming a kind of
humanity that should inspire and inform our collective willingness to imagine
what a real democracy might look like. The political philosopher, Cornelius
Castoriadis, rightly argues that "people need to be educated for democracy
by not only expanding the capacities that enable them to assume public
responsibility but also through active participation in the very process of
governing."[50] The current attack on democracy is directly linked to a
systemic destruction of all those public spheres that expand the power of the
imagination, critical inquiry, thoughtful exchange and the formative culture
that makes critical education and an engaged citizenry dangerous to
fundamentalists of all ideological stripes.

Protest movements produce a new understanding of


politics based more heavily on political participation.
Giroux 14 [Henry, is an American and Canadian scholar and cultural
critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States,
he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies,
youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002
Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the
modern period, Protesting Youth in the Age of Neoliberal Cruelty, June 18,
2014]
In opposition to such conditions, a belief in the power of collective resistance
and politics emerged once again in 2010, as global youth protests embraced
the possibility of deepening and expanding democracy, rather than rejecting

it. Such movements produced a new understanding of politics based on


horizontal forms of collaboration and political participation. In doing so, they
resurrected revitalized and much needed questions about class power,
inequality, financial corruption, and the shredding of the democratic process .
They also explored as well as what it meant to create new communities of
mutual support, democratic modes of exchange and governance, and public
spheres in which critical dialogue and exchanges could take place. What was
distinctive about the protesting youth across the globe was their rejection to
the injustices of neoliberalism and their attempts to redefine the meaning of
politics and democracy, while fashioning new forms of revolt (Hardt & Negri
2012; Graeber 2013). Among their many criticisms, youthful protesters
argued vehemently that traditional social democratic, left, and liberal parties
suffered from an extremism of the center that made them complicitous
with the corporate and ruling political elites, resulting in their embrace of the
inequities of a form of casino capitalism which assumed that the market
should govern the entirety of social life, not just the economic realm (Hardt &
Negri 2012:88).

Protest movements have been successful in the past in


creating spaces that cultivate democratic culture as well
as creating more democratic social orders
Giroux 14 [Henry, is an American and Canadian scholar and cultural
critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States,
he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies,
youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002
Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the
modern period, Protesting Youth in the Age of Neoliberal Cruelty, June 18,
2014]
The protesters in various countries have not failed. On the contrary, they
realize that they need more time to fully develop the visions, strategies,
cultural apparatuses, infrastructures, organizations, and alliances necessary
to more fully realize their attempts to replace the older, corrupt social orders
with new ones that are not simply democratic, but have the support of the
people who inhabit them. Rather than disappearing, many protesters have
focused on more specific struggles, such as getting universities to disinvest in
coal industries, fighting the rise of student debt, organizing against the TransPacific Partnership, protesting austerity cuts, creating free social services for
the poor and excluded, and developing educational spaces that can provide
the formative culture necessary for creating the needs, identities, and modes
of agency capable of democratic relations (Zeese 2013; Taaffe 2013;
Brahinsky 2014). At the same time, they are participating in everyday
struggles that, as Thomas Piketty points out in Capital in the Twenty-First
Century, make clear that free-market capitalism is not only responsible for
terrifying inequalities in both wealth and income, but also produces antidemocratic oligarchies (Piketty 2014:571). And it is precisely through various
attempts to create spaces in which democratic culture can be cultivated that

the radical imagination can be liberated from the machinery of social and
political death produced by casino capitalism. What was once considered
impossible becomes possible through the development of worldwide youth
protests that speak to a future that is being imagined, but waiting to be
brought to fruition.

Hashtag Activism is Effective


Hashtag Activism proves to be valuable and influential
Olin 14 [Olin, Laura. #BringBackOurGirls: Hashtag Activism Is CheapAnd
Thats a Good Thing. May 9 2014. http://time.com/94059/bringbackourgirlshashtag-activism-is-cheap-and-thats-a-good-thing/. 6/23/15 IH]
Where are the stolen girls of Nigeria? And why dont we care more? BoingBoing.net asked on April 30th,
two weeks after more than 300 girls were kidnapped from their school dormitory in Nigeria. The next day,
a group of African American women on Twitter wondered what the coverage would look like if hundreds of
white girls had gone missing: Thered already be a Lifetime movie in the works. Seven days later,
virtually no news-consuming person in the West could be ignorant of the story, Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan had been forced to commit more resources toward the search, and the U.S., France,
and the U.K. had all promised aid as well. What changed in those seven days? The unserious-sounding but

#BringBackOurGirls started in
by desperate parents and activists who didnt believe their
president when he said he was taking action to recover the kidnapped girls. They wanted to
put pressure on the government to do more . They tried everything they could think
ultimately serious answer seems to be: a hashtag campaign.
Nigeria on April 23rd

of to raise awareness of the kidnappings within and beyond Nigeria. One of those things was
#BringBackOurGirls. It worked, likely beyond anything theyd imagined or hoped for.
Encapsulating both a story and a cause in just four words, the hashtag at first began to take
hold on Twitter only within Nigeria. Activists wrote it on signs to bring to street protests. Then
it began to spread within Africa. April 30th, two weeks after the kidnapping, was a turning
point. News broke that the terrorist group that took the girls, Boko Haram, planned to sell

#BringBackOurGirls
went from 10,000 mentions a day to 100,000 or 200,000 . It jumped oceans, and
thousands of non-Africans began using it. As often happens, celebrities got involved ,
them into forced marriages for $12 apiece. Over the next few days,

to dubious effect: Kim Kardashian, Christiane Amanpour, Chris Brownwith no apparent


recognition of hypocrisyand, mostly recently, Anne Hathaway. Two weeks after its first use,

#BringBackOurGirls had gathered 2 million mentions . In recent days,


#BringBackOurGirls has verged into feeling like Twitters cause clbre, something people
participate in regardless of whether they know the larger context or the campaigns aims .

Critics have begun dismissing it as empty online activism

that wont, in the end,


bring back the girls. We cant know if the hashtag will ultimately help deliver the girls back

But #BringBackOurGirls has felt like one of the first Twitter causes
that has a chance of actually changing outcomes , especially since former and
their parents.

current Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry got involved and Michelle Obama
tweeted a photo of herself holding a sign with #BringBackOurGirls written on it in big block
letters. Secretary Kerry followed up his tweet with an announcement that the State
Department would send military and law enforcement personnel to help advise Nigerian
officials in the search for the girls. The First Ladys photo led to another, even more
widespread round of media coverage: the New York Post, for example, ran the tweet as the full
cover of their front page with the headline, YES, MICHELLE! But beyond that, the First
Ladys participation felt like a public rebuke of President Jonathan and his wife Patience, who
has faced criticism for reportedly ordering the arrest of activists protesting the governments
response to the kidnappings and even accusing protesters of making up the abductions.
Ignore millions of regular people participating in a hashtag campaign? Sure. Ignore Michelle

However trivial hashtags can feel, their most


basic function is as a tool for focusing attention. Crucially, theyre also free
and open to anyone to use. So desperate Nigerian parents, without
extraordinary power or resources can draw the kind of attention that leads to
real pressure and real power. That feels a little bit world-changing. And activists who
Obama? Two Secretaries of State?

started the hashtag have gotten out of it exactly what theyd hoped for. In the space of a
week, they made it impossible for President Jonathan to continue chalking up their daughters
abduction as the latest Boko Haram atrocity to be grimly accepted and eventually forgotten.

Its not everything, but its a start . And the world is now talking about 276 stolen girls
in Nigeria when before it wasnt talking about them at all.

Our Education is Good


Such a retelling of history requires an active politics of
collective forgetting this avoidance of how politics can be
often times be influenced by racialized social relations
creates a one-sided retelling of history that allows us to
bracket off the past from the present
Chandler and McKnight 2009
(Prentice Chandler Ph.D from the University of Alabama, Assistant Professor
of Social Studies Education and Critical Race Theory, and Douglas McKnight Ph.D. Louisiana State University, professor of Educational Leadership, Policy
and Technology Studies and Social and Cultural Studies, The Failure of Social
Education in the United States: A Critique of Teaching the National Story from
"White" Colourblind Eyes, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, v7 n2
p217-248 Nov 2009)
This avoidance of race in social studies classrooms and schools in general
leads to teachers and administrators deciding what the definition of race
should be for students; when teachers affirm that race is irrelevant either
by audible words or by their silence about race, they reveal perhaps
unwitting, racist assumptions that all people are alike (Branch, 2001, p. 110111). Racism in this position has been individualized to the point that people
are shielded from the notion that racism occurs on cultural, legal and
systemic levels, and that it is supported by the status quo on those levels
(Wildman & Davis, 1997). To ignore race and its appearance in society and
school allows the perception that race does not matter, and that
failures (of a group or person) are due to innate deficiencies within that
particular person, rather than allowing for systemic evaluation of the status
quo. The colour-blind philosophy has created a situation in which whites are
unable to understand that people of colour have more institutional and
individual barriers than they do (Blau, 2003; Dixon & Rousseau, 2005).
When teachers treat race in particular ways (i.e. remain silent, give it partial
treatment, and represent Others experiences through white eyes) they
are operating from the right to define the story. It is based on the premise
that someone has more of a right to state what they think the world looks
like and to coerce others into agreeing with that view (Armstrong & Ng,
2005, p. 32). In other words, it sustains the power of the storyteller, who
historically in the classroom has been and continues to be white, especially in
elementary grades, even as the overall racial and ethnic makeup of the US
shifts. And this powerful position is made all the more problematic
when the story itself serves to defend dominant white images
(DiPardo & Fehn, 2000; Chalmers, 1997) even as it claims to have overcome
racism and achieved colour- blind status, hence enabling the dominant
culture of whiteness to remain intact and not confront race as a compelling
problem in US history as well as in the present. This condition preserves the

story of the US as a white story, even as multicultural education theorists


attempt to gain access to the story for people of colour.

AT: Reforms Solve


Institutional reforms are ineffective complete overhaul
of status quo power relations are key
SEAN ILLING teaches political theory at Louisiana State University JUN 22,
2015 Rich people are the f**king worst: The 1 percents vile new war on us
all
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/22/rich_people_are_the_fking_worst_the_1_per
cents_vile_new_war_on_us_all/
Rich people rarely tell you how they really feel about poor people . Occasionally,
though, you get a glimpse. Earlier this week, the Washington Post published a story about Rancho Santa
Fe, a small but extremely wealthy enclave in Southern California. Like the rest of California, the people of
Rancho Santa Fe are dealing with a drought. As you might imagine, that means water is scarce and
conservation is critical. For the denizens of Rancho Santa Fe, however, conservation is someone elses
problem, namely poor people. According to Steve Yuhas, who lives in the area and hosts a conservative
talk-radio show, privileged people should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on
brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful. Oh, the humanity! In case it wasnt
clear, Yuhas added that the right to water ought to scale with income: No, were not all equal when it
comes to water. And Yuhas isnt alone. Gay Butler, an avid equestrian and fellow resident of Rancho
Santa Fe, fumed for similar reasons. It angers me because people arent looking at the overall picture,
she said. What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres? Perhaps Butler has
a point. Its one thing to demand sacrifice in extraordinary circumstances, but weve got to draw the line
somewhere, right? If a woman wants to ride her finely manicured horse on a dirt-free prairie in the middle
of the desert, what matters a little drought? Brett Barbre, a fellow Orange Country aristocrat, also appears
to get it. I call it the war on suburbia, he remarked. California used to be the land of opportunity and
freedom. Its slowly becoming the land of one group telling everyone else how they think everybody should
live their lives. Barbre continued: Theyll have to pry it [his water hose] from my cold, dead hands. You
may be asking yourself: Do restrictions on water consumption during a historic drought really constitute an
all-out assault on human freedom? Fair question. Most of us fail to see this issue in such grand terms.
Maybe were missing something. Mr. Barbre is either a bold lover of liberty or a detached plutocrat with a
penchant for hyperbole. You be the judge. In any case, I see the decadence of the people in Rancho Santa
Fe as a microcosm of America today, particularly corporate America. What these people exhibit, apart from
their smugness, is a complete absence of any sense of collective responsibility. They cant see and arent
interested in the consequences of their actions. And they cant muster a modicum of moderation in the
face of enormous scarcity. Every resource, every privilege, is theirs to pilfer with impunity. These people
are prepared to endanger an entire ecosystem simply to avoid the indignity of brown golf courses; this is

The wealthiest Americans and their apostles in government


tell us that its the poor people who are entitled, who take and exploit and
keep more than they deserve. But thats a half-truth, and a dangerous one at that. Entitlement
has many faces, the most destructive of which is on display in Rancho Santa Fe. These adolescent
upper-crusters are entitled because they believe they have a right to
everything they can get hold of regardless of the costs. They believe living with others
carries no obligations. Anyone who places their right to pristine golf courses above
their responsibility to respect communal resources is a social toxin, a
privileged parasite eating away at the foundations of society. Its important that
their actions be seen in this context. Theres a lesson in Rancho Santa Fe and in
California more generally. Whats happening there foreshadows our future.
Were confronted with crises on a number of fronts. From climate change to economic
inequality, our institutions and the people controlling them are failing us. Changes
are necessary, but a segment of society (the 1 percent, well call them) is
unwilling to sacrifice; theyre too invested in power, in comfort. Whether its oil
what true entitlement looks like.

profiteers distorting climate science or Wall Street banks undermining efforts to regulate the financial
industry,

entrenched interests are doing everything possible to preserve the

status quo, even when so doing threatens to upend the whole system just like
the people of Rancho Santa Fe. The corrosive elitism in Rancho Santa Fe is the stuff popular
revolts are based on. These Dickensian vultures want to hoard until nothing
remains; theyre blind to those beyond their gated communities. Disconnectedness is a close cousin of
privilege, so its not surprising that they live in a bubble. But their persecution mania, their belief in their
privileged status, is insufferable and a public hazard. They cant imagine what its like to live without, so
theyll risk anything to ensure that they dont. California may survive the selfish stupidity of a few citizens
in Rancho Santa Fe, but its not clear how long the country can survive the excesses and greed of Wall

The problem is the attitude


of the wealthy, the contempt, the indifference, and the lack of anything
resembling civic virtue. To be rich is no crime. To abuse privilege, to profit at the expense of
Street and Big Business. Wealth, its worth noting, isnt the enemy.

others, is quite another thing and its all too common these days.

Impacts

Social Death
Anti-Blackness is the Controlling Impact for how we
should interpret all forms of violence
Crockett 14 ( JNasah , writer, performer, and cultural worker who focuses on
Black cultural production and Black radical traditions. Raving Amazons: Antiblackness and Misogynoir in Social Media June
30,2014https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/raving-amazons-antiblackness-andmisogynoir-in-social-media.
Antiblackness,inaroughhewnnutshell,isthestructuringlogicofthemodernityandthe
foundationofthecontemporaryworldwelivein.Itistheglueandthestringrunningthrough
ourconceptionsofwhatitmeanstobefree,whatitmeanstobeacitizen,whatitmeanstobea
legitimateandproductivememberofsociety,whatitmeanstobeHuman,andwhatitmeansto
betheantiHuman.AntiblacknessisthestructuralpositioningoftheBlack(theBlackhere
beingamarkerforacertaintypeofsubjectivitycomparabletoMarxstheworkershoutoutFrank
Wilderson)asanobjectthatisfungibleandabletobeaccumulatedlikeanyotherwicket
churnedoutbytheprocessofcapitalism;itisthefactofBlackfolksbeingopentoperpetualand
gratuitousviolencethatneedsnodefinitivepriorprovocationorreason;thereasonisthe
factofBlackness(see:gettingshotforwalkinghomewithsomeSkittles,gettingshotwhilebeing
handcuffedinthebackseatofacar,gettingshotforcalling911,beingbeatenforstaringat
someoneinadehumanizingway,andonandon).Itis,toechoHartman,theafterlifeofslavery:a
logicthatcollapsesthepastandthepresentandplacesviolencetowardstheBlackwithinarangeof
acceptabledailypractices.Certainlyantiblacknessisattitudinalseethelibidinaleconomy,i.e.thesystemsof
desireandinstinctsandfantasiesandrepulsionaroundskintone,hairtypes,bodiesthatmakesitselfapparentinEurocentricbeauty
standardsorthefactthatlighterskinnedAfricanAmericanwomenreceiveshorterprisonsentencesthantheirdarkerskinned
counterparts.Butthatshowlogicandstructuresoperate,theyimbueeverythingthatspringsforth

fromthem.Ourlivesandsocieties(becausewhenwespeakoftheafterlifeofracebasedchattelslavery,Arabandtrans
Atlantic,wearespeakingoftheentireworld)arefundamentallyshapedbyit,notonlyinstitutionally,but
alsoattheleveloftheeveryday,includingcrossingthestreet.Soofcourseitmakesitselfapparentinthe
supposedlybravenewworld(sodifferentfromanyworldthatcamebefore!)ofsocialmedia.ImyselfjoinedbothTwitterandTumblr
backin2009,afterexperiencesstretchingbacktohighschoolwithBlackPlanet.com,Myspace,Livejournal,andofcourseFacebook.
WithTwitterandTumblr,however,Ijoinedafterspendingayearortwolurkingontheedgesofaparticulargroupof(mostly)women
ofcolor,andmovingontosocialmediaaroundthesametimetheydidallowedmetoconnectwiththeminwaysIwasntabletowhen
themainplatformwas,say,WordPress.Forus,andforthemanyBlackwomenIhavesinceconnectedandbuiltwithsince2009,
socialmediaoffersusyetanotherwaytobuildourbelovedcommunities,toextendthenetworksoflove,camaraderie,andjoyous
supportthathavelongexistedinourmeatspacecommunitieshairsalons,churches,Blackstudentunions,kitchentables,etc.Social
mediaalsobecomesacentralsiteformuchofouractivism,fromthemultinational#BringBackOurGirlshashtagtoholdingmedia
outletsaccountableforpublishingblatantracism.Wearealsotheoryhouses,circulatingandchallengingdiscoursesandpracticesthat
negativelyimpactourlivesasBlackwomen,andmakingcriticalconnectionsthatareoftenmissingfromthemediathatsurroundsus.
Icanthelpbutseehistoricalparallelsto,say,early20thcenturyPullmanPorterssecretlydistributingcopiesofThe Chicago
DefendertotheBlackfolkstheycameacross.Whatweredoingisnothingnew,butbeingonsocialmediameansthatthis
networkingishappeninginthepubliceye.Ialsocanthelpbutseehistoricalparallelsinthemultipleformsofantiblackbacklash
Blackwomenhavereceivedonsocialmediaoverthepastfewyears.Thetopicofsurveillanceinsocialmediahasbeen

ahotonelately,butmanydiscussionsonitstopandendattheEdwardSnowden/NSAtype
revelationsoverpost9/11,postWaronTerrorinvasionsofprivacyatthehandsofan
overzealousgovernment.However,ifweweretoextendtheideaofpolicingandsurveillance
furtherbackintime,andexpanditbeyondthetropeofitbeingprimarilycarriedoutby
governmentemployees,itbecomesapparentthatsurveillancehasalreadybeenacentralpartof

theexperienceofBlackwomenonTwitter.RecallthatintheU.S.,thepolicehavetheirrootsin
slavepatrols;policingandmanagementofthepotentiallyunrulyBlackbodiesunderliesthecall
forlawandorderandtheconstituentneedforpolice.ToquoteWildersonagain,insocietythereis
afundamentalanxietyoverwhere is the Black and what is he or she
doing,andinanantiblackworld,everynonBlackisdeputizedtopatrolandmanagethe
Blacks.

Blackness is social death and unimaginable exclusion


Vargas and James 13 [Joo Costa and Joy, University of Texas and
Williams University, Refusing Blackness-as-Victimization: Trayvon Martin and
the Black Cyborgs, Chapter 14 in Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts
and Contemporary Manifestations ed. George Yancy and Janine Jones]
What happens when, instead of becoming enraged and shocked every time a
black person is killed in the United States, we recognize black death as a
predictable and constitutive aspect of this democracy? What will happen then
if instead of demanding justice we recognize (or at least consider) that the
very notion of justice-indeed the gamut of political and cognitive elements
that constitute formal, multiracial democratic practices and institutionsproduces or requires black exclusion and death as normative? To think about
Trayvon Martin's death not merely as a tragedy or media controversy but as a
political marker of possibilities permits one to come to terms with several
foundational and foretold stories, particularly if we understand that death or
killing to be prefigured by mass or collec- tive loss of social standing and
life. One story is of impossible redemption in the impossible polis. It departs
from, and depends on, the position of the hegemonic, anti-black-which is not
exclusively white but is exclusively non-black-subject and the political and
cognitive schemes that guarantee her ontology and genealogy. Depending on
the theology, redemption requires deliverance from sin, and/or deliverance
from slavery. 1 Redemption is a precondition of integration into the whitedominated social universe2 Integration thus requires that the black become a
non-slave, and that the black become a non-sinner. The paradox or
impossibility is that if blackness is both sin and sign of enslavement, the mark
of "Ham,'; then despite the legal abolition of juridical enslavement or chattel
slavery or the end of the formal colony, the sinner and enslaved endure; and
virtue requires the eradication of both. If we theorize from the standpoint say
of Frantz Fanon, through the lens of the fiftieth anniversary of the English
publication, The Wretched of the Earth (or Ida B. Wells's Southern Horrors,
Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark, Frank Wilderson's Jncognegro, etc.), we
can follow a clear heuristic formulation: from the perspective of the
dominant, white-inflected gaze and predisposition, blacks can be redeemed
neither from sin nor from slavery. 3 For a black person to be integrated, s/he
must either become non-black, or display superhuman and/or infrahuman
qualities. (In Fanonian terms she would become an aggrandized slave or
enfranchised slave-that is, one who owns property still nonetheless remains
in servitude or colonized.) The imagination, mechanics, and reproduction of
the ordinary polis rely on the exclusion of ordinary blacks and their

availability for violent aggression and/ or premature death or disappearance


(historically through lynching and the convict prison lease system, today
through "benign neglect" and mass incarceration). The ordinary black person
can therefore never be integrated. The "ordinary negro" is never without sin.
Thus, to be sinless or angelic in order to be recognized as citizenry has been
the charge for postbellum blackness. Throughout the twentieth century,
movements to free blacks from what followed in the wake of the abolition of
chattel slavery ushered in the postbellum black cyborg: the call for a
"Talented Tenth" issued by white missionaries and echoed by a young W. E. B.
Du Bois, Bayard Rustin's imploring a young Martin Luther King Jr. to become
"angelic" in his advocacy of civil rights and to remove the men with shotguns
from his front porch despite the bombings and death threats against King, his
wife Corella, and their young children. The angelic negro/negress is not
representative and his or her status as an acceptable marker for U.S.
democracy is predicated upon their usefulness for the transformation of
whiteness into a loftier, more ennobled formation. This performance or
service of the angelic black would be resurrected in the reconstruction of
Trayvon Martin as a youth worthy of the right to life, the right of refusal to
wear blackness as victimization; the right to fight back. That is, the right to
the life of the polis; so much of black life, particularly for the average fellah,
is mired in close proximity to the graveyard, hemmed in by the materiality of
social margins and decay, exclusion and violence.

Allowing Institutional racism allows for the


dehumanization of blacks
Blow 9(CHARLES M. BLOW , Timess visual Op-Ed columnist, conducts a
discussion about all things statistical from the environment to
entertainment and their visual expressions., Cites studies written by Phillip
Atiba Goff The Pennsylvania State University Jennifer L. Eberhardt Stanford
University Melissa J. Williams University of California, Berkeley Matthew
Christian Jackson The Pennsylvania State University Not Yet Human
February 25, 2009 http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/not-yet-human/,
//AR)
Six studies under the
title Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and
Contemporary Consequences were published in last Februarys Journal of Personality and
Those following the New York Post cartoon flap might find this interesting.

Social Psychology. Among the relevant findings: Historical representations explicitly depicting Blacks as

a mental association between


Blacks and apes remains. Here, the authors demonstrate that U.S. citizens
implicitly associate Blacks and apes. And After having established that individuals
apelike have largely disappeared in the United States, yet

mentally associate Blacks and apes, Study 4 demonstrated that this implicit association is not due to

In Study 5, we
demonstrated that, even controlling for implicit anti-Black prejudice, the
implicit association between Blacks and apes can lead to greater
endorsement of violence against a Black suspect than against a White
personalized, implicit attitudes and can operate beneath conscious awareness.

suspect. Finally, in Study 6, we demonstrated that subtle media representations


of Blacks as apelike are associated with jury decisions to execute Black
defendants.This may provide some context for considering the motives of the cartoonist and his
editors, and for understanding the strong public reaction.

Institutional Racism Bad


Racism has allowed blacks to be categorized into negative
stereotypes making it impossible for prosperity
Kaplan 9(Karen Kaplan | Kaplan is a Times staff writer, Racial stereotypes
and social status, December 9 2008
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/09/science/sci-race9, //AR
Barack Obama's election as president may be seen as a harbinger of a colorblind society, but a new

study suggests that derogatory racial stereotypes are so powerful that merely
being unemployed makes people more likely to be viewed by others -- and
even themselves -- as black. In a long-term survey of 12,686 people, changes in social
circumstances such as falling below the poverty line or being sent to jail
made people more likely to be perceived by interviewers as black and less
likely to be seen as white. Altogether, the perceived race of 20% of the people in the study
changed at least once over a 19-year period, according to the study published today in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences. "After [junk bond financier] Michael Milken goes to prison, he'll be no
more likely to say he's a black person or any less likely to say he's a white person," said Amon Emeka, a
social demographer at USC who was not involved in the study. "[U.S. Supreme Court Justice] Clarence
Thomas might say he's transcended race, but he wouldn't say that he's a white person, and certainly no

Researchers have long recognized that


a person's race affects his or her social status, but the study is the first to
show that social status also affects the perception of race . "Race isn't a
characteristic that's fixed at birth," said UC Irvine sociologist Andrew Penner, one of the
study's authors. "We're perceived a certain way and identify a certain way
depending on widely held stereotypes about how people believe we should
behave." Penner and Aliya Saperstein, a sociologist at the University of Oregon, examined data from
one on the planet would say he's a white person."

the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Though the ongoing survey is
primarily focused on the work history of Americans born in the 1950s and 1960s, participants have also
provided interviewers with information on a variety of topics, including health, marital status, insurance
coverage and race. On 18 occasions between 1979 and 1998, interviewers wrote down whether the

The researchers found that


people whom the interviewers initially perceived as white were
roughly twice as likely to be seen as nonwhite in their next interview
if they had fallen into poverty, lost their job or been sent to prison .
People previously perceived as black were twice as likely to continue being
seen as black if any of those things had happened to them. For example, 10% of
people they spoke with were "white," "black" or "other."

people previously described as white were reclassified as belonging to another race if they became

The
effect has staying power. People who were perceived as white and then
became incarcerated were more likely to be perceived as black even after
they were released from prison, Penner said. The racial assumptions affected
self-identity as well. Survey participants were asked to state their own race when the study began
incarcerated. But if they stayed out of jail, 4% were reclassified as something other than white.

in 1979 and again in 2002, when the government streamlined its categories for race and ethnicity. Of the
people who said they were white in 1979 and stayed out of jail, 95% said they were white in 2002. Among

The
results underscore "the pervasiveness of racial stratification in society ," said
Emeka. "The fact that both beholders and the observers of blackness
attach negative associations to blackness speaks volumes to the
continuing impact of racial stratification in U.S. society." But Robert T.
those who were incarcerated at some point, however, only 81% still said they were white in 2002.

Carter, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia Teachers College in New York who studies
race, culture and racial identity, said he wasn't convinced that stereotypes had the power to change the
perception of race. "It's not social status that shapes race, it's race that shapes social status," he said.
"Stratification on the basis of racial group membership has been an integral part of our society since prior
to the inception of the United States. It's been true for hundreds of years." To see if the changes were the
result of simple recording errors made when interviewers filled out their surveys, the researchers checked
how often a participant's gender changed from one year to the next. They found changes in 0.27% of
cases, suggesting that interviewers weren't being sloppy. They also looked for subjects who were
interviewed by the same person two years in a row. Even in those cases, the results were the same. The
researchers are examining whether other social stereotypes have a similar effect on perceived race. People
who have less education, live in the inner city instead of the suburbs and are on welfare are more likely to
be seen as black, Saperstein said. "The data is really interesting, but it doesn't allow us to say what was
going on in these people's heads," she said. "Our story is consistent with the story that there's implicit
prejudice."

Racism must be rejected in every instance


Barndt 91 (Joseph R. Barndt co-director of Ministry Working to Dismantle
Racism "Dismantling Racism" p. 155
To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and
limitations, ghettos and prisons. The prison of racism confines us all, people of
color and white people alike. It shackles the victimizer as well as the
victim. The walls forcibly keep people of color and white people separate from each other; in our
separate prisons we are all prevented from achieving the human potential God intends for us. The
limitations imposed on people of color by poverty, subservience, and
powerlessness are cruel, inhuman, and unjust; the effects of
uncontrolled power, privilage, and greed, whicha are the marks of our
white prison, will inevitably destroy us as well. But we have also seen that
the walls of racism can be dismantled. We are not condemned to an
inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of freedom.
Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and
cultural racism can be destroyed. You and I are urgently called to joing
the efforst of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all,
the walls of racism. The danger point of self-destruction seems to be
drawing even more near. The results of centuries of national and
worldwide conquest and colonialism, of military buildups and violent
aggression, of overconsumption and environmental destruction may be
reaching a point of no return. A small and predominantly white minority
of the global population derives its power and privelage from the
sufferings of vast majority of peoples of all color. For the sake of the
world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.

Racism Bad
Racism is the lynchpin of the modern biopolitical state,
spawning the worst excesses of biopower. The aff is the
path to eugenic control and genocide to legitimate state
action
Mendieta 02 [Eduardo Mendieta, SUNY at Stony Brook, To make live and to let die Foucault on Racism;
Meeting of the Foucault Circle APA Central Division Meeting, Chicago, April 25, 2002]
I have thus far discussed Foucaults triangulation between the discourses of the production of truth, the power that these discourse
enact and make available to social agents, and the constitution of a political rationality that is linked to the invention and creation
of its horizon of activity and surveillance. I want now to focus on the main theme of this courses last lecture. This theme discloses
in a unique way the power and perspicacity of Foucaults method. The theme concerns the kind of power that biopower renders
available, or rather, how biopolitics produces certain power effects by thinking of the living in a novel way. We will approach the

whereas the power of the sovereign under Medieval and


early Modern times was the power to make die and to let live, the power of
the total state, which is the biopower state, is the power to make live and to
let die. Foucault discerned here a telling asymmetry. If the sovereign exercised his power with the executioners axe, with the
theme by way of a contrast:

perpetual threat of death, then life was abandoned to its devices. Power was exhibited only on the scaffold, or the guillotine its
terror was the shimmer of the unsheathed sword. Power was ritualistic, ceremonial, theatrical, and to that extent partial, molecular,
and calendrical. It was also a power that by its own juridical logic had to submit to the jostling of rights and claims. In the very
performance of its might, the power of the sovereign revealed its limitation. It is a power that is localized and circumscribed to the

the power of the biopower state is


over life [expand]. And here Foucault asks how can biopolitics then reclaim the power over death? or rather, how
can it make die in light of the fact that its claim to legitimacy is that it is
guarding, nurturing, tending to life? In so far as biopolitics is the management of life, how does it make
theater of its cruelty, and the staging of its pomp. In contrast, however,

die, how does it kill? This is a similar question to the one that theologians asked about the Christian God. If God is a god of life, the
giver of life, how can he put to death, how can he allow death to descend upon his gift of life why is death a possibility if god is the

in order to re-claim death, to be able to inflict death on


its subjects, its living beings, biopower must make use of racism; more
precisely, racism intervenes here to grant access to death to the biopower
state. We must recall that the political rationality of biopower is deployed
over a population, which is understood as a continuum of life. It is this
continuum of life that eugenics, social hygiene, civil engineering, civil medicine, military engineers,
doctors and nurses, policeman, and so on, tended to by a careful management of roads,
giver of life? Foucaults answer is that

factories, living quarters, brothels, red-districts, planning and planting of gardens and recreation centers, and the gerrymandering

Biopolitics is the
result of the development and maintenance of the hothouse of the political
body, of the body-politic. Society has become the vivarium of the political
rationality, and biopolitics acts on the teeming biomass contained within the
parameters of that structure built up by the institutions of health, education, and production. This is
where racism intervenes, not from without, exogenously, but from within,
constitutively. For the emergence of biopower as the form of a new form of
political rationality, entails the inscription within the very logic of the modern
state the logic of racism. For racism grants, and here I am quoting: the conditions for
the acceptability of putting to death in a society of normalization. Where
there is a society of normalization, where there is a power that is, in all of its
surface and in first instance, and first line, a bio-power, racism is
indispensable as a condition to be able to put to death someone, in order to
be able to put to death others. The homicidal [meurtrire] function of the
state, to the degree that the state functions on the modality of bio-power,
can only be assured by racism (Foucault 1997, 227) To use the formulations from his 1982 lecture The
of populations by means of roads, access to public transformations, placement of schools, and so on.

Political Technology of Individuals which incidentally, echo his 1979 Tanner Lectures the power of the state after the 18th
century, a power which is enacted through the police, and is enacted over the population, is a power over living beings, and as such

since the population is nothing more than what


the state takes care of for its own sake, of course, the state is entitled to
slaughter it, if necessary. So the reverse of biopolitics is thanatopolitics.
(Foucault 2000, 416). Racism, is the thanatopolitics of the biopolitics of the
total state. They are two sides of one same political technology, one same
political rationality: the management of life, the life of a population, the
tending to the continuum of life of a people. And with the inscription of
racism within the state of biopower, the long history of war that Foucault has been
telling in these dazzling lectures has made a new turn: the war of peoples, a war against
it is a biopolitics. And, to quote more directly,

invaders, imperials colonizers, which turned into a war of races, to then turn
into a war of classes, has now turned into the war of a race, a biological unit,
against its polluters and threats. Racism is the means by which bourgeois
political power, biopower, re-kindles the fires of war within civil society.
Racism normalizes and medicalizes war. Racism makes war the permanent
condition of society, while at the same time masking its weapons of death
and torture. As I wrote somewhere else, racism banalizes genocide by making
quotidian the lynching of suspect threats to the health of the social body.
Racism makes the killing of the other, of others, an everyday occurrence by
internalizing and normalizing the war of society against its enemies. To
protect society entails we be ready to kill its threats, its foes, and if we
understand society as a unity of life, as a continuum of the living, then these
threat and foes are biological in nature.

Racism Outweighs Nuclear War


Racism outweighs nuclear war
Mohan 93 (Brij, Professor at LSU, Eclipse of Freedom p. 3-4)
Metaphors of existence symbolize variegated aspects of the human reality.
However, words can be apocalyptic. "There are words," de Beauvoir writes,
"as murderous as gas chambers" (1968: 30). Expressions can be unifying and
explosive; they portray explicit messages and implicit agendas in human
affairs and social configurations. Manifestly the Cold War is over. But the
world is not without nuclear terror. Ethnic strife and political instabilities in
the New World Order -- following the dissolution of the Soviet Union -- have
generated fears of nuclear terrorism and blackmail in view of the widening
circle of nuclear powers. Despite encouraging trends in nuclear disarmament,
unsettling questions, power, and fear of terrorism continue to characterize
the crisis of the new age which is stumbling at the threshold of the twentyfirst century.The ordeal of existence transcends the thermonuclear fever
because the latter does not directly impact the day-to-day operations if the
common people. The fear of crime, accidents, loss of job, and health care on
one hand; and the sources of racism, sexism, and ageism on the other hand
have created a counterculture of denial and disbelief that has shattered the
faade of civility. Civilization loses its significance when its social institutions
become counterproductive. It is this aspect of the mega-crisis that we are
concerned about.

Labeling Advantage

1AC
Fusion Centers surveil activists under the guise of
terrorism

Royden 15 Occupy.com. June 19. Protest Is the New Terror: How U.S.
Law Enforcement Is Working to Criminalize Dissent Derek Royden is a writer
at occupy.com and nation of change. http://www.occupy.com/article/protestnew-terror-how-us-law-enforcement-working-criminalize-dissent
the FBI surveilled civil rights and other activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to leaders of the
as part of its wide ranging COINTELPRO (counter intelligence program)
during the 1960s and early 70s. The use of planted news stories, faked communications to create dissension
Its well established that
National Lawyers Guild

within activist groups, informants to make dubious cases and even assassinations was revealed by a group of activists called the Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI, who broke into a bureau office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971 and found ample evidence of the agencys
misdeeds. This is generally seen as an era of terrible government overreach in the name of fighting communism. The problem is that

the

use of similar tactics has been discovered again and again in the
years since. Following the anti-globalization protests of 1999, the 9/11 attacks, and the Occupy protests of 2011, similar
strategies, enhanced by modern technology, have been ratcheted up and deployed against an ever-increasing number of activists and political

this is due to the


fact that there simply aren't enough real threats of terrorism to justify all the
money and toys that have been given to U.S. law enforcement. Add to this the fact that police at all levels seem eager to
see potential terrorism in even the mildest forms of dissent and you have a recipe for disaster. In one of
groups of all ideological stripes as part of the even more dubious wars on drugs and terrorism. Part of

the most recent instances, it was revealed that the FBI has been coordinating with local law enforcement to target the Black Lives Matter
movement. Another story, unrelated to current anti-racist organizing, is a bizarre case out of Minneapolis in the lead up to the Republican
national convention in 2008. According to the City Pages, a Univ. of Minnesota police officer who was the departments only officer on the local
Joint Counter Terrorism Task Force worked with an FBI Special Agent to recruit college students who acted as paid informants at vegan

Joint
Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), of which there are currently 104 located in cities and towns across the United States, were
potlucks hoping theyd discover activist plans to disrupt the city's upcoming convention. Extending the Long Arm of the Law

created in the 1980s and greatly expanded in the aftermath of 9/11. They were set up to coordinate between diverse federal agencies and

in tandem with Fusion Centers that are supposed to collect and


analyze data related to potential terrorism. To see how these task forces can overstep their bounds , take the case of Eric
local law enforcement, and often work

Linsker, who police tried to arrest for allegedly trying to throw a trash can over the side of a walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge during the large,
mostly peaceful protests that erupted in New York City following the failure to indict the officer whose choke-hold led to the death of Eric
Garner. Other protesters intervened to stop the arrest but Linkser left his bag behind which, according to authorities, contained his passport,
three hammers, and a small amount of marijuana. While police may have been well within their rights to track down Linsker and charge him if
the vandalism allegations were true, it's who did the arresting that is problematic: rather than the NYPD, it was the New York JTTF that brought
Linkser in, perhaps believing that the hammers were potential instruments of terror. This should be a cause for worry, since it means either

law enforcement's definition of terrorism has become far too broad,


or they are targeting more than just terrorism. Stingrays and the Dangers of Technology
Activists with Occupy Wall Street, and later Black Lives Matter , have relied on social networks and technology to organize their efforts.
Ubiquitous phones with video recording capacity have revealed abuses of power by law enforcement and discredited official stories. Smart
phones are also useful during marches to inform other protesters on the fly about concentrations of police, allowing demonstrators to change
their routes to avoid confrontation. As one counter-terrorism expert told the New York Post in regards to Black Lives Matter protests in early
December: They wore me out. Their ability to strategize on the fly is something we havent dealt with before to this degree.

Unfortunately, like most 21st century technology, the use of smart phones by activists has
become a double-edged sword, exposing them to surveillance risks that were unimaginable in
previous eras. One such technology is Stingray, produced by Harris Technology, which mimics a cell phone tower and allows law enforcement
to pull GPS and other data from phones within their range. In an interesting case reported by Wired magazine, police in Erie County, NY, used
the technology 47 times in the last five years and only received the required permission from a court once. Even in that case, they asked for a
court order rather than a warrant, which carries a higher burden of proof... (and) mischaracterized the true nature of the tool. The same story
notes that the New York Civil Liberties Union posted documents online that showed the FBI and local police departments had made binding
agreements to keep their use of the technology secret, even going so far as to ask courts to dismiss criminal cases in which the use of
Stingray might be revealed. The unique moment created by anti-police brutality protests throughout the U.S. last year and coming on the
heels of a federally coordinated effort to dismantle Occupy encampments in 2011 revealed that federal police agencies, especially the FBI,
working with local police have directed their resources as much against protesters, dissenters and those practicing and civil disobedience as
they have against the threat represented by terrorists, whether homegrown lone wolves" or organized outside groups. While the recent NSA

while
the right to dissent remains a fundamental American freedom, the
fear of terrorism being openly exploited by law enforcement has
allowed police to resurrect COINTELPRO in all but name.
reform bill passed in Congress represents a victory for civil liberties and privacy advocates, there's still a ways to go. Because

Calling everyday citizens terrorists leads to


dehumanization, and justifies atrocities.
Macleod 10 (Ryannon, IR major @ Memorial U of Newfoundland, e-IR,
publisher of IR lit., 5/3/10, http://www.e-ir.info/?p=4017) JPG
While little to no persuasion is required to garner support for defensive acts of war upon a nations invasion by foreign militant groups or armies, those governments seeking to

government
leaders must rhetorically construct their enemies with
dehumanizing language so as to exploit the ways in which the
general masses perceive others rhetorical construction of ones
enemies is fundamental to a nations public support for war
Dehumanizing others renders the requisite horrors of war
tolerable
engage in aggressive acts of war against other states face the ideological encumbrance of rallying public support for their cause. In these cases

. Such

, (Elliot 2004, 99) and ensures that no moral relationship with the (enemy) inhibits the victimizers violent behaviour (Haslam 2006, 254). Through carefully

crafted narratives, government leaders are able to sculpt and shape socially constructed realities in such a way so as to allow or even demand (its) citizens to undertake acts that
would be universally rejected if they were directed towards true human beings (Anderson 2006, 739). How, then, does one go about orchestrating such a sophisticated fabrication of

Successful dehumanization rests first within defining those


which a government wishes to antagonize as others,
the goal is to construct
the other
less than human and deserving of
punishment
reality?

distinctly lacking a capacity for

those characteristics associated with being innate to human nature; ultimately,


emphasize that

this definition in such a way so as to

is morally culpable of great crimes, thus

(Boudreau and Polkinghorn 2008, 176). This is usually established in relation to ethnicity and race, with the enemy cast as being savages or

barbarians lacking in culture, cognitive and rational capacities, morality, and self-restraint; the ideal portrayal is of a savage [that] has brutish appetites for violence and sex, is

One effective means of denying a group


inclusion to the human race through rhetoric is to explicitly liken
the groups members to animals
impulsive, and prone to criminality (Haslam 2006, 252).

, insects, or parasites. Equally effective is the construction of a likeness to children,

implicating a lack of development and autonomy. Put simply, if rhetoric is crafted in such a way so as to cast ones enemies as lacking what distinguishes humans from animals, they

the definitive goal is to define the


reality of the intended enemy so that public perception associates
the group
War on Terror
itself is
named in such a way so as to avoid explicitly naming any human
opposition
the U.S military forces seek to conquer an
abstract notion of evil, an inhuman construct that no bullet can
kill
should be seen [either] implicitly or explicitly as animal-like (Haslam 2006, 258);

, as well as the groups individual members, as anything but human (Elliot 2004). No intense scrutiny or analysis is needed to find these basic founding

elements of dehumanization entangled in even the most superficial components of Bushs

the conflict

to American forces. Instead,

(Elliot 2004, 100). However, such a fixation upon evil is far from a modern development for the Americans, and long precedes both the War on Terror and the tragedy of

9/11; whether it be government leaders of the Cold War era associating the Soviet Union with the idea of an empire of evil, or Adolf Hitlers immortalization as the personification of

the presidents
rhetoric of evil was highly effective in that it immediately
eradicated any space within the public perception for critical
thought
evil (Ivie 2007), George Bushs immediate invocation of evil imagery is hardly unprecedented. Though not an inherently unique approach,

regarding terrorism, and those proposed enemies of the United States. From the very beginning of the War on Terror, absolutely every consideration

became a matter of national security as viewed through the lens of an evil threat (Ivie 2007, 226). By resorting to a means of rhetorical definition of enemies founded in previous

, Bushs invocation of evil allowed for him to associate his


wartime narratives with oppressive regimes of past, casting
terrorists as the heirs of fascism, totalitarianism and Nazism
American conflicts

(Maggio

2007, 822). Bush explicitly highlighted this very association within his address to a joint session of congress on September 20th, 2001, stating: [those responsible for the attacks on
9/11] are the heirs of all murderous ideologies of the 20th Century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions by abandoning every value except the will to power they

Though this does not explicitly dehumanize


those whom he opposes, the reliance upon past constructions of
enemies of the United States allowed Bush to strongly associate
those enemies to other groups
follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism.

who have long been accepted as lacking in human characteristics. This idea, along with the

association to evil, is frequently re-emphasized in subsequent public addresses regarding the War on Terror that Bush gave over the next five years. Despite the strength of these

Bush reinforces the dehumanized image they construct


by including rhetoric of murder when speaking of his enemies
ideological associations,

. Though not

as inherently diabolical a concept as evil, the rhetoric of murder is perhaps more effective as it draws a direct link between those Bush wishes to dehumanize, and an understanding of
the moral capacity to commit heinous criminal acts upon innocent individuals. Whether it be his continual reference to the attacks on 9/11 as acts of murder (for example, Bush
2001a, Bush 2001b, Bush 2002), or the statement that The United States of America is an enemy of those who aid terrorists and of the barbaric criminals who profane a great religion
by committing murder in its name, (Bush 2001c) Bush is able to further deny membership to the human species to those enemies of the U.S by constructing for them a reality in

the rhetoric of evil and murder form


the foundations for the dehumanization of the enemies
which there is absolutely no capacity for innate human characteristics. Though

of the United States, George

W. Bush elaborates upon this by detailing explicit examples of the evil demonstrated by those enemies. Within his 2002 State of the Union Address Bush tells of the enemys use of
poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This imagery is taken further within the 2003 State of the Union
Address, within which Bush details the forced confessions obtained by the enemy by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. As if this were not enough to seal the
dehumanized fate of those enemies of the U.S, Bush details the torture methodologies preferred by his enemies to be electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping of acid on the
skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues and rape. Barbaric? Savage, brutish appetites for violence and sex? Morally culpable of great crimes? All of these key
elements of dehumanization are evident within this one statement. By presenting the American people with such a graphic list outlining gruesome crimes, Bush not only suggests that
his enemies are less than human, he demands that their identity be acknowledged as innately evil, monstrous, and horrific. Though conventional means of dehumanization are not

the War on Terror


is able to skilfully
use ideas of evil and murder to fulfil the theoretical requirements
of dehumanizing an enemy. By relying upon past constructions of
evil
Bush is able to present the American
people with a portrait of an enemy who is completely devoid of
human characteristics
evident within the presidents rhetoric regarding his enemies within

, George W. Bush

, as well as graphic narratives of his enemys behaviour,

, who is without culture or morality, and who has a voracious appetite for gruesome crimes against humanity. One need

only skim Bushs rhetoric of evil to see his desired picture of an enemy who opposes freedom and democracy in all of its forms; of ruthless barbaric criminals who profane religion in
order to justify their sacrificing of human life. The evil, deluded men of whom he spins tales are heartless, thrive in chaos and have absolutely no regard for human dignity. In this,
Bush takes the practice of dehumanization to a whole new level not only does he succeed as depicting those with whom he aims to engage in aggressive acts of war as less than
human, he manages to craft a narrative in which those whom he wishes to conquer are the embodiment of evil, and everything which threatens the American way of life.

Terror discourse creates a cult to kill resulting in endless


violence against the enemy This is the ultimate impact
Ivie 7 (Robert, Prof of Comm and Culture @ Indiana U, Rhetoric & Public Affairs. V. 10.
Is. 2., 2007, 221+, Questia) JPG
holy terror" is a rhetorical malfunction that prods
the nation to displace "its own deformities on to a vilified other"
so that it might "rid itself magically of its defects"
terrorists are rendered this way
into dehumanized scapegoats-that is, as "inanimate bombs,
psychologically damaged, diseased, and subhuman
such rhetoric "clouds our
abilities to think about
violence.
evil is a trope deeply
embedded in political culture
radical evil "is
inherently corrosive of democratic politics" and, we might add,
overly conducive to war.
Indeed, in Terry Eagleton's critical view, "

without recognizing in the scapegoat a

"horrific double" and thus acknowledging America's own "collective disfigurement."21When

-in all cases portraying them as acting

without forethought, provocation, or reason," in the words of Stephen John Hartnett and Laura Ann Stengrim,

the historical, political, economic, and cultural causes of

"22 Rhetorical practices that invoke the

sign of evil cannot be banished entirely if for no other reason than, as John Angus Campbell attests,

.23 Yet James Arnt Aune rightly insists that the incantation of

24 The rhetoric of religion informs political culture in just this corrosive way, as we have learned so well from

Kenneth Burke. The ritual of "victimage" in secular affairs, he explains, is the "logological" equivalent of a theology of redemption through sacrifice and thus an "insight into the

Thus the Cult of the Kill


pervades the language of sociopolitical relations, especially in the
secular religion of a chosen people
nature of language itself as a motive": Order leads to Guilt that involves Redemption through Victimage.

whose Covenant with God implies the possibility of a Fall from grace and entails, as a

condition of redemption, some punishment or payment for wrongdoing. This logic of atonement allows redemption through vicarious sacrifice, which is the principle of mortification by

when purification is achieved by


venting conflict through a sacrificial vessel
'logologically inseparable' from the idea of dominion," and thus
the scapegoat principle "is basic to the pattern of governance."
transference or scapegoat that "is particularly crucial to conditions of empire," Burke insists,

. In this sense, "the role of the sacrificial principle . . . [is]

25 As a

basic principle of symbolic action, then, the idea of "redemptive sacrifice" follows from the repression of conscience-laden guilt and in response to the condition of sociopolitical order.
Victimage, or "redemption by vicarious atonement," is "intrinsic in the idea of guilt" just as "guilt is intrinsic to the idea of a Covenant." Moreover, terms for order, fall, and redemption
imply one another in a cyclical logic that can be reversed so that, for example, "the terms in which we conceive of redemption can help shape the terms in which we conceive of the
guilt that is to be redeemed." Accordingly, the name by which we designate a "curative victim" to cleanse our guilt not only reflects but also reflects back upon our sense of order and

The more fearful and sinister the image we paint of


our enemy, the greater our corresponding sensation of
endangerment and the stronger our need for redemption through
vicarious sacrifice.
Once
the enemy is imagined, one is already in a state of war."
a concomitant fear of damnation.26

It may well be that simply naming the enemy is, per se, sufficient cause for war, or as James Hillman writes, "
27

Labeling Bad
Terror labels create a binary of us versus them
Berger et. al 14 [Berger, Ronit. Say Terrorist, Think Insurgent: Labeling
and Analyzing Contemporary Terrorist Actors.
http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article /view/374/html]
The widespread use of the "terrorist group" label is likely due to a
combination of psychological and instrumental factors. Psychologically, the
use of this label provides a certain degree of emotional satisfaction to
societies targeted by terrorism. Terrorism evokes repugnance and fear,
thereby stoking an unequivocal rejection of terrorism's means and agents
alike.[29] Populations have been trained to reject compromise with terrorists,
and want to believe that terrorists are unique in their evilness, therefore
deserving a category of their own. This explains not only why governments
and societies targeted by political violence cling to the terrorism label, but
also why they often fail to view "terrorism" as part of a broader violent
conflict. Instrumentally, a strong case can be made that "naming and
shaming" groups that rely on the most brutal acts of violence can serve a
number of goals designed to weaken these actors. Such labels can assist
efforts of building an international coalition designed to oppose these groups
through legal, political, economic, or militarily efforts. Moreover, repeated
emphasis of the most unacceptably violent behavior of such groups can
arguably serve the goal of curtailing public support for these groups among
their potential constituents. For the purpose of policy pronouncements,
therefore, the terrorism label has certain advantages. Despite this value, we
argue that policy analysisincluding those that directly affect policy
formulation and strategic messagingmust adopt a more complex view that
better accounts for the evolving nature of terrorist groups and their complex
interaction with other tactics and modes of warfare, as well as their
interaction with broader conflicts such as insurgency and civil wars.

Labeling groups as terrorism fails


Berger et. al 14 [Berger, Ronit. Say Terrorist, Think Insurgent: Labeling
and Analyzing Contemporary Terrorist Actors.
http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article /view/374/html]
In sum, the official use by governments of the "terrorist group" label to describe
groups adopting terrorism as a tactic continues to be an important element in the struggle against

can help delegitimize the use of terrorist violence; reduce public


support; and undercut financial and material support for terrorist entities. At
terrorism. It

the same time, the use of this label must not obscure a far more nuanced reality that acknowledges a
number of important caveats: First, terrorist groups use, almost without exception, terrorism in conjunction
with other tactics, notably guerrilla warfare. Second, terrorist groups are becoming more sophisticated
political actors, with some attempting to provide basic services to the population in an attempt to win over
hearts and minds. Third, terrorism is rarely a self-standing phenomenon . Instead, most
terrorism occurs in the context of broader armed conflict, typically an insurgency and/or a civil war. We

governments should strive to preserve the benefits of applying the


terrorism label while avoiding the labels potential entrapments. Perhaps the most
argue that

dangerous potential pitfall is for governments to fall victim to their own rhetoric. At worst, such a rhetorical
entrapment can lead governments to focus on policies designed to address only the specific threat of
terrorism posed by these groups. As the above discussion has shown, however, the dangers emanating

A government policy that not only labels, but whose


loses sight of
the overall challenges posed by these groups, thereby failing to enact the
most adequate policy responses. For that reason, we argue for an approach that separates the
from these actors are far more variegated.

policy analysts also examine these actors through the narrow lens of terrorist groups

way in which these militant actors are referred to in official statements from the way in which they are
examined by specialists and analysts - including those directly informing the government. Official policy
statements, we believe, should continue to label actors involved in terrorism as terrorist groups. At the
same time, policy analysis informing the governments policy pronouncements and decisions should adopt

that in most
cases, these groups are best understood as insurgent groups , and hence
propose this label for analytical purposes as the most nuanced framework. The
analytical employment of the "insurgent group" concept can contribute to a deeper theoretical
greater nuance when examining and conceptualizing these militant groups. We believe

understanding of the power distribution challenge that insurgent groups pose to governments by using

can be useful in explaining the adoption of both


violent (including terrorism) and nonviolent means of political struggle, based
on the present political, economic and social conditions on the ground.
Furthermore, utilization of the label "insurgent groups" allows for a more
comprehensive perspective on the dynamic relations between politically motivated
terror. In addition, the suggested label

violent actors that use terrorism as a tactic, governments, and other relevant actors. Finally, in terms of
policy, the use of the suggested framework will provide a broader perspective of the insurgents' political
development, a better grasp of its network of contacts and supporters, and it may also grant considerable
flexibility to policy decision-making.

Terror labeling bad


Boyns and Ballard 4 [Boyns, David and Ballard, James. Developing a
Sociological Theory for the Empirical Understanding of Terrorism.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02692394#page-1]
The first of these emerging trends is spectacultuarization, the hyperreal,
supersized terrorism and the resultant social fear generated by the hyperbole
of terrorism. Some scholars (Ferguson, Kazi, and Perera, 2003; Bremer-Maerli, 2003) note that in
many cases, unsubstantiated claims and dubious evidence are used to argue
that somehow terrorism is so massive (weapons of mass destruction) or immediately
threatening (perhaps justifying armed conflict as a preventative measure) that we have no
choice but to respond and respond in force as our political leaders ask. In short,
fear is the coin of the realm during such periods and crisis the justification for action, even if science or
reality does not support the claims. Bruck (1992) has used the term spectaculturization to describe crisis
periods in society whereby the spectacle of violence is used to validate the fears of consumers of media
programming and their feelings of turmoil during times of exigency and political uncertainty. Just as

these feelings rest upon are


"without origin or reality," many of the fears of terrorism are likewise
exemplars of false consciousness within the body public and may better be
understood as representing self-motivated agendas created by state agencies
that are charged with counteracting perceived or real threats to social
organization (Brents, Dean, and Ballard, 2003; Ballard, 2000). Thus, the movement is to
super-size terrorism, to validate the socially created characterization that it is
currently bigger, more deadly, much more threatening, or in some cases that it is so
different that it is somehow representative of the worst visions of postmodern society. This tendency
Baudrillard (1983: 2) noted that the models of mediated reality

to overstate the threat of terrorism may represent nothing more than


indicators of a social or moral panic deliberately created to gain more funding
for government agencies and/or to justify more restrictions on civil liberties
and human rights by repressive government entities.

Terrorism labels lead to misconceptions and consequences


Changankarian 13 [Changankarian, Anais. The Delegitimizing Power of
the Terrorism Label. 7/18/13. http://www.e-ir.info/2013/07/18/thedelegitimizing-power-of-the-terrorism-label/]
One of the most striking aspects of the study of terrorism is that

there is actually no

commonly agreed definition of what terrorism is. Many scholars have come up with
their own definitions of the term but it has been impossible to reach a consensus to define
terrorism internationally. Because of the lack of common understanding of what terrorism is,
there is no possibility to objectively identify the phenomenon and question some actors use of

This has given governments and political actors in general the ability
to use the word terrorism very freely, even promiscuously (Jenkins 1980: 1). As
the term.

explained by Staun, terrorism is not objective in the sense that nothing can be terrorism in
itself (2010: 411). Actions and groups become terrorists when it has been seen judicious to
label them as such, out of all of the other alternative terms that were available. As stated by
Valentina Bartolucci, framing

an event as terrorism is not a natural act, non it is


neutral, and alternative framings are always possible (2010: 119).
Consequently, the term is not even subjective (as it is not relative to a
personal belief or interpretation) but inter-subjective and inherently political
and institutionalised since actors have been deliberately using the term as a
way of reaching political interests (Staun 2010: 411). Hence the reason why the
literature on terrorism refers to a terrorist rhetoric, which Cambridge dictionaries define as a
speech or writing which is intended to be effective and influence people. The terrorist
rhetoric is thus appreciated for the impact it can have on the audience and has reached a
discursive value. As explained by many scholars, it has been used to target political
opponents. Jenkins, for example, states that some

governments are prone to label as


terrorism all violent acts committed by their political opponents (1980: 1)
whereas Kapitan explicitly asserts that the aim is to discredit those who are targeted by this
rhetoric (2003: 7). A reason for this is that, according to the constructivist theory, the way
people perceive their surrounding world is socially constructed. Ideas and shared knowledge

discourse is very
important as language plays a predominant role in shaping reality and in
influencing the way people perceive it (Kegley 2009, 39-42). Consequently,
labelling (or naming) in itself, as written by Jackson, is always a highly charged
process that can have serious political and social consequences (2005: 23). As
about reality have a strong impact on world politics. In that sense,

added by Michael Bhatia: Once assigned, the power of a name is such that the process by
which the name was selected generally disappears and a series of normative associations,
motives and characteristics are attached to the named subject (2005: 8).

Terror Reps Bad


The representation of terror was founded upon a
dichotomy between good and evil this discourse is the
precondition for endless violence against the other
Kellner 7 (Douglas, Chair of Philosophy @ UCLA, Presidential Studies
Quarterly. Vol. 37 (4), 2007, pg. 622+) JPG
Such hyperbolic rhetoric
communicates through
codes to specific audiences,
demonizing terms
elevate status in the Arab world as a
mythical superhero who stands up to the West and help marshal
support among those who feel anger toward the West
the global media helped produce a mythology
while generating fear and hysteria that legitimated Bush
administration militarism geared toward the "Evil One,"
The discourse of "evil" is totalizing and absolutistic,
allowing no ambiguities or contradictions. It assumes a binary
logic where "we" are the forces of goodness and "they" are the
forces of darkness. Such discourse legitimates any action
undertaken in the name of good, no matter how destructive, on
the grounds that it is attacking "evil." The discourse of evil is
apocalyptic, evoking a cataclysmic war with mythical stakes.
evil
must be totally defeated
This discourse of evil raises the stakes and violence of
conflict and nurtures more apocalyptic and catastrophic politics,
fueling future cycles of
wars.
For certain
Manichean Islamic fundamentalists, the United States is "evil," the
source of all the world's problems
is a salient example of Bushspeak that

in this case domestic Christian right-wing groups that are Bush's preferred recipients of his discourse.

(18) But

for bin Laden both

his

and intense hatred of the West.

Bush and

of bin Laden, elevating him to almost

superhuman status,

as Bush has called bin Laden,

equating him with Satan.

cosmological

and

perspective,

In this

cannot be just attacked one piece at a time, through incremental steps, but

, eradicated

from the earth if good is to reign.

hatred, violence, retribution, and

It is, of course, theocratic Islamic fundamentalists who themselves

engage in similar simplistic binary discourse and projection of evil onto the Other which they use to legitimate acts of terrorism.

, and deserves to be destroyed. Such one-dimensional thought does not distinguish

between U.S. policies, leaders, institutions, or people, while advocating a Jihad, or holy war, against the American monolithic evil. The terrorist crimes of September 11 appeared to be
part of this Jihad and the monstrousness of the actions of killing innocent civilians shows the horrific consequences of totally dehumanizing an "enemy" deemed so evil that even
innocent members of the group in question deserve to be exterminated. Underlying the Bush-Cheney administration rhetoric were fundamental American political mythologies. The
civilization discourse built on Ronald Reagan's favorite rhetoric of "the city on the hill," whereby the destiny of the United States was to establish a site of freedom and civilization in

Bush's discourse in particular evoked the frontier


mentality
terrorism
became the threatening face of savagery in democracy's troubled
empire."
against whom he declared
war.
the wilderness (see Rogin 1987).

whereby the sheriff defends the good citizens against evil outlaws and savages. (19) As Ivie and Giner (2007) put it, "After 9/11

Bush's "savages" were the "evil doers" associated with Islamic terrorism,

The legitimation of violence against evildoers is also grounded in the political mythology of what Jewett and Lawrence (1988) describe as the "American monomyth," a

dominant trope of the genres of popular culture in the United States from Indian captivity narratives through the Hollywood western and superhero films. On this model, a community
is threatened by barbaric forces, and redemptive violence is used to protect the community. In the post-9/11 context, the barbaric forces threatening the community were global
terrorism and Bush's Terror War policies were redemptive violence.

Police surveil activists as if they were terrorists

Royden 15 Occupy.com. June 19. Protest Is the New Terror: How U.S.
Law Enforcement Is Working to Criminalize Dissent Derek Royden is a writer
at occupy.com and nation of change. http://www.occupy.com/article/protestnew-terror-how-us-law-enforcement-working-criminalize-dissent

the FBI surveilled civil rights and other activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to leaders of the
National Lawyers Guild as part of its wide ranging COINTELPRO (counter intelligence program)
during the 1960s and early 70s. The use of planted news stories, faked communications to create dissension
Its well established that

within activist groups, informants to make dubious cases and even assassinations was revealed by a group of activists called the Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI, who broke into a bureau office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971 and found ample evidence of the agencys
misdeeds. This is generally seen as an era of terrible government overreach in the name of fighting communism. The problem is that

the

use of similar tactics has been discovered again and again in the
years since. Following the anti-globalization protests of 1999, the 9/11 attacks, and the Occupy protests of 2011, similar
strategies, enhanced by modern technology, have been ratcheted up and deployed against an ever-increasing number of activists and political

this is due to the


fact that there simply aren't enough real threats of terrorism to justify all the
money and toys that have been given to U.S. law enforcement. Add to this the fact that police at all levels seem eager to
see potential terrorism in even the mildest forms of dissent and you have a recipe for disaster. In one of
groups of all ideological stripes as part of the even more dubious wars on drugs and terrorism. Part of

the most recent instances, it was revealed that the FBI has been coordinating with local law enforcement to target the Black Lives Matter
movement. Another story, unrelated to current anti-racist organizing, is a bizarre case out of Minneapolis in the lead up to the Republican
national convention in 2008. According to the City Pages, a Univ. of Minnesota police officer who was the departments only officer on the local
Joint Counter Terrorism Task Force worked with an FBI Special Agent to recruit college students who acted as paid informants at vegan

Joint
Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), of which there are currently 104 located in cities and towns across the United States, were
potlucks hoping theyd discover activist plans to disrupt the city's upcoming convention. Extending the Long Arm of the Law

created in the 1980s and greatly expanded in the aftermath of 9/11. They were set up to coordinate between diverse federal agencies and
local law enforcement, and often work

in tandem with Fusion Centers that are supposed to collect and


can overstep their bounds

analyze data related to potential terrorism. To see how these task forces
, take the case of Eric
Linsker, who police tried to arrest for allegedly trying to throw a trash can over the side of a walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge during the large,
mostly peaceful protests that erupted in New York City following the failure to indict the officer whose choke-hold led to the death of Eric
Garner. Other protesters intervened to stop the arrest but Linkser left his bag behind which, according to authorities, contained his passport,
three hammers, and a small amount of marijuana. While police may have been well within their rights to track down Linsker and charge him if
the vandalism allegations were true, it's who did the arresting that is problematic: rather than the NYPD, it was the New York JTTF that brought
Linkser in, perhaps believing that the hammers were potential instruments of terror. This should be a cause for worry, since it means either

law enforcement's definition of terrorism has become far too broad,


or they are targeting more than just terrorism. Stingrays and the Dangers of Technology
Activists with Occupy Wall Street, and later Black Lives Matter , have relied on social networks and technology to organize their efforts.
Ubiquitous phones with video recording capacity have revealed abuses of power by law enforcement and discredited official stories. Smart
phones are also useful during marches to inform other protesters on the fly about concentrations of police, allowing demonstrators to change
their routes to avoid confrontation. As one counter-terrorism expert told the New York Post in regards to Black Lives Matter protests in early
December: They wore me out. Their ability to strategize on the fly is something we havent dealt with before to this degree.

Unfortunately, like most 21st century technology, the use of smart phones by activists has
become a double-edged sword, exposing them to surveillance risks that were unimaginable in
previous eras. One such technology is Stingray, produced by Harris Technology, which mimics a cell phone tower and allows law enforcement
to pull GPS and other data from phones within their range. In an interesting case reported by Wired magazine, police in Erie County, NY, used
the technology 47 times in the last five years and only received the required permission from a court once. Even in that case, they asked for a
court order rather than a warrant, which carries a higher burden of proof... (and) mischaracterized the true nature of the tool. The same story
notes that the New York Civil Liberties Union posted documents online that showed the FBI and local police departments had made binding
agreements to keep their use of the technology secret, even going so far as to ask courts to dismiss criminal cases in which the use of
Stingray might be revealed. The unique moment created by anti-police brutality protests throughout the U.S. last year and coming on the
heels of a federally coordinated effort to dismantle Occupy encampments in 2011 revealed that federal police agencies, especially the FBI,
working with local police have directed their resources as much against protesters, dissenters and those practicing and civil disobedience as
they have against the threat represented by terrorists, whether homegrown lone wolves" or organized outside groups. While the recent NSA

while
the right to dissent remains a fundamental American freedom, the
fear of terrorism being openly exploited by law enforcement has
allowed police to resurrect COINTELPRO in all but name.
reform bill passed in Congress represents a victory for civil liberties and privacy advocates, there's still a ways to go. Because

Fusion centers anti-terrorism efforts directed at peaceful


social movements
Hilliard, Messineo 14 [GlobalResearch, Mara Verheyden-Hillard
cofounder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense & Education Fund,
Attorney for the International Action Center, Anti-war activist, Carl Messineo
cofounder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense and Education

Fund; http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-role-of-the-fusion-centers-inthe-nationwide-spying-operation-against-the-occupy-movement-andpeaceful-protest-in-america/5383571]
documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice
Fund, provides highlights and analysis of how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-funded Fusion Centers used their
vast anti-terrorism and anti-crime authority and funds to conduct a sprawling, nationwide
and hour-by-hour surveillance effort that targeted even the smallest activity of
peaceful protestors in the Occupy Movement in the Fall and Winter of 2011. It is
This report, based on

being released in conjunction with a major story in the New York Times that is based on the 4,000 pages of government documents uncovered

a two-year long investigation. The newly published


reveal the actual workings of the Fusion Centers created
ostensibly to coordinate anti-terrorism efforts following the September
11, 2001, attacks in collecting and providing surveillance information on peaceful
protestors. The new documents roll back the curtain on the Fusion Centers and show the communications,
interactions and emails of a massive national web of federal agents, officials,
police, and private security contractors to accumulate and share
information, reporting on all manner of peaceful and lawful political
activity that took place during the Occupy Movement from protests and rallies to meetings and educational lectures. This
enormous spying and monitoring apparatus included the Pentagon, FBI,
DHS, police departments and chiefs, private contractors and
commercial business interests. There is now, with the release of these documents,
incontrovertible evidence of systematic and not incidental conduct and practices of
the Fusion Centers and their personnel to direct their sights against a peaceful
movement that advocated social and economic justice in the United
States. It bears noting also that while these 4,000 pages offer the most significant and largest window
into the U.S. intelligence and law enforcements coordinated targeting of Occupy, they can only be a portion of what is likely
many more tens of thousands of pages of materials generated by the
nationwide operation. Until now the role of the Fusion Centers in their application of anti-terrorism authority and
by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) during
documents

resources has been shrouded in secrecy. In 2012, the Senate issued an investigative report on the Fusion Centers that The Washington Post
described as revealing pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions.

Labels = Islamophobia
These Fusion Centers engage in islamophobic profiling
that use racial categories to categorize individuals
Reports of training sessions provided to fusion center personnel and local law
enforcement officers by so-called counterterrorism experts also raise serious
questions about compliance with constitutional protections against profiling
on religious grounds. According to recent press accounts, the flood of federal money
flowing to local enforcement for homeland security efforts has produced a
cottage industry of counterterrorism trainers of dubious provenance.50 As
outlined in the reports, some of these trainers engage in fear-mongering that displays
dramatic ignorance of both the subject they purport to teach and the
constitutional rights of Americans. According to an article in The Washington Post, one
instructor told fusion center personnel to monitor Muslim student groups and
mosques and, if possible, to tap their phones.51 The same instructor told an
interviewer that to prevent Muslims from seeking to impose sharia law in the United
States, police officers have to look at the entire pool of Muslims in a
community.52 Another instructor warns local law enforcement officials that
Muslims want the Islamic flag [to] fly over the White House. 53 One selfproclaimed expert on Islamic terrorism, who regularly teaches courses to law
enforcement personnel across the country, told Florida law enforcement officers to
assume that all Muslims lie to disguise the true, violent nature of Islam . He also
claimed as fact that a Muslim wearing a headband means that he is willing to be a martyr, and that a
Muslim using a long Arabic name that is spelled differently on different forms of ID provides probable

None of these claims, of course, are true. This sort of


misbegotten, misleading training encourages civil liberties violations. National
cause to take them in.54

security experts warn that it also compromises police effectiveness by distracting law enforcement
officers from actual threats and by poisoning relationships between police and the communities that can
be their best sources of information.55

Prejudice against Islam is prevalent in surveillance


records
Hussain & Greenwald 2014, Murtaza Hussain (journalist and political commentator.
His work focuses on human rights, foreign policy, and cultural affairs), Glenn Greenwald (journalist,
constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law), MEET THE
MUSLIM-AMERICAN LEADERS THE FBI AND NSA HAVE BEEN SPYING ON, 8 July 2014,
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under-surveillance/. PE
Other former and current federal officials say such beliefs are not representative of the FBI or Justice

blatant prejudice against Muslim-Americans is also documented in


the Snowden archive. In one 2005 document, intelligence community
personnel are instructed how to properly format internal memos to justify
FISA surveillance. In the place where the targets real name would go, the
memo offers a fake name as a placeholder: Mohammed Raghead. The
Department. But

vast majority of individuals on the FISA recap spreadsheet are not named. Instead, only their email

Under the
heading Nationality, the list designates 202 email addresses as belonging
to U.S. persons, 1,782 as belonging to non-U.S. persons, and 5,501 as
unknown or simply blank. The Intercept identified the five Americans placed under
addresses are listed, making it impossible in most cases to ascertain their identities.

surveillance from their email addresses. It is unclear whether the government obtained any legal

permission to monitor the Americans on the list. The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment
for this story. During the course of multiple conversations with The Intercept, the NSA and the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence urged against publication of any surveillance targets. Except in
exceptional circumstances, they argued, surveillance directly targeting Americans is conducted only with

Last week, anonymous officials told another news outlet


that the government did not have a FISA warrant against at least one of the
individuals named here during the timeframe covered by the spreadsheet.
court-approved warrants.

Impact Ext.
Hate for the other creates a fundamental clash of civilizations which
imposes violence on everyone outside the body politic
Kellner 7 (Douglas, Chair of Philosophy @ UCLA, Presidential Studies
Quarterly. Vol. 37 (4), 2007, pg. 622+) JPG
the Terror War became a "clash of fundamentalisms" in
which both sides deployed Manichean discourses used to whip up
hatred of the Other and to incite violence and war. The media were the instruments of both, creating
As Tariq Ali (2002) notes,

hysteria while circulating militarist and Manichean discourses. Media commentators on U.S. television, for example, offered one-sided and
ideological accounts of the cause of the September 11 events, blaming their favorite opponents in the current U.S. political spectrum as the
source of the terror assaults. For fundamentalist Christian ideologue Jerry Falwell, and with the verbal agreement of Christian Broadcast Network

this "horror beyond words" fell on liberals,


feminists, gays, and the ACLU. Falwell said and Robertson agreed: The abortionists
have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be
mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the
President Pat Robertson, the culpability for

abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for

all of them who have tried to secularize America--I point


the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen ." (20) In fact, this
the American Way--

argument is similar to a right-wing Islamic claim that the United States is fundamentally corrupt and evil and thus deserves God's wrath, an
argument made by Falwell critics that forced the fundamentalist fanatic to apologize. On the issue of "what to do," right-wing columnist Ann

We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the


ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their
countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." (21) While Bush was declaring a "crusade" against terrorism and the
Coulter (2001) declaimed: "

Pentagon was organizing Operation Infinite Justice, Bush administration Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (U.S. Department of State 2001)
said the administration's retaliation would be "sustained and broad and effective" and that the United States "will use all our resources. It's not
just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending
states who sponsor terrorism."

The fear-based politics of terror justifies violence in the name of rhetorical


constructions
Ivie 7 (Robert, Prof of Comm and Culture @ Indiana U, Rhetoric & Public
Affairs. V. 10. Is. 2., 2007, 221+, Questia) JPG
Bush justified a doctrine of preemptive
war against the enemies of civilization and "the evil designs of
tyrants," a doctrine that opened its third section with a quotation from the president speaking at the National Cathedral in Washington,
Similarly, eight months later on September 20, 2002,

D.C., three days after 9/11 and vowing to "rid the world of evil." On October 7, just over two weeks after announcing his strategy of preemption,

the United States must


presume the worst and must acknowledge "an urgent duty to
prevent the worst from occurring."29 Then, in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, the
Bush applied the new doctrine directly to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, saying that

president insisted that America could not afford to trust in the "sanity and restraint" of, nor could it wait any longer to disarm, a "dictator" with
access to "the world's most dangerous weapons" and a history of using them to kill and disfigure thousands of his own people. This was an "evil"
man who tortured children and adults alike with electric shocks, hot irons, acid drips, power drills, amputations, and rape. "If this is not evil," Bush

The image of Satan was Bush's rhetorical


trump card in a case for preemptive war that lacked strong
evidence of a substantial or imminent threat to the United States
or to world security.31 Fear and the perception of peril were themselves
entailments of the sign of evil. The very soul of the nation was at risk of damnation and in need of
proclaimed, "then evil has no meaning."30

redemption. A war to bring down the demonic Saddam Hussein was a war of atonement and salvation-a war, Christian Spielvogel argues, that
Bush represented throughout his 2004 reelection campaign "as a test of national moral resolve in the face of evil."32 Bush's born-again
articulation of Christian moral orthodoxy and its daunting expectation of strict fidelity to God's law required the nation to go it alone in Iraq as an

fear of
evildoers provides the impetus to sustain one's moral fortitude." 33
affirmation of faith. Thus the moral logic of this pivotal symbolic form perpetuated war, as Spielvogel explains, because "

America's public faith ultimately was justified by a special covenant with God, and it was to Him that the nation ultimately was accountable in

Fellow citizens," he cautioned in the


State of the Union address on January 31, 2006,"we've been called to leadership in a period
of consequence."35
what the president called, deep into the bloody occupation of Iraq, this "time of testing."34 "

The discourse surrounding terror produces a violent representation that


necessitates mass killings in the name of good
Mitchell 5 (WJ Thomas, Prof of English & Art Hist. @ U of Chicago, ELH, Vol.
72, No. 2, Summer 2005, pp. 291-308, Muse) JPG
terror, which fuses the divine
and the demonic in a single unspeakable and unimaginable
compound. The terrorist is a holy warrior or a devil, depending upon your
I hope it is becoming clear what all this has to do with

point of view, or your historical positioning (yesterdays terrorist is todays hero of the

Terror is also the deliberate combining of the


semiotics and aesthetics of the unimaginable with those of the
unspeakable. You cant imagine anyone doing this, going this far? You think the
unnameable horror, the indescribable, unspeakable act cannot be named,
described, and reenacted? Terrorists speak the language of the unspeakable. They perform
and stage the unimaginable. Their acts as producers of words and
images, symbolic forms of violence, are much more important than
their acts of actual physical violence. Strategic forms of violence such
as war or police action are not essential to their repertoire. The main
weapon of terror is the violent spectacle, the image of destruction,
or the destruction of an image, or both, as in the mightiest spectacle of them all,
glorious revolution).

the destruction of the World Trade Center, in which the de- struction of a globally recognizable

The people consumed


with the image are collateral damage, enemies of God who are of no
icon was staged, quite deliberately, as an icon in its own right.

interest. Or they are holy sacrifices, whose innocence is precisely the point. From the
standpoint of the terrorist, their innocence makes them appropriate sac- rificial victims. From
the standpoint of counter-terror, their innocence confirms the absolute, unspeakable evil and
injustice of the terrorist cause. (There is, of course, the intermediate, compromise position
known as collateral damage, which expresses regret for the loss of innocent life, but claims
nevertheless a statistical kind of justice in unverifiable claims about the number of guilty

the point of terrorist violence is not the killing of the


the terrorizing of the enemy with a traumatizing

terrorists killed.) Either way,


enemy as such, but

spectacle. Shock and awe are the tactics that unite non-state with state terror- ism, and
in both cases the traumatic spectacle can be rationalized as a humane act of restraint.

Instead of killing large masses of people, it is sufficient to send


them a message by subjecting them to shocking displays of
destruction.15

Framing Contention

1AC

Framing Contention
Independent of the success of our advocacy, the
education from our debate is a reason to vote for the
affirmative team itll trigger critical engagement with
the society that will create politics for social change
Giroux 12 [Henry, Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and
Cultural Studies Department, Beyond the Politics of the Big Lie: The Education Deficit and the New
Authoritarianism June 6, 2012 http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9865-beyond-the-politics-of-the-big-lie-theeducation-deficit-and-the-new-authoritarianism]

one of the paradoxes of education [is] that precisely at the point


when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with
your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself
as an educated person."(43) What Baldwin recognizes is that learning has the possibility to trigger
a critical engagement with oneself, others and the larger society - education
becomes in this instance more than a method or tool for domination but a
politics, a fulcrum for democratic social change . Tragically, in our current climate "learning" merely
He goes on to argue "that

contributes to a vast reserve of manipulation and self-inflicted ignorance. Our education deficit is neither reducible to the failure of particular types of
teaching nor the decent into madness by the spokespersons for the new authoritarianism. Rather, it is about how matters of knowledge, values and ideology

Surviving the current education deficit will depend


on progressives using history, memory and knowledge not only to reconnect
intellectuals to the everyday needs of ordinary people, but also to jumpstart
social movements by making education central to organized politics and the
quest for a radical democracy.
can be struggled over as issues of power and politics.

Structural violence outweighs it creates the necessary


conditions for all large scale impacts to occur
Scheper-Hughes and Burgois, Professors of Anthropology
at UC Berkeley and UPenn write in 2004
[Prof of Anthropology @ Cal-Berkely, and Bourgois Professors of Anthropology @ UPenn, Nancy
and Philippe, Introduction: Making Sense of Violence, in Violence in War and Peace, pg. 19-22]
This large and at first sight messy Part VII is central to this anthologys thesis. It encompasses everything from the routinized, bureaucratized, and utterly banal violence
of children dying of hunger and maternal despair in Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33) to elderly African Americans dying of heat stroke in Mayor Dalys
version of US apartheid in Chicagos South Side (Klinenberg, Chapter 38) to the racialized class hatred expressed by British Victorians in their olfactory disgust of the
smelly working classes (Orwell, Chapter 36). In these readings violence is located in the symbolic and social structures that overdetermine and allow the criminalized
drug addictions, interpersonal bloodshed, and racially patterned incarcerations that characterize the US inner city to be normalized (Bourgois, Chapter 37 and Wacquant,
Chapter 39). Violence also takes the form of class, racial, political self-hatred and adolescent self-destruction (Quesada, Chapter 35), as well as of useless (i.e.
preventable), rawly embodied physical suffering, and death (Farmer, Chapter 34). Absolutely central to our approach is a blurring of categories and distinctions between

Close attention to the little violences produced in the structures, habituses, and
mentalites of everyday life shifts our attention to pathologies of class, race, and
gender inequalities. More important, it interrupts the voyeuristic tendencies of violence studies that risk publicly humiliating the powerless who
wartime and peacetime violence.

are often forced into complicity with social and individual pathologies of power because suffering is often a solvent of human integrity and dignity. Thus, in this anthology
we are positing a violence continuum comprised of a multitude of small wars and invisible genocides (see also Scheper- Hughes 1996; 1997; 2000b) conducted in the
normative social spaces of public schools, clinics, emergency rooms, hospital wards, nursing homes, courtrooms, public registry offices, prisons, detention centers, and

humans are capable of reducing the


socially vulnerable into expendable nonpersons and assuming the license - even the duty - to kill, maim, or soulpublic morgues. The violence continuum also refers to the ease with which

murder. We realize that in referring to a violence and a genocide continuum we are flying in the face of a tradition of genocide studies that argues for the absolute
uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust and for vigilance with respect to restricted purist use of the term genocide itself (see Kuper 1985; Chaulk 1999; Fein 1990; Chorbajian
1999). But we hold an opposing and alternative view that, to the contrary, it is absolutely necessary to make just such existential leaps in purposefully linking violent acts
in normal times to those of abnormal times. Hence the title of our volume: Violence in War and in Peace. If (as we concede) there is a moral risk in overextending the

there is), an even greater risk lies in


failing to sensitize ourselves, in misrecognizing protogenocidal practices and sentiments daily enacted as
concept of genocide into spaces and corners of everyday life where we might not ordinarily think to find it (and

normative behavior by ordinary good-enough citizens. Peacetime crimes, such as prison construction sold as economic development to impoverished communities in the
mountains and deserts of California, or the evolution of the criminal industrial complex into the latest peculiar institution for managing race relations in the United States

(Waquant, Chapter 39), constitute the small wars and invisible genocides to which we refer. This applies to African American and Latino youth mortality statistics in
Oakland, California, Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York City.

These are invisible genocides not because they are secreted away or

hidden from view, but quite the opposite. As Wittgenstein observed, the things that are hardest to perceive are those which are right before our eyes and therefore taken
for granted. In this regard, Bourdieus partial and unfinished theory of violence (see Chapters 32 and 42) as well as his concept of misrecognition is crucial to our task. By
including the normative everyday forms of violence hidden in the minutiae of normal social practices - in the architecture of homes, in gender relations, in communal
work, in the exchange of gifts, and so forth - Bourdieu forces us to reconsider the broader meanings and status of violence, especially the links between the violence of
everyday life and explicit political terror and state repression, Similarly, Basaglias notion of peacetime crimes - crimini di pace - imagines a direct relationship between

war crimes are merely ordinary, everyday


crimes of public consent applied systematic- ally and dramatically in the extreme context of
war. Consider the parallel uses of rape during peacetime and wartime, or the family resemblances between the legalized violence of US immigration and
wartime and peacetime violence. Peacetime crimes suggests the possibility that

naturalization border raids on illegal aliens versus the US government- engineered genocide in 1938, known as the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Peacetime crimes suggests
that everyday forms of state violence make a certain kind of domestic peace possible. Internal stability is purchased with the currency of peacetime crimes, many of
which take the form of professionally applied strangle-holds. Everyday forms of state violence during peacetime make a certain kind of domestic peace possible. It is
an easy-to-identify peacetime crime that is usually maintained as a public secret by the government and by a scared or apathetic populace. Most subtly, but no less
politically or structurally, the phenomenal growth in the United States of a new military, postindustrial prison industrial complex has taken place in the absence of broadbased opposition, let alone collective acts of civil disobedience. The public consensus is based primarily on a new mobilization of an old fear of the mob, the mugger, the
rapist, the Black man, the undeserving poor. How many public executions of mentally deficient prisoners in the United States are needed to make life feel more secure for
the affluent? What can it possibly mean when incarceration becomes the normative socializing experience for ethnic minority youth in a society, i.e., over 33 percent of

it is essential that we recognize the existence of a genocidal capacity among


otherwise good-enough humans and that we need to exercise a defensive hypervigilance to the less dramatic, permitted, and
even rewarded everyday acts of violence that render participation in genocidal acts and
policies possible (under adverse political or economic conditions), perhaps more easily than we would like to recognize. Under the violence continuum we include,
young African American men (Prison Watch 2002). In the end

therefore, all expressions of radical social exclusion, dehumanization, depersonalization, pseudo-speciation, and reification which normalize atrocious behavior and
violence toward others. A constant self-mobilization for alarm, a state of constant hyperarousal is, perhaps, a reasonable response to Benjamins view of late modern
history as a chronic state of emergency (Taussig, Chapter 31). We are trying to recover here the classic anagogic thinking that enabled Erving Goffman, Jules Henry, C.
Wright Mills, and Franco Basaglia among other mid-twentieth-century radically critical thinkers, to perceive the symbolic and structural relations, i.e., between inmates and
patients, between concentration camps, prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes, and other total institutions. Making that decisive move to recognize the continuum of
violence allows us to see the capacity and the willingness - if not enthusiasm - of ordinary people, the practical technicians of the social consensus, to enforce genocidal-

mass violence and genocide are born, it is


ingrained in the common sense of everyday social life . The mad, the differently abled, the mentally
like crimes against categories of rubbish people. There is no primary impulse out of which

vulnerable have often fallen into this category of the unworthy living, as have the very old and infirm, the sick-poor, and, of course, the despised racial, religious, sexual,
and ethnic groups of the moment. Erik Erikson referred to pseudo- speciation as the human tendency to classify some individuals or social groups as less than fully
human - a prerequisite to genocide and one that is carefully honed during the unremark- able peacetimes that precede the sudden, seemingly unintelligible outbreaks of

Collective denial and misrecognition are prerequisites for mass violence and
genocide. But so are formal bureaucratic structures and professional roles. The practical technicians of everyday violence in the backlands of Northeast Brazil
mass violence.

(Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33), for example, include the clinic doctors who prescribe powerful tranquilizers to fretful and frightfully hungry babies, the Catholic priests who
celebrate the death of angel-babies, and the municipal bureaucrats who dispense free baby coffins but no food to hungry families. Everyday violence encompasses the
implicit, legitimate, and routinized forms of violence inherent in particular social, economic, and political formations. It is close to what Bourdieu (1977, 1996) means by
symbolic violence, the violence that is often nus-recognized for something else, usually something good. Everyday violence is similar to what Taussig (1989) calls
terror as usual. All these terms are meant to reveal a public secret - the hidden links between violence in war and violence in peace, and between war crimes and
peace-time crimes. Bourdieu (1977) finds domination and violence in the least likely places - in courtship and marriage, in the exchange of gifts, in systems of
classification, in style, art, and culinary taste- the various uses of culture. Violence, Bourdieu insists, is everywhere in social practice. It is misrecognized because its very
everydayness and its familiarity render it invisible. Lacan identifies rneconnaissance as the prerequisite of the social. The exploitation of bachelor sons, robbing them of
autonomy, independence, and progeny, within the structures of family farming in the European countryside that Bourdieu escaped is a case in point (Bourdieu, Chapter 42;
see also Scheper-Hughes, 2000b; Favret-Saada, 1989). Following Gramsci, Foucault, Sartre, Arendt, and other modern theorists of power-vio- lence, Bourdieu treats direct
aggression and physical violence as a crude, uneconomical mode of domination; it is less efficient and, according to Arendt (1969), it is certainly less legitimate. While
power and symbolic domination are not to be equated with violence - and Arendt argues persuasively that violence is to be understood as a failure of power - violence, as
we are presenting it here, is more than simply the expression of illegitimate physical force against a person or group of persons. Rather, we need to understand violence as
encompassing all forms of controlling processes (Nader 1997b) that assault basic human freedoms and individual or collective survival. Our task is to recognize these
gray zones of violence which are, by definition, not obvious. Once again, the point of bringing into the discourses on genocide everyday, normative experiences of
reification, depersonalization, institutional confinement, and acceptable death is to help answer the question: What makes mass violence and genocide possible? In this
volume we are suggesting that mass violence is part of a continuum, and that it is socially incremental and often experienced by perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders and even by victims themselves - as expected, routine, even justified. The preparations for mass killing can be found in social sentiments and institutions from the family,

They harbor the early warning signs (Charney 1991), the priming (as Hinton, ed., 2002
calls it), or the genocidal continuum (as we call it) that push social consensus toward devaluing certain forms of
human life and lifeways from the refusal of social support and humane care to vulnerable social parasites (the nursing home elderly, welfare queens,
to schools, churches, hospitals, and the military.

undocumented immigrants, drug addicts) to the militarization of everyday life (super-maximum-security prisons, capital punishment; the technologies of heightened
personal security, including the house gun and gated communities; and reversed feelings of victimization).

Low probability should be no probability dont fall for


cognitive biases that make the negs internal link chains
appear coherent
Sunstein, Distinguished Service Professor at the
University of Chicago writes in 2002
[Cass, Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, Law School and
Department of Political Science, Probability Neglect: Emotions, Worst Cases, and Law,
http://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/112-1/SunsteinFINAL.pdf]
If someone is predisposed to be worried, degrees of unlikeliness seem to provide no comfort, unless one can prove that harm is absolutely impossible, which itself is not

A]ffect-rich outcomes yield pronounced overweighting of small

possible.1 [

probabilities . . . .2 On Sept. 11, Americans entered a new and frightening geography, where the continents of safety and danger seemed forever shifted. Is
it safe to fly? Will terrorists wage germ warfare? Where is the line between reasonable precaution and
panic? Jittery, uncertain and assuming the worst, many people have answered these questions by forswearing air travel, purchasing gas masks and radiation
detectors, placing frantic calls to pediatricians demanding vaccinations against exotic diseases or rushing out to fill prescriptions for Cipro, an antibiotic most experts
consider an unnecessary defense against anthrax.3 I. RISKS, NUMBERS, AND REGULATION Consider the following problems: People live in a community near an
abandoned hazardous waste site. The community appears to suffer from an unusually high number of deaths and illnesses. Many members of the community fear that the
hazardous waste site is responsible for the problem. Administrative officials attempt to offer reassurance that the likelihood of adverse health effects, as a result of the site,
is extremely low.4 The reassurance is met with skepticism and distrust. An airplane, carrying people from New York to California, has recently crashed. Although the
source of the problem is unknown, many people suspect terrorism. In the following weeks, many people who would otherwise fly are taking trains or staying home. Some
of those same people acknowledge that the statistical risk is exceedingly small. Nonetheless, they refuse to fly, in part because they do not want to experience the anxiety
that would come from flying. An administrative agency is deciding whether to require labels on genetically modified food. According to experts within the agency,
genetically modified food, as such, poses insignificant risks to the environment and to human health. But many consumers disagree. Knowledge of genetic modification
triggers strong emotions, and the labeling requirement is thought likely to have large effects on consumer choice, notwithstanding expert claims that the danger is trivial.

people
tend to focus on the adverse outcome, not on its likelihood. That is, they are not closely attuned to the probability
that harm will occur. At the individual level , this phenomenon, which I shall call probability
neglect, produces serious difficulties of various sorts, including excessive worry and unjustified behavioral
changes. When people neglect probability, they may also treat some risks as if they were nonexistent, even though the
How should we understand human behavior in cases of this sort? My principal answer, the thesis of this Essay, is that when intense emotions are engaged,

likelihood of harm, over a lifetime, is far from trivial. Probability neglect can produce significant problems for law and regulation. As we shall see, regulatory agencies, no
less than individuals, may neglect the issue of probability, in a way that can lead to either indifference to real risks or costly expenditures for little or no gain. If agencies
are falling victim to probability neglect, they might well be violating relevant law.5 Indeed, we shall see that the idea of probability neglect helps illuminate a number of
judicial decisions, which seem implicitly attuned to that idea, and which reveal an implicit behavioral rationality in important pockets of federal administrative law. As we
shall also see, an understanding of probability neglect helps show how government can heighten, or dampen, public concern about hazards. Public-spirited

political actors, no less than self-interested ones, can exploit probability neglect so as to promote attention to problems
that may or may not deserve public concern. It will be helpful to begin, however, with some general background on individual and social judgments about risks. A.
Cognition On the conventional view of rationality, probabilities matter a great deal to reactions to risks. But emotions, as such, are not assessed independently; they are
not taken to play a distinctive role.6 Of course, people might be risk-averse or risk-inclined. For example, it is possible that people will be willing to pay $100 to eliminate a
1/1000 risk of losing $900. But analysts usually believe that variations in probability should matter, so that there would be a serious problem if people were willing to pay
both $100 to eliminate a 1/1000 risk of losing $900 and $100 to eliminate a 1/100,000 risk of losing $900. Analysts do not generally ask, or care, whether risk-related
dispositions are a product of emotions or something else. Of course, it is now generally agreed that in thinking about risks, people rely on certain heuristics and show
identifiable biases.7 Those who emphasize heuristics and biases are often seen as attacking the conventional view of rationality.8 In a way they are doing just that, but the
heuristicsand- biases literature has a highly cognitive focus, designed to establish how people proceed under conditions of uncertainty. The central question is this: When
people do not know about the probability associated with some risk, how do they think? It is clear that when people lack statistical information, they rely on certain
heuristics, or rules of thumb, which serve to simplify their inquiry.9 Of these rules of thumb, the availability heuristic is probably the most important for purposes of
understanding risk-related law.10 Thus, for example, a class whose instances are easily retrieved will appear more numerous than a class of equal frequency whose
instances are less retrievable.11 The point very much bears on private and public responses to risks, suggesting, for example, that people will be especially responsive to
the dangers of AIDS, crime, earthquakes, and nuclear power plant accidents if examples of these risks are easy to recall.12 This is a point about how familiarity can affect
the availability of instances. But salience is important as well. The impact of seeing a house burning on the subjective probability of such accidents is probably greater
than the impact of reading about a fire in the local paper.13 So, too, recent events will have a greater impact than earlier ones. The point helps explain much risk-related
behavior. For example, whether people will buy insurance for natural disasters is greatly affected by recent experiences.14 If floods have not occurred in the immediate
past, people who live on flood plains are far less likely to purchase insurance.15 In the aftermath of an earthquake, the proportion of people carrying earthquake insurance
rises sharplybut it declines steadily from that point, as vivid memories recede.16 For purposes of law and regulation, the problem is that the availability heuristic can
lead to serious errors of fact, in terms of both excessive controls on small risks that are cognitively available and insufficient controls on large risks that are not.17 The
cognitive emphasis of the heuristics-and-biases literature can be found as well in prospect theory, a departure from expected utility theory that explains decision under
risk.18 For present purposes, what is most important is that prospect theory offers an explanation for simultaneous gambling and insurance.19 When given the choice,
most people will reject a certain gain of X in favor of a gamble with an expected value below X, if the gamble involves a small probability of riches. At the same time, most
people prefer a certain loss of X to a gamble with an expected value less than X, if the gamble involves a small probability of catastrophe.20 If expected utility theory is
taken as normative, then people depart from the normative theory of rationality in giving excessive weight to lowprobability outcomes when the stakes are high. Indeed,
we might easily see prospect theory as emphasizing a form of probability neglect. But in making these descriptive claims, prospect theory does not specify a special role
for emotions. This is not a puzzling oversight, if it counts as an oversight at all. For many purposes, what matters is what people choose, and it is unimportant to know
whether their choices depend on cognition or emotion, whatever may be the difference between these two terms. B. Emotion No one doubts, however, that in many
domains, people do not think much about variations in probability and that emotions have a large effect on judgment and decisionmaking.21 Would a group of randomly
selected people pay more to reduce a 1/100,000 risk of getting a gruesome form of cancer than a similar group would pay to reduce a 1/200,000 risk of getting that form
of cancer? Would the former group pay twice as much? With some low-probability events, anticipated and actual emotions, triggered by the best-case or worst-case
outcome, help to determine choice. Those who buy lottery tickets, for example, often fantasize about the goods associated with a lucky outcome.22 With respect to risks of
harm, many of our ordinary ways of speaking suggest strong emotions: panic, hysteria, terror. People might refuse to fly, for example, not because they are currently
frightened, but because they anticipate their own anxiety, and they want to avoid it. It has been suggested that people often decide as they do because they anticipate
their own regret.23 The same is true for fear. Knowing that they will be afraid, people may refuse to travel to Israel or South Africa, even if they would much enjoy seeing
those nations and even if they believe, on reflection, that their fear is not entirely rational. Recent evidence is quite specific.24 It suggests that people greatly neglect
significant differences in probability when the outcome is affect richwhen it involves not simply a serious loss, but one that produces strong emotions, including fear.25
To be sure, the distinction between cognition and emotion is complex and contested.26 In the domain of risks, and most other places, emotional reactions are usually
based on thinking; they are hardly cognition-free. When a negative emotion is associated with a certain riskpesticides or nuclear power, for examplecognition plays a
central role.27 For purposes of the analysis here, it is not necessary to say anything especially controversial about the nature of the emotion of fear. The only suggestion is
that when emotions are intense, calculation is less likely to occur, or at least that form of calculation that involves assessment of risks in terms of not only the magnitude
but also the probability of the outcome. Drawing on and expanding the relevant evidence, I will emphasize a general phenomenon here: In political and market domains,
people often focus on the desirability of the outcome in question and pay (too) little attention to the probability that a good or bad outcome will, in fact, occur. It is in such
cases that people fall prey to

probability neglect, which is properly treated as a form of quasi-rationality.28 Probability neglect

is especially large when people focus on the worst possible case or otherwise are subject to strong emotions. When such emotions are at work, people do not give

it is not fully
rational to treat a 1% chance of X as equivalent , or nearly equivalent, to a 99% chance of
X, or even a 10% chance of X. Because people suffer from probability neglect, and because neglecting probability is not fully rational, the phenomenon I identify raises
sufficient consideration to the likelihood that the worst case will actually occur. This is quasi-rational because, from the normative point of view,

new questions about the widespread idea that ordinary people have a kind of rival rationality superior to that of experts.29 Most of the time, experts are concerned
principally with the number of lives at stake,30 and for that reason they will be closely attuned, as ordinary people are not, to the issue of probability. By drawing attention
to probability neglect, I do not mean to suggest that most people, most of the time, are indifferent to large variations in the probability that a risk will come to fruition.
Large variations can, and often do, make a differencebut when emotions are engaged, the difference is far less than the standard theory predicts. Nor do I suggest that
probability neglect is impervious to circumstances. If the costs of neglecting probability are placed on screen, then people will be more likely to attend to the question of
probability.31 In this light it is both mildly counterintuitive and reasonable, for example, to predict that people would be willing to pay less, in terms of dollars and waiting
time, to reduce lowprobability risks of an airplane disaster if they are frequent travelers. An intriguing study finds exactly that effect.32 For similar reasons, market
pressures are likely to dampen the impact of probability neglect, ensuring that, say, risks of 1/10,000 are treated differently from risks of 1/1,000,000, even if individuals,
in surveys, show relative insensitivity to such differences. Acknowledging all this, I emphasize three central points. First, differences in probability will often affect behavior
far less than they should or than conventional theory would predict. Second, private behavior, even when real dollars are involved,33 can display insensitivity to the issue
of probability, especially when emotions are intensely engaged. Third, and most important, the demand for legal intervention can be greatly affected by probability
neglect, so that government may end up engaging in extensive regulation precisely because intense emotional reactions are making people relatively insensitive to the
(low) probability that the relevant dangers will ever come to fruition. C. Law It is not at all clear how the law should respond to probability neglect. But at a minimum, the
phenomenon raises serious legal issues in administrative law, at least under statutes banning agencies from acting unless they can show a significant risk34 or can
establish that the benefits of regulation outweigh the costs.35 If agencies are neglecting the issue of probability (perhaps because the public is doing so as well), they may
well be acting unlawfully. Indeed, the law of judicial review shows an inchoate understanding of probability neglect, treating it as a problem for which judicial invalidation is

a solution.36 The only qualification is that the relevant law remains in an embryonic state. There is much to be done, especially at the agency level, to ensure that
government is alert to the probability that harm will actually occur. Outside of the context of administrative law, an understanding of probability neglect will help us to
make better predictions about the public demand for law. When a bad outcome is highly salient and triggers strong emotions, government will be asked to do something
about it, even if the probability that the bad outcome will occur is low. Political participants of various stripes, focusing on the worst case, are entirely willing to exploit
probability neglect. Those who encourage people to purchase lottery tickets, focusing on the best case, do the same. An understanding of probability neglect
simultaneously helps show why jurors, and ordinary officials, are not likely to be moved much by a showing that before the fact, the harm was not likely to occur. For many
people, what matters is that the harm did occur, not that it was unlikely to do so before the fact. For law, many of the most difficult questions are normative in character:
Should government take account of variations in the probability that harms will occur? Should government respond to intense fears that involve statistically remote risks?
When people suffer from probability neglect, should law and policy do the same thing? At first glance, we might think that even if people are neglecting probability,
government and law at least should notthat the tort system and administrators should pay a great deal of attention to probability in designing institutions. If government
wants to insulate itself from probability neglect, it will create institutions designed to ensure that genuine risks, rather than tiny ones, receive the most concern. Such
institutions will not necessarily require agencies to discuss the worst-case scenario.37 And if government is attempting to increase public concern about a genuine danger,
it should not emphasize statistics and probabilities, but should instead draw attention to the worst-case scenario. If government is attempting to decrease public concern
with a risk that has a tiny probability of coming to fruition, it may be ineffective if it emphasizes the issue of probability; indeed, it may do better if it changes the subject or
stresses instead the affirmative social values associated with running the risk.38 On the other hand, public fear, however unwarranted, may be intractable, in the sense
that it may be impervious to efforts at reassurance. And if public fear is intractable, it will cause serious problems, partly because fear is itself extremely unpleasant and
partly because fear is likely to influence conduct, possibly producing wasteful and excessive private precautions. If so, a governmental response, via regulatory safeguards,

a
key question is whether people can imagine or visualize the worst-case outcome.39 When the
worst case produces intense fear, surprisingly little role is played by the stated probability that that outcome will occur.40 An important function of strong
emotions is thus to drive out quantitative judgments, including judgments about probability, by
making the best case or the worst case seem highly salient.41 But it is important to note that probability neglect can occur even
would appear to be justified if the benefits, in terms of fear reduction, justify the costs. II. PROBABILITY NEGLECT: THE BASIC PHENOMENON When it comes to risk,

when emotions are not involved. A great deal of evidence shows that whether or not emotions are involved, people are relatively insensitive to differences in probabilities,
at least when the relevant probabilities are low. A. Insensitivity to Variations Among Low Probabilities Do people care about probability at all? Of course they do; a risk of
1/100,000 is significantly less troublesome than a risk of 1/1000. But many people, much of the time, show a remarkable unwillingness to attend to the question of
probability. Several studies show that when people are seeking relevant information, they often do not try to learn about probability at all. One study, for example, finds
that in deciding whether to purchase warranties for consumer products, people do not spontaneously point to the probability of needing repair as a reason for the
purchase.42 Another study finds that those making hypothetical, risky managerial decisions rarely ask for data on probabilities.43 Or consider a study involving children
and adolescents,44 in which the following question was asked: Susan and Jennifer are arguing about whether they should wear seat belts when they ride in a car. Susan
says that you should. Jennifer says you shouldnt . . . . Jennifer says that she heard of an accident where a car fell into a lake and a woman was kept from getting out in
time because of wearing her seat belt . . . . What do you think about this?45 In answering that question, many subjects did not think about probability at all.46 One
exchange took the following form: A: Well, in that case I dont think you should wear a seat belt. Q (interviewer): How do you know when thats gonna happen? A: Like, just
hope it doesnt! Q: So, should you or shouldnt you wear seat belts? A: Well, tell-you-the-truth we should wear seat belts. Q: How come? A: Just in case of an accident. You
wont get hurt as much as you will if you didnt wear a seat belt. Q: Ok, well what about these kinds of things, when people get trapped? A: I dont think you should, in that
case.47 These answers might seem odd and idiosyncratic, but we might reasonably suppose that some of the time, both children and adults focus primarily on bad
scenarios, without thinking a great deal about the question of probability. Many studies find that significant differences in low probabilities have little impact on decisions.
This finding is in sharp conflict with the standard view of rationality, which suggests that peoples willingness to pay for small risk reductions ought to be nearly
proportional to the size of the reduction.48 Perhaps these findings reflect peoples implicit understanding that in these settings, the relevant probability is low, but not
zero, and that finer distinctions are unhelpful. (What does a risk of 1/100,000 really mean? How different is it, for an individual, from a risk of 1/20,000 or 1/600,000?) In
an especially striking study, Kunreuther and his coauthors found that mean willingness to pay insurance premiums did not vary among risks of 1/100,000, 1/1,000,000, and
1/10,000,000.49 They also found basically the same willingness to pay for insurance premiums for risks ranging from 1/650, to 1/6300, to 1/68,000.50 The study just
described involved a between subjects design; subjects considered only one risk, and the same people were not asked to consider the various risks at the same time.
Low probabilities are not likely to be terribly meaningful to most people, but most educated people would know that a 1/100,000 risk is worse than 1/1,000,000 risk. When
low-probability risks are seen in isolation and are not assessed together, we have an example of the problem of evaluability.51 For most people, most of the time, it is
very difficult to evaluate a low probability, and hence isolated decisions will pick up small or no variations between peoples assessments of very different risks. But several
studies have a within subjects design, exposing people simultaneously to risks of different probabilities, and even here, the differences in probabilities have little effect
on decisions. An early study examined peoples willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce various fatality risks. The central finding was that the mean WTP to reduce such risks
was, for over 40% of the respondents, unaffected by a large variation in the probability of harm, even though expected utility theory would predict significant effects from
such variations.52 A later study found that for serious injuries, WTP to reduce the risk by 12/100,000 was only 20% higher than WTP to reduce the same risk by 4/100,000,
even though standard theory would predict a WTP three times as high.53 These results are not unusual. Lin and Milon attempted to elicit peoples willingness to pay to
reduce the risk of illness from eating oysters.54 There was little sensitivity to variations in probability of illness.55 Another study found little change in WTP across
probability variations involving exposure to pesticide residues on fresh produce.56 A similar anomaly was found in a study involving hazardous wastes, where WTP actually
decreased as the stated fatality risk reduction increased.57 There is much to say about the general insensitivity to significant variations within the category of lowprobability events. It would be difficult to produce a rational explanation for this insensitivity; recall the standard suggestion that WTP for small risk reductions should be
roughly proportional to the size of the reduction.58 Why dont people think in this way? An imaginable explanation is that in the abstract, most people simply do not know
how to evaluate low probabilities. A risk of 7/100,000 seems small; a risk of 4/100,000 also seems small.59 Most people would prefer a risk of 4/100,000 to a risk of
7/100,000, and I have noted that joint evaluation improves evaluability, which would otherwise be extremely difficult.60 But even when the preference is clear, both risks
seem small, and hence it is not at all clear that a proportional increase in WTP will follow. As suggested by the findings of Kunreuther and his coauthors, it is likely that in
a between-subjects design, WTP to eliminate a risk of 4/100,000 would be about the same as WTP to eliminate a risk of 7/100,000, simply because the small difference
would not matter when each risk is taken in isolation.

no risk of nuclear war mutually assured destruction and


economic interdependence
Aziz, 3/14 - the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com.
He is also an associate editor atPieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared
on Business Insider, Zero Hedge, and Noahpinion. (John, Don't worry: World
War III will almost certainly never happen, The Week,
http://theweek.com/article/index/257517/dont-worry-world-war-iii-will-almostcertainly-never-happen)
Next year will be the seventieth anniversary of the end of the last global conflict. There have been points on that timeline
such as the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, and a Soviet computer malfunction in 1983 that erroneously suggested that
the U.S. had attacked, and perhaps even the Kosovo War in 1999 when a global conflict was a real possibility. Yet today

the
threat of World War III has almost faded into nothingness . That is, the probability
of a world war is the lowest it has been in decades, and perhaps the lowest it has ever been
since the dawn of modernity. This is certainly a view that current data supports. Steven
Pinker's studies into the decline of violence reveal that deaths from war have
in the shadow of a flare up which some are calling a new Cold War between Russia and the U.S. I believe

fallen and fallen since World War II. But we should not just assume that the past is an accurate guide
to the future. Instead, we must look at the factors which have led to the reduction in war and try to conclude whether the

what's changed? Well, the first big change after the last world war
was the arrival of mutually assured destruction. It's no coincidence that the
end of the last global war coincided with the invention of atomic weapons.
The possibility of complete annihilation provided a huge disincentive to
launching and expanding total wars. Instead, the great powers now fight
proxy wars like Vietnam and Afghanistan (the 1980 version, that is), rather than letting
their rivalries expand into full-on, globe-spanning struggles against each
other. Sure, accidents could happen, but the possibility is incredibly remote. More importantly, nobody in
power wants to be the cause of Armageddon . But what about a non-nuclear
global war? Other changes economic and social in nature have made
that highly unlikely too. The world has become much more economically
interconnected since the last global war. Economic cooperation treaties and
free trade agreements have intertwined the economies of countries around
the world. This has meant there has been a huge rise in the volume of global trade since World War II, and especially
since the 1980s. Today consumer goods like smartphones, laptops, cars, jewelery, food, cosmetics, and medicine are
produced on a global level, with supply-chains criss-crossing the planet . An
decrease in war is sustainable. So

example: The laptop I am typing this on is the cumulative culmination of thousands of hours of work, as well as resources
and manufacturing processes across the globe. It incorporates metals like tellurium, indium, cobalt, gallium, and
manganese mined in Africa. Neodymium mined in China. Plastics forged out of oil, perhaps from Saudi Arabia, or Russia,
or Venezuela. Aluminum from bauxite, perhaps mined in Brazil. Iron, perhaps mined in Australia. These raw materials are
turned into components memory manufactured in Korea, semiconductors forged in Germany, glass made in the United
States. And it takes gallons and gallons of oil to ship all the resources and components back and forth around the world,

In a global
war, global trade becomes a nightmare. Shipping becomes more expensive
due to higher insurance costs, and riskier because it's subject to seizures,
blockades, ship sinkings. Many goods, intermediate components or resources including energy supplies
until they are finally assembled in China, and shipped once again around the world to the consumer.

like coal and oil, components for military hardware, etc, may become temporarily unavailable in certain areas. Sometimes
such as occurred in the Siege of Leningrad during World War II the supply of food can be cut off. This is why countries

These kinds of
breakdowns were troublesome enough in the economic landscape of the
early and mid-20th century, when the last global wars occurred. But in
today's ultra-globalized and ultra-specialized economy? The level of economic
adaptation even for large countries like Russia and the United States with lots of land and natural resources
required to adapt to a world war would be crushing, and huge numbers of business and
livelihoods would be wiped out. In other words, global trade interdependency has become , to
borrow a phrase from finance, too big to fail.
hold strategic reserves of things like helium, pork, rare earth metals and oil, coal, and gas.

nuclear war doesnt cause extinction


Seitz 06 - former associate of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic
Studies at Harvard Universitys Center for International Affairs (Russell, The'
Nuclear Winter ' Meltdown Photoshopping the Apocalypse,
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2006/12/preherein_honor.html)
history is full of prophets of doom who
fail to deliver, not all are without honor in their own land. The 1983 'Nuclear Winter " papers in Science were so
politicized that even the eminently liberal President of The Council for a Liveable World called " The worst example ofthe
misrepesentation of science to the public in my memory." Among the authors was Stanford President
All that remains of Sagan's Big Chill are curves such as this , but

Donald Kennedy. Today he edits Science , the nation's major arbiter of climate science--and policy. Below, a case illustrating the mid-range of the ~.7 to ~1.6
degree C maximum cooling the 2006 studies suggest is superimposed in color on the Blackly Apocalyptic predictions published in Science Vol. 222, 1983 .
They're worth comparing, because the range of soot concentrations in the new models overlaps with cases assumed to have dire climatic consequences in the

"Apocalyptic predictions require, to be taken seriously,higher


standards of evidence than do assertions on other matters where the stakes are not as great." wrote Sagan in Foreign Affairs , Winter 1983
-84. But that "evidence" was never forthcoming. 'Nuclear Winter' never existed
outside of a computer except as air-brushed animation commissioned by the a PR
widely publicized 1983 scenarios --

firm - Porter Novelli Inc. Yet Sagan predicted "the extinction of the human species " as temperatures plummeted 35 degrees C and the world froze in the
aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Last year, Sagan's cohort tried to reanimate the ghost in a machine anti-nuclear activists invoked in the depths of the Cold
War, by re-running equally arbitrary scenarios on a modern interactive Global Circulation Model. But the Cold War is history in more ways than one. It is a

do not reproduce the apocalyptic results of what


The subzero 'baseline case' has melted down
into a tepid 1.3 degrees of average cooling- grey skies do not a Ragnarok make . What remains is just not
the stuff that End of the World myths are made of. It is hard to exaggerate how seriously " nuclear winter "was
credit to post-modern computer climate

simulations

that they

Sagan oxymoronically termed "a sophisticated one dimensional model."

once taken by policy analysts who ought to have known better. Many were taken aback by the sheer force of Sagan's rhetoric Remarkably, Science's news
coverage of the new results fails to graphically compare them with the old ones Editor Kennedy and other recent executives of the American Association for

You can't say they didn't try to reproduce


this Cold War icon. Once again, soot from imaginary software materializes in midair by the
megaton , flying higher than Mount Everest . This is not physics, but a crude exercise in ' garbage in, gospel out' parameter forcing designed to
maximize and extend the cooling an aeosol can generate, by sparing it from realistic attrition by rainout in the lower atmosphere. Despite
decades of progress in modeling atmospheric chemistry , there is none in this
computer simulation, and ignoring photochemistry further extends its impact. Fortunately , the history of science is as hard to erase as it is
the Advancement of Science, once proudly co-authored and helped to publicize.

easy to ignore. Their past mastery of semantic agression cannot spare the authors of "Nuclear Winter Lite " direct comparison of their new results and their

Dark smoke clouds in the lower atmosphere don't last long enough to spread across the globe.
Cloud droplets and rainfall remove them. rapidly washing them out of the sky in a matter of days to
old.

weeks- not long enough to sustain a global pall. Real world weather brings down particles much as soot is scrubbed out of power plant smoke by the water
sprays in smoke stack scrubbers Robock acknowledges this- not even a single degree of cooling results when soot is released at lower elevations in he
models . The workaround is to inject the imaginary aerosol at truly Himalayan elevations - pressure altitudes of 300 millibar and higher , where the computer

The
new studies like the old suffer from the disconnect between a desire to paint the sky
black and the vicissitudes of natural history. As with many exercise in worst case models both at invoke rare phenomena
as commonplace, claiming it prudent to assume the worst . But the real world is subject to Murphy's lesser known second lawif everything must go wrong, don't bet on it. In 2006 as in 1983 firestorms and forest fires that send smoke into the
stratosphere rise to alien prominence in the modelers re-imagined world , but i the real one remains a
very different place, where though every month sees forest fires burning areas the size of cities - 2,500
hectares or larger , stratospheric smoke injections arise but once in a blue moon . So how come these neomodel's vertical transport function modules pass it off to their even higher neighbors in the stratosphere , where it does not rain and particles linger..

nuclear winter models feature so much smoke so far aloft for so long?

Extensions

Structural Violence First


You should privilege everyday violence for two reasons- A)
social bias underrepresents its effects B) its effects are
exponential, not linear which means even if the only
causes a small amount of structural violence, its terminal
impacts are huge
Nixon 11
(Rob, Rachel Carson Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, pgs. 2-3)
Three primary concerns animate this book, chief among them my
conviction that we urgently need to rethink-politically, imaginatively, and
theoretically-what I call "slow violence." By slow violence I mean a violence
that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction
that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is
typically not viewed as violence at all. Violence is customarily conceived as
an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in
space, and as erupting into instant sensational visibility. We need, I
believe, to engage a different kind of violence, a violence that is neither
spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its
calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales. In
so doing, we also need to engage the representational, narrative, and
strategic challenges posed by the relative invisibility of slow violence.
Climate change, the thawing cryosphere, toxic drift, biomagnification,
deforestation, the radioactive aftermaths of wars, acidifying oceans, and a
host of other slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes present
formidable representational obstacles that can hinder our efforts to
mobilize and act decisively. The long dyings-the staggered and
staggeringly discounted casualties, both human and ecological that result
from war's toxic aftermaths or climate change-are underrepresented in
strategic planning as well as in human memory. Had Summers advocated
invading Africa with weapons of mass destruction, his proposal would have
fallen under conventional definitions of violence and been perceived as a
military or even an imperial invasion. Advocating invading countries with
mass forms of slow-motion toxicity, however, requires rethinking our
accepted assumptions of violence to include slow violence. Such a
rethinking requires that we complicate conventional assumptions about
violence as a highly visible act that is newsworthy because it is event
focused, time bound, and body bound. We need to account for how the
temporal dispersion of slow violence affects the way we perceive and
respond to a variety of social afflictions-from domestic abuse to
posttraumatic stress and, in particular, environmental calamities. A major
challenge is representational: how to devise arresting stories, images, and
symbols adequate to the pervasive but elusive violence of delayed effects.

Crucially, slow violence is often not just attritional but also


exponential, operating as a major threat multiplier; it can fuel
long-term, proliferating conflicts in situations where the
conditions for sustaining life become increasingly but gradually
degraded.

Prioritizing everyday violence is key - responding to it


later causes error replication and movement burn out,
only re-orienting focus away from macro-level violence
produces sustainable political coalitions
Cuomo 96
(Chris, Prof. of Political Science @ U of Cincinnati, War is not just an event:
reflections on the significance of everyday violence, Hypatia, vol. 11, no.
4 Fall (1994))
Theory that does not investigate or even notice the omnipresence of
militarism cannot represent or address the depth and specificity of the
everyday effects 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 institutions help construct gendered and national
identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman
entities and communities during peacetime. Lack of attention to these
aspects of the business of making or preventing 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 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,
crisis-based ethics and politics are problematic because they distract
attention from the need for 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 make

resisters drop all other political priorities. 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.

systemic impacts outweigh their extinction impacts


Martin, 84 - physicist whose research interests include stratospheric
modelling. He is a research associate in the Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty of
Science, Australian National University, and a member of SANA. (Brian,
Extinction politics, SANA Update, May,
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/84sana1.html)
There are quite a number of reasons why people may find a belief in
extinction from nuclear war to be attractive
implicit
Western chauvinism The effects of global nuclear war would mainly hit the
population of the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union. This is quite
unlike the pattern of other major ongoing human disasters of starvation,
disease, poverty and political repression which mainly affect the poor,
nonwhite populations of the Third World. The gospel of nuclear extinction can
be seen as a way by which a problem for the rich white Western societies is
claimed to be a problem for all the world. Symptomatic of this orientation is
the belief that, without Western aid and trade, the economies and
populations of the Third World would face disaster this is only Western selfcentredness.
Third World populations would in many ways be better off
without the West
A related factor linked with nuclear extinctionism is a belief that nuclear
war is the most pressing issue facing humans. I disagree, both morally and
politically, with the stance that preventing nuclear war has become the most
important social issue for all humans
concern over the actuality of
massive suffering and millions of deaths resulting from poverty and
exploitation can justifiably take precedence over
nuclear war.
Nuclear war may be the greatest threat to the collective lives of those in the
rich, white Western societies but, for the poor, nonwhite Third World peoples,
other issues are more pressing.
to give precedence to nuclear war as
an issue is to assume that nuclear war can be overcome in isolation from
changes in major social institutions, including the state, capitalism, state
socialism and patriarchy. If war is deeply embedded in such structures - as I
would argue then to try to prevent war without making common cause with
other social movements will not be successful politically
.[8] Here I will only briefly comment on a few factors. The first is an

. But

Actually,

: the pressure to grow cash crops of sugar, tobacco and so on would be reduced, and we would no longer witness fresh fish being airfreighted from Bangladesh to

Europe.

. Surely, in the Third World,

the possibility of a similar death toll from

In political terms,

[9] -

. This means that the antiwar movement needs to link its

strategy and practice with other movements such as the feminist movement, the workers' control movement and the environmental movement. A focus on nuclear extinction also encourages a focus on appealing
to elites as the means to stop nuclear war, since there seems no other means for quickly overcoming the danger. For example, Carl Sagan, at the end of an article about nuclear winter in a popular magazine,

if war has deep institutional roots, then


appealing to elites has no chance of success
advocates writing letters to the presidents of the United States and of the Soviet Union.[10] But

. This has been amply illustrated by the continual failure of disarmament negotiations and

appeals to elites over the past several decades.

Utilitarianism is Bad
Utilitarianism is a flawed system. It is impossible to
measure and to predict the benefits and/or harms
resulting from a course of action or a moral rule.
McCarthy and Lysaught 7

Whats wrong with utilitarianism?, The Moral Course of


Thinking in Gathered for the Journey: Moral Theology in Catholic Perspective, Rapids:
Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007.
http://theophilogue.com/2009/11/19/utilitarianism-what-is-it-why-does-it-not-work/
McCarthy and Lysaught rehearse some of the standard criticisms of

utilitarianism,

for which I have given my own

has no way to
objectively determine the nature, importance, and value of consequences. To
put it another way: How do we know what are good and bad consequences? What consequences
count most? Whose opinion of what are good consequences and what are
bad consequences counts most? Failure to give coherent and rational
criterion for answering such questions spells decisive defeat for the whole
theory of exclusive utilitarianism. It seems to need something else to help it out. That is why I
articulation and creative names. They run as follows: The Inevitability of Arbitrariness It

personally think that the utilitarian factor is legitimate when considered as part of the picture, but exclusive utilitarianism

Contrary IntuitionIt
often undermines our common sense and moral intuitions, often demanding
certain actions that rub our conscience the wrong way. For example, what if I knew I could
always leads to arbitrary judgment of consequences, and therefore arbitrary ethics. The

cheat on my wife with my female boss without her ever finding out in order to get a raise, which would have good
consequences for my family (less financial stress, my wife could cut back to part time to spend more time with the kids,
the kids could benefit from more parental care, I could save more money for the kids for college, etc.)? My gut tells me:

utilitarianism tells me its [works] like a math


problem (good consequences = good action). The Omniscience Requirement
sometimes it is impossible to know the totality of the potential (much less the
actual) consequences of ones actions. Sometimes what looks to us to be a disaster turns
Dont do this, it is wrong, wrong, wrong. But

out to be a blessing in disguise? We get fired only to later realize that the new job we attain as a
consequence pays better and is more enjoyable. On the flip side ,

sometimes we think
something is going to turn out great, but in the end is a big letdown . If these
small scale experiences in the lives of ordinary people demonstrate how difficult it is to know the
consequences of certain actionshow much more difficult must it be for people whose decisions effect an
entire nation (e.g. the President) to judge the full weight of the consequences of their decisions?

Utilitarianism can justify any barbarity


Anderson, National Director of Probe Ministries International
2004 Utilitarianism: The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number
http://www.probe.org/theology-and-philosophy/worldview-philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-for-thegreatestnumber.html
One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means"
mentality. If any worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, a true
ethical foundation is lost. But we all know that the end does not justify the
means. If that were so, then Hitler could justify the Holocaust because the
end was to purify the human race. Stalin could justify his slaughter of millions
because he was trying to achieve a communist utopia. The end never justifies
the means. The means must justify themselves. A particular act cannot be

judged as good simply because it may lead to a good consequence. The


means must be judged by some objective and consistent standard of
morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of minorities if the
goal is the greatest good for the greatest number. Americans in the
eighteenth century could justify slavery on the basis that it provided a good
consequence for a majority of Americans. Certainly the majority benefited
from cheap slave labor even though the lives of black slaves were much
worse. A third problem with utilitarianism is predicting the consequences. If
morality is based on results, then we would have to have omniscience in
order to accurately predict the consequence of any action. But at best we can
only guess at the future, and often these educated guesses are wrong. A
fourth problem with utilitarianism is that consequences themselves must be
judged. When results occur, we must still ask whether they are good or bad
results. Utilitarianism provides no objective and consistent foundation to
judge results because results are the mechanism used to judge the action
itself.inviolability is intrinsically valuable.

Their framework condones mass slaughter Util


normalizes atrocities
Jim Holt, New York Times, August 5, 1995 Morality, Reduced To Arithmetic
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/05/opinion/morality-reduced-toarithmetic.html
Can the deliberate massacre of innocent people ever be condoned? The atomic
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, resulted in the deaths of 120,000 to
250,000 Japanese by incineration and radiation poisoning. Although a small fraction of the victims were

Among the
justifications that have been put forward for President Harry Trumans
decision to use the bomb, only one is worth taking seriously -- that it saved lives. The
alternative, the reasoning goes, was to launch an invasion. Truman claimed in his
memoirs that this would have cost another half a million American lives . Winston
soldiers, the great majority were noncombatants -- women, children, the aged.

Churchill put the figure at a million. Revisionist historians have cast doubt on such numbers. Wartime
documents suggest that military planners expected around 50,000 American combat deaths in an
invasion. Still, when Japanese casualties, military and civilian, are taken into account, the overall invasion
death toll on both sides would surely have ended up surpassing that from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Scholars will continue to argue over whether there were other, less catastrophic ways to force Tokyo to
surrender. But given the fierce obstinacy of the Japanese militarists, Truman and his advisers had some
grounds for believing that nothing short of a full-scale invasion or the annihilation of a big city with an

Would this prospect have


justified the intentional mass killing of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
In the debate over the question, participants on both sides have been
playing the numbers game. Estimate the hypothetical number of lives saved
by the bombings, then add up the actual lives lost. If the first number
exceeds the second, then Truman did the right thing; if the reverse, it was
wrong to have dropped the bombs . That is one approach to the matter -the utilitarian approach. According to utilitarianism, a form of moral
reasoning that arose in the 19th century, the goodness or evil of an
action is determined solely by its consequences. If somehow you can save 10
lives by boiling a baby, go ahead and boil that baby . There is, however, an older ethical
apocalyptic new weapon would have succeeded. Suppose they were right.

tradition, one rooted in Judeo-Christian theology, that takes a quite different view. The gist of it is

expressed by St. Pauls condemnation of those who say, Let us do evil, that good may come. Some
actions, this tradition holds, can never be justified by their consequences; they are absolutely forbidden. It
is always wrong to boil a baby even if lives are saved thereby. Applying this absolutist morality to war can
be tricky. When enemy soldiers are trying to enslave or kill us, the principle of self-defense permits us to
kill them (though not to slaughter them once they are taken prisoner). But what of those who back them?
During World War II, propagandists made much of the indivisibility of modern warfare: the idea was that
since the enemy nations entire economic and social strength was deployed behind its military forces, the
whole population was a legitimate target for obliteration. There are no civilians in Japan, declared an
intelligence officer of the Fifth Air Force shortly before the Hiroshima bombing, a time when the Japanese
were popularly depicted as vermin worthy of extermination. The boundary between combatant and
noncombatant can be fuzzy, but the distinction is not meaningless, as the case of small children makes
clear. Yet is wartime killing of those who are not trying to harm us always tantamount to murder? When
naval dockyards, munitions factories and supply lines are bombed, civilian carnage is inevitable. The
absolutist moral tradition acknowledges this by a principle known as double effect: although it is always
wrong to kill innocents deliberately, it is sometimes permissible to attack a military target knowing some
noncombatants will die as a side effect. The doctrine of double effect might even justify bombing a hospital
where Hitler is lying ill. It does not, however, apply to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Transformed into hostages
by the technology of aerial bombardment, the people of those cities were intentionally executed en masse
to send a message of terror to the rulers of Japan. The practice of ordering the massacre of civilians to
bring the enemy to heel scarcely began with Truman. Nor did the bomb result in casualties of a new order
of magnitude. The earlier bombing of Tokyo by incendiary weapons killed some 100,000 people.

What

Hiroshima and Nagasaki did mark, by the unprecedented need for rationalization they
presented, was the triumph of utilitarian thinking in the conduct of war. The
conventional code of noncombatant immunity -- a product of several centuries of ethical progress among
nations, which had been formalized by an international commission in the 1920s in the Hague -- was
swept away. A simpler axiom took its place: since war is hell, any means necessary may be used to end, in
Churchills words, the vast indefinite butchery. It is a moral calculus that, for all its logical consistency,
offends our deep-seated intuitions about the sanctity of life -- our conviction that a person is always to be

utilitarian calculations
are susceptible to bad-faith reasoning: tinker with the numbers enough and
virtually any atrocity can be excused in the national interest . In January, the world
treated as an end, never as a means. Left up to the warmakers, moreover,

commemorated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where mass slaughter was committed
as an end in itself -- the ultimate evil. The moral nature of Hiroshima is ambiguous by contrast. Yet in the
postwar era, when governments do not hesitate to treat the massacre of civilians as just another strategic

the bombs sinister legacy is plain: it has inured us to the idea of


reducing innocents to instruments and morality to arithmetic.
option,

No Risk of Wars
No Risk of Great Power Wars
Goldstein, 9/10- 11 (Joshua- professor emeritus of international
relations at American University and author of the forthcoming book
winning the war on war, Think Again: War, Foreign Affairs)
the last decade has seen fewer war
deaths than any decade in the past 100 years, based on data
compiled by researchers Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch
of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Worldwide, deaths caused
directly by war-related violence in the new century have averaged
about 55,000 per year, just over half of what they were in the
1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold War
(180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in
World War II. If you factor in the growing global population, which
has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the decrease is even sharper. Far
from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War ended
have been an era of rapid progress toward peace.Armed conflict has
declined in large part because armed conflict has fundamentally
changed. Wars between big national armies all but disappeared
along with the Cold War, taking with them the most horrific kinds
of mass destruction. Today's asymmetrical guerrilla wars may be
intractable and nasty, but they will never produce anything like
the siege of Leningrad. The last conflict between two great
powers, the Korean War, effectively ended nearly 60 years ago. The last sustained
territorial war between two regular armies, Ethiopia and Eritrea,
ended a decade ago. Even civil wars, though a persistent evil, are less
common than in the past; there were about a quarter fewer in
2007 than in 1990. If the world feels like a more violent place than
it actually is, that's because there's more information about wars
-- not more wars themselves. Once-remote battles and war crimes
now regularly make it onto our TV and computer screens, and in
more or less real time. Cell-phone cameras have turned citizens
into reporters in many war zones. Societal norms about what to
make of this information have also changed. As Harvard University
psychologist Steven Pinker has noted, "The decline of violent
behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that
tolerate or glorify violence," so that we see today's atrocities -though mild by historical standards -- as "signs of how low our
behavior can sink, not of how high our standards have risen."
So far they haven't even been close. In fact,

There is an almost zero probability for great power shoot


out- our evidence indicts all of the negatives impact
scenarios
Fettweis, 8 (Christopher J.- PoliSci Proff @ Tulan University and Former
Proff of U.S. foreign policy and Grand strategy @ naval war college, Losing
Hurts Twice as Bad, W.W. Norton & Company, p.190-94)
One can be fairly confident in making such an assertion in part because of what might be the single

The world is significantly


more peaceful at the beginning of the twenty-first century than at
any time in recorded history. Although conflict and chaos may
dominate the headlines, the incidence of warfare has dropped to
remarkably low levels. A far greater percentage of the worlds people live in societies at
peace than at any other time in history. Not only is the current era markedly
better in most measurable categories of international security
than ever before, but it is growing more stable as time goes by. At
the very least, to a growing number of experts, a major clash of arms does not
seem plausible. Major war may well have become obsolete. Rather
than a clash of civilizations a coming anarchy, or a step back to the future
toward multipolarity and instability, the new century may well
prove to be far more peaceful than any previous one. The number
and intensity of all kinds of conflict, including interstate wars, civil wars, and ethnic
conflicts, declined steadily throughout the 1990s and into the new
decade. This period of peace may be due to some combination of nuclear
most significant yet under-reported trend in world politics:

weapons, complex economic interdependence, the spread of democracy, or , as many scholars believe,

a simple change in ideas about what is worth fighting for. These


days, not much may be left. This rather bold and perhaps counterintuitive claim may
seem a bit utopian to those familiar with the long, dismal history of warfare. Is not war an
innate part of human nature, an outgrowth of our passions and imperfections, like
murder? Not necessarily, say many of the scholars. After all, murder
is an act of the individual, often of passion rather than reason:
war is a rational act of state, a symptom of the broader practices
of the international system of states. War is an institution, a
tradition of dispute resolution, a method countries have chosen to
employ when their interests diverge. Granted, it has been with us since the
beginning of time, but as political scientists John Mueller has noted, unlike breathing, eating or sex,

not something that is somehow required by the human


psyche, by the human condition , or by the forces of history. The
eminent military historian John Keegan reports being impressed
by the evidence that mankind, wherever it has the option, is
distancing itself from the institution of warfare. If keegan is impressed,
war is

then maybe we should be, too. Overall, as the table below shows, international and internal conflicts
has steadily declined since the end of the cold war. Despite perceptions that the current wars on
terror and in Iraq may have created, the world is a much safer place that it was in prior generations.

There remains a human (and perhaps particularly American)


tendency to replace one threat with another, to see international
politics as an arena of dangerous competition, but this perception
simply no longer matches the facts. The evidence is apparent on

every continent. At the beginning of 2008, the only conflict raging in the entire western
hemisphere was the ongoing civil war in Colombia, but even that was far less sever than it was a

Europe, which of course has been the most war-prone


continent for most of human history, was entirely calm, without even the
decade ago.

threat of interstate conflict. The situations in Bosnia and Kosovo were not settled, but they were at

the great powers have shown


no eagerness to fill Balkan power vacuums- to the contrary, throughout the
least stable for the moment. And in contrast to 1914,

1990s they had to be shamed into intervention, and were on the same side when they did. The entire
Pacific Rim was currently experiencing no armed conflict. Even in the Middle East, where Iraq continued
to burn, a tenuous peace was holding between Arabs and Israelis, terrorism not withstanding, and no
other wars seemed imminent. This trend was even visible in Africa where , despite
a variety of ongoing serious challenges, levels of conflict were the lowest they have ever been in the
centuries of written history we have about the continent. Darfur and the Congo were the only real
extended tragedies still underway; the intensity of the internal conflicts simmering in Algeria, Somalia,
Senegal, and a couple of other places is in all cases lower than a decade ago. This can all change quite
rapidly Ethiopia and Eritrea might soon decide to renew their pointless fighting over uninhabitable
land, for instance, or Kenya could melt down into chaos but right now, the continent seems more
stable than it has ever been. West Africa is quiet, at least for the moment, as is all of
Southern Africa, despite the criminally negligent governance of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. None of
this is to suggest that these places are without problems, of course. But given the rapid increase in the
world population and number of countries (the League of Nations had 63 members at its peak between
the wars, while the United Nations currently has 192), one might expect a great deal more warfare than

We also are witnessing record low levels of the


secondary symptoms of insecurity, such as arms races, military
rivalry, and cold wars. Either we are merely experiencing another of the worlds
there currently is.

occasional peaceful periods (and it would be by far the most remarkable such period ever), or

something about the nature of international politics has changed ,


and for the better. The twentieth century witnessed an
unprecedented pace of evolution in all areas of human endeavor , in
science and medicine, transportation and communication, and even in religion . In such an
atmosphere, perhaps it is not difficult to imagine that attitudes
toward the venerable institution of warfare may also have
experiences similarly rapid evolution, to the point where its
obsolescence could become plausible, even probable, in spite of thousands of
years of violent precedent. Perhaps the burden of proof should be on those
who say that our rules of governing war cannot change, and that it
will someday return with a vengeance. Overall, although the idea
that war is becoming obsolete is gaining ground in academic
circles, it has yet to make much headway in those of policymaking.
One need not be convinced of its wisdom, however, to believe that the United States is an extremely
safe country, or at the very least that its basic existence does not depend on an active presence

No matter what happens in the far corners of the globe, it


would seem, America is going to survive the coming century quite
well. Even those who actively support internationalism have a
hard time demonstrating that there foreign adventures are truly
necessary to assume the basic security of the United States. The
benefits of activist strategies must therefore manifestly outweigh the costs, since the United
States could easily survive inaction, no matter how dire any future
situation appears.
abroad.

War Focus Bad


The exclusive definition of war as something that occurs
between lily white sovereign states rejects the hundreds
of colored wars that happen against the state because
they are seen as Hiccups in the system
Krishna 01 [Sankaran Krishna dept of political science @ university of
hawii @ manoa, Race, Amnesia, and the Education of International
Relations, October-December 2001,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3225/is_4_26/ai_n28886581/]
The list does not include the periods 1815-1839 or 1882-1914, nor any of
similar activities engaged in by European powers other than the British, such
as France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Belgium. In thinking of what it
is that allows these numerous and violent encounters between different
peoples to fall out of the history of international relations, it becomes obvious
that a certain principle of abstraction is at work here, centering on the
concept of "sovereignty." Wars are defined exclusively as the acts of
sovereign powers on each other in a tradition that goes back a long way in IR
discourse, whereas the impressive list above constitutes merely encounters
between various forms of quasi states, native principalities, warlords, tribes,
territories, and puppet regimes, on the one hand, and a sovereign state, on
the other. Such encounters can hence be excised from the genealogy of
international relations. Thus, the Revolt of 1857 that swept across northern
India, resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, and at one point looked likely
to bring a forcible end to the British Raj there, does not count: it is not
between two settled sovereign bounded entities that mutually recognize each
other as authentic states. Rather, it is seen as a hiccup in the pacification of
empire, a mere "Mutiny" as it came to be called, a "domestic" issue that is by
its very definition incapable of altering the Hundred Years' Peace. The
operation of this abstraction of sovereignty to deny the bloody history of the
nineteenth century is no aberration. The same sovereign definition of "war"
informs J. David Singer's voluminous data-gathering enterprise on conflict; it
underlies the effort by Bueno de Mesquita to assess the rational utility
calculations of war initiators; it allowed Rudy Rummell to claim that
"democracies" rarely, if ever, initiate wars with each other or produce
genocides; and for still others to claim (against all the evidence of the
incredibly sanguinary twentieth century) that the Cold War brought stability
and peace to the world order. (7) By deftly defining international as the
encounter between sovereign states, much of a violent world history is
instantly sanitized. A recent study by Bernard Nietschmann finds that of the
120 wars that were ongoing in 1987, only 4 were between sovereign states,
and the vast majority of insurgencies and civil wars were unnoticed because
"the media and academia are anchored in the stat e. Their tendency is to
consider struggles against the state to be illegitimate or invisible. . . . They
are hidden from view because the fighting is against peoples and countries

that are often not even on the map." (8) Among other things, what this
sovereigntist abstraction accomplishes is simple: the loss of lives during
encounters between states and nonsovereign entities is of no consequence. It
needs to be mentioned that the overwhelming number of these casualties
were either brown or black, while sovereignty remained lily-white. The
overwhelming discursive logic of the discipline is oriented toward securing
the state against any other forms of belonging. (9)

This actively sanctions and justifies global violence and


genocide
Krishna 01 [Sankaran Krishna dept of political science @ university of
hawii @ manoa, Race, Amnesia, and the Education of International
Relations, October-December 2001,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3225/is_4_26/ai_n28886581/]
This article argues that the discipline of international relations was and is
predicated on a systematic politics of forgetting, a willful amnesia, on the
question of race. Historically, the emergence of a modern, territorially
sovereign state system in Europe was coterminous with, and indissociable
from, the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the "new" world, the
enslavement of the natives of the African continent, and the colonization of
the societies of Asia. Specifically, I will argue that the discipline of
international relations maintains its ideological coherence via two crucial
strategies of containment that normalize the coeval emergence of modern
sovereignty and dispossession on a global scale: these strategies are
"abstraction" and "redemption." In this article, I flesh out the argument vis-avis "abstraction"; for, reasons of space, however, I can have no more than an
adumbrated discussion of "redemption." First, IR discourse's valorization,
indeed fetishization, of abstraction is premised on a desire to escape history,
to efface the violence, genocide, and theft that marked the encounter
between the rest and the West in the post-Columbian era. Abstraction,
usually presented as the desire of the discipline to engage in theory-building
rather than in descriptive or historical analysis, is a screen that
simultaneously rationalizes and elides the details of these encounters. By
encouraging students to display their virtuosity in abstraction, the discipline
brackets questions of theft of land, violence, and slavery--the three processes
that have historically underlain the unequal global order we now find
ourselves in. Over attention to these details is disciplined by professional
practices that work as taboo: such-and-such an approach is deemed too
historical or descriptive; that student is not adequately theoretical and
consequently is lacking in intellectual rigor; so-and-so might be better off
specializing in comparative politics or history or anthropology; such-and-such
a question does not have any direct policy relevance; and so on. A second
strategy of containment in IR discourse is the idea of deferred redemption.
This operates by an eternal deferment of the possibility of overcoming the

alienation of international society that commenced in 1492. While


"realistically" such overcoming is regarded as well-nigh impossible, its
promise serves as the principle by which contemporary and historical
violence and inequality can be justified and lived with. Redemptive strategies
of containment are reflected in a wide variety of IR discourses: Kant's idea of
perpetual peace as consequent upon international war and dispersion; the
possibility of an international community epitomized in organizations such as
the United Nations; the promise of international socialism; the discourse of
capitalist modernization on the Rostowian model; and more recently, the "end
of history" under the regime of globalization. All these strategies hinge on the
prospect of deferred redemption: the present is inscribed as a transitional
phase whose violent and unequal character is expiated on the altar of that
which is to come.

*** Fusion Centers Version


#2

Counter Terrorism
Advantage

1AC
ISIS attack by July 4th and We Arent Ready
By Sandy Fitzgerald | Sunday, 21 Jun 2015 Newsmax.com
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Devin-Nunes-terrorist-threathigh/2015/06/21/id/651553/#ixzz3eI9aS0Ho Rep. Nunes: US Facing the
'Highest Threat Level We Have Ever Faced'
The United States is facing the "highest threat level we have ever faced"
because of the growing number of foreign fighters entering and leaving Iraq and
Syria and online radicalization of young people , House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes
said Sunday, pointing out that federal officials do not know how many have traveled to the Middle East to
fight with the Islamic State. "They're

very good at communicating through separate avenues,


where it's very difficult to track," the California Republican told CBS' "Face the Nation." "That's
why when you get a young person who is willing to get into these chat rooms, go on the Internet and get

it's something we are not only unprepared [for], we are also not
used to it in this country." FBI Director James Comey has already said there are cases open all
radicalized,

over the country concerning ISIS, and Nunes said Sunday the warnings are especially vital with the July 4

FBI officials told ABC News last week


that several arrests are expected to be made before July Fourth, and that the agency is engaged in
hundreds of investigations into alleged ISIS supporters across all 50 states . The
holiday nearing and large ceremonies planned across the country.

investigation has already led to the arrest of New York college student Munther Omar Saleh, who is being
accused of being an alleged fervent supporter of ISIS, and that he had offered to translate the group's
propaganda into English. Nunes said Sunday he is concerned that it will not be easy to protect Americans

Independence Day ceremonies. "It's just tough to secure those


types of areas if you have someone who wants to blow themselves up or
open fire or other threats of that nature and we just don't know or can track
all of the bad guys that are out there today, " he told CBS.
during the nation's

They Will Use WMDs


By Theodore Schleifer, CNN May 12, 2015 Former CIA official: ISIS
terrorist attack in U.S. is possible
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/12/politics/michael-morell-isis-attack-osama-binladen/
Islamic militants have the ability to direct individuals to conduct small-scale
attacks in the United States and could pose an even greater threat in the future ,
according to the former deputy director of the C entral Intelligence Agency. Michael
Morell, a longtime intelligence analyst who served as acting director of the
agency after the resignation of David Petraeus in 2012 , warned that if ISIS
was allowed to take refuge in Iraq and Syria, they could orchestrate an attack
in the United States. The group has claimed responsibility for a recent attack in Garland, Texas, where
police killed two gunmen. RELATED: Former CIA official takes aim at politicians Morell told CNN's Jake

it is "not far-fetched" that ISIS or other terrorist


groups could gain access to weapons of mass destruction. "That would
be the nightmare scenario: a terrorist attack, here in the United States, here in New
York, another major city, that involved either chemical, biological or other nuclear
weapons," he said. Morell also disputed a report this week by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour
Tapper on "The Lead" that

Hersh that a walk-in informant tipped the United States off to the location of Osama bin Laden before the

American military killed him. "I can't tell you that somebody didn't walk into a station somewhere and say
'I know where Osama bin Laden is.'" Morell said. "But I can guarantee you that no one walk in ever
provided information that actually led us to Osama bin Laden."

Oversaturation of information makes tracking these


threats
Thomas 15 [Kansas City Star, Judy L. Thomas writer for Kansas City Star,
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/18859890]
the focus and some funding for preventing
terrorism at home have dissolved: The 78 fusion centers promoted by the
Department of Homeland Security to be the centerpiece of terror intelligence in
the wake of 9/11 has disrupted a system of police work that previously had
been effective. Despite hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars pumped into them, the
centers are largely autonomous and operated by disparate agencies that sometimes
dont even cooperate with one another. The fusion center victories the DHS touts
often have little to do with domestic terrorism. In fact, many of them involve drug busts,
fugitive apprehension or natural disaster responses. The FBI, which operates more than
100 terrorism task forces, also has struggled to track domestic terrorism
for a variety of reasons, including clashes with fusion centers, critics say. Congress has
But as Islamic extremists continue to wage attacks,

eliminated funding for a Justice Department program that provides anti-terrorism training and resources to
thousands of law enforcement officers. The FBI acknowledges the agency turned its attention to foreign
terrorists after 9/11. Our efforts today remain very heavily focused in the area of the international
terrorism threat, but we have an active domestic terrorism program as well, said spokesman Paul
Bresson. Over the course of time, it has been critical for the FBI to be agile to respond to all emerging
threats, regardless of where they originate. And that is what we have done extremely well over our 107-

A DHS spokesman said his agency, too, was continuing to


give domestic terrorism the attention it needs. Homeland Security protects our
year history.

nation from all threats, whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its
violence, S.Y. Lee said in an email last month. The agency does not concentrate on any particular group

Yet all the while, those who monitor domestic terrorism say
the threat continues to mount. We are five years into the largest
resurgence of right-wing extremism that weve had since the 1990s, said
Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the Anti-Defamation
League, which trains more than 10,000 law enforcement officers a year about
domestic terrorism, extremism and hate crimes. From 2009 through July 2014, Pitcavage said,
authorities were involved in 46 shootouts with domestic extremists. Wh en it comes to domestic
extremism, what tends to happen is that a lot of it goes under the radar, and a
or ideology, Lee said.

lot including murders and what you would think would be major incidents only gets reported locally
and regionally, Pitcavage said. So unless it happens in your backyard, the average American doesnt
quite realize how much of this is happening.

Dirty bombs go nuclear---high risk of theft and attacks


escalate
Dvorkin 12 (Vladimir Z., Major General (retired), doctor of technical sciences, professor, and senior
fellow at the Center for International Security of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations
of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Center participates in the working group of the U.S.-Russia
Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, 9/21/12, "What Can Destroy Strategic Stability: Nuclear Terrorism
is a Real Threat,"
belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22333/what_can_destroy_strategic_stability.html)

Hundreds of scientific papers and reports have been published on nuclear terrorism. International conferences have been
held on this threat with participation of Russian organizations, including IMEMO and the Institute of U.S. and Canadian
Studies. Recommendations on how to combat the threat have been issued by the International Luxembourg Forum on
Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Russian-American Elbe Group, and
other organizations. The UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of
Nuclear Terrorism in 2005 and cooperation among intelligence services of leading states in this sphere is developing. At
the same time, these

efforts fall short for a number of reasons, partly because various acts of
nuclear terrorism are possible. Dispersal of radioactive material by detonation of
conventional explosives (dirty bombs) is a method that is most accessible for terrorists.
With the wide spread of radioactive sources, raw materials for such attacks have become
much more accessible than weapons-useable nuclear material or nuclear weapons. The use
of dirty bombs will not cause many immediate casualties, but it will result into long-term
radioactive contamination, contributing to the spread of panic and socio-economic
destabilization . Severe consequences can be caused by sabotaging nuclear power
plants, research reactors, and radioactive materials storage facilities. Large cities are
especially vulnerable to such attacks. A large city may host dozens of research reactors
with a nuclear power plant or a couple of spent nuclear fuel storage facilities and dozens
of large radioactive materials storage facilities located nearby. The past few years have seen
significant efforts made to enhance organizational and physical aspects of security at facilities, especially at nuclear power
plants. Efforts

have also been made to improve security culture. But these efforts do not
preclude the possibility that well-trained terrorists may be able to penetrate
nuclear facilities . Some estimates show that sabotage of a research reactor in a
metropolis may expose hundreds of thousands to high doses of radiation. A formidable
part of the city would become uninhabitable for a long time . Of all the scenarios, it is building
an improvised nuclear device by terrorists that poses the maximum risk. There are no
engineering problems that cannot be solved if terrorists decide to build a
simple gun-type nuclear device. Information on the design of such devices, as
well as implosion-type devices, is available in the public domain. It is the acquisition of weaponsgrade uranium that presents the sole serious obstacle. Despite numerous preventive measures taken, we cannot rule out
the possibility that such

materials can be bought on the black market. Theft of weapons-

grade uranium is also possible . Research reactor fuel is considered to be


particularly vulnerable to theft, as it is scattered at sites in dozens of countries. There are
about 100 research reactors in the world that run on weapons-grade uranium fuel,
according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A terrorist gun-type
uranium bomb can have a yield of least 10-15 kt, which is comparable to the yield of
the bomb dropped on Hiroshima . The explosion of such a bomb in a modern
metropolis can kill and wound hundreds of thousands and cause serious economic
damage. There will also be long-term sociopsychological and political consequences . The
vast majority of states have introduced unprecedented security and surveillance measures at transportation and other
large-scale public facilities after the terrorist attacks in the United States, Great Britain, Italy, and other countries. These
measures have proved burdensome for the countries populations, but the public has accepted them as necessary. A

nuclear terrorist attack will make the public accept further measures meant to enhance
control even if these measures significantly restrict the democratic liberties they are
accustomed to. Authoritarian states could be expected to adopt even more restrictive
measures. If a nuclear terrorist act occurs, nations will delegate tens of thousands of their secret
services best personnel to investigate and attribute the attack. Radical Islamist groups
are among those capable of such an act. We can imagine what would happen if they do so, given the
anti-Muslim sentiments and resentment that conventional terrorist attacks by Islamists

have generated in developed democratic countries. Mass deportation of the nonindigenous population and severe sanctions would follow such an attack in what will
cause violent protests in the Muslim world. Series of armed clashing terrorist
attacks may follow. The prediction that Samuel Huntington has made in his book
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order may come true. Huntingtons
book clearly demonstrates that it is not Islamic extremists that are the cause of the Western worlds problems. Rather

This is
especially dangerous for Russia because these fault lines run across its territory. To sum it
there is a deep, intractable conflict that is rooted in the fault lines that run between Islam and Christianity.

up, the political leadership of Russia has every reason to revise its list of factors that could undermine strategic stability.
BMD does not deserve to be even last on that list because its effectiveness in repelling massive missile strikes will be
extremely low. BMD systems can prove useful only if deployed to defend against launches of individual ballistic missiles or
groups of such missiles. Prioritization of other destabilizing factorsthat could affect global and regional stabilitymerits
a separate study or studies. But even without them I can conclude that nuclear terrorism should be placed on top of the
list.

The threat of nuclear terrorism is real, and a successful nuclear terrorist

attack would lead to a radical transformation of the global order . All of the threats
on the revised list must become a subject of thorough studies by experts. States need to work hard to forge a common
understanding of these threats and develop a strategy to combat them.

Independently causes extinction via retaliation


Ayson 10 - Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic
Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington (Robert, July. After a
Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism,
Vol. 33, Issue 7. InformaWorld.)
But these two nuclear worldsa non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchangeare not necessarily

some sort of terrorist attack , and especially an act of nuclear terrorism, could
precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons between
two or more of the states that possess them. In this context, todays and tomorrows terrorist groups might assume the place
allotted during the early Cold War years to new state possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a
catalytic nuclear war between the superpowers started by third parties. These risks were
separable. It is just possible that

considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew about nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem. It may require a
considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such a
massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, it might well be wondered just
how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most
obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in supporting that sort of
terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however remote, do suggest themselves. For example,
how might the United States react if it was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from
Russian stocks,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of that nuclear
material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation by Michael May et al. that while the debris
resulting from a nuclear explosion would be spread over a wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and
collectable, and a wealth of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and, most
important some indication of where the nuclear material came from.41 Alternatively, if the act of nuclear terrorism came as a complete
surprise, and American officials refused to believe that a terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at all) suspicion would shift
immediately to state possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and France, and probably Israel and India as
well, authorities in Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North Korea, perhaps Iran if its program continues, and
possibly Pakistan. But at

what stage would Russia and China be definitely ruled out in this high stakes game of
nuclear Cluedo? In particular , if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of existing
tension in Washingtons relations with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded
between these major powers, would officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the
worst? Of course, the chances of this occurring would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of
limited armed conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war, as unlikely as these
developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China
during a period of heightened tension or even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that
might rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack? Washingtons

early
response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil might also raise the possibility of an unwanted (and
nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise and confusion during the
immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president might be expected to place

the countrys armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert. In such a tense
environment, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just possible that Moscow and/or
China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intention s to use force (and possibly nuclear
force) against them. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might grow, although it must be admitted
that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating response. As part of its initial response to the act of nuclear terrorism (as
discussed earlier) Washington might decide to order a significant conventional (or nuclear) retaliatory or disarming attack against the
leadership of the terrorist group and/or states seen to support that group. Depending on the identity and especially the location of these
targets, Russia and/or China might interpret such action as being far too close for their comfort, and potentially as an infringement on their
spheres of influence and even on their sovereignty. One far-fetched but perhaps not impossible scenario might stem from a judgment in
Washington that some of the main aiders and abetters of the terrorist action resided somewhere such as Chechnya, perhaps in connection
with what Allison claims is the Chechen insurgents long-standing interest in all things nuclear.42 American pressure on that part of the
world would almost certainly raise alarms in Moscow that might require a degree of advanced consultation from Washington that the latter
found itself unable or unwilling to provide. There is also the question of how other nuclear-armed states respond to the act of nuclear
terrorism on another member of that special club. It could reasonably be expected that following a nuclear terrorist attack on the United
States, bothRussia and China would extend immediate sympathy and support to Washington and would work alongside the United States in
the Security Council. But there is just a chance, albeit a slim one, where the support of Russia and/or China is less automatic in some cases
than in others. For example, what would happen if the United States wished to discuss its right to retaliate against groups based in their
territory? If, for some reason, Washington found the responses of Russia and China deeply underwhelming, (neither for us or against us)
might it also suspect that they secretly were in cahoots with the group, increasing (again perhaps ever so slightly) the chances of a major
exchange. If the terrorist group had some connections to groups in Russia and China, or existed in areas of the world over which Russia and
China held sway, and if Washington felt that Moscow or Beijing were placing a curiously modest level of pressure on them, what conclusions
might it then draw about their culpability.

Even Limited Casualties Are Sufficient to Trigger the


Impact
NTI 11 Citing Vahid Majidi. Feb. 17 FBI Official Sees 100% Likelihood of WMD Strike on U.S. The Nuclear Threat
Initiative works to strengthen global security by reducing global threats, Vahid Majidi is an FBI senior official.
http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/fbi-official-sees-100-likelihood-of-wmd-strike-on-us/
Newsmax cited the case of Roger Bergendorff, who in 2008 was sentenced to 42 months in prison for possession of the

A WMD event with limited casualties could still


produce terrible psychological effects , Majidi said. "A singular lone wolf individual
can do things in the dark of the night with access to a laboratory with low
quantities of material and could hurt a few people but create a devastating
effect on the American psyche," he said. A would-be attacker working alone
remains a major concern, while intelligence agencies in the U nited States and abroad
have established strategies for identifying schemes developed by terrorist
organizations such as al-Qaeda, according to Majidi. Majidi said his office is pursuing strategies for identifying
preparation of novel bioterrorism materials. "We are not sitting on our hands waiting to
predict what will happen based on what happened yesterday , Majidi said. "You can
lethal toxin ricin (see GSN, Nov. 18, 2008).

design an organism de novo that never existed before. While there is no known articulated threat, this is something that
we feel is a technology or science that potentially can be misused, either accidentally or on purpose."

The Plan is Necessary to Shift From Mass Surveillance to


Targeted Surveillance
Omtzigt and Schirmer 15 (Pieter and GNTER, Mass surveillance: wrong in practice
as well as principle, Open Democracy, Feb 23, 2015, Accessed May 20, 2015, https://www.opendemo...principle)//AD

two solid empirical studies


have shown
that mass surveillance has not proved effective in the prevention of terrorist
attacks, whereas targeted surveillance has. These studies have shown that
those,
who insist on collecting the whole haystack are
not really helping the fight against terrorism
if you target everything, theres
no target.
In fact,

on either side of the Atlantic, cited in the report of the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee,

like the former NSA director, General Keith Alexander,

. Jim Sensenbrenner, a veteran Republican member of Congress, pointed out that the

bigger haystack makes it harder to find the needle. And Thomas Drake, a former NSA executive turned critic, said that

An analysis of the Boston marathon bombing in April 2013 showed that alarm signals pointing to the future perpetrator were lost in a mass of alerts generated by tactics that threw the

. In short, mass surveillance may actually help terrorists because it


diverts limited resources away from traditional law enforcement, which
gathers more intelligence on a smaller set of targets
. By flooding the system
with false positives, big-data approaches to counter-terrorism actually make it
harder to identify and stop the real terrorists before they strike.
net too widely

. In both the Boston and Paris cases, the perpetrators had been on the

radar of the authorities for some time, but the relevant intelligence was not followed up properly because it was drowned in a mass of data

That Makes FBI Surveillance Efficient and Effective


Only Way to Stop Terrorist Plots
Schmidt 15 "Report Credits F.B.I. With Progress Since 9/11, but Says
More Is Needed." The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 Mar. 2015.
Web. 24 June 2015.
The F.B.I. has made great strides since the Sept. 11 attacks

but urgently needs to

improve its intelligence capabilities, hire more linguists and elevate the stature of its analysts to counter the rapidly evolving threats to the United States, according to a

The report by the F.B.I. 9/11 Review Commission said


the bureau had prevented catastrophic terrorist attacks but needed
to improve its ability to collect information from people and to
efficiently analyze it, contending that the bureau lags behind marked advances in law enforcement capabilities. This imbalance needs
report released on Wednesday.

urgently to be addressed to meet growing and increasingly complex national security threats, from adaptive and increasingly tech-savvy terrorists, more brazen computer
hackers and more technically capable, global cyber syndicates, the report said. The 2004 report of the national Sept. 11 Commission and subsequent reviews called for

the report released Wednesday was far less critical.


Rather than a rebuke, it amounts to a status-check on the F.B.I.
transformation that began in 2001. Todays bureau bears little
resemblance to that organization, and some of the areas cited for
improvement are markedly better than they were years ago. For instance,
the 2004 report said that two-thirds of the bureaus analysts were
qualified to perform their jobs. The latest report, by contrast, said, The training and
professional status of analysts has improved in recent years. And while the
major changes to the F.B.I., but

report said the F.B.I. needed more translators, it was much less critical of the bureaus foreign language ability than previous reports were. Many of the reports
recommendations related to issues that the F.B.I.s director, James B. Comey, has raised since he took over the bureau in September 2013. For instance, Mr. Comey has

the F.B.I.s transformation from a law enforcement agency to an intelligence operation. Last year, he
created a high-level executive position to oversee a branch division
meant to expand the use of intelligence across all investigations. He has
also said that raising the profile of analysts, and strengthening their
relationships with agents, are among his chief priorities. I think this is a moment of pride
for the F.B.I., Mr. Comey said Wednesday at a news conference in Washington. An outside group of some of our nations most important leaders and
thinkers has stared hard at us and said, You have done a great job at transforming yourself.
said that one of his biggest priorities is continuing

Theyve also said what Ive said around the country: Its not good enough. He added, There are a lot of ways you can be even better. The review commission was
created by Congress in 2014 to assess the bureaus progress since the attacks. In particular, the panel examined the extent to which the F.B.I. had put into effect the

Many of the findings and recommendations in


this report will not be new to the F.B.I., the latest report said. The bureau is
already taking steps to address them. In 2015, however, the F.B.I. faces an increasingly complicated and
dangerous global threat environment that will demand an accelerated commitment to reform. Everything is moving faster . The
recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission.

principal authors of the report were Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University; Edwin Meese III, the former attorney general; and Timothy J.
Roemer, a former House member from Indiana and former ambassador to India. The panel was particularly critical of how the F.B.I. treats its analysts. It said that despite
its stated intentions to address concerns from its analysts, the bureau did not regard them as a professional work force that needed to be continually trained and

The F.B.I. is far better at


sharing information with other government agencies than it was
before the Sept. 11 attacks, the report said. But it needs to improve how it
communicates with local law enforcement
educated. It said analysts needed to be empowered to question special agents operational assumptions.

authorities and the private sector.

Looking ahead, the F.B.I. will be increasingly dependent upon all domestic and

foreign partnerships to succeed in its critical and growing national security missions including against the rapidly evolving cyber and terrorist threats, the report said.

Cutting Fusion Centers Solves

AT: Fusion Centers Key to Stop Terrorism


FBI Programs Will Fill in and they are more efficient
David Inserra, 4-15-2015, "Time to Reform the U.S. Counterterrorism
EnterpriseNow," Heritage Foundation,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/04/time-to-reform-the-uscounterterrorism-enterprisenow
In the aftermath of 9/11, DHS was created to ensure that silos of information are broken down, and that counterterrorism agents are able to use the best intelligence proactively. While great strides have been made

fusion
centers often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence
reporting to DHS and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever
fusion centers were not meaningfpully contributing to
counterterrorism measures and may have even been harming efforts
the fusion centers serve
cities or regions already covered by 104 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs)
and 56 Field Intelligence Groups (FIGs), which play a similar role to that of
fusion centers. This broad duplication of efforts results in an inefficient and
counterproductive use of counterterrorism funds.
in this direction, DHSs role in the intelligence and information-sharing arenas remain limited. In 2012, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee found that

. It also

provided multiple assessments and examples that show

.[1] More recent reports

also show fusion centers to have mixed results.[2] Meant to serve as hubs of sharing between federal, state, and local officials,

78

often

[3]

In 2013, the DHS Inspector General (IG) reported that DHSs Homeland

Security Information Network (HSIN)designed to share sensitive but not classified information with federal, state, local government, and private-sector partnerswas only being used by a small percentage of all
potential partners. State and local officials stated that one reason for not using HSIN was that the system content was not useful.[4] Since the IG report came out, however, HSIN has successfully migrated to an
updated system and is seeking to add desired content from DHS components.[5] At around 40,000 active users at the end of 2013, HSIN is far short of its 2015 objective of 130,000.[6] Furthermore, a RAND report
sponsored by DHS found that HSIN was only a somewhat useful source of information.[7]

Fusion Centers Dont Solve Counter Terror


Fusion Centers are inefficient mechanisms for data
collection This circumvents their ability in counter terror
operations
Michael German, Policy Counsel for National Security, ACLU Washington
Legislative Office, and Jay Stanley, Public Education Director, ACLU
Technology and Liberty Program, 2007 December Whats Wrong With
Fusion Centers?
https://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/privacy/fusioncenter_20071212.pdf
New institutions like fusion centers must be planned in a public, open manner, and their implications
for privacy and other key values carefully thought out and debated. And like any powerful institution in a

must be constructed in a carefully bounded and limited manner


with sufficient checks and balances to prevent abuse . Unfortunately, the new
fusion centers have not conformed to these vital requirements. Since no two
democracy, they

fusion centers are alike, it is difficult to make generalized statements about them. Clearly not all fusion
centers are engaging in improper intelligence activities and not all fusion center operations raise civil

the lack of a proper legal framework to


regulate their activities is troublesome. This report is intended to serve as a primer that
liberties or privacy concerns. But some do, and

explains what fusion centers are, and how and why they were created. It details potential problems fusion
centers present to the privacy and civil liberties of ordinary Americans, including: Ambiguous Lines of

The participation of agencies from multiple jurisdictions in fusion


centers allows the authorities to manipulate differences in federal, state and
local laws to maximize information collection while evading accountability
and oversight through the practice of policy shopping. r i v a t e S e c t o r P a r t i
c i p a t i o n . Fusion centers are incorporating private-sector corporations
into the intelligence process, breaking down the arms length relationship
that protects the privacy of innocent Americans who are employees or customers of
Authority.

these companies, and increasing the risk of a data breach. M i l i t a r y P a r t i c i p a


t i o n . Fusion centers are involving military personnel in law enforcement activities in troubling

Federal fusion center


guidelines encourage whole sale data collection and manipulation processes
that threaten privacy. E x c e s s i v e S e c r e c y . Fusion centers are hobbled
by excessive secrecy, which limits public oversight, impairs their ability to
acquire essential information and impedes their ability to fulfill their stated
mission, bringing their ultimate value into doubt. The lack of proper legal limits on the new
fusion centers not only threatens to undermine fundamental American values, but also threatens to
turn them into wasteful and misdirected bureaucracies that, like our federal
security agencies before 9/11, wont succeed in their ultimate mission of stopping
terrorism and other crime.
ways. D a t a F u s i o n = D a t a M i n i n g .

Fusion centers hinder war on terror


Smith 12 [Oct 3, 2012, Network World, Ms. Smith Senior Director of
Circulation citing Senate report on fusion centers, Fusion centers don't
find terrorists, filled with 'crap' that violates privacy,

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223243/microsoft-subnet/fusioncenters-don-t-find-terrorists--filled-with--crap--that-violates-privacy.html]
Another chapter on how-it-hindered counterterrorism cited an example of the
"Russian 'cyberattack' in Illinois" where the hacker allegedly cracked into the
utility control system. According to the red-alert fusion center report, the
hacker "sent commands which caused a water pump to burn out." The
Department of Defense said such cyberattacks would be treated as "acts of
war" and the FBI launched an investigation. However, according to the report:
"In truth, there was no intrusion, and DHS investigators eventually concluded
as much. The so-called "intrusion" from Russia was actually an incident of
legitimate remote computer access by a U.S. network technician who was
working while on a family vacation. Almost no part of the initial reports of the
incident had been accurate - not the fusion center report, or DHS's own
intelligence report, or its intelligence briefing. The only fact they got right
was that a water pump in a small Illinois water district had burned
out. That is just one of several examples. The Senate investigation found
that: claims made by DHS did not always fit the facts, and in no case did a
fusion center make a clear and unique intelligence contribution that helped
apprehend a terrorist or disrupt a plot. Worse, three other incidents examined
by the Subcommittee investigation raised significant concerns about the
utility of the fusion centers, and raised the possibility that some centers have
actually hindered or sidetracked federal counterterrorism efforts.

Data Collection Through Fusion Centers Cant Solve


Counter Terrorism
Walker 12 "Fusion Centers: Expensive, Practically Useless, and Bad for
Your Liberty." Reason.com. N.p., 03 Oct. 2012. Web. 22 June 2015.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs has just released a report [pdf] on the "fusion centers" that
pepper the law-enforcement landscape -- shadowy intelligencesharing shops run on the state and local level but heavily funded by
the federal Department of Homeland Security. It is a devastating
document. When a report's recommendations include a plea for the DHS to "track how much money
it gives to each fusion center," you know you're dealing with a system that has some very basic
problems. After

reviewing 13 months' worth of the fusion centers'


output, Senate investigators concluded that the centers' reports
were "oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering
citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally
taken from already-published public sources, and more often than
not unrelated to terrorism." One report offered the vital intelligence that "a certain model
of automobile had folding rear seats that provided access to the trunk without leaving the car," a feature
deemed notable because it "could be useful to human traffickers." Others highlighted illegal activities by
people in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database, which sounds useful until you
hear just what those people did that attracted the centers' attention. One man was caught speeding.
Another shoplifted some shoes. TIDE itself, according to the Senate report, is filled not just with suspected
terrorists but with their "associates," a term broad enough to rope in a two-year-old boy. Nearly a third of

the reports were not even circulated after they were written, sometimes because they contained no useful
information, sometimes because they "overstepped legal boundaries" in disturbing ways: "Reporting on
First Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to violence or criminality; reporting on or improperly
characterizing political, religious or ideological speech that is not explicitly violent or criminal; and
attributing to an entire group the violent or criminal acts of one or a limited number of the group's
members." (One analyst, for example, felt the need to note that a Muslim community group's list of
recommended readings included four items whose authors were in the TIDE database .)

Interestingly, while the DHS usually refused to publish these


problematic reports, the department also retained them for an
"apparantly indefinite" period. Why did the centers churn out so
much useless and illegal material? A former employee says officers
were judged "by the number [of reports] they produced, not by
quality or evaluations they received." Senate investigators were "able to identify only
one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his
mistakes." Specifically, he had to attend an extra week of training. Other issues identified in the Senate
report: Some of the fusion centers touted by the Department of Homeland Security do not, in fact,
exist. Centers have reported threats that do not exist either. An alleged Russian "cyberattack" turned

DHS "was unable to provide an accurate tally of how much it had


granted to states and cities to support fusion centers efforts." Instead
it offered "broad estimates of the total amount of federal dollars
spent on fusion center activities from 2003 to 2011, estimates which
ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion." When you aren't keeping track of how
out to be an American network technician accessing a work computer remotely while on vacation.

much you're spending, it becomes hard to keep track of what that money is being spent on. All sorts of

A center in San Diego "spent nearly $75,000 on


55 flat-screen televisions," according to the Senate report. "When asked
dubious expenses slipped by.

what the televisions were being used for, officials said they displayed calendars, and were used for 'opensource monitoring.' Asked to define 'open-source monitoring,' SD-LECC officials said they meant 'watching

A "2010 assessment of
state and local fusion centers conducted at the request of DHS found
widespread deficiencies in the centers' basic counterterrorism
information-sharing capabilities," for example. "DHS did not share that report with
the news.'" The report is also filled with signs of stonewalling.

Congress or discuss its findings publicly. When the Subcommittee requested the assessment as part of its
investigation, DHS at first denied it existed, then disputed whether it could be shared with Congress,
before ultimately providing a copy." And

then there's the matter of mission


creep. Many centers have adopted an "all-crime, all-hazards"
approach that shifts their focus from stopping terrorism and onto a
broader spectrum of threats. You could make a reasonable case that this is a wiser use of
public resources -- terrorism is rare, after all, and the DHS-driven movement away from the all-hazards
approach in the early post-9/11 years had disastrous results. Unfortunately, the leading "hazards" on the

At any rate, the DHS should


stop citing the centers as a key part of America's counterterrorism
efforts if those centers have found better (or easier) things to do
than trying to fight terror.
fusion centers' agenda appear to be drugs and illegal aliens.

Fusion centers cant solve terrorism


Kenny 12 Jack Kenny, DHS Fusion Centers Spend Much, Learn Little, Mislead a Lot,
Wednesday, 03 October 2012, http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/13097-dhsfusion-centers-spend-much-learn-little-mislead-a-lot

A network of 77 "fusion" intelligence centers, set up around the country


under the auspices of the federal Department of Homeland Security, has over the

past decade uncovered little information that could be useful in defending the
nation against terrorism. It also created numerous reports on the legal,
everyday of activities of ordinary Americans, according to a Senate report released
Tuesday. In Federal Support for And Involvement in State and Local Fusion Centers, the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations wasted no time in panning the work of the centers, which the panel found
to be of little to no value in guarding the nation against the threat of domestic terrorism. Instead,

the

centers themselves pose a threat to our constitutional liberties, as the report noted
early in its executive summary: The Subcommittee investigation found that DHSassigned detailees to the fusion centers forwarded "intelligence" of uneven
quality oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy
Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not
unrelated to terrorism. The centers, established to "fuse' the efforts of state
and law enforcement agencies with those of federal investigators in uncovering security
threats, has produced an undetermined number of reports like the following: "Ten
Book Recommendations for Every Muslim," a list of reading suggestions offered by a Muslim community
group, included books by four authors whose names were listed in a terrorism database. In Santa Cruz,
California, a speaker gave a daylong motivational talk and a lecture on "positive parenting" at a Muslim
center. "Possible Drug Smuggling Activity" was reported by a pair of state wildlife officials who spotted
two men in a fishing boat "operating suspiciously" in water near the U.S.-Mexico border. The report noted
that the fishermen "avoided eye contact" and that their boat appeared to be low in the water, "as if it were
laden with cargo." Fusion centers have created headlines and generated outrage and ridicule in recent
years by sending out alerts about Ron Paul bumper stickers, the American Civil Liberties Union, activists for
and against legalized abortion, and gun-rights advocates. After reviewing more than 600 unclassified

"The subcommittee investigation could identify no


reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a
contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist
plot," said the report of the subcommittee, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, with Tom Coburn
reports over a one-year period,

of Oklahoma the ranking Republican. There is no telling how much taxpayer money was spent in preparing
the fusion reports, since Congress has created such a complicated, multi-sourced grant process that

even Department of Homeland Security officials don't know how much money
they have received and spent on the centers. The fusion centers are UNDER
the authority of the DHS, but are funded mainly by grants to local governments from the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. The Senate panel estimated that somewhere between $289 million and
$1.4 billion in federal appropriations were spent on the fusion centers between 2003 and 2011. Federal
spending accounts for 20 to 30 percent of the costs of operating the fusion centers, the report said, with
the remaining 70 to 80 percent funded by state and local governments. Whatever the total dollar amount

the fusion centers have had enough money to spend heavily on datamining software, flat-screen televisions and , in Arizona, two fully equipped
Chevrolet Tahoes that are used for commuting, investigators found. Though the millions,
is,

or possibly billions, spent on the fusion centers has produced little of value, according to the report,
Congress is unlikely to cut off or even reduce funding for the program. Its effectiveness, or lack thereof, in
uncovering terrorist threats might be less important to members than the politically rewarding effects of

It may also be
difficult to make a convincing case about the inefficiency of the centers in
fulfilling their mission when the Department of Homeland Security can't tell
us what the mission is. Testifying before Congress last year, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet
sending all that money home to state and local law enforcement agencies. And

Napolitano pointed to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force as the federal, state and local effort dealing
directly with the domestic terrorist threat.

Fusion Centers are Ineffective


Kenny 12 Jack Kenny, DHS Fusion Centers Spend Much, Learn Little, Mislead a Lot,
Wednesday, 03 October 2012, http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/13097-dhsfusion-centers-spend-much-learn-little-mislead-a-lot

"A JTTF is really focused on terrorism and terrorism-related investigations ," the
Secretary said. "Fusion centers are almost everything else." Given the difficulty of
evaluating in any definitive way "almost everything else," Congress will likely go on funding
it. Aside from the cost, There are issues of civil liberties involved in the practice of
spying and reporting on the reading and fishing activities or the parenting advice given by people
here in the "Homeland." Indeed the problem has been recognized by officials in the Department of
Homeland Security, who rejected many of the reports cited by the Senate panel. "We cannot report on
books and other writings" just because the authors are named in a terrorism database, a DHS reviewer in
Washington wrote in response to the report on the reading list put out by the Muslim community group.
"The writings themselves are protected by the First Amendment unless you can establish that something in
the writing indicates planning or advocates violent or other criminal activity." "The number of things that
scare me about this report are almost too many to write into this (form)," a Homeland Security reviewer
wrote after analyzing the report on the motivational talk and lecture on "positive parenting" at the Muslim
center in Santa Cruz. The reviewer noted that "the nature of this event is constitutionally protected activity
(public speaking, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion.)" Another reviewer was obviously frustrated
over the report on the men in the fishing boat by officials who suspected drug smuggling. "The fact that
some guys were hanging out in a boat where people normally do not fish MIGHT be an indicator of
something abnormal, but does not reach the threshold of something we should be reporting," the
Homeland Security official wrote, adding that the report "should never have been nominated for
production, nor passed through three reviews." That the report was ultimately nixed should be mildly
encouraging, though the fact that it had earlier passed three reviews says something about the size and

the Senate panel also wanted to know why


reports on legal activities were stored at Homeland Security headquarters in
Washington for a year or more after they had been canceled. The storage is
an apparent violation of the U.S. Privacy Act, which prohibits federal agencies
from keeping information on constitutionally protected activities without a
valid reason. The practice is also in conflict, the report said, with DHS guidelines, which mandate that
efficiency of the DHS bureaucracy. But

once a determination is made that a document should not be maintained, "the U.S person identifying
information is to be destroyed immediately." "It was not clear why, if DHS had determined that the reports
were improper to disseminate, the reports were proper to store indefinitely," the Senate report said. DHS
replied that the canceled reports could still be retained "for administrative purposes such as audit and

Homeland Security Department spokesman Matthew Chandler called


the Senate's report on fusion centers "out of date, inaccurate and
misleading," the Associated Press reported. Chandler faulted the report for
focusing only on information produced by fusion centers while not
considering the benefit to state and local officials in receiving intelligence
from the federal government. Yet the vacuous nature of that "intelligence" appears to be the
entire point of the report. The subcommittee discovered that until this year, the
federal reports officers at the fusion centers received five days of training and
were never tested or graded afterward. One unidentified Homeland Security official
oversight."

described the problem in stark terms: You would have some guys, the information you'd see from them,
you'd scratch your head and say, "What planet are you from?"

Fusion Centers Wont Stop the Next Attack


Fusion Centers Are Not Equipped To Stop the Next Major
Terrorist Attack
Sosadmin 15 "So-called 'counterterror' Fusion Center in Massachusetts
Monitored Black Lives Matter Protesters." So-called 'counterterror' Fusion
Center in Massachusetts Monitored Black Lives Matter Protesters. N.p., 28
Nov. 2014. Web. 24 June 2015.
Law enforcement officials at the Department of Homeland Security-funded Commonwealth Fusion Center spied on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of Black Lives
Matter protesters in Boston earlier this week, the Boston Herald reports. The reference to the so-called fusion spy center comes at the very end of a news story quoting
Boston protesters injured by police in Tuesday nights demonstrations, which was possibly the largest Ferguson related protest in the country the day after the nonindictment of Darren Wilson was announced. The state police Commonwealth Fusion Center monitored social media, which provided critical intelligence about protesters
plans to try to disrupt traffic on state highways, state police said

. There are nearly 100 fusion centers

nationwide,

and two in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth Fusion Center in Maynard is run by the Massachusetts State Police.
The Boston Regional Intelligence Center, also known as the BRIC, is located at Boston Police Department headquarters in Roxbury and run by

Both fusion centers were established with funds from the


Department of Homeland Security, and rely heavily on federal
counterterrorism grants. Fusion centers have long come under fire
from congressional leaders and democracy advocates as being largely wasteful, duplicative of
other local/federal counterterrorism efforts, and violative of civil
rights and civil liberties. In Boston, the ACLU disclosed internal intelligence files showing that BRIC officials used
the BPD.

their federally-funded counterterrorism infrastructure to monitor peaceful protesters including Veterans for Peace and CODEPINK, labeling
them as domestic extremists and homeland security threats. The Boston fusion center even kept track of the political activities of Marty Walsh,

Fusion center officials in Pennsylvania got caught


spying on anti-fracking activists, apparently in league with natural
gas companies. An Arkansas fusion center director told the press his
spy office doesnt monitor US citizens, just anti-government groups
however thats defined. Washington state fusion centers have
insinuated that activism is terrorism. There are many, many other examples nationwide of these socurrently the citys mayor.

called fusion centers getting caught red handed monitoring protest movements and dissidents, conflating First Amendment protected speech

. The fusion centers, meanwhile, have never once


stopped a terrorist attack. Its not clear what beyond monitoring
dissidents and black peoplethrough so-called gang databases
these fusion centers actually do. We here in Boston know one thing for sure:
they dont stop terrorism. Some people might say that counterterrorism analysts at the Commonwealth Fusion
with crime or terrorism

Center should be monitoring the tweets and Facebook posts of Black Lives Matter activists, if those activists intend to shut down highways.
We can agree to disagree about that, but please dont say these fusion centers are primarily dedicated to stopping terrorism when they are
doing things like this. Stopping traffic for a few hours is civil disobedience, not terrorism. A supposed anti-terrorism center has no business
monitoring public social media accounts looking for intelligence about civic protest movements.

Fusion Centers Ineffective


Fusion Centers are ineffective at combating terrorism
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard & Carl Messineo MAY 23, 2014 HIDDEN
ROLE OF FUSION CENTERS IN NATIONWIDE SPYING OPERATION AGAINST
OCCUPY MOVEMENT http://www.infowars.com/hidden-role-of-fusion-centers-in-nationwide-spyingoperation-against-occupy-movement/

This report, based on documents obtained by the Partnership for


Civil Justice Fund, provides highlights and analysis of how the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-funded Fusion Centers used
their vast anti-terrorism and anti-crime authority and funds to
conduct a sprawling, nationwide and hour-by-hour surveillance effort
that targeted even the smallest activity of peaceful protestors in the
Occupy Movement in the Fall and Winter of 2011. It is being released in
conjunction with a major story in the New York Times that is based on the 4,000 pages of
government documents uncovered by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) during a twoyear long investigation. The newly published documents reveal the actual

workings of the Fusion Centers created ostensibly to coordinate


anti-terrorism efforts following the September 11, 2001, attacks in
collecting and providing surveillance information on peaceful
protestors. The new documents roll back the curtain on the Fusion Centers and show the
communications, interactions and emails of a massive national web of federal agents, officials, police, and
private security contractors to accumulate and share information, reporting on all manner of peaceful
and lawful political activity that took place during the Occupy Movement from protests and rallies to
meetings and educational lectures. This enormous spying and monitoring apparatus included the
Pentagon, FBI, DHS, police departments and chiefs, private contractors and commercial business interests.
There is now, with the release of these documents, incontrovertible evidence of systematic and not
incidental conduct and practices of the Fusion Centers and their personnel to direct their sights against a
peaceful movement that advocated social and economic justice in the United States. It bears noting also
that while these 4,000 pages offer the most significant and largest window into the U.S. intelligence and
law enforcements coordinated targeting of Occupy, they can only be a portion of what is likely many more
tens of thousands of pages of materials generated by the nationwide operation. Until now the role of the
Fusion Centers in their application of anti-terrorism authority and resources has been shrouded in secrecy.
In 2012, the Senate issued an investigative report on the Fusion Centers that The Washington Post

The Department
of Homeland Security immediately dismissed and condemned the
report and defended the fusion centers, saying the Senate
investigators relied on out-of-date data, from 2009 and 2010, and
prior years of materials. The public was not privy to the records underlying that investigation,
described as revealing pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions.

however, the documents that the Senate reviewed predated the documents that the Partnership for Civil
Justice Fund has obtained and made public. The newly released documents show that the Department of
Homeland Securitys representations were far from true, that the conduct of the Fusion Centers continued

The American people can now see for themselves how the
U.S. government and the Department of Homeland Security are
spending hundreds of millions of dollars of their money in Fusion
Center operations. These documents, along with materials previously released by the
unabated.

PCJF that exposed the FBI and other domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies targeting of
Occupy,

reveal a U.S. surveillance-industrial apparatus charging


forward in willful disregard for the fundamental civil liberties and
political freedoms of the people. Targeting a peaceful social justice movement as a
criminal or terrorist enterprise is incompatible with a constitutional democracy. These documents

show that the Fusion Centers constitute a menace to democracy.

This
gross misuse of U.S. taxpayers money also demonstrates that the Fusion Centers are a colossal rat hole of
waste. The Fusion Centers should be defunded and ended immediately. Coinciding with the publication of
these new documents and this report, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has initiated a nationwide
campaign to End the Fusion Centers! The campaign includes a mass email and letter-writing effort to
President Obama and all members of Congress calling on them to defund and end the Fusion Centers. As
part of the End the Fusion Centers campaign and to broaden awareness of the dangers posed by the
Fusion Centers, the PCJF has also made the new documents fully available to the public and to the media in
searchable format at BigBrotherAmerica.org.

The Fusion Centers are Incompatible with Democracy and


Must Be Ended
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard & Carl Messineo MAY 23, 2014 HIDDEN
ROLE OF FUSION CENTERS IN NATIONWIDE SPYING OPERATION AGAINST
OCCUPY MOVEMENT http://www.infowars.com/hidden-role-of-fusion-centers-in-nationwide-spyingoperation-against-occupy-movement/

The new Fusion Center documents demonstrate the workings of a


self-perpetuating Surveillance-Industrial Complex. In the name of
fighting terrorism, and with ever-regular admonitions to the
American public that these institutions must be given a blank check
in the name of national security, a limitless funding stream flows
from the American people into the pockets of those who profit and
benefit from this system. These documents reveal what our money is
being wasted on and, critically, how it is being used in derogation of
our fundamental rights and liberties. The people of the United
States do not want to live as a nation under constant surveillance,
targeted by government counterterrorism and intelligence agencies
when they engage in the exercise of basic rights to free speech. The
American people have the right and ability to decide the nature of
the society in which they live. We are calling on elected officials to
defend the Constitution and democratic rights by defunding and
ending the Fusion Centers.

Info Gathering Intel Gap


Fusion centers create information redundancies that
offset the programs effectiveness
Inserra 2015, David Inserra Research Associate, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, 15 April
2015, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/04/time-to-reform-the-us-counterterrorismenterprisenow. PE

the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee


found that fusion centers often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate
intelligence reporting to DHS and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever. It also
provided multiple assessments and examples that show fusion centers were not
meaningfully contributing to counterterrorism measures and may have even
been harming efforts.[1] More recent reports also show fusion centers to have mixed results.[2]
Meant to serve as hubs of sharing between federal, state, and local officials, the 78 fusion centers
often serve cities or regions already covered by 104 FBI Joint Terrorism Task
Forces (JTTFs) and 56 Field Intelligence Groups (FIGs), which play a similar role to
that of fusion centers.[3] This broad duplication of efforts results in an
inefficient and counterproductive use of counterterrorism funds.
In 2012,

Fusion centers create intelligence gaps Boston


Marathon Bombings prove
Ward 2013, Kenric Ward (national correspondent and chief of the Virginia Bureau for
Watchdog.org. Formerly a reporter and editor at two Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers), How 'Fusion
Center' flopped in Boston Marathon bombing, 23 May 2013, http://www.examiner.com/article/how-fusioncenter-flopped-boston-marathon-bombing. PE

Fusion Centers massive data-retention facilities funded in part by the


Department of Homeland Security have spread out across 77 cities, collaborating with local
Federal

law-enforcement agencies to identify and defuse terrorist threats. But the center in Massachusetts, an
early adopter of the intelligence-gathering program,

failed to stop the two accused


Boston Marathon bombers. Indeed, in the run-up to the attack, officials
acknowledged that the left arm of the law didnt know what the right arm was
doing. Testifying at the House Homeland Security Committee this month, Boston Police Commissioner
Edward Davis said he was unaware that the FBI had, in 2011, questioned one of the brothers implicated in
the deadly street bombing. In

a literal sense, the homeland security system that we


built after 9/11 to protect the American people from terrorist attacks failed to
stop the Tsarnaev brothers, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., told the panel. In 2004,
then-Gov. Mitt Romney established the Commonwealth Fusion Center as part of a national effort to
centralize and expand governments ability to collect and retain personal information for the professed
purpose of preventing terrorism. Federal Fusion Center guidelines declare, Leaders must move forward
with a new paradigm on the exchange of information and intelligence. The American Civil Liberties Union
calls the centers a powerful intelligence data hub. It makes a mountain of electronic information
from a wide array of public and commercial sources available to law-enforcement officials, who can
collect, share and comb through it, going far beyond the bounds of ordinary criminal investigations, the
ACLU said in a statement. In Boston, that process produced more confusion than clarity. Alongside the

the Boston
Regional Intelligence Center. Despite the bureaucratic overlap or because
of it Davis testified that neither the city nor his department was told that
Massachusetts fusion center, the Boston Police Department ran a companion operation,

Russian intelligence agents had explicitly warned U.S. officials about


Tamerlan Tsarnaev. This is a case where redundancy actually creates
intelligence gaps, ACLU senior policy counsel Mike German told Watchdog.org from his Washington,
D.C., office.

Accurate Intel Key


Accurate intel is more necessary than ever and is to
needed to stop terrorist plots
Lee and Schwartz 04 [Ronald D. and Paul M. respectively, Professor
Ronald Lee holds an M.A. in Demography from the University of California,
Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. He spent a
postdoctoral year at the National Institute of Demographic Studies, Professor
and author Paul Schwartz (born 1959) is a noted expert in information privacy
law. He is the Jefferson E. Peyser Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law
and a Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, Beyond the
War on Terrorism: Towards the New Intellligence Network January 1, 2004]
In Terrorism, Freedom, and Security, Philip B. Heymann undertakes a wide-ranging study of how the United
States can - and in his view should - respond to the threat of international terrorism. A former Deputy
Attorney General of the United States Department of Justice ("DOJ") and current James Barr Ames Professor
of Law at Harvard Law School, Heymann draws on his governmental experience and jurisprudential
background in developing a series of nuanced approaches to preventing terrorism.1 Heymann makes clear
his own policy and legal preferences. First, as his choice of subtitle suggests, he firmly rejects the widely
used metaphor of the United States engaging in a "war" on terrorism. Heymann views this mental model
and the policies it spawns or is said to justify as, at best, incomplete, and, at worst, ineffective in
preventing terrorist attacks and harmful to democracy in the United States (pp. 19-36). Second,

Heymann advocates the paramount importance of intelligence to identify and


disrupt terrorists' plans and to prevent terrorists from attacking their targets
(p. 61). Heymann observes that the United States needs both "tactical intelligence" to
stop specific terrorist plans and "strategic intelligence" to understand the
goals, organization, resources, and skills of terrorist organizations (p. 62). At the
same time, however, a heightened reliance on accurate and timely intelligence comes with risks. Heymann
is concerned about the creation and consequences of an "intelligence state" in the United States. Here is
the crux of the problem for both the government and the governed:

we need precise, detailed,

and accurate intelligence more than ever, but the agencies that comprise the United States
Intelligence Community ("USIC") can cause harm to the fabric of civic society because of their informationgathering capabilities

AT: Intel From Fusion Centers Key to Stop


Terrorism
Oversaturation of information makes predicting terrorism
linkages impossible
Chad Foster, chief policy analyst,The Council of State Governments and
Gary Cordner, professor, College of Justice & Safety, Eastern Kentucky
University 2005 The Impact of Terrorism on State Law Enforcement The
Council of State Governments and Eastern Kentucky University Joint Report
State police have many competing public safety and law enforcement priorities today. As is often the case
when new crimes surface, these agencies are struggling with incorporating new terrorism-related
demands into the existing crime-fighting framework. To this end, two views or approaches are embraced
dedicating personnel for terrorism-related duties, or fully integrating terrorism into other crime
prevention duties, the all crimes approach. The dedicated-personnel model is partly predicated on the
assumption that terrorists and terrorist-related activities are not closely linked to other more traditional
criminal activity such as financial crimes and drug smuggling. The requirements for fighting terrorism are
unlike those for dealing with these other crimes. Advocates of this model also argue for a separate,
specialized approach because the risks and stakes associated with terrorism are extremely high, and this
approach prevents mission creep into other law enforcement priorities. This is a valid concern,
especially given how agencies today measure performance through quantitative factors such as number
of arrests and prosecutions. Unlike other crimes, three years could pass before one state-level arrest is
made related to terrorism. A preponderance of states and experts believe

that a nexus does exist

among types of criminal activity, including illegal drug operations, money laundering, fraud,
identity theft and terrorism. It is well known that some of the Sept. 11 terrorists were cited for traffic
violations prior to the attacks while others obtained and used fraudulent drivers licenses.8 Many experts
believe there to be a high probability to identify terrorists through their involvement in precursor or lower
level criminal activity, as was possible with the Sept. 11 terrorists. Proponents of this model argue that

This strategy
ensures that possible precursor crimes are screened and analyzed for
linkages to larger-scale terrorist activities. Furthermore, experts believe that terrorists will
an all crimes approach to terrorism prevention should be embraced by the states.

behave like fugitives if pressured by law enforcement from many different levels and angles. Thus,
terrorists will become vulnerable by resorting to criminal activity to support terrorist-related operations.
Emergency management professionals use a similar approach, known as all hazards, for emergency

Although possible, making these linkages appears


to be extremely difficult. First, there is a shortage of research about the
precursor crimes-terrorism nexus. Evidence is needed suggesting how certain
types of crimes are more or less prone to supporting terrorism-related
activities. Otherwise, law enforcement analysts and investigators are likely
scanning very broadly for linkages, wasting precious time and resources.
response and preparedness.

More concrete evidence would help law enforcement home in on those crimes that have the greatest
chance for supporting terrorist-related activities.

Terror Threat High

Terror Attack Coming July 4th


Security Experts Agree Attack On July 4th
By Evan Perez and Shimon Prokupecz, CNN June 27, 2015
Authorities warn of possible terrorist threats around July 4
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/politics/july-4-terror-threats/
Authorities are warning of possible terrorist threats around the July 4 holiday ,
several law enforcement officials told CNN on Friday. The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI
and the National Counterterrorism Center issued a joint intelligence bulletin
to law enforcement across the U.S. The bulletin doesn't warn of any known active plots.
But it serves as a general warning of heightened threats. It says extremists could
launch attacks tied to Independence Day or in reaction to perceived
defamation of the Prophet Mohammed. CNN reported in recent weeks that U.S. law
enforcement officials believe the Islamist terrorist threat is the highest in
years. The officials have raised concern about possible domestic attacks tied to the July 4 holiday and
the upcoming visit of Pope Francis.

Terrorists Can Get in From Mexico


Terrorists groups from around the globe pushing past the
southern borders
Wilson 15, Read Wilson (Writer for Washington Post), Washington Post, Texas officials warn of
immigrants with terrorist ties crossing southern border, 26 Feb 2015,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/02/26/texas-officials-warn-of-immigrants-withterrorist-ties-crossing-southern-border/. PE

A top Texas law enforcement agency says border security organizations have
apprehended several members of known Islamist terrorist organizations
crossing the southern border in recent years, and while a surge of officers to
the border has slowed the flow of drugs and undocumented immigrants, its
costing the state tens of millions of dollars. In a report to Texas elected officials, the state
Department of Public Safety says border security agencies have arrested several Somali immigrants
crossing the southern border who are known members of al-Shabab, the
terrorist group that launched a deadly attack on the Westgate shopping mall
in Nairobi, Kenya, and Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, another Somalia-based group once funded by Osama bin Laden.
Another undocumented immigrant arrested crossing the border was on
multiple U.S. terrorism watch lists, the report says . According to the report, one
member of al-Shabab, apprehended in June 2014, told authorities he had
been trained for an April 2014 suicide attack in Mogadishu . He said he escaped and
reported the planned attack to African Union troops, who were able to stop the attack. The FBI believed another
undocumented immigrant was an al-Shabab member who helped smuggle several potentially dangerous terrorists into

Authorities also apprehended


immigrants who said they were members of terrorist organizations in Sri
Lanka and Bangladesh. The Department of Public Safety said the report, first published by the Houston
the U.S. [Drone strike kills senior al-Shabab official in Somalia]

Chronicle, was not meant for public distribution. [T]hat report was inappropriately obtained and [the Chronicle was] not
authorized to possess or post the law enforcement sensitive document, department press secretary Tom Vinger said in an

The department said


it had come into contact in recent years with special interest aliens, who
come from countries with known ties to terrorists or where terrorist groups
thrive. Those arrested include Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans and
Pakistanis. In all, immigrants from 35 countries in Asia and the Middle East
have been arrested over the past few years in the Rio Grande Valley . The
e-mail. U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to requests for comment.

department says there is no known intelligence that specifically links undocumented immigrants to terrorism plots, but

the authors warn its almost certain that foreign terrorist


organizations know of the porous border between the U.S. and
Mexico. It is important to note that an unsecure border is a vulnerability
that can be exploited by criminals of all kinds, Vinger said. And it would be naive
to rule out the possibility that any criminal organizations around the world,
including terrorists, would not look for opportunities to take advantage of
security gaps along our countrys international border . Even without the threat of foreign
terrorists making their way across the border, Texas law enforcement officials say seven of the
eight major Mexican drug cartels operate throughout Texas . Those cartels have sent
assassins as far north as the Dallas-Fort Worth area to commit murders, and the drug trade is thriving. The cartels
are also branching into sex trafficking, which can present a lower risk and
yield a higher profit than the drug trade, the report says . Law enforcement officials have
uncovered major trafficking rings operating in Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and several east
coast cities. Almost all human smuggling rings have ties to the Mexican drug cartels, the report found, and in many cases

undocumented immigrants are kept locked in small, confined spaces where they go days without food or water. Law
enforcement officials found one stash house in the Houston area crammed with 115 illegal immigrants. The report says
the Gulf, Zeta, Juarez and Sinaloa cartels have the most prominent footprints in Texas. O fficials

are also
worried about the growing influence of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that
originated in Los Angeles. The cartels have been effective in corrupting U.S.
law enforcement officials at all levels, the DPS report says. But the surge of Texas DPS officers,
National Guard troops and other law enforcement officials, ordered by then-Gov. Rick Perry (R) last June, has worked to
stem last years flood of undocumented immigrants crossing into the Rio Grande Valley. [Gov. Perry to send National
Guard troops to Mexican border amid migrant crisis]

Border officials apprehended 313,000


immigrants in FY 2014, nearly three times the number caught in FY 2011.

In
recent months, that number has diminished significantly. The report said the number of arrests per week had fallen from a
high of about 6,000 to around 2,000. The surge has also led to the seizure of more than $1.8 billion worth of cartel drugs,
or about 150 tons of marijuana, 588 pounds of cocaine and 320 pounds of methamphetamines. Cartels have shifted
marijuana trafficking west, from McAllen to the small towns of Escobares and Roma. The cartels are sending scouts to
watch U.S. border patrol officers, and they believe the Texas border surge will end soon, once the money runs out,

DPS said the


state and National Guard have spent more than $102 million deploying troops
and officers and bolstering surveillance capabilities . The state has already installed 1,224
according to intelligence collected by the Department of Public Safety. It is not without costs.

surveillance cameras along the border, and another 4,000 cameras will be installed in the coming months. Fully securing
the border would require the constant presence of an incredible number of troops as many as 76,000, the report found.
This summer, the surge sent about 1,000 National Guard soldiers to the border.

Terrorists can be smuggled in through the Mexican border


Example of four men from Istanbul
Dinan 14 [Stephen, is national political correspondent for The Washington
Times, covering the 2008 presidential elections and politics. He also covers
immigration legislation and politics for the paper. Before becoming political
correspondent he ran the paper's congressional bureau, then served as White
House correspondent, 4 Turkish terrorists caught in Texas after being
smuggled across border, The Washington Times, November 12, 2014]
Four men flew from Istanbul through Paris to Mexico City in late August,
where they were met by a Turkish-speaking man who stashed them in a safe
house until their Sept. 3 attempt to cross into the U.S. over the border with
Mexico. Their capture by the Border Patrol in Texas set off a fierce debate over the mens intentions,
with some members of Congress saying they were terrorist fighters. Homeland Security officials, including
Secretary Jeh Johnson, countered that they were part of the Kurdish resistance which, like the U.S., is

the men are linked to anti-U.S. jihadists or not,


admitted to being part of a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and their
ability to get into the U.S. through the southern border they paid $8,000
each to be smuggled into Texas details the existence of a network capable
of bringing terrorists across the border. The four mens story, as discerned from internal
fighting the Islamic States advance in Iraq. But whether
they

September and October documents reviewed by The Washington Times, also seems to contrast with what
Mr. Johnson told Congress in September, when he assured lawmakers that the four men were not
considered terrorist threats to the U.S., even as behind the scenes his department proposed the four be
put on terrorist watch lists. Homeland Security spokeswoman Marsha Catron said the individuals werent
associated with the Islamic State, which is also known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS. The suggestion that
individuals who have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the southwest border is categorically false,
and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground, Ms. Catron said. DHS
continues to have no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross
the southwest border. She did not reply to questions about the status of the four men or why her
department proposed they be put on terrorist watch lists. As of a month ago they were being held at the

The men initially claimed to be members of


the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Party/Front, known by the acronym
South Texas Detention Facility in Pearsall, Texas.

DHKP/C. The group is a Marxist insurgency that claimed credit for a 2013
suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkeys capital, last
year. But U.S. counterterrorism officials said the men were more likely members of the PKK, or Kurdistan
Workers Party, which has been battling for Kurdish rights within Turkey for decades, though recently PKK
and Turkish leaders have tried to broker a political agreement.

Terrorists can sneak in through Mexico An Al Qaeda


terrorist was able to do it for years without getting
caught
Judicial Watch 14 [is a politically conservative, nonpartisan
government watchdog group. According to its mission statement, it
"advocates high standards of ethics and morality in America's public life and
seeks to ensure that political and judicial officials do not abuse the powers
entrusted to them by the American people.", Al Qaeda Terrorist Wanted by
FBI Crossed Back and Forth Into U.S. From Mexico, December 8, 2014]
An Al Qaeda terrorist on the FBIs most wanted list for years crossed back and
forth into the United States from Mexico to meet fellow militant Islamists in
Texas and piloted an aircraft into the Cielo Dorado airfield in Anthony, New
Mexico, law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. The same Al Qaeda operative helped
plan the 2009 bombing of talk-show superstar Oprah Winfreys Chicago
studios and the iconic Sears Tower (renamed Willis Tower), a story that Judicial Watch broke
just last week. His name is Adnan G. El Shukrijumah (also known as Javier Robles) and over
the weekend he was killed in Pakistan, according to military officials in the Islamic republic. In 2010
Shukrijumah was indicted in the Eastern District of New York for his role in a
terrorist plot to attack targets in the United Statesincluding New York Citys
subway systemand the United Kingdom, according the FBI. The plot against
New York Citys subway system was directed by senior Al Qaeda leadership in
Pakistan, the FBI says, and was also directly related to a scheme by Al Qaeda
plotters in Pakistan to use Western operatives to attack a target in the United
States. A year earlier Shukrijumah helped plan a terrorist truck-bomb plot targeting Winfreys Harpo
Studios and the Sears Tower. Two of his fellow conspiratorsEmad Karakrah and Hector Pedroza Huerta
were recently arrested for unrelated state crimes in different parts of the country. Karakrah is in Cook
County, Illinois Jail on charges of making a false car bomb threat after leading police on a high-speed chase
through Chicago with an ISIS flag waving from his car in August. Huerta, an illegal alien twice convicted for

The
men form part of a sophisticated narco-terror ring, exposed by JW in October,
with connections running from El Paso to Chicago to New York City . It includes an
driving intoxicated, is in the El Paso County Jail and is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.

all-star lineup of logistics and transportation operatives for militant Islamists in the United State, drug and
weapons smugglers for the Juarez drug cartel in Mexico, an FBI confidential informant gone rogue and two

Despite being one of the FBIs


most wanted terrorists, Shukrijumah for years managed to slip in and out of
the U.S. through the southern border to meet fellow militant Islamists including
Karakrah and Huertain the El Paso region, JWs law enforcement sources confirm. In fact, in March
of the FBIs most wanted terrorists. Shukrijumah is one of them.

the most wanted terrorist piloted a private aircraft from Mexico into the airfield at Cielo Dorado in Anthony
New Mexico, according to JWs high-level government sources.

ISIS Can Get WMD Through Mexico


ISIS claims ability to smuggle nukes over the southern
border
Blake 2015, Eben Blake (intern covering general affairs at IBTimes in New York City. He is
currently pursuing a degree in English and History at Brown University and previously worked at The Brown
Daily Herald as the Arts and Culture Editor), Islamic State Nuclear Weapons: ISIS Claims It Can Smuggle
Devices Through Nigeria, Mexico To The United States, 3 June 2015, International Business Times,
http://www.ibtimes.com/islamic-state-nuclear-weapons-isis-claims-it-can-smuggle-devices-through-nigeria1950280. PE

The Islamic State group claims it could purchase a nuclear device from
Pakistan and transport it to the United States through drug-smuggling
channels. The group, also known as ISIS and ISIL, would transfer the nuclear weapon
from Pakistan to Nigeria or Mexico, where it could be brought to South
America and then up to the U.S., according to an op-ed allegedly written by
kidnapped British photojournalist John Cantlie and published in Dabiq, the
group's propaganda magazine. The op-ed said that Boko Haram, the Nigerian jihadist
group that announced its formal allegiance to ISIS in March, would make their
efforts to transport a weapon to the U.S. much easier, reported Nigerian
newspaper Premium Times. ISIS claims the Nigerian army is in a "virtual state of collapse" because of its

While U.S. officials have dismissed the ability of the group


to acquire or transport a nuclear weapon, Indian Minister of State Defense
Rao Inderjit Singh said at the Shangri-La regional security conference in
Singapore last weekend that "[w]ith the rise of ISIL in West Asia, one is afraid to an
extent that perhaps they might get access to a nuclear arsenal from states
like Pakistan," Bloomberg reported. Cantlie describes how ISIL would hypothetically call on
supporters in Pakistan to "purchase a nuclear device through weapons
dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region, " after which it would be
"transported overland until it makes it to Libya" when " the mujahedeen move
it south to Nigeria." It would then be moved to South America in the same
method that "drug shipments bound for Europe pass through West Africa ,"
war against Boko Haram.

according to Premium Times. After transporting the device through the "porous borders of South America"
to Mexico, it would be "just

a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel" to bring


the nuclear bomb into America. Since his abduction in 2012, Cantlie has appeared in
multiple ISIS propaganda videos, including the series "Lend Me Your Ears."

Terrorists Can Get in From Canada


Canadian/U.S. border lacks security- enables terrorists
Inquisitr 2014, ISIS Terrorist Crosses Border From Canada To America By Boat [Video], 8 Sept
2014, http://www.inquisitr.com/1461442/isis-terrorist-crosses-border-from-canada-to-america-by-boatvideo/#e64QiKJ55wvxRvZs.99. PE

A man dressed as an ISIS terrorist entered the U.S. from Canada across Lake
Erie without getting caught. This border crossing stunt is portrayed in the latest video
from muckraking journalist James OKeefe and the Project Veritas group to demonstrate border
insecurity in this instance in Cleveland, Ohios, backyard. See embed below. According to the video, the Border
Patrol seldom monitors Lake Erie, while the Coast Guard shows up only
occasionally. The porous U.S.-Mexican border has received a lot of publicity given
the recent illegal immigration surge, but apparently the Canadian border over
water is also undefended assuming this video is accurate. Operators of small pleasure vessels are supposed to check in with immigration
officials via the honor system when they leave U.S. waters. Whether that occurs in practice is another matter. Moreover, hiring a small boat
from Canada to the middle of Lake Erie could not be easier, and no one
seemed to notice the terrorist on board, OKeefe claimed. On the eve of the
9/11 anniversary, OKeefe pointed out that U.K. intelligence officials have
revealed that hundreds of jihadis (including the individual that allegedly
murdered American journalist James Foley) hold British passports, enabling
them to fly to Canada without a visa. America is just a short boat ride away from Ontario. In the OKeefe video, the makebelieve ISIS terrorist walks into Clevelands Rock and Roll Hall of Fame carrying a suspicious duffel bag without being stopped. In a previous video, OKeefe and company
showed how someone dressed up like Osama bin Laden could cross the Rio Grande from Mexico to the U.S. undetected. Although OKeefe has his share of detractors for
his particular brand of journalism, the Project Veritas team has exposed primarily through undercover videos possible election law violations by the Wendy Davis for
governor campaign, the corrupt ACORN organization, other instances of voter fraud, apparent chicanery in the Obamacare navigator program, and revealed that some
outspoken anti-gun journalists declined to post gun-free zone signs outside their own homes. His group also exposed potential abuses in the so-called Obamaphone

As The Inquisitr previously reported, an Infowars journalist dressed as an


ISIS militant walked across the Mexican border into Texas near El Paso
carrying a simulated severed head without being detained. According to Judicial Watch, ISIS has
program.

targeted the Fort Bliss U.S. military base in El Paso for a possible attack.

Canadian/U.S border control creates security gap


Mora 2011, Edwin Mora (Writer for CNS News), Canadian Border Bigger Terror Threat Than
Mexican Border, Says Border Patrol Chief, 18 May 2011, http://cnsnews.com/news/article/canadian-borderbigger-terror-threat-mexican-border-says-border-patrol-chief. PE

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has apprehended more
suspected terrorists on the nations northern border than along its southern
counterpart, CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin said Tuesday. In terms of the terrorist threat,
its commonly accepted that the more significant threat comes from the
U.S.-Canada border, Bersin told a hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration,
Refugees, and Border Security. Bersin attributed the situation, in part, to the fact that
the U.S. and Canada do not share information about people placed on their
respective no-fly lists. As a result, individuals deemed a threat who fly into
one country may then cross the land border into the other . Because of the fact that
we do not share no-fly [list] information and the Canadians will not, we are more than we would like
confronted with the fact where a [person designated as a] no-fly has entered Canada and then is arrested
coming across one of our bridges into the United States, he said. As it screens air travelers, the
Department of Homeland Securitys Transportation Security Administration places individuals who are
considered a threat to aviation on a no-fly list, which is a subset of the terrorist watchlist. Bersins
comments came after the subcommittees ranking Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, asked him about
the relative numbers of people apprehended along the northern and southern borders. He responded
that the detentions and arrests along the border with Canada were a small, small fraction when

compared to the number apprehended in the south. "That doesnt mean that we dont face significant
threats along the northern border, he added. CBP figures for fiscal year 2010 indicate that 447,731
illegal crossers were apprehended along the southwest border and 7,431 along the U.S.-Canada border.
Cornyn noted during the hearing that the FY2010 arrests along the southwest border included 59,000
individuals from countries other than Mexico. Last March, the senator told a conference on border security
that of those 59,000 people, 663 came from special-interest countries like Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan,
Somalia, and Yemen and from countries that have been designated by the U.S. Department of State as
state-sponsors of terror Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan. Speaking to reporters after Tuesdays hearing,

Bersin said his agency has recorded more cases of people with suspected
terrorist backgrounds or links to terror organizations entering the U.S. from
Canada than from Mexico. That doesnt mean that were not looking for it
on both borders, south and north, he said . Bersin said people who are on the no-fly list
for a variety of reasons may enter Canada, because theyre entitled under Canadian
laws to do so, and then they attempt to cross into the United States by way of
bridge or tunnel border crossings. CBP officers have stopped that, he said, but without quantifying the
number of suspected terrorist arrests by CBP.

Bersin told reporters Canadian authorities


do not act on no-fly list information provided by the U.S. government if it
affects a Canadian citizen. This, he said, creates a security gap. Under the
Canadian charter as thats been interpreted to me they do not believe that they can accept information
that would affect Canadian citizens, and therefore dont.

Dozens of unmanned crossings allow easy access to


terrorists
John 2014, Gavin John (Writer for Fox News), Sheer size of US-Canada border stokes terrorism
fears, 17 Nov 2014, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/11/17/sheer-size-us-canada-border-stokes-terrorismfears/. PE

Lone-wolf terrorists heeding Islamic States call to attack inside North


America could move easily between the U.S. and Canada, where the
enormous border cuts through four Great Lakes and vast areas of remote
tundra crisscrossed by back roads seldom seen by either nations border
patrol agents, experts say. Last months attack on the Canadian capital
sparked fresh concerns about the potential cross-border movement of
jihadists, an issue former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell raised last month, saying terrorists radicalized
in Canada can easily make their way into the U.S. But Canada may have just as much to fear
from terrorists coming north from the U.S., and experts say the only practical solution is close cooperation and careful
monitoring of threats by both governments. To have a secure border, there has to be a partnership with the person on
the other side, said Mike Milne, spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. I cant emphasize enough that
the partnership with the Canadians is really what makes the border work and we have a great team. They go hand in
hand.

Nearly a million people use one of the 300 official border crossings
every day, leaving open the possibility of passport fraud and human
smuggling. But if terrorists already inside the U.S. or Canada are determined
to move undetected between the two nations, there are many undefended
passages along the 5,500-mile border. Crossings near the densely-populated areas of
Montreal and Toronto to the east and Vancouver in the west are closely guarded, but the vast area in between is not. And
to the north, the Alaska border alone covers more than 1,500 miles, much of it unguarded. "To stop somebody who has
been radicalized in Canada from coming across that border requires that you know about them, that the Canadians know
about them and tell us, and that they try to cross that border illegally," Morell said in a CBS interview. "There are many,

Along the 545-mile border between


Montana and Alberta, for example, there are six official, manned ports of
entry. But FoxNews.com found dozens more unofficial and undefended
crossings. A stretch of road that runs parallel to the border just outside of Sweetgrass, Mont., includes six roads
many ways to cross that border illegally, so I worry about that."

that cross between the countries with nothing but an occasional sign notifying travelers of the border. Canada has
divided the responsibility of protecting the border between the Canadian Border Services Agency at the official ports of
entry, and the RCMP in between those points. The RCMP has a specific unit called Integrated Border Enforcement Team

"Since the terrorist attacks of September 11,


2001, the focus of the Border Patrol has changed to detection, apprehension
and/or deterrence of terrorists and terrorist weapons." - U.S. Customs and Border
that is solely dedicated to protection of the border.

Protection mission statement In the U.S., Customs and Border Patrol under the Department of Homeland Security, is
divided into three difference factions, each in charge of a different aspect of border security. The Office of Field Operations
coordinates and facilitates entry of goods and people at the official ports of entry, while the U.S. Border Patrol secures the
border between the ports of entry. Lastly, the Office of Air and Marine patrols the border from the air and sea. For the
Border Patrol, the main objective is stopping terrorists from coming into the U.S., as evidenced by the agency's own
mission statement. "Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the focus of the Border Patrol has changed to detection,

The overt
call from Islamic State, beckoning its sympathizers to attack inside the U.S.
and Canada, both of which are taking part in airstrikes aimed at ISIS in Iraq
and Syria, has lawmakers worried about the border. "There is a great concern
that our southern border and our northern border is porous and that they will
be coming across," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, said in September. Canadian officials say that under Prime
apprehension and/or deterrence of terrorists and terrorist weapons," reads the first line of the statement.

Minister Stephen Harper, who took office in 2006, the nation has increased its own border patrols by more than 25
percent. Canada also has recently undertaken tough new counter-terrorism measures and moved to revoke citizenship
from dual nationals shown to have fought with terror groups overseas. The U.S.-Canada border is approximately 5,500
miles long, including the Alaskan boundary. (CBP) The number of apprehensions of people illegally crossing in from
Canada fell to 3,230 last year, down nearly 1,000 from 2012 and marking at least a 20-year low. By contrast, the Border
Patrol apprehended 414,397 people crossing in illegally from Mexico in 2013. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Sharon
Franks, Milnes counterpart north of the border, agreed that cooperation something often missing between officials on
either side of the Mexican border is key to security. A sign notifies drivers they are about to enter the U.S. on one of the
rural roads outside of Sweetgrass, Mont. (FoxNews.com) (Gavin John/Crystal Schick) We have a great level of
cooperation from the CBP, Franks said. Both the RCMP and the U.S. Border Patrol also say they depend on citizens living
along the border to report suspicious activity. These people are patriots and good citizens and they dont want to see
smugglers or terrorists entering their country," Milne said. "Theyre the eyes and ears. Its very important to coordinate in
remote areas where there are limited resources. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle sits just outside the
Fortuna port of entry on the border of North Dakota and Saskatchewan earlier this month. (FoxNews.com) (Gavin
John/Crystal Schick) The RCMP plans to implement new measures along remote parts of the eastern border on the
Canadian side, including video cameras, radar, ground sensors, and thermal radiation detectors. Similar measures are

much of the responsibility for


security lies in the hands of their counterparts across the border. "We have this
already in place in areas around the U.S. Border. But for both sides,

unique trusting relationship with the Canadians, said Milne. We share a mission, which is the protection of each
respective nation.

Terrorists can sneak in through Canada Millennium plot


proves that is has happened before, caught based on
sheer luck
Myers 04 [Lisa Myers was the senior investigative correspondent for NBC
Nightly News. A 1973 graduate of the University of Missouri's Missouri School
of Journalism in Columbia, Missouri, she joined NBC in 1981. Emmy for
outstanding journalism., Foiling millennium attack was mostly luck, April 24,
2004]
It's almost become an article of faith at the 9/11 commission hearings that high-level meetings in
Washington helped stop a terrorist attack at the Los Angeles airport just before the turn of the millennium.
But the inside-the-Beltway gospel just isn't true. NBC News went back to the customs agent who actually
stopped an al-Qaida terrorist from entering the United States in 1999, and she says it was her gut instincts

In December of 1999, upon


arriving on a ferry from Canada, al-Qaida operative Ahmed Ressam was
arrested with a trunk full of explosives. His plan: to blow up Los Angeles
International Airport. Some members of the 9/11 commission now argue that al-Qaidas plot was
not meetings in Washington that helped her make the arrest.

foiled because of almost frenetic White House meetings that month, keeping the bureaucracy on its toes.
On April 13, 2004, 9/11 commission member Timothy Roemer said, The Clinton administration has a great
deal of success during this time period. My theory is, because of this small group that is meeting at the top

Was
the bomb plot foiled by an alert White House or by an alert agent on the front
lines? His story didnt make sense to me, said customs inspector Diana
Dean. Now retired, Dean was working the border that night. On a hunch
something wasnt quite right, she questioned Ressam and asked him to pop
his trunk. Inside were big bags of white powder that were first thought to be drugs. But that night, drug
levels of government. NBC News decided to take a close look at what happened four years ago.

tests came back negative. When investigators looked further, they found timers and realized the powder

My heart dropped right into my toes when I realized


what it was. She says no one had told her anything about being on alert for terrorists. I dont recall
was explosives. Dean said,

any specific threats," she added. "I dont recall anybody saying watch for terrorists. Customs officials
confirm that no alert had gone out to the field. The Clinton administration was at battle stations during this
period, and that extraordinary effort helped foil al-Qaida plots against Americans in Jordan. But theres

In fact,
senior counterterror officials attribute catching Ressam to good training and
sheer luck. As for Dean, she received an award and today shrugs off revisionist history in Washington,
simply no evidence that meetings in Washington stopped the planned attack on American soil.

noting that success has many fathers.

Terrorists have been able to consistently sneak through


the US-Canadian border
Camarota 02 [Dr. Steven Camarota serves as the Director of Research
for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington, DC-based
research institute that examines the consequences of legal and illegal
immigration on the United States. The Center promotes an informed debate
on comprehensive immigration reform by providing policymakers, academics,
media, and citizens with fact-based information on immigration., How the
terrorists get in, September 2002]
Terrorists have also slipped into the country illegally. Several have sneaked into the country at our sea
ports. Millennium conspirators Abdelghani Meskini and Abdel Hakim Tizegha both originally entered the
United States as stowaways on ships that docked at a U.S. port. Crew members of cargo ships, stowaways,

terrorists have entered


the country from Canada. After originally coming as a stowaway, Tizegha
eventually went to Canada for a time before slipping back across the northern
border. Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer (who planned to bomb the Brooklyn subway system) also
tried to sneak across the Canadian border. Tizegha was captured only after he
successfully entered the country and took part in the Millennium plot. Mezer,
on the other hand, was caught three times between 1996 and 1997 trying to
sneak into the United States. A Palestinian, Mezer had been turned down for a
student visa in 1993 at the American consulate in Jerusalem. Yet he
eventually received a Canadian student visa. On his third attempt to enter the United
and those being smuggled into the country are all potential threats. Other

States illegally in June 1997, the Canadian government refused to take him back. The INS then paroled him
into the United States and started deportation proceedings against him. If we improve our visa processing
system but fail to strengthen our land borders, we can expect more cases like these.

Terrorists Can Get in from LNG Tankers


Al Qaeda operatives have sneaked into the US as
stowaways on LNG tankers
Raines 04 [Ben, is an environment reporter for the Alabama Media Group,
Letter confirms suspicions of smuggling on LNG ships, April 29, 2004]
In May 2001, officers from the U.S. Coast Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal
agencies boarded an Algerian liquefied natural gas tanker arriving in Boston and discovered a large cache
of U.S. currency and illegal drugs, according to the April 15 letter from Homeland Security to U.S. Rep Ed
Markey, D-Mass. The letter was written in response to Markey's inquiries concerning allegations in former
U.S. terrorism chief Richard Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies." In his book, published this year, Clarke
claimed that federal officials knew prior to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that " al-Qaida

operatives had been infiltrat ing Boston by coming in on liquid natural gas
tankers from Algeria." In March, FBI officials publicly denied Clarke's assertions, although they
acknowledged that at least one Algerian who secretly entered aboard an LNG tanker is under federal
indictment for allegedly planning to blow up Los Angeles airport as part of al-Qaida's "Millennium Bombing

the U.S. Coast Guard, the


Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service suspected
Algerian LNG tankers of smuggling drugs and illegal aliens as early as 1995 .
The letter said that federal agencies are still investigating links between the
Algerian stowaways and Islamic fundamentalists. "Preliminary analysis shows a handful
Plot." The letter that Homeland Security sent Markey also revealed that

of illegal migrants may have had indirect associations with those indicted for the Millennium Bombing
Plot," the letter said. It also said that federal agents had recovered "substantial amounts of U.S. currency
and illegal drugs" from an LNG tanker. Markey said Wednesday in a written statement, "This information
would seem to confirm statements made in former counter-terrorism Czar Richard Clarke's recent book

LNG tankers entering Boston Harbor may have been used by


terrorists as a means of infiltrating into our country ." Many of the 11 hijackers boarded
indicating that

the airliners used in the terror attacks at Boston's Logan International Airport. Markey, a senior member of
the House terrorism committee, whose district is home to Boston Harbor's LNG import terminal, has
demanded to know why federal security officials told him repeatedly that there were no known terror
threats related to the LNG tankers that had been arriving in Boston. There is no evidence, according to FBI
statements in March, that Abdelghani Meskini, the Algerian stowaway who has been indicted in the airport
plot, had terrorist ties when he arrived in this country. It was unclear from FBI statements whether officials
believed Meskini became involved with terrorists after arriving in the United States.

Terrorists Can Get in from Shipping Containers


Cargo ships go virtually unchecked easy for terroristic
exploitation
Schoen 2004, John W. Schoen (reported and written about economics, business and financial
news for more than 30 years), NBC News, Ships and ports are terrorisms new frontier, 21 June 2004,
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5069435/ns/business-world_business/t/ships-ports-are-terrorisms-newfrontier/#.VYyogHmd5g1. PE

One of the thorniest security problems involves determining just whats inside
each of the 40-foot steel containers that arrive every day on cargo ships
carrying as many as 4,000 containers each. Air travelers at security checkpoints have
become accustomed to delays as passengers spend a few moments unpacking laptops, removing shoes

a comparable physical inspection of the millions of tons of


cargo that enter U.S. ports every day is simply not practical: security experts
and retying them. But

say it takes five agents roughly three hours to fully inspect the contents of just one of those containers.

only 2 percent of containerized cargo


entering the country are physically inspected. And while advanced
technology scanners have helped speed those inspections, just tracking the
200 million containers that move among the worlds top seaports each year is
a major undertaking. Flynn cited one major shipper with over 300,000 containers in its
inventory. It doesnt know where 40 percent of them are at any given time, he
said. It takes one of their customers saying, Hey Ive got one of your boxes if you want it back.' Those
boxes are a potentially potent weapon for terrorists whether for use
smuggling weapons, explosive materials or terrorists themselves, or as a
huge chemical, biological or "dirty" bomb spreading radioactive waste . At
present, though, many ports are ill-prepared to deal with that threat . The
Can you spot the threats? The result is that

accidental explosion of a container on the dock of the Port of Los Angeles on April 28 underscored the
problem. Gasoline fumes from a pickup truck inside the container were apparently ignited by a spark from
a battery, blowing the locked steel doors open and spilling the contents, which included 900 bottles of LPG
butane gas, according to Michael Mitre, Coast Port Security director at the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union. There was virtually no response, Mitre told a House panel on maritime security last
week. There was no evacuation. There was no shutdown of work It could have been something that
was a biological or chemical release; it could be a radioactive release. No one knew. But at the time, the
terminal was absolutely not prepared. Mitre said the explosion also highlights a major deficiency in
container inspection. Export

cargo is not treated the same way as import cargo,


he said. We have cargo coming in through the gates that is not having to
show what the contents are." As a result, terrorists inside the U.S. would have
a much easier time loading a container on an outbound shipment , he said.

Al Qaeda operatives have used commercial sea containers


to illegally penetrate the U.S.
DEBKA 02 [DEBKAfile is an Israeli military intelligence website based in
Jerusalem, providing commentary and analyses on terrorism, intelligence,
national security, military and international relations, with a particular focus
on the Middle East., Stowaway Terrorists Sneak Into America By Sea
Container, June 19, 2002]

Between 75 and 125 operatives of the fundamentalist terror network, al


Qaeda, are known to have illegally penetrated the United State s in the last two
months, mostly through American ports as stowaways in commercial sea
containers. Many more are estimated to have slipped through unbeknownst
to US authorities. This clandestine traffic was first exposed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue No. 39,
November 30, 2001. In its latest issue, DEBKA-Net-Weekly, June 14, 2002, tracks this burgeoning
menace, which is making the United States and the world,s shipping industry
increasingly susceptible to the threat of terror attack by invaders from the
sea. US port authority sources believe penetrations occurred at New York,
New Jersey, Long Beach, Miami and Savannah, Georgia, as well as Port
Everglades, Florida. Container, oil and bulk ports are especially vulnerable.
Some of the stowaways arrive complete with arms or explosives, the nature
of which - conventional, radioactive, chemical or biological - the US
authorities are at great pains to keep dark . However, shipping sources told us witnesses
had seen suspect containers appearing to be quarantined after their al Qaeda infiltrators were killed,
suggesting the suspected presence of toxic substances. The threat applies equally to the international
container traffic that carries much of the world,s lifeblood. Experts have opined that a "dirty bomb
exploding in a container at sea would stop the world,s container traffic cold until a credible security system
for sea-going containers was in place. On May 22, 2002, Fairplay International Shipping Weekly reported:

an apparent infiltration of Islamic extremists through


US ports during the past two months. " Some of the men slipped through security disguised
"More details have emerged about

as stevedores, according to Bob Graham, chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence. He said he
had seen reports indicating that some extremists might have been wearing safety jackets and protective
helmets to give the appearance of dockworkers. US Coast Guard officials have refused to divulge any

said
25 extremists "entered in a foreign country, hid out in a container and then
entered the United States." In some of the stowaway containers, US counterterror authorities were dismayed to find uniforms of American dockworkers
and even US Coast Guards, along with the appropriate tags and ID for free access to port
information about the reports, but Graham stressed: "The American people have a right to know." He

facilities, including off-limits sections. Groups of 5 to 7 of these men dressed as port workers have been
sighted hurrying over to waiting vans and driving off at speed.

AT: Foreign Operations Solve Terrorism


Foreign counter-terror strategies are actually propelling
violent terrorist attacks on a global scale

Englund 15

"The Security Paradox in Counter-terror Strategy | TRENDS."


TRENDS. N.p., 12 Apr. 2015. Web. 26 June 2015

Over the past six months, terrorist violence has occurred almost
simultaneously in many regions of the world. The casual observer
may be overwhelmed by these threats and demand that something
be done to punish those responsible and stop future acts of
violence. A counter-terror doctrine must simultaneously make people feel more secure and take effective actions to ensure the physical security of potential
targets of terrorist violence. Sometimes things done to achieve the former can make the latter more difficult. While doing something in response to violence is required,
success depends on a nuanced, focused strategy that both punishes perpetrators of violence and addresses political and economic stability in regions affected with
terrorist violence. This article will explore this paradox by first examining the nature of the just do something response. It will then consider stability as an element of

The use of force to punish the perpetrators of violence is


necessary, but will always result in some collateral damage. The
coalition of Arab states confronting violent groups across the region
will need to be ready to counter the inevitable propaganda used
against them by terror groups to try to discredit coalition
governments. Secondly, while difficult and requiring patience and a long-term commitment, a comprehensive counter-terror strategy must also
counter-terror policy.

address potential economic and political root causes of terrorist violence. Do something to stop this now A short recital of recent events is shocking: Somalia-based
al-Shabab kills 148 students at Garrissa University in Kenya. Boko Haram gunmen, dressed as preachers, kill two dozen in Nigeria. In Yemen, Houthi rebels storm the
presidential palace, and terrorists belonging to al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula free hundreds of their former colleagues from prisons there. The so-called Islamic State
fights for control of Anbar and Salladin provinces in Iraq. Armed groups attack resorts and military checkpoints on the Sinai Peninsula. The Taliban in Pakistan killed over
240 children in December. This surge of terror becomes even more sinister when violence spreads to Europe and North America, as was recently realized in Paris, London,
Ottawa, and as far away as Sydney, Australia. Such a litany of violence against innocents demands justice, most often called for in its retributive form; the perpetrators of
violence, their enablers and those who inspire violence need to be punished. However, a hasty, kinetic response can be counter-productive for two reasons: quick reactions
risk misperceiving the origins of the violence and result in inappropriate target selections; second, since collateral damage is almost always associated with the application

. Democratic
societies are especially susceptible to this rational reaction to
terrorist violence. Governments of these societies, under pressure
from their people, do highly visible, literally explosive things in
response. Witness the recent violence in Kenya and the response to
that violence. In the early morning hours of April 2, at least four armed men entered the campus of Garissa University College, initially took hostages,
then began to murder studentsreportedly focusing their violence against professed Christiansultimately killing 148. In response Kenyan
President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed that his country would respond to
the violence in the severest way possible. On April 6th, Kenyan Air
Force planes bombed sites in Somalia described as al-Shabab
training camps. A Kenyan military spokesman reported that, the
bombings are part of the continued process and engagement against
al-Shabab, which will go on. This is part of continuing operations,
not just in response to Garissa. Eyewitnesses told BBC reporters
that the attacks killed at least three civilians and destroyed
livestock and wells in an area without al-Shabab presence.[1] Unfortunately,
this is not Kenyas first experience with mass-casualty terrorist violence. On September 21, 2013 , al-Shabab gunmen attacked
a shopping mall in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, killing sixty-seven
and wounding scores more. This attack by al-Shabab was
immediately linked to Kenyas participation in the African Union
Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and by extension AMISOMs close
relationship with the Untied States. Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications,
of force, even the most carefully planned attack can provide terror groups with ammunition for their own propaganda efforts

admitted, the fact of the matter is, weve actually had a very aggressive effort to go after al-Shabab in Somalia, and, frankly, I think it was that pressure on al-Shabab
that, in terms of their own professed motivation, led them to pursue an attack against Kenya.[2] Translating as the youth, al-Shabab was born as a youth arm of the
Union of Islamic Courts that once dominated in the political vacuum of Somalia. The AMISOM mission itself was a response to al-Shabab successes in its insurgency against
Ethiopian forces that invaded Somalia in 2006 and then withdrew in 2007. By 2011, African Union forces swept al-Shabab from the Somali capital, Mogadishu.[3] The rise

an operation that
was intended to crush Islamic extremists, stabilize Somalia, and
install more tractable leadershipbut accomplished the exact
opposite.[4] The implication is that the heavy-handed intervention in Somalia, in which thousands of civilians were killed or displaced, encouraged a radical
of al-Shabab in Somalia has been directly linked to the United States- backed 2006 invasion by Ethiopia, described as

response. The intervention and subsequent withdrawal created the vacuum which al-Shabab filled. Since the Ethiopians unilaterally declared victory over the Islamic
Courts and began to withdraw from Somalia in 2007, intense fighting, piracy, and war-enabled famines grind on, meanwhile, in a more radicalized Somalia.[5]

conclusion of this line of analysis is that as states like Ethopia,

The

Uganda, and Kenya join the United States in its war on terrorism,
more lives are disrupted by enforcement actions and the greater the
opportunity for radical groups like al-Shabab to gain traction. In
other words, the way in which terrorism is fought can itself give rise
to terrorism. We know that the way in which we fight is connected to peoples perception of the fight. There have been
several recent studies that demonstrate statistically that, for
example, the United States use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs,
or drones) has both increased negative perceptions of the United
States in the areas most affected by drone activity and changed the
way terror groups advertise their positions and try to gather
support.[6] The utility of negative perceptions to propaganda efforts
can be considered separately from the actual effectiveness of
attacks by countries fighting a war on terrorism. In terms of
effectiveness, the evidence is mixed: senior terror group leaders
who are killed are quickly replaced, but those who replace them may
be less capable and experienced. Also, people who are continually in fear of being killed are less effective because they
are then more cautious in how and how often they move. This is the crux of the paradox. Actions that address security threats, and strategies that can make people feel
more secure, can also encourage new, different threats. The same paradox occurs in urban combat. I receive rocket fire from a densely populated neighborhood. I can

But, I also know that the men


who set up those crude rockets that just sailed my direction are long
gone and the only casualties of my return fire will be innocent
bystanders near the improvised launch rails that now sit empty. The
only sensible thing to do is to not return firethe tragedy of killing
innocent civilians will be joined by damaged credibility, will invite
retaliation, and may feed enemy propaganda. Similarly, in counter-insurgency operations, actions that
pinpoint the origin of the fire and I can automatically return fire on that point of origin.

reduce your security in the short-term can gain trust and cooperation in the long-term. Dismounted patrols (out of armored vehicles, interacting with locals) have been
proven to be important in counter-insurgency operations. These optionsnot returning fire if fired upon, lowering your guard, reducing security in the short termseem
counter-intuitive and are frustrating positions to be in, but these can be effective security strategies in the long-term. Clearly the application of force is necessary to
remove some threats, but force cannot be the dominant strategy. As more Arab states take action against targets on the Arabian Peninsula, in Libya, and in Iraq and
Syria, these Arab coalition allies will be increasingly described as dupes and lackeys of the West or worse, as apostate regimes, lacking all legitimacy. The core function
of military force is to kill and destroy; collateral damage is inevitable. Arab states taking action against terror groups must steel themselves against the inevitable use of
this collateral damage against them, engaging strategic communication to present effective, convincing counter-messages.

Current US counter-terror strategies are filled with a


plethora of mistakes and paradoxes

Englund 15

"The Security Paradox in Counter-terror Strategy | TRENDS."


TRENDS. N.p., 12 Apr. 2015. Web. 26 June 2015.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf was pilloried in U.S.
media outlets for her comment during an interview that the threat
posed by Daesh (ISIS, ISIL, the Islamic State) cannot be undone by
killing fighters alone, that we need to go after the root causes that
leads people to join these groups. During the interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews in which Harf was
interrupted multiple times, she essentially suggested that a more effective counter-terror strategy would include addressing the governance of regions most affected by

Her comments were met with derision and, taken out of


context, they might seem nave. Clearly a jobs program in Iraq and
Syria is not going to draw Daesh militants away from their jihad to
lead peaceful and productive lives. However, the essence of her
message (even if delivered in a less-than-elegant way)[7] is on point and deserves more careful
consideration. The economic and political realities of the greater Middle-East and South Asia must be accounted for in any effective counter-terror
terrorist violence.

strategy. How practical is Harfs root causes suggestion? Can such root causes be discovered and addressed? The decision to support or join extremely violent groups
to express your political will is a highly complex one. If experts agree on one thing, it is that the factors contributing to this decision or radicalization are varied. Studying
the decision is fraught with problems. However, a consensus has developed around a cluster of root causes that can either create permissive environments for terrorist
violence, or directly contribute to the radicalization of a segment of a population. These are, generally: high unemployment, economic inequality and social exclusion
among heterogeneous groups; rapid population growth (with a bulge of young people) accompanied by rapid urbanization; and a clash of values.[8] No single factor can
be identified as causing terrorism and the mix of contributing factors can vary in different contexts. However, sufficient evidence exists to recommend studying root

causes in conjunction with other contributing factors such as political stability. Political stability and the ability of a government to actually govern and resolve political
crises are cited as belonging to its own category of attending causes.[9] Thinking about root causes is therefore helpful in considering long-term counter-terror
strategies. As is often said: easier said than done. Even if Harfs jobs comment was in fact sensible in the long-term, effecting such a strategy is highly complicated,
involving the difficult task of identifying specific contributing or permissive factors, and then actually doing something to address those factors. Struggling economies
with governments whose legitimacy is sometimes challenged present a combination of factors that require attention when creating a comprehensive, coherent, and
effective counter-terror strategy. Conclusion Effective counter-terrorism requires making people more secure from terrorist violence while also making them feel more
secure. These two distinct, but clearly related, goals can sometimes put a government in a bind. Sometimes the things that make people feel more secure

launching a convincing counter-attack to punish the perpetrators


and their sponsorscan lead to the rise of other threats. Equally
frustrating, sometimes reducing security in the short-term can
contribute to greater security in the long-term. Finally, long-range
strategies that try to sort out root causes of terrorism are
complex and dont contribute to immediate security advantages, but
are necessarily part of a comprehensive strategy. Clearly a civilized
society cannot countenance violent barbarism, genocide and the
destruction of whole cultures, ancient or modern. The perpetrators
of violence must be punished. But states that apply force must be
ready to attend to the inevitable effects of collateral damage
through effective strategic communication. They must be willing to
win the political loyalty of their people. At the same time, a
comprehensive counter-terror strategy must also include addressing
the root-causes of terrorist violencea difficult task requiring
patience and a long-term commitment.

Terrorists can get WMDs

Nuke Threat High


Available nuclear material and terrorist motivation make
nuclear terror attack inevitable
Jaspal Associate Professor at the School of Politics and International
Relations, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan 12 (Zafar Nawaz,
Nuclear/Radiological Terrorism: Myth or Reality?, Journal of Political Studies, Vol. 19, Issue - 1, 2012,
91:111)

misperception, miscalculation and above all ignorance of the ruling elite about
security puzzles are perilous for the national security of a state . Indeed, in an
age of transnational terrorism and unprecedented dissemination of dualuse
nuclear technology, ignoring nuclear terrorism threat is an imprudent policy
choice. The incapability of terrorist organizations to engineer fissile material does not
eliminate completely the possibility of nuclear terrorism. At the same time, the
absence of an example or precedent of a nuclear/ radiological terrorism does
not qualify the assertion that the nuclear/radiological terrorism ought to be
remained a myth. Farsighted rationality obligates that one should not
miscalculate transnational terrorist groups whose behavior suggests that
they have a death wish of acquiring nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological
material producing capabilities. In addition, one could be sensible about the published
information that huge amount of nuclear material is spread around the globe .
According to estimate it is enough to build more than 120,000 Hiroshima-sized
nuclear bombs (Fissile Material Working Group, 2010, April 1). The alarming fact is that a few
storage sites of nuclear/radiological materials are inadequately secured and continue
to be accumulated in unstable regions (Sambaiew, 2010, February). Attempts at stealing
fissile material had already been discovered (Din & Zhiwei, 2003: 18). Numerous evidences
confirm that terrorist groups had aspired to acquire fissile material for their
terrorist acts. Late Osama bin Laden, the founder of al Qaeda stated that acquiring
nuclear weapons was areligious duty (Yusufzai, 1999, January 11). The IAEA also reported
The

that al-Qaeda was actively seeking an atomic bomb. Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl, a dissenter of Al Qaeda, in his
trial testimony had revealed his extensive but unsuccessful efforts to acquire enriched uranium for alQaeda (Allison, 2010, January: 11). On November 9, 2001, Osama bin Laden claimed that we have
chemical and nuclear weapons as a deterrent and if America used them against us we reserve the right to
use them (Mir, 2001, November 10). On May 28, 2010, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a Pakistani nuclear
scientist confessed that he met Osama bin Laden. He claimed that I met Osama bin Laden before 9/11 not
to give him nuclear know-how, but to seek funds for establishing a technical college in Kabul (Syed, 2010,
May 29). He was arrested in 2003 and after extensive interrogation by American and Pakistani intelligence
agencies he was released (Syed, 2010, May 29). Agreed, Mr. Mahmood did not share nuclear know-how

Al Qaeda, but his meeting with Osama establishes the fact that the terrorist organization was in
contact with nuclear scientists. Second, the terrorist group has sympathizers in
the nuclear scientific bureaucracies . It also authenticates bin Ladens Deputy Ayman
with

Zawahiris claim which he made in December 2001: If you have $30 million, go to the black market in the
central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist and a lot of dozens of smart briefcase bombs are

The covert meetings between nuclear scientists


and al Qaeda members could not be interpreted as idle threats and thereby the
available (Allison, 2010, January: 2).

threat of nuclear/radiological terrorism is real. The 33Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted in 2008
that what keeps every senior government leader awake at night is the thought of a terrorist ending up

the nuclear
deterrence strategy cannot deter the transnational terrorist syndicate from
nuclear/radiological terrorist attacks. Daniel Whiteneck pointed out: Evidence suggests, for
with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear (Mueller, 2011, August 2). Indeed,

that al Qaeda might not only use WMD simply to demonstrate the
magnitude of its capability but that it might actually welcome the escalation
of a strong U.S. response, especially if it included catalytic effects on
governments and societies in the Muslim world. An adversary that prefers
escalation regardless of the consequences cannot be deterred ( Whiteneck, 2005,
example,

Summer: 187) Since taking office, President Obama has been reiterating that nuclear weapons represent
the gravest threat to United States and international security. While realizing that the US could not
prevent nuclear/radiological terrorist attacks singlehandedly, he launched 47an international campaign to
convince the international community about the increasing threat of nuclear/ radiological terrorism. He
stated on April 5, 2009: Black

market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials


abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy,
build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a
global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the
rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold (Remarks by
President Barack Obama, 2009, April 5). He added: One terrorist with one nuclear weapon
could unleash massive destruction. Al Qaeda has said it seeks a bomb and that it would have
no problem with using it. And we know that there is unsecured nuclear material across the globe
(Remarks by President Barack Obama, 2009, April 5). In July 2009, at the G-8 Summit, President Obama
announced the convening of a Nuclear Security Summit in 2010 to deliberate on the mechanism to secure
nuclear materials, combat nuclear smuggling, and prevent nuclear terrorism (Luongo, 2009, November
10). President Obamas nuclear/radiological threat perceptions were also accentuated by the United
Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1887 (2009). The UNSC expressed its grave concern regarding
the threat of nuclear terrorism. It also recognized the need for all States to take effective measures to
prevent nuclear material or technical assistance becoming available to terrorists. The UNSC Resolution
called for universal adherence to the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials and its 2005
Amendment, and the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. (UNSC Resolution,
2009) The United States Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) document revealed on April 6, 2010 declared that

terrorism and proliferation are far greater threats to the United States and
international stability. (Security of Defence, 2010, April 6: i). The United States declared
that it reserved the right tohold fully accountable any state or group that
supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass
destruction, whether by facilitating, financing, or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts
(Nuclear Posture Review Report, 2010, April: 12). This declaration underscores the possibility that

terrorist groups could acquire fissile material from the rogue states

Yes Nukes Pakistan Will Sell


Pakistani military infiltrated by Al-Qaeda
Panda 14 [Sept 18, 2014, Ankit Panda foreign affairs analyst, writer, and
editor with expertise in international relations, political economy,
international security, and crisis diplomacy, editor at The Diplomat,
previously Research Specialist at Princeton University on international crisis
diplomacy, international security, technology policy, and geopolitics, Al
Qaeda's Worrying Ability to Infiltrate the Pakistani Military, The Diplomat,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/09/al-qaedas-worrying-ability-to-infiltrate-thepakistani-military/]
Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) staged its
first major attack within the region, laying siege to a Pakistani naval
dockyard in a brazen attempt to seize the frigate, PNS Zulfiqar. While the details of the attack have
been widely reported, what is most concerning is the manner in which the
attack was carried out. AQIS managed to recruit Pakistani naval
officers, allowing its agents to infiltrate the dockyard. The group
boasted about its ability to recruit inside the Pakistani military in a
On Saturday night, this past weekend,

statement released on September 11, three days ahead of the attack. Usama Mahmood, AQISs
spokesperson, issued a separate statement in Urdu following the attack in which he declares: The Naval
officers who were martyred on Saturday in the attack in Karachi were al-Qaeda members. They were trying
to attack American marines and their cronies. The statement confirms that AQIS has not abandoned Al
Qaedas core strategy of attacking the Western governments that the group perceives as supporting unjust
and corrupt regimes in the Middle East (contrast this with ISIS,which concentrates its fight on the close
enemy instead of the far enemy). The statement after the attack detailed the attack (at least from
AQISs perspective): [The attackers] had taken over control of the ship and were proceeding to attack the
American carrier when they were intercepted by the Pakistan military These men thus became martyrs.
The Pakistani military men who died defending enemies of the Muslim nation, on the other hand, are
cursed with hell. The Pakistan Navy noted that four attackers were arrested, and Pakistani news outlets

Pakistans
defense ministry, the defense minister acknowledged that insiders were
culpable in enabling this attack: Without assistance from inside,
these people could not have breached security, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif
noted in parliament. This attack is concerning for several reasons. First, and most
obviously, it is further evidence of a long-time concern shared by U.S. and Indian officials alike
that Pakistans military apparatus is not immune to infiltration by Al
Qaeda and related groups. The attack will shake the United States (admittedly already
reported that among the arrested were two naval officers. In what is very likely a first for

shaky) faith in Rawalpindis ability to keep its house in order. According to an anonymous Western
counterterrorism official cited by the Wall Street Journal, If we are to work with the Pakistan Navy, we
have to be able to trust them. This attack raises a lot of questions. This helps explain why Al Qaeda hasnt
shied away from taking responsibility for and publicizing such a profound failure of an attack.

the attack failed, it puts the Pakistan military in a difficult place

Even if

(admittedly, the

the attack
took place on the same day that PNS Zulfiqar was slated to set sail for the
Indian Ocean to join an international flotilla. This suggests that Al Qaedas
infiltration went beyond having a naval officer unlock the gate for its
operatives ahead of an attack the group was clearly being fed information about
Pakistani military operations. It appears the officers on board were to be
joined by other militants who were to arrive by boat from the sea and then stow away on
Pakistani military does a good job of doing this on its own most of the time). Interestingly,

board, noted one Pakistani security official, adding that the plan was to get close to the U.S. ships on the

high seas, and then turn the shipboard weapon systems on the Americans. Had the attack succeeded,
U.S. navy ships in the Arabian Sea faced the prospect of a serious naval engagement the Zulfiqar is

Pakistan seems to have no


clear plan for combing its military particularly its navy for Al Qaeda
sympathizers and operatives. Back in 2011, we saw that the navy was already
infiltrated by officers sympathizing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The attack on
equipped with antiship missiles with a 300 kilometer range.

the PNS Mehran naval air base took place after failed talks between the Pakistan navy and Al Qaeda over
officers who had been arrested over suspected links to the group. As one report back then noted, the
deeper underlying motive for that attack was a massive internal crackdowns on al-Qaeda affiliates
within the navy. In the aftermath of the PNS Mehran attack, it became clear that Pakistani naval
intelligence had some competence in tracing Al Qaeda sympathizers within its own ranks. While its
methods may not have been fool-proof, it was apparently successful to the degree that it arrested Al
Qaeda operatives within the navy, prompting the sequence of events that led to the 15-hour siege on the
PNS Mehran base. As the Asia Times Online notes, citing one senior navy official, Pakistans naval
intelligence was spurred into action by the potential negative impact that this infiltration could have on the

when Pakistani naval


intelligence detained officers suspected of having links to Al Qaeda, it noted that
it immediately received threats from Al Qaeda cells . When it moved
the detainees to a different site, it continued receiving threats that
indicated Al Qaeda knew almost instantly where its infiltrators were
being kept. It was clear the militants were receiving good inside
information as they always knew where the suspects were being detained, indicating
sizeable al-Qaeda infiltration within the navys ranks, the Asia Times Online noted. In the
three years since the PNS Mehran incident and the Pakistan navys failed attempts to
mediate with Al Qaeda, it seems little has changed. Finally, this weekends attack helps to shed
Pakistani militarys important relationship with the United States. Back then,

some light on the role of Al Qaedas new wing in the Indian subcontinent. While Ayman al-Zawahiri may
have declared India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar its battlefield, logistical factors make it highly likely that
Pakistan will continue to be Al Qaedas primary area of focus in South Asia. While Al Qaedas continued
operation in Pakistan was all but a certainty before this attack, what remains uncertain is the degree to
which the group has successfully infiltrated the Pakistani military.

And they are willing to sell


Rajghatta 15 [Chidanand Rajghatta: foreign editor and US correspondent
for the Times of India, Saudis procuring nukes from Pak: US officials, The
Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Saudis-procuringnukes-from-Pak-US-officials/articleshow/47336885.cms]
Saudi Arabia is long suspected to have bankrolled Pakistan's
nuclear program under an arrangement that it would have access to atomic bombs if its existence is
threatened. Unnamed US officials have now breathed life into this story by affirming that
Riyadh may be moving ahead with procuring bombs from Islamabad ,
purportedly because the Saudi royalty that rules Sunni-majority Arabia is angry
with the Obama administration's impending nuclear deal with its Shia rival Iran.
WASHINGTON:

"Hundreds of people at (CIA headquarters) Langley" were working to establish whether Islamabad had
already supplied the Gulf nation with nuclear technology or weaponry, a U.S intelligence officials told the
Sunday Times for a weekend story, adding that "We

know this stuff is available to them


off the shelf," and that it "has to be the assumption" that the Saudis have decided to become a
nuclear power. Saudi officials have already indicated that U.S overture to Iran, a mutual long-term rival, is
pushing them further down the nuclear weapons path. Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin
Faisal told a recent conference in South Korea that "whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too," and
other remarks by the Saudis and their protectorate states have indicated they are agitated by the Obama
overtures towards Iran, a regional and sectarian rival. "For the Saudis the moment has come," a former US
defence official told the paper, adding that "There has been a long-standing agreement in place with the
Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward."

Pakistan

typically denies any such transaction, but given its history of lying about
everything from nuclear proliferation to terrorism, it has no credibility in the international
community including in the "Muslim ummah." Saudi Arabia practically owns Pakistan, many of whose
leading political lights seek refuge with their Saudi patrons when the going gets tough at home. When they
are not ordering around their Pakistani vassals, the Saudis arbitrate political disputes in Islamabad,
keeping it solvent and alive with free supply of oil and liquidity. The Pakistani military, whose air force has
trained Saudi pilots and operates Saudi jets, is beholden to the House of Saud for resolving political
tensions and functions as a rentier army for Saudis and its Gulf allies. The Pakistani military, which
manages the country's nuclear arsenal, allows Saudis to access to it but not its own prime ministers,
presidents and other civilians leaders. All this has happened under the benevolent gaze of Washington,
which has long been a patron of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both artificially created Sunni majority states
that are fearful of and have a complex about Shia-majority Iran rooted in the Persian civilization. Despite
Pakistan's efforts to maintain a semblance of balance given its large Shia population, Saudi radicalization
and oil money had made it a Sunni satellite state with large scale killing of Shias and other minorities in
recent months. The nuclear tie-up with Saudis therefore comes as no surprise to anyone. "Given their close
relations and close military links, it's long been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a
commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads,"" former

a senior British military officer


was quoted telling the paper that Western military leaders "all assume the Saudis have
made the decision to go nuclear."
Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen told the Sunday Times, and

Pakistan is Selling Nukes to Saudi Arabia


Pakistan Will Sell Saudi Arabia Proves
PressTV 5/17 [May 17, 2015, Saudi Arabia to purchase nuclear arms
from Pakistan: US Official,
http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/05/17/411559/Saudi-nukes-armspakistan]
Saudi Arabia has made a strategic decision to purchase off-theshelf nuclear weapons from Pakistan, a US official says. "There has been
a long-standing agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud
has now made the strategic decision to move forward," British newspaper
Sunday Times quoted a former US defense official as saying in a Sunday
report. "Hundreds of people at [CIA headquarters in] Langley" were trying to
discover if Islamabad had already supplied the Persian Gulf nation with
nuclear technology or arms, another unnamed US intelligence official said.
Over the past three decades Saudi Arabia has financed considerable amounts
of Islamabad's nuclear program and provided it with billions of dollars of
subsidized oil. "Given their close relations and close military links, it's long
been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a
commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them
immediately with nuclear warheads," British former Foreign Secretary Lord
David Owen was quoted as saying. Western military leaders "all assume the
Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear," he added. "The fear is that
other Middle Eastern powers Turkey and Egypt may feel compelled to do
the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race," he noted.
World top arms importer Back in March, Saudi Arabia became the worlds
biggest importer of weapons, according to an arms trade report. According to
the Global Defense Trade Report, Saudi Arabia spent over $6.4 billion on
weapons purchases in 2014, putting India in the second place. Over the past
year, the Saudi kingdom increased its arms imports by 54 percent. Growth in
Saudi Arabia has been dramatic and, based on previous orders, these
numbers are not going to slow down, RT quoted IHS expert Ben Moores as
saying. According to a separate report, Muhammad Khilewi, an official in the
Saudi mission to the UN, who requested US asylum in 1994, provided
documents which allegedly described the Kingdoms long-time support for
Iraqs nuclear weapons program during Saddam Hussein's regime. Around $5
billion were given to the regime on the condition that functional nuclear
technology and, if possible, nuclear weapons be transferred to Saudi Arabia.

Yes Nukes Pakistan Will Sell


Al-Quaeda as well as the Taliban and other terrorist
groups in Pakistan have the capability to possess nuclear
weapons
Mulvey 10 [Stephen, Assistant Editor of BBC News, Could Terrorists Get
a Hold of a Nuclear Bomb, April 12, 2010]
"a greater possibility of a nuclear meltdown in
Pakistan than anywhere else in the world". The region has more violent
extremists than any other, the country is unstable, and its arsenal of nuclear
weapons is expanding. Once a new plutonium reactor comes on line in the near future "smaller,
In Rolf Mowatt-Larssen's view, there is

more lethal plutonium bombs will be produced in greater numbers", he says.

the Taliban and alQaeda are not the only shadows on the Pakistani landscape. There is also the
Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which is accused of carrying out the Mumbai attack in November
The possibility of a Taliban takeover is, he admits, a "worst-case scenario". But

2008, and like the Pakistani officer corps, recruits mostly in the Punjab. "As one senior Pakistani general
once told me," wrote Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution last week, "the relationship between the
army and the Lashkar-e-Taiba is a family affair". He went on: "Pakistan has taken serious measures to
protect the crown jewels of its national security, but it lives in a perilous time. If there is a nightmare
nuclear security scenario in Pakistan today it is probably an inside-the-family-job that ends up in a
nuclear armageddon in India." The point is echoed by Ian Kearns of the British American Security

states could use terrorist groups to


attack adversaries "by proxy", engineering nuclear security breakdowns to
facilitate terrorist access to weapons or materials. BBC correspondents say there is
Information Council (Basic), who writes of the danger that

every indication that the Pakistani military is in total control of the country's nuclear facilities. Though
henow works in academia, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen led US efforts to determine whether
possessed a nuclear bomb, in the wake of 9/11.

al-Qaeda

long-held intent and persistent efforts to


acquire nuclear and biological weapons represent a unique means of
potentially fulfilling their wildest hopes and aspirations ," he writes. Al-Qaeda's
experience on the nuclear black market has taught its planners that its best
chance lies in constructing an "improvised nuclear device (IND)," he says. For this
He doesn't believe it does. But "the group's

they would need either a quantity of plutonium or 25kg-50kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU), the size of
one or two grapefruits. HEU is held in hundreds of buildings in dozens of countries. "Security measures for
many of these stocks are excellent, but security for others is appalling," according to a report published in

The IAEA registered 15 confirmed cases of


unauthorised possession of plutonium or HEU between 1993 and 2008, a
few of which involved kilogram-sized quantities . In most cases the quantity was far lower
but in some cases the sellers indicated there was more. (If there was, it hasn't been traced.) There is
no global inventory of either material, so no-one can be sure how much has
gone missing over the years. Neither are there agreed international standards
for security and accounting of these materials . UN Security Council Resolution 1540
2008 by the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

merely calls for "appropriate and effective" measures, without defining this in detail. "It is a stark and

nuclear materials and weapons around the world are not


as secure as they should be," writes Ian Kearns, in his Basic report.
worrying fact, therefore, that

Yes Nukes Iran


Nuclear terrorism is the biggest threat to US national
security.
Allison 15 [Dr. Graham T., Director, Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard
Kennedy School, OPENING STATEMENT BY DR. GRAHAM T. ALLISON BEFORE
THE UNITED STATES SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AT A
HEARING CONVENED TO DISCUSS LESSONS LEARNED FROM PAST WMD
NEGOTIATIONS June 24, 2015]
It is my honor to address the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today on the question of lessons we can
learn from earlier nuclear arms control negotiations and agreements to meet the current challenge posed
by Irans nuclear progress. Let me begin by applauding the leadership and members of the Committee for
your determination to assure that the U.S.- led campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is
the most effective it can be, and for insisting that Congress plays its essential role in this process. One of
my favorite quotations comes from the German philosopher, Nietzsche, who observed that: The most
common form of human stupidity is forgetting what one is trying to do. I have a framed version of that
quotation in my office and try to think about it every day.

In the case of Irans nuclear


challenge, what are we trying to do? In one line: to prevent a nuclear
weapon exploding on the territory of the United States or our allies. When
asked, What was the single largest threat to American national security?
Presidents Obama and George W. Bush agreed 100%. As both have said
repeatedly: The single largest threat to American national security is nuclear
terrorism. 2 Most people cannot imagine terrorists successfully exploding a bomb in an American city.
But few could imagine the 9/11 attack by Al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center and the Pentagonbefore it
happened. I have written a book about nuclear terrorism and am happy to provide copies to any members
or their staff who would be interested. While it has one chapter on Iran, the book attempts to address the
danger of nuclear terrorism as a whole. I applaud the Committees role in drilling down on the Iranian

turn with equal determination


to equivalent or even larger potential sources of nuclear weapons that
terrorists could use to destroy New York, or Washington, or even Boston. For
perspective, it is worth pausing to consider: if in the next decade terrorists
successfully explode a nuclear bomb devastating the heart of a great city in
the world, where will the bomb have come from? Iran? Or: North Korea?
Pakistan? Russia? Iran poses the most urgent nuclear threat today , but not, I
believe, the most significant. If terrorists conduct a successful nuclear attack in the
next decade, North Korea and Pakistan rank well ahead of Iran on my list of
probable sources for the weapon or its components .
challenge. But I hope that when you complete that work, you will

Iran Will Sell


Hepler 6/25/15 Iran Increases Terror as Obama Seeks Nuke Deal
http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/us/iran-increases-terror-as-obama-seeksnuke-deal
It is absolutely no secret that the main state sponsor of terror in the
world today is Iran. They have been exporting their radical Islamic jihad
for decades. In fact, the only people who seem to want to deny this reality
are the Obama treaty negotiations team led by Secretary of State John
Kerry. But, Kerrys State Department has put out a report that tells the truth

about Iran and terrorism. Teaparty.org reports: (Free Beacon) Iran has
increased its efforts to finance and carry out terrorist activities
across the world and remains a top nuclear proliferation threat,
according to a new State Department assessment. Iran is funding
and arming leading terrorist groups in the Middle East and
elsewhere,according to the State Departments 2014 Country
Reports on Terrorism, which thoroughly documents how Tehran
continues to act as a leading sponsor terror groups that pose a
direct threat to the United States. The report comes as Western powers
work to finalize a nuclear deal with Iran ahead of a self-imposed June 30
deadline, though it is unclear whether the new findings will come up in
negotiations. In 2014, Irans state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide
remained undiminished through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods
Force (IRGC-QF), its Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and Tehrans ally
Hizballah, which remained a significant threat to the stability of Lebanon and
the broader region, the report states. In addition to al Qaeda and the
Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL), Iran leads the list of
dangerous state actors. ISIL and AQ were far from the only serious threat
that confronted the United States and its allies, according to the report. Iran
continued to sponsor terrorist groups around the world, principally through its
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF). So, lets get this
straight. We know Iran is the leading sponsor of terror organizations worldwide. They have made countless threats to destroy America. And, in the
midst of all this, the Obama Administration is currently negotiating a deal to
allow them to develop nuclear weapons which will most likely be used against
Israel, western Europe, and the U.S. iran nukes Ads by Adblade 15 Famous
Celebs Who Have Committed Horrible Crimes! You'll Understand Why
Australia Is A Scary Place After You See These Photos...Yikes 15 Famous
Celebs Who Have Committed Horrible Crimes! What is wrong with this
picture? And, thats not all Iran is up to, according to teaparty.org: > Iran also
is failing to comply with international restrictions on its contested nuclear
program and has not lived up to obligations to come clean about past military
work on nuclear weapons, according to the report. Iran remains a state of
proliferation concern, it states. Despite multiple [United Nations Security
Council resolutions] requiring Iran to suspend its sensitive nuclear
proliferation activities, Iran continued to be in noncompliance with its
international obligations regarding its nuclear program. The State Dept.
report also names names with regard to Irans proxy terror organizations.
Teaparty.org provides a list: The Islamic Republics support for terrorism
spans across the Middle East and even into the Western hemisphere,
which remains a particular concern to U.S. officials. Irans terror
affiliations include Lebanese Hizballah, several Iraqi Shia militant groups,
Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad, the report states. Iran, Hizballah, and
other Shia militia continued to provide support to the Assad regime [in Syria],
dramatically bolstering its capabilities, prolonging the civil war in Syria, and
worsening the human rights and refugee crisis there. Irans support for the
embattled Syrian president includes sending arms shipments through Iraqi

airspace, which violates U.N. Security Council resolutions barring such action.
This support is meant to belittle coalition airstrikes and U.S. contributions to
the Government of Iraqs ongoing fight against ISIL, according to the report.
Why anyone in their right mind would coddle such a monstrous regime and
even think of negotiating with them on something so important as nuclear
weapons is well beyond reason. To an outside observer, this seems like a
death wish for any government. How can the Obama Administration take
America down this path to destruction? Somehow, it must be more of
Obamas fundamental transformation of America.

AT: Terrorists Dont Want WMDs


Terrorists have expressed their intent to obtain WMDs and
there is a high likelihood of WMD terrorist attack
Vahid Majidi, Assistant Director, Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate,
Federal Bureau of Investigation October 18, 2011 Statement Before the
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, D.C. https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/ten-years-after-9-11and-the-anthrax-attacks-protecting-against-biological-threats
WMD terrorism and proliferation are evolving threats to U.S. national security .
In his 2010 testimony before the Senate and the House of Representatives, the director of national

dozens of identified domestic and international terrorists


and terrorist groups have expressed their intent to obtain and use WMD in
future acts of terrorism. The frequency of high-profile acts of terrorism has increased over the
intelligence stated that

past decade. Indicators of this increasing threat include the 9/11 attacks, the 2001 Amerithrax letters, the
possession of WMD-related materials by Aafia Siddiqui when she was captured in 2008, and multiple
attempts by terrorists at home and abroad to use explosives improvised from basic chemical precursors.
The challenge presented by these threats is compounded by the large volume of hoax threats that distract
and divert law enforcement agencies from addressing real threats. In its 2008 report World at Risk, the

there is a high likelihood


of some type of WMD terrorist attack by the year 2013. The U.S. Intelligence Community
Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism stated

determined that the most probable WMD scenarios involve the use of toxic industrial chemicals, biological

The use of chemical


warfare agents, biological warfare agents, and improvised nuclear devices
are other possiblethough less likelyscenarios due to the difficulties in obtaining the
toxins/poisons, or radioisotopes fabricated into an improvised dispersal device.

necessary materials, technologies, and expertise. In addition to efforts by terrorists to use WMD, multiple
countries seek to expand their WMD capabilities. For some of these countries, U.S. technologies represent
the key to moving their WMD programs forward. The U.S. faces constant attempts by foreign nations to
obtain technology, knowledge, and materials for the development and production of chemical, biological,
and nuclear weapons. As new technologies emerge and mature and as scientific expertise and
technological equipment become more readily available, the challenge of safeguarding these from those
that would use them for nefarious purposes is increasing exponentially. Accordingly, the U.S. government
must regularly reassess its counterproliferation methods to meet the ever-changing challenge.

AT: Terrorists Dont Want the WMDs


Terrorists have expressed interest and have to ability to
possess nuclear weapons
Brill and Luongo 12 [Kenneth C. and Kenneth N. respectively,
Ambassador Kenneth C. Brill was president of The Fund for Peace from 2010
to 2011. Prior to that, he had a 35-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. In
his final Foreign Service assignment, he was the founding director of the
National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC), part of the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence. Mr. Kenneth N. Luongo is the President and founder
of the Partnership for Global Security (PGS) and the Center for a Secure
Nuclear Future (CSNF). He currently co-chairs the Fissile Materials Working
Group (FMWG) and is a member of the Nuclear Security Governance Experts
Group (NSGEG). He has authored nearly 100 articles and briefed audiences
around the world on global security challenges., Nuclear Terrorism: A Clear
Danger NY Times, March 15, 2012]
Terrorists exploit gaps in security. The current global regime for protecting the
nuclear materials that terrorists desire for their ultimate weapon is far from
seamless. It is based largely on unaccountable, voluntary arrangements that are inconsistent across
borders. Its weak links make it dangerous and inadequate to prevent nuclear terrorism. Later this month in
Seoul, the more than 50 world leaders who will gather for the second Nuclear Security Summit need to

There is
a consensus among international leaders that the threat of nuclear terrorism
is real, not a Hollywood confection . President Obama, the leaders of 46 other nations, the
heads of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations, and numerous experts
have called nuclear terrorism one of the most serious threats to global
security and stability. It is also preventable with more aggressive action. At least four
terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, have demonstrated interest in using a
nuclear device. These groups operate in or near states with histories of questionable nuclear security
practices. Terrorists do not need to steal a nuclear weapon. It is quite possible to
make an improvised nuclear device from highly enriched uranium or
plutonium being used for civilian purposes. And there is a black market in
such material. There have been 18 confirmed thefts or loss of weapons-usable nuclear material. In
seize the opportunity to start developing an accountable regime to prevent nuclear terrorism.

2011, the Moldovan police broke up part of a smuggling ring attempting to sell highly enriched uranium;
one member is thought to remain at large with a kilogram of this material.

Yes WMD Attack Experts


WMD terror attack is inevitable experts
NTI 11 Citing Vahid Majidi. Feb. 17 FBI Official Sees 100% Likelihood of
WMD Strike on U.S. The Nuclear Threat Initiative works to strengthen global
security by reducing global threats, Vahid Majidi is an FBI senior official.
http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/fbi-official-sees-100-likelihood-of-wmd-strike-onus/
A senior FBI official said there is a 100 percent chance that the United States
at some time will be attacked with a weapon of mass destruction, Newsmax reported
on Monday (see GSN, Feb. 14). "The notion of probability of a WMD attack being low or
high is a moot point because we know the probability is 100 percent,"
FBI Assistant Director for the WMD Directorate Vahid Majidi said. "Weve seen this
in the past, and we will see it in the future. There is going to be an attack using chemical, biological or

the expected WMD attack could be carried out by an


international terrorist group, a lone actor or a criminal operation . An incident would
radiological material." Majidi said

be expected to feature a weapon less devastating than a nuclear bomb due to the difficulty in preparing
and transferring such as device. While the net probability [of a terrorist nuclear strike] is incredibly low, a
10 kiloton device would be of enormous consequence, Majidi said. So even with those enormously low
probabilities, we still have to have a very effective and integrated approach trying to fight the possibility.

in 2001, personnel discovered al-Qaeda


had established a "nascent" project to produce biological and chemical
warfare agents, Majidi said. The U.S. intelligence community receives hundreds of reports annually
When the U.S. military entered Afghanistan

of international extremists acquiring weapons of mass destruction, Majidi said. While such reports are
consistently found not to be credible, Majidi's office yearly probes more than 12 cases in which there was a
goal of launching an unconventional weapons strike.

Yes WMD Attack Acquisition Likely


Acquisition of nuclear material is possible
NTI 11 Citing Vahid Majidi. Feb. 17 FBI Official Sees 100% Likelihood of WMD Strike on U.S. The Nuclear Threat
Initiative works to strengthen global security by reducing global threats, Vahid Majidi is an FBI senior official.
http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/fbi-official-sees-100-likelihood-of-wmd-strike-on-us/

The amount of loose nuclear material from the former Soviet Union is
unknown, according to Majidi. I know there is a hobby of guessing, and
different folks give you a different number, he said. All I can tell you is that
from the interdictions that we have had in the past decade, the quantities
have been sufficient of highly enriched uranium that I clearly worry about this
material on a global scale. How much is there? Any amount is too much. A
terrorist who stole a nuclear weapon from a country that has one would have
an easier time than if he tried to make one. One of the things you have to
understand is that nuclear markets are very ambiguous markets, Majidi
added. There are as many bad guys trying to sell material as there are good
guys trying to make sure that that doesnt happen"

ISIS wants WMD


ISIS is able to get nuclear and chemical weapons, and will
use them to kill large numbers of innocents
Cirincione 14 [Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares
Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy
and conflict resolution. He was appointed to the presidency by the
Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008., ISIS will be in position to
get nuclear weapons if allowed to consolidate power, resources, says expert
September 30, 2014]
The risk of a terrorist attack using nuclear or chemical weapons has just gone
up. ISIS is willing to kill large numbers of innocents, and it has added three
capabilities that catapult the threat beyond anything seen before: control of
large, urban territories, huge amounts of cash, and a global network of
recruits. British Home Secretary Theresa May warned that if ISIS consolidates its control over the land it
occupies, We will see the worlds first truly terrorist state with the space to
plot attacks against us. Its seizure of banks and oil fields gave it more than
$2 billion in assets. If ISIS could make the right connection to corrupt officials
in Russia or Pakistan, the group might be able to buy enough highly enriched
uranium (about 50 pounds) and the technical help to build a crude nuclear
device. Militants recruited from Europe or America could help smuggle it into their home nations. Or ISIS
could try to build a dirty bomb, conventional explosives like dynamite laced with highly radioactive
materials. The blast would not kill many directly, but it would force the evacuation of tens of square blocks
contaminated with radioactive particles. The terror and economic consequences of a bomb detonated in

ISIS could also try to get


chemical weapons, such as deadly nerve gases or mustard gas . Fortunately, the
the financial districts of London or New York would be enormous.

most likely source of these terror weapons was just eliminated. The Obama administration struck a deal
with Syrian President Bashar Assad that has now destroyed the 1,300 tons of chemical bombs Assad built.
Without this deal, ISIS would likely already have these weapons.

ISIS will become the first true terrorist state and will use
chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to kill
indiscriminately
Morris 14 [Nigel, Deputy political director at The Independent, Isis could
become 'worlds first truly terrorist state' and bomb UK with nuclear and
chemical weapons, Theresa May warns, September 30, 2014]
Isis could acquire nuclear and biological weapons to launch attacks on Britain, the
Home Secretary warned today as she set out new measures to clamp down on extremist groups. In a
speech to the Tory party conference that concentrated almost entirely on the threat from terrorism at

the jihadist group could become the world's


first truly terrorist state in Iraq and Syria. If [Isis] succeed in firmly
consolidating their grip on the land they occupy in Syria and Iraq, we will see the worlds first truly
terrorist state established within a few hours flying time of our country, she said. We will see
terrorists given the space to plot attacks against us, train their men and
women, and devise new methods to kill indiscriminately. We will see the risk, often
prophesied but thank God not yet fulfilled, that with the capability of a state behind them, the
terrorists will acquire chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to attack
home and abroad, Theresa May warned that

us. We must not flinch. We must not shy away from our responsibility. We must not drift towards danger
and insecurity. While we still have the chance, we must act to destroy them.

Other Terrorism Impacts

// 2AC Bioterror Add On


The risk of bioterrorism is real and high now
Saunders-Hastings 14
(Patrick, Securitization Theory and Biological Weapons, E-IR, Jan 8, 2014, Accessed May 20,
2015, http://www.e-ir.info...l-weapons/)//AD

, a changing global and scientific landscape has led to a greater


potential for the acquisition of biological weapons capacity by terrorist
groups
research labs
was
half empty, poorly guarded
methods of biological weapons
production are now freely accessible via the Internet
recent scientific advances may support
biological weapons production by enabling the production of a higher
yield of high-quality product
However

. For instance, during the Cold War, the Soviets reportedly employed approximately 55, 000 scientists and technicians at 6 biological weapons research labs and 5 production facilities37. Among

other things, smallpox was weaponized into ballistic missiles and bombs38. In 1997, the United States conducted a visit to one of these

to find that the facility

, and that most of the scientists had left39. It is, therefore, possible that the biological agents, the equipment, and the human

knowledge and expertise have since fallen into the hands of rogue states or terrorist organizations. Additionally,

, and the technological requirements are not beyond the

means of a determined, well-funded terrorist organization2. Moreover,

36. They may also support more effective weaponization, by making agents more resistant to environmental hazards or by

making agents targetable against specific biochemical pathways36. As these capabilities spread across the globe, there will be a greater potential for terrorists to harness and use these techniques. While the

capabilities of terrorists to engineer biological weapons may have been overstated in the past, this can no longer be said to be the case. It has been argued that two of the preconditions for assessing the threat of

bioterrorism, vulnerability to an attack and terrorist capability, are in place; the only remaining consideration is intent40. It is important to determine whether the intent to acquire and use such weapons is present

among terrorist groups. While terrorist groups have not often used biological weapons, it is unclear whether this is due to insufficient capabilities or lack of intent1. There are a variety of reasons why they may not

be interested in the use of biological weapons, including viewing such weapons as illegitimate in military combat, risks of tactical failure, perceptions of high technical difficulty, and concerns about the

various terrorist groups


have a
documented interest in the acquisition of biological weapons, and with
advances in biotechnology and weaponization, their use may become
more attractive 2, 41. Experts also point to a shift in terrorist intent:
post-modern terrorism aims to inflict the highest mortality rather
than make political statements
This makes biological weapons
an attractive option for such group
indiscriminate nature of a biological weapons attack3. That said,

, including Aum Shinrikyo and al Qaeda,

through violence 33.

s; one estimate suggests that the cost to cause civilian casualties is only one dollar per square kilometer for

biological weapons, compared to 800 and 2000 dollars per square kilometer for nuclear and conventional weapons, respectively42. In a similar vein, the recent war on terror has created an increasingly

biological weapons are particularly well-suited to this form of


smaller, more informed terrorist groups
present circumstances may make the acquisition and use of
biological weapons more attractive.
decentralized terrorist threat;

28. In short, while the intent to use biological weapons has been documented in terrorist groups

in the past,

Extinctionbioweapon causes global pandemic


Mhyrvold 13-postdoctoral fellow from the Department of Applied Mathematics
and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, doctorate in theoretical and mathematical
physics and a master's degree in mathematical economics from Princeton, master's
degree in geophysics and space physics and a bachelor's degree in mathematics
(Nathan, Strategic Terrorism A Call to Action, The Lawfare Research Paper Series
Research paper, July 3, 2013, http://www.lawfarebl...3-2013.pdf)//AD

many biological agents are communicable and so can spread


beyond the people initially infected to affect the entire population.
Infectious pathogens are inherently hard to control because there is
usually no reliable way to stop an epidemic once it starts
Unfortunately,

. This property makes such biological

agents difficult to use as conventional weapons. A nation that starts an epidemic may see it spread to the wrong countryor even to its own people. Indeed, one cannot target a small, well-defined population with a

contagious pathogen; by its nature, such a pathogen may infect the entire human race. Despite this rather severe drawback, both the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as Imperial Japan, investigated and

produced contagious bioweapons. The logic was that their use in a military conflict would be limited to last-ditch, scorched earth campaigns, perhaps with a vaccine available only to one side. Smallpox is the most

famous example. It is highly contagious and spreads through casual contact. Smallpox was eradicated in the wild in 1977, but it still exists in both U.S. and Russian laboratories, according to official statements.7

Unofficial holdings are harder to track, but a number of countries, including North Korea, are believed to possess covert smallpox cultures. Biological weapons were strictly regulated by international treaty in 1972.

The United States and the Soviet Union agreed not to develop such weapons and to destroy existing stocks. The United States stopped its bioweapons work, but the Russians cheated and kept a huge program going

into the 1990s, thereby producing thousands of tons of weaponized anthrax, smallpox, and far more exotic biological weapons based on genetically engineered viruses. No one can be certain how far either the

germs or the knowledge has spread since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Experts estimate that a large-scale, coordinated smallpox attack on the United States might kill 55,000 to 110,000 people, assuming that

sufficient vaccine is available to contain the epidemic and that the vaccine works.8, 9 The death toll may be far higher if the smallpox strain has been engineered to be vaccine-resistant or to have enhanced

a
attack on the United States could easily broaden into a
global pandemic,
All it would take is for one
infected person to leave the country and travel elsewhere
infections would most likely appear on every continent,
within two weeks. Once these beachheads were established, the
epidemic would spread almost without check because the vaccine in
world stockpiles and the infrastructure to distribute it would be
insufficient. That is particularly true in the developing world
virulence. Moreover,

smallpox

despite the U.S. stockpile of at least 300 million doses of vaccine.

. If New York City were attacked with

smallpox,

except perhaps

Antarctica,

, which is ill equipped to handle

their current disease burden to say nothing of a return of smallpox. Even if only 50,000 people were killed in the United States, a million or more would probably die worldwide before the disease could be
contained, and containment would probably require many years of effort. As horrible as this would be,

worst attack one can imagine

such a pandemic is by no means the

, for several reasons. First, most of the classic bioweapons are based on 1960s and 1970s technology because the 1972

treaty halted bioweapons development efforts in the United States and most other Western countries. Second, the Russians, although solidly committed to biological weapons long after the treaty deadline, were

the science and technology of molecular


biology have made enormous advances, utterly transforming the field
in the last few decades. High school biology students routinely perform
molecular-biology manipulations that would have been impossible even
for the best superpower-funded program back in the heyday of
biological-weapons research
terrorists have vastly more deadly bugs to choose from
never on the cutting edge of biological research. Third and most important,

. The biowarfare methods of the 1960s and 1970s are now as antiquated as the lumbering mainframe computers of that era.

Tomorrows

will

. Consider this sobering

development: in 2001, Australian researchers working on mousepox, a nonlethal virus that infects mice (as chickenpox does in humans), accidentally discovered that a simple genetic modification transformed the

virus.10, 11 Instead of producing mild symptoms, the new virus killed 60% of even those mice already immune to the naturally occurring strains of mousepox. The new virus, moreover, was unaffected by any

existing vaccine or antiviral drug. A team of researchers at Saint Louis University led by Mark Buller picked up on that work and, by late 2003, found a way to improve on it: Bullers variation on mousepox was 100%

lethal, although his team of investigators also devised combination vaccine and antiviral therapies that were partially effective in protecting animals from the engineered strain.12, 13 Another saving grace is that

the genetically altered virus is no longer contagious. Of course, it is quite possible that future tinkering with the virus will change that property, too. Strong reasons exist to believe that the genetic modifications

Buller made to mousepox would work for other poxviruses and possibly for other classes of viruses as well. Might the same techniques allow chickenpox or another poxvirus that infects humans to be turned into a

100% lethal bioweapon, perhaps one that is resistant to any known antiviral therapy? Ive asked this question of experts many times, and no one has yet replied that such a manipulation couldnt be done. This case

is just one example. Many more are pouring out of scientific journals and conferences every year. Just last year, the journal Nature published a controversial study done at the University of WisconsinMadison in
which virologists enumerated the changes one would need to make to a highly lethal strain of bird flu to make it easily transmitted from one mammal to another.14

Biotechnology is

advancing so rapidly that it is hard to keep track of all the new


potential threats. Nor is it clear that anyone is even trying. In addition
to lethality and drug resistance, many other parameters can be played
with, given that the infectious power of an epidemic depends on many
properties, including the length of the latency period during which a
person is contagious but asymptomatic.

Delaying the onset of serious symptoms allows each new case to spread to more people and

thus makes the virus harder to stop. This dynamic is perhaps best illustrated by HIV , which is very difficult to transmit compared with smallpox and many other viruses. Intimate contact is needed, and even then,

the infection rate is low. The balancing factor is that HIV can take years to progress to AIDS , which can then take many more years to kill the victim. What makes HIV so dangerous is that infected people have lots

of opportunities to infect others. This property has allowed HIV to claim more than 30 million lives so far, and approximately 34 million people are now living with this virus and facing a highly uncertain

infect its host quickly, to generate symptoms slowly


could silently penetrate
the population to unleash its deadly effects suddenly. This type of
epidemic would be almost impossible to combat because most of the
infections would occur before the epidemic became obvious. A
terrorist group could develop
and kill a large part of humanity
with it
terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some
scientist may do so first and publish the details
pathogens could drive the human race
to extinction
a detailed species-elimination plan of this nature was
openly proposed in a scientific journal
future.15

A virus

genetically engineered to

say, only after weeks or monthsand to spread easily through the air or by casual contact would be vastly more devastating than HIV . It

technologically

sophisticated

such a virus

. Indeed,

. Given the rate at which biologists are making discoveries about viruses

and the immune system, at some point in the near future, someone may create artificial

that

. Indeed,

. The ostensible purpose of that particular research was to suggest a way to extirpate the malaria

mosquito, but similar techniques could be directed toward humans.16 When Ive talked to molecular biologists about this method, they are quick to point out that it is slow and easily detectable and could be fought

Modern biotechnology
will soon be capable, if it is not already, of bringing about the demise
of the human race or at least of killing a sufficient number of people
to end high-tech civilization and set humanity back 1,000 years or
more.
but keep in mind that it takes
only a handful of individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has
lethal power of this potency been accessible to so few, so easily
modern biological science has frighteningly undermined
the correlation between the lethality of a weapon and its cost
Access to extremely lethal agentslethal enough to
exterminate Homo sapienswill be available to anybody with a solid
background in biology, terrorists included.
with biotech remedies. If you challenge them to come up with improvements to the suggested attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas.

That terrorist groups could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem far-fetched,

. Even more

dramatically than nuclear proliferation,

, a fundamentally stabilizing

mechanism throughout history.

The 9/11 attacks involved at least four pilots, each of whom had sufficient education to

enroll in flight schools and complete several years of training. Bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering. Mohammed Atta attended a German university, where he earned a masters degree in urban planningnot

A future set of terrorists could just as easily be


students of molecular biology who enter their studies innocently
enough but later put their skills to homicidal use. Hundreds of
universities
have curricula sufficient to train people in the skills
necessary to make a sophisticated biological weapon,
it seems likely
in the near future
terrorists
will
fashion a bioweapon that could
a field he likely chose for its relevance to terrorism.

in Europe and Asia

and hundreds more in the United States accept

students from all over the world. Thus

misanthropic individual,

that sometime

overcome our best defenses and do something truly terrible, such as

a small band of

, or even a single

kill

millions or even

billions of people

. Indeed, the creation of such weapons within the next 20 years seems to be a virtual certainty. The repercussions of their use are hard to

estimate. One approach is to look at how the scale of destruction they may cause compares with that of other calamities that the human race has faced.

Yes Bioterror
Risk of Bioterror is High
Saunders-Hastings 14
(Patrick, Securitization Theory and Biological Weapons, E-IR, Jan 8, 2014, Accessed May 20,
2015, http://www.e-ir.info...l-weapons/)//AD

the threat of biological weapons has been framed as a security


issue 4. This examines whether
the threat of a biological
weapons attack has been overstated
by drawing on
securitization theory
Therefore,

essay

, and to what degree,

with respect to the governments response

, which critically evaluates the process through which an issue comes to be viewed through a security framework. In addition, the essay will also use the

precautionary principle, described by the 1998 Wingspread Statement as the notion that when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even

if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically5. Though more often applied to considerations of environmental risk, in the case of biological weapons, the principle could be used

justify caution even in the absence of consensus


due
to the severity of the consequences
the biological
weapons threat has not been overestimated
the biodefense
measures expressed in current policy and funding decisions are
warranted Despite measures
which may suggest
the government response is an overreaction, other characteristics of
the bioweapons threat justify its securitization and resulting
prioritization in the government agenda.
the
consequences
pose an existential threat
there is
an inadequate degree of preparedness
the mere possibility of
an attack is enough to warrant high spending on preventive
programs
the response has been appropriately measured given
the threat.
exaggerations
in the
media
is a
separate issue from government policy decisions in response to the
security threat
to

surrounding the probability of an attack, simply

if an attack was to occur. It will be argued that

and that

such as likelihood-adjusted mortality,

U.S.

To do this, the essay provides a discussion of

how

potential

of an attack

to the United States, how

for such an event, how

and

preparative

, and how

The focus will be on the United States government because it has taken such a prominent role in bioweapon securitization and biodefense funding. A single country, the US, was

chosen as a point of focus to avoid confusion due to differing levels of threat and response across countries. Additionally, any

that may exist

or the public portray and view the biological weapons threat will be ignored; though this could be related to the governments decision to securitize bioweapons, this

and is outside the scope of this paper.

how

// 2AC Ebola Add On


Terrorists Will Attack With Ebola
Robert Richardson October 6, 2014 FBI Warns Terror Attack Could be Coming
Very Soon: ISIS Looking at Using Ebola Attacks
http://offgridsurvival.com/terroristebolaattacks/
As the world watches our governments complete incompetence in handling our nations first Ebola case,

intelligence officials are warning that terror groups are looking to use the
Ebola outbreak in Africa as a chance to weaponize the virus and use it as a
bio-weapon. FBI Director James Cornet told CBS on Sunday, that militants were
planning an attack on the United States or our allies, and looking to do it very, very
soon. After watching how easily an infected person could gain access to the
United States, followed by the almost criminal neglect shown by our federal
government in their handling of the crisis, intelligence officials are worried
that groups like ISIS and al-Qaida may intentionally infect themselves in West
Africa in an attempt to wreak havoc across the globe . A few infected
individuals could then easily spread the virus via the worlds
transportation systems.

Ebola causes extinction


Lekpeh 14- Gondah, BS, University of Liberia, Ebola: Liberians Destined
for Extinction, http://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/2014/08/21/ebolaliberians-destined-extinction/
Liberian medical student Gondah Lekpeh gives us his perspective from the
front lines of the Ebola outbreak. On July 22 of this year, the Liberian Minister
of Health informed us and the world that the Ebola hemorrhagic fever
outbreak in our country is out of control. This disease is caused by the
deadly Ebola VIRUS, and the fate of infected individuals is death in 90% of
cases. The announcement followed more than a month of efforts by the
Ministry of Health to contain and eradicate the virus. The Ministry is doing
what it can, but with the weak health care system because of the lack of
human and other resources, the Ebola outbreak has caused the system to
break down. The disease CONTINUES to directly and indirectly take away
lives. Indeed, our relatives, colleagues and friends are perishing daily and our
survival as a people is unpredictable. Either through natural selection
some will survive, or we will all be extinct. As I was writing this, a
childhood schoolmate of mine, a nurse, just died this morning after
contracting the disease at St. Catholic Hospital while treating a patient about
two weeks ago.

Ebola Causes Extinction


Ebola causes extinction
Ethiopia, 2014 (Hara, Ebola Epidemic could lead to Human Extinction
warns WHO as the Outbreak spreads in to East Africa (Hara Ethiopia), Hara
Ethiopia Wordpress,
http://haraethiopiadotcom.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/ebola-epidemic-couldlead-to-human-extinction-warns-who-as-the-outbreak-spreads-in-to-eastafrica-hara-ethiopia/, Accessed: October 30, 2014, S.D.Y.)
The Ebola epidemic threatens the very survival of societies and could lead
to failed states, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned. The latest outbreak of
the lethal disease is very different worse still, it could mutate into
something even more deadly. The outbreak , which has killed some 4,000 people in West
Africa, has led to a crisis for international peace and security , WHO head Margaret
Chan said. In a speech delivered on her behalf at a conference in the Philippines, Ms Chan said Ebola was
a historic risk. I

have never seen a health event threaten the very survival of


societies and governments in already very poor countries, she said. I have never
seen an infectious disease contribute so strongly to potential state failure. Meanwhile, the outbreak
spreads in to East Africa nations of Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan as passenger dies at Kenyas Jomo
Kenyatta International Airport.Anxiety has gripped Kenya after a female passenger from South Sudan died
on Saturday night from Ebola-like SYMPTOMS after arriving in the country Ethiopias Ministry of Health on
Sunday said that a modern laboratory center will start operating on Monday for tasting of four suspected
cases of Ebola. A disease that MEDICAL DOCTORS believe is Ebola appears to be suspected in the
Ethiopian capital. One western African origin diplomat has been admitted for flu like symptoms in Saint
Yared General Hospital.Three more people have been also admitted to the black lion hospital, with a
reported cases of bleeding and fever. Doctors in black lion hospital, speaking anonymously because of the
sensitivity of the issue and afraid of reprisal action from government officials, are saying it is Ebola. The
Ethiopian Government has so far refused to confirm the existence of the disease. On several occasions, the

Ebola in Ethiopia for fear that acknowledging it will deprive


the tourism and the economy and inflame the current public anger.Ethiopias
health care system is among the least developed in Sub-Saharan Africa and is not, at
present, able to effectively cope with the Ebola outbreak. A lack of leadership from
government to devise and implement emergency public health strategies has
contributed to an alarming level of vulnerability to Ebola epidemics.
Government has denied the existence of

// 2AC Forest Fires Add On


Intel Gathering Proves Al Qaeda is Targetting Forest Fires
JOE KOVACS 09/11/2013 Ex-NSA official: Al-Qaida ignited California blazes
http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/are-terrorists-setting-u-swildfires/#cYxf45UvPHASwHSO.99
As the 2013 season of devastating wildfires continue s to rage across the American West,
the question of arson as a form of major terrorism is again being raised. Already
this year, 35,440 reported fires have burned a total of 3.9 million acres, with a quarter-million acres scorched the iconic
Yosemite National Park. Large blazes continue to burn in several states, with six alive in Idaho, five each in California and
Montana, and one each in Alaska, Louisiana, Oregon, Texas and Washington. The National Interagency Fire Center in
Boise, Idaho, says at this time last year, 45,278 fires had burned 7.9 million acres, and in 2011, there were 55,619 fires

Scott, a former National Security Agency official and


Aviation Week editor, told the American Center for Democracy that terrorists are
using fire as a tactical weapon of war. Perhaps the most simple form of economic warfare is wild
land arson, Scott said in his Fire Wars presentation. Thats just setting fires in U.S. forests [and] grasslands. For
any terrorists that are determined to inflict significant damage with very little
investment or risk, fire is an extremely high-leverage weapon of mass
effect. Scott explained that after U.S. Navy SEALs killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin
Laden, they captured a treasure trove of material that provided some
unprecedented insight into the al-Qaida plans . And one of those was a
detailed campaign for starting fires throughout the [American] West. U.S.
officials have pretty much determined that some of the fires that burned in
California [in 2011] were ignited by al-Qaida operatives, Scott said.
devastating 7.2 million acres. In July 2012, William

Extinction
Romm 9 (Joseph- Physicist and Climate Expert, Global Warming, California, and
Wildfires, September 1, http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-01-globalwarming-california-and-wildfires)
The scientific literature paints a hellish future if we dont quickly
reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends (see Climate change expected to
sharply increase Western wildfire burn area as much as 175% by the 2050s). Even the watered
down, consensus-based 2007 IPCC report acknowledged the danger: A warming climate encourages
wildfires through a longer summer period that dries fuels, promoting easier ignition and faster spread.

the wildfire season


in the western U.S. has increased by 78 days, and burn durations of fires >1000 ha
Westerling et al. (2006 see here) found that, in the last three decades,

have increased from 7.5 to 37.1 days, in response to a spring-summer warming of 0.87C. Earlier
spring snowmelt has led to longer growing seasons and drought, especially at higher elevations, where
the increase in wildfire activity has been greatest. In the south-western U.S., fire activity is correlated
with ENSO positive phases, and higher Palmer Drought Severity Indices. Insects and diseases are a
natural part of ecosystems. In forests, periodic insect epidemics kill trees over large regions, providing

These epidemics are related to aspects


of insect life cycles that are climate sensitive. Now brutal heat and drought
are fueling massive California wildfires once again (see, for instance, the BBC piece
dead, desiccated fuels for large wildfires.

Heat fuelling California wildfire). We cant expect much from the status quo media (see CNN, ABC,
WashPost, and AP blow Australian wildfire, drought, heat-wave story). So here is CAPs Tom Kenworthy
explaining What a 1-Degree Temperature Increase Means for Wildfiresand Ill end with some
comments on this positive or amplifying carbon-cycle feedback: To the average person a 1-degree rise
in average spring and summer temperatures may not seem like much. But for residents of the western
United Statesincluding California, which is fighting at least eight fires right nowit

could mean

a staggering increase in the extent and cost of fires according to a recent study. In their
report, researchers at Headwaters Economics, an independent nonprofit research group in Bozeman,

climate change and the accelerating movement of


western residents to areas near or in undeveloped forests will likely prove to be a
devastating combination. That 1-degree increase in spring and summer temperatures,
Mont., predict that

they conclude, will increase the area burned by seasonal fires in Montana by more than 300 percent
and more than double the cost of protecting homes threatened by fire. Though the Headwaters paper
focuses on Montana, using data from 18 large fires in the state during 2006 and 2007, it has
implications for fire-prone areas throughout the Rocky Mountain West. And it builds on a growing body
of evidence that inaction on climate change will cost the western United States dearly. Earlier this
summer, for example, Harvard University scientists published a study in the Journal of Geophysical
Research predicting that areas burned by wildfires in the West could increase by 50 percent by 2050,
with even larger increases of 75 percent to 175 percent in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain

Those increases could have large impacts on human health


because of the added smoke and particulates released into the air, the study said.
West.

Federal and state agencies responsible for fighting western wildfires, particularly the United States
Forest Service, are already struggling to cope with the rapidly increasing costs of protecting lives and
property. Since 2000, wildland fires in the United States have burned an average of more than 7 million
acres a year, about double the average acreage for the previous four decades. Federal firefighting
costs have also risen dramatically, according to the Government Accountability Office, averaging $2.9
billion per year from fiscal 2001-2005 compared to $1.1 billion in the previous five-year period. The
Headwaters study predicts that state wildland firefighting costs in Montana will double to quadruple by
2025. The increasing popularity of building homes in or near forested areas, known as the wildlandurban interface, or WUI, is a major factor in the escalating costs of fire suppression. A 2006 report by
the Department of Agricultures Office of Inspector General found that the majority of [Forest Service]
large fire suppression costs are directly linked to protecting private property in the WUI, with Forest
Service managers estimating between 50 and 95 percent of large fire costs spent on that purpose
alone. Though federal agencies shoulder the major financial burden for protecting those homes,
development decisions in wild areas are made by local and state officials. While fire-prone lands are
being developed, the climate is warming, leading to more large fires, write the authors of the
Headwaters Economics report, which notes that with just 14 percent of the wildland urban interface
developed in the West, the cost of protecting those areas will increase significantly. More development
in these sensitive areas would lead to more wildfire suppression costs, even in the absence of climate
change. Climate change will only exacerbate this effect. Climate change and its impacts on
temperature, drought, and snowpack runoff will affect fires as well as many other aspects of life in the
West. Climate models predict that global warming will significantly reduce snow runoff in the West, the
regions major source of water. A study published in April by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
estimated that the Colorado River, the lifeline for 27 million people in the Southwest, will not be able to
produce its allocated water supply 60 percent to 90 percent of the time by mid-century.

That

would have major impacts on food production, recreation, and development


in the fastest-growing region in the nation. It will also mean forests will dry out sooner,
with a likely increase in fire activity. And in recent years, a widespread and so far unchecked epidemic
of mountain pine beetles that has killed millions of acres of trees from Colorado north into Canada has
laid the foundation for a potentially large increase in catastrophic fires. Climate change has played a
role in that outbreak, too, as warmer winters spare the beetles from low temperatures that would
normally kill them off, and drought stresses trees. In the western United States, mountain pine beetles
have killed some 6.5 million acres of forest, according to the Associated Press. As large as that path of
destruction is, its dwarfed by the 35 million acres killed in British Columbia, which has experienced a
rash of forest fires this summer that as of early this month had burned more than 155,000 acres. In the
United States to date about 5.2 million acresan area larger than Massachusettshave burned this
year. Destruction of trees by the mountain pine beetle, combined with climate change and fire, makes
for a dangerous feedback loop. Dead forests sequester less carbon dioxide. Burning forests release lots
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide adds to climate change, which raises
temperatures, stresses forests, and makes more and bigger fires more likely. Its a frightening prospect,
as British Columbias Forests Minister Pat Bell told an International Energy Agency conference last
week. I am not a doomsayer, said Bell. I

am not one who wants to say we are


beyond the tipping point. But I am afraid that we are getting close
to that. The final reason to worry about the climate-wildfire connection is that wildfires are
a classic amplifying feedback, since burning forests release carbon

dioxide that accelerates global warming. As the 2006 Science article, Warming
and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity (subs. reqd), concludes soberly:
virtually all climate-model projections indicate that warmer springs and summers will occur over the
region in coming decades. These trends will reinforce the tendency toward early spring snowmelt and
longer fire seasons. This will accentuate conditions favorable to the occurrence of large wildfires,
amplifying the vulnerability the region has experienced since the mid-1980s. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Changes consensus range of 1.5 to 5.8C projected global surface temperature
warming by the end of the 21st century is considerably larger than the recent warming of less than
0.9C observed in spring and summer during recent decades over the western region. If the average
length and intensity of summer drought increases in the Northern Rockies and mountains elsewhere in
the western United States, an increased frequency of large wildfires will lead to changes in forest
composition and reduced tree densities, thus affecting carbon pools. Current estimates indicate that

If wildfire
trends continue, at least initially, this biomass burning will result in
carbon release, suggesting that the forests of the western United States may become a source
western U.S. forests are responsible for 20 to 40% of total U.S. carbon sequestration.

of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide rather than a sink, even under a relatively modest
temperature-increase scenario. Moreover, a recent study has shown that warmer, longer growing
seasons lead to reduced CO2 uptake in high-elevation forests, particularly during droughts. Hence,

the projected regional warming and consequent increase in


wildfire activity in the western United States is likely to magnify the
threats to human communities and ecosystems, and substantially increase the
management challenges in restoring forests and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We are
simply running out of time to stop all of the carbon-cycle feedbacks from intensifying
and to stop these devastating, record-breaking wildfires from becoming the normal climate.

Al Qaeda Will Use Fires Intel


More Evidence Intel Proves Intent
JOE KOVACS 09/11/2013 Ex-NSA official: Al-Qaida ignited California blazes
http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/are-terrorists-setting-u-swildfires/#cYxf45UvPHASwHSO.99
He noted the last confirmed weaponized wildfires were in World War II, when the Japanese sent incendiary

the Christian Broadcasting Network reported alQaida was advising would-be terrorists how best to burn America. The terror
groups magazine included pictures, diagrams and explanations on how to
start fires to obtain the most damage. CBN analyst Erick Stakelbeck said the extreme
detail provides reason for concern. The information , he said, is all designed to
cause the maximum amount of carnage and death. CBN noted that in the U.S., more
balloons across the Pacific. However,

houses are built in the countryside than in the cities and cited a Montana fire chief who said the prospect

websites run by jihadis


made claims of arson in a number of California wildfires. WND reported in 2004 that
of a wildfire terrorist attack was not farfetched. WND also reported

an Arabic-language jihadi website also posted a message purporting to be al-Qaidas plan of economic
attack on the U.S. that including proposals to turn the nations forests into raging infernos. The National
Terror Alert Response Center report said: We are NOT implying that the California fires are an act of
terrorism; however, the threat of pyro-terrorist attacks pose a significant risk to the U.S. and the fires in
California and Greece earlier this year should be a wake-up call. Even in 2003, an FBI memo warned that
national forests in the West could be the next target for terror by Osama bin Ladens al-Qaida network.
The memo, obtained by the Arizona Republic, warned law enforcement that a senior al-Qaida detainee told
interrogators he planned to spark multiple, catastrophic wildfires simultaneously in Colorado, Montana,
Utah and Wyoming to strike a blow to the U.S. economy. WND also reported documents

recovered
from a remote area along the Pakistan border revealed that bin Laden wanted
al-Qaida to launch a global fireball by lighting forest fires in Europe, the
United States, Australia and South America. The documents, uncovered during an
operation led by the British intelligence service MI6, were described by
experts in that agency as the most worrying [plot] that the world is facing.

Al Qaeda Causes Forest Fires


Al-Qaeda Is Responsible for Environmental Destruction on
American Soil

Jolly 15 "Al Qaeda's Responsible For Burning America's Forests And


Homes." Political Outcast. N.p., 27 Aug. 2013. Web. 26 June 2015.
When Navy SEAL Team 6 raided Osama bin Ladens compound and killed the al Qaeda leader, they retrieved a treasure of documents and plans detailing many of the

Among that information was the detailed plans for


launching an economic warfare against America in the form of
wildfires. The al Qaeda plans laid out the idea of setting numerous
wildfires in the forests, especially those near towns and farmlands.
They figured that the fires would cost the US millions of dollars to
fight and that it would disrupt the economy of many local areas . This should
terrorist groups operations.

not have been a surprise to the US government as people like William Scott of the American Center for Democracy warned about terrorists setting forest fires ten years
earlier. In an address this month to an Economic Warfare SuperPanel ACD/EWI, Scott divulged some details about the forest fires this year that have ravaged so many
parts of the US and drove him and his family away from their home in the Colorado Springs area. Not all of the fires you hear about and see on the news were caused by

Dozens of wildfires have been caused by arson and are still under investigation.
Scott contends that some of these arson set fires may in fact be the
results of al Qaedas fire war on America. Some of the fires that were
ignited in California in 2012 were set by al Qaeda operatives. Al
Qaeda articles have detailed instructions of how to plant timed
explosives in forests and grasslands, mainly in the western US. They
also laid out plans for the use of remote-controlled ember bombs
with which to start fires. Listen to Scott lay out his case that we are currently under al Qaedas
economic warfare plan to destroy Americas economy and way of life
by setting fires in strategic areas. At the time Scott spoke, a week ago, he points out that
there were 52 large fires burning in the US. Just since the beginning
of July, fire crews have been battling fires in Alabama, Alaska,
Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho,
Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee,
Utah, and Wyoming. He also notes that these are just the fires on
federal land and not any of those on state or private lands including
6 fires, 4 of which were started in one night in wheat stubble fields
in Kansas earlier this month. Twenty-five fires set in El Paso and Tell Counties in Colorado. All of these fires were within a few
miles of each other and were all caused by arson. The arsonist who set them is still at large. Scott asks the question if the Waldo Canyon
fire was set by terrorists and could it have been set by the person
that set the other 25 fires, all of which were quickly extinguished.
Could the Waldo Canyon fire have been their lucky #26 that
destroyed homes, killed several people and will cost millions of
dollars in many ways. The impacts of fighting these fires will cost
billions of dollars in the long run. There are the immediate costs of
fighting the fires plus they have also the cost of hundreds of homes
and businesses. Some of these arson set fires have hit in heavy
tourist areas, causing many people to abort their vacation plans.
Hotels suffered huge numbers of cancellations. The loss of tourism
has forced many businesses to lay off workers. Until the forests have a chance to regrow, any
lightning.

substantial rains will cause massive flooding which will in turn cause the erosion of the fragile topsoil on hundreds of thousands of acres. Once the topsoil is gone, many of

The effects of some of these fires could


be devastating for years to come. Al Qaeda is successfully waging
an economic warfare by means of fires and our government is
currently doing little to prevent it. Scott urges that the government needs to be more aggressive in monitoring our
the former plants and trees will not be able to sprout and take root.

lands and swifter in reaching fires as they start. He lays out ways this could happen, but somehow I doubt if our inept Congress will take the threat seriously, continue to
chock up the fires as lightning and domestic arsonists and continue to fight fires as cheaply as possible. If you do nothing else, at least forward this video of William Scott
to your Senator and Congressman/woman and urge them to take the threat seriously and to act upon it. If as Scott says that some of these fires are being deliberately set
by al Qaeda terrorists, then it is an act of war being waged on American soil. That means that we need to use our military resources to fight the terrorist fires and save the
lives and properties of Americans, and this should come before getting involved with Syrias civil war. America needs to defend America on American soil first!

AT: Forest Fires are from Natural Disasters


Recent Evidence Proves Natural Causes Cant Explain
Recent Increases in Forest Fires
JOE KOVACS 09/11/2013 Ex-NSA official: Al-Qaida ignited California blazes
http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/are-terrorists-setting-u-swildfires/#cYxf45UvPHASwHSO.99
An editorial in June by the Washington Examiner noted, Those trying to downplay the
threat of terrorism have dismissed such a possibility as paranoid . As Americans

learned in 2001, and again as recently as 2012 in Benghazi and 2013 with the Boston Marathon bombing,
terrorist threats are not something to take lightly. This years wildfire in Yosemite started Aug. 17 in the
Stanislaus National Forest, but authorities believe it was not an act off terror. They say a hunters illegal
fire swept out of control, torching 394 square miles of timber, meadows and sensitive wildlife habitat. The
Associated Press reports it has cost more than $89 million to fight, and officials say it will cost tens of
millions of dollars more to repair the environmental damage alone.

Yosemite National Park

has been decimated by fire in the summer of 2013. As WND reported in June, an expert on
Islamic terrorism believes a wildfire that ravaged the outskirts of Colorado Springs, Colo., killing two people
and destroying more than 500 homes, should be examined by terror investigators. One thing that my

investigators have given me the authority to state is that they have all but
ruled out natural causes as the cause of this fire , said Sheriff Terry Maketa at the time.
I cant really go any further on that, but I can say we are pretty confident it was not, for instance, a
That single blaze in Colorado caused more than $85 million in
damage, but that figure is expected to rise to possibly $120 million.

lightning strike.

EXT: Forest Fires Cause Warming


Forest fires destruct the Ecosystem causing a massive
release into the atmosphere
Scott, 1 (Dayna- Of The Faculty of Environmental Studies Porgram at York
University, Looking for loopholes: under the new climate change deal,
Canada can use business-as-usual forestry to excuse continued greenhouse
gas emissions. Relying on forests as carbon sinks diverts attention from the
critical work of cutting energy-related emissions, Alternatives, September)
Carbon is carbon, to be sure. But for greenhouse gas reduction purposes,

what matters is

carbon reliably kept out of the atmosphere.

Equivalence is retained only if


carbon can be pulled out of the atmosphere and held in trees or wood products on the surface of the
earth, in ways that ensure it will ''remain as stable as if it were in underground coal or oil
reserves''(f.#6) for over a century (the length of time the unit of CO[Symbol Not Transcribed] it offsets

Any of the counted carbonsequestering wood that burns, or rots, or oxidizes in some other
way, undermines the equivalence. So does any forestry practice that releases
carbon from existing sinks. In reality, storing carbon in forest sinks is inherently
vulnerable, if only because of the dynamic nature of ecosystems.
Some analysts have called this the ''carbon time-bomb effect,''
referring to sudden releases of carbon from systems previously
acting as sinks, and have judged that ''increasing the amount of carbon
stored in biospheric systems in order to compensate for carbon
emanating from the burning of fossil fuels constitutes a high-risk
strategy.''(f.#8)
will have a radiative effect on the atmosphere).(f.#7)

Ext: Forest Fires Kill Top Soil


Forest fires cause soil erosion
Cammeraat et al., 6 (L.H.- Phd University of Amsterdam, Changes in
Topsoil Properties after Forest Fires studied by Thin Section Analysis,
Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 8, 06736)
Changes in top soil properties resulting from forest fires with
different intensities are discussed. Understanding these alterations is essential
to understand infiltration and erosion processes after forest fires. Sites in Northern Greece (wildfire)
and Eastern Spain (experimental fire) were compared to non-burned sites. Thin sections were used
to study the undisturbed topsoil properties for burned and non-burned sites in addition to classical
soil structure, aggregation and infiltration measurements. Main results ob- tained from the topsoil
analysis were: -Burned

plots showed changes in the distribution of


soil aggregation, indicating an in- crease in the amount of
coarser aggregates over 4 mm in size and an increase of micro- aggregates smaller than
0.106mm. This effect was more clearly present in the crust than in
the sub-crust. It was shown by the thin section analyses that for the larger ag- gregates the
amount of lithorelicts (mineral grains) increased, which indicated degra- dation of the natural
aggregates after fire. The observed increase of micro-aggregates may be related to dis-aggregation
of coarser aggregates as inter-aggregate bonding between finer aggregates and primary particles
in coarse aggregates are dominated by polysaccharides. In this case the bindings, which apparently
are more vulnerable to heating than the finer micro-aggregates that are more dominated by
physico-chemical bonding types. -Stability of the macro-aggregates (4-4.8 mm) was clearly lower
for the burned areas in comparison to non-burned areas, also hinting towards a decrease in the
amount of organic bonding compounds such as roots, hyphae and polysaccharides. -Infiltration
experiments were carried out with a dripping plate rainfall simulator. These showed lowest
infiltration rates for burned soil, when compared to non-burned sites -The thin section analyses
showed results confirming those observed for soil aggre- gation and structure with regard to the
changes in aggregate size, but revealed more information about its composition and changes.

From the foregoing it can be concluded that the top soils of


sites were adversely affected by forest fire reducing coarse soil
aggregation and porosity, which is also expressed by the
rainfall simulator experiments enhancing erosion vulnerability
and runoff production. These results confirm the broader scale
outcomes of the erosion studies after the fire, with strongly
increased runoff and sediment yield on the burned sites in
comparison to the unburned ones. The thin section analysis was
found to be a very useful technique to study the in-situ physical
arrangement of the soil structure and was in accordance with
the analysis of the standard sampling techniques giving
additional information on the changes in the top soil after forest
fires.

Extinction
Avery, Director of & Senior Fellow at Center for Global Food Issues, former
agriculture analyst for the State Department, and former staff member of the
President's National Advisory Commission on Food and Fiber, 95 (Dennis,
SAVING THE PLANET WITH NO-TILL, HIGH-YIELD FARMING, before the
Manitoba/North Dakota Zero Tillage Farmer's Association, January 24,

http://www.mandakzerotill.org/books/proceedings/Proceedings
%201995/highyield.html)
The true

long-term threat to human existence is soil erosion. Doubling the


yields on the best and safest farmland cuts soil erosion by more than half. And now herbicides and
conservation tillage are letting us cut those low rates of soil erosion by 65 to 98 percent. It should now be
possible to build topsoil and soil tilth on much of the world's best farmland -- while carrying on intensive high-yield farming. For 10,000
years, man has accepted soil erosion as the long-term price for having a dependable food supply in the short run. In the U.S. alone, the
Conservation 'Technology Information Center reports roughly 100 million acres using conservation tillage systems. The systems are
continuing their rapid spread through such widely-differing agricultures as Western Europe, Brazil, Australia and Kenya. We are doing this

Herbicides are the first alternative mankind has ever developed to


"bare-earth" farming. These herbicide-based farming systems are the most sustainable farming Systems ever
devised. They save more soil, even as they encourage more
earthworms, more soil microbes and more soil tilth than plowing .
with chemicals.

Nor do the herbicides present any significant threat to wildlife or people from runoff or residues.
(Atrazine, the most widely-used "suspicious" herbicide in the world has just had its safety rating raised
seven-fold by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.) In addition, high-yield farmers are in the
midst of developing "no-leach" farming. Tractors and applicator trucks for farm chemicals now can be
guided by global positioning satellites and radar within inches of their true positions across the field,
while microprocessors vary the application rates of chemicals and seed seven times a second based on
intensive soil sampling, soil hydrology, slope, plant population and nearness to waterways. It is now
practical to manage our farms by the square yard, rather than in chunks of 10 or 100 hectares. Highyield farming must now claim environmental credit for both the acres not plowed. and for the soil
erosion not suffered.

2AC Pakistan Retaliation


Mistrust Means the US Will Think the Weapon is From
Pakistan
Michael Kugelman is the South Asia program associate at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars 2011 March 1 The U.S.-Pakistan
relationship in disarray
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/01/the_us_pakistan_relationship
_in_disarray
Yet it would be a mistake to assume the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was plunged into crisis only
after Davis pulled the trigger, and that it will remain so only as long as he languishes in his jail cell. In
reality, the Davis affair represents just the latest chapter in a lengthening narrative -- one of an unraveling

could rupture completely. The ongoing U.S.-Pakistan struggles


are often attributed to a mere trust gap, easily surmountable if each side convinces the other
of its good intentions. Unfortunately, mutual suspicions are too historically ingrained
simply to be wished away with soothing words. Islamabad stews over what it
perceives as America's repeated betrayals, if not outright abandonment, of
Pakistan -- from Washington's failure to help prevent the partition of Pakistan during a bloody civil war
partnership that some fear

in 1971, to its reduced engagement with Islamabad following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in

Washington, meanwhile, steams about the billions of dollars of its aid


that have been diverted or simply disappeared, along with the persistent
evidence that elements of the Pakistani government and security forces still
support key insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan, such as the Haqqani network.
With relations held hostage to mutual suspicion, equivocations and
prevarications are part and parcel of the partnership . For example, while the United
the late 1980s.

States is coy about the status and activities of its security personnel inside Pakistan, the latter is
ambiguous about the extent of its military's ties to extremists. Washington badly wants Pakistan to take
definitive steps to root out militants in North Waziristan, who use this tribal area as a staging ground for
attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Islamabad has thus far refused. Publicly, it argues that its army is
overstretched, referring explicitly to ongoing flood relief activities and counter militancy operations in
Pakistan's other tribal areas, and implicitly to troops massed along its eastern border with India. Yet behind
such explanations lurk the powerful strategic calculations that harden Islamabad's position and that
Washington can do little about: These anti-Afghan government extremists do not target the Pakistani
government, some maintain links with the Pakistani military, and they offer a hedge against Indian
influence in Afghanistan after U.S. forces have departed. Pakistan's wish list is also unlikely to be fulfilled. A
deal to provide civilian nuclear energy? Virtually unfathomable, given Pakistan's poor proliferation record.
Better access to U.S. markets for Pakistani textile exports? This proposal has considerable support around
Washington, but not from the powerful U.S. textile lobby. Also, proponents conveniently forget how
Pakistan's textile products are of decidedly lower value than those of Bangladesh and China. Efforts to get
India talking about Kashmir? Given its keen interest in furthering its rapidly developing strategic rapport

A deteriorating
relationship, even one marked by mutual mistrust and divergent interests,
can be salvaged in an environment of civility. Unfortunately, U.S .-Pakistan
relations unfold in a climate of acrimony. Washington berates Islamabad -publicly and incessantly -- for not taking sufficient action against militancy within its borders. Such
hectoring rankles Pakistanis to no end, and hardens a perception at the heart
of their mistrust of the United States - the perception that for Washington, security interests reign
with New Delhi, Washington will likely continue to treat this issue very delicately.

supreme and Pakistani lives are cheap. Constantly needling Pakistan to "do more" about domestic
militancy, Pakistanis believe, demonstrates callous disregard for the Pakistani soldiers killed in operations
against extremists in recent years. To be sure, however, Washington's language, while harsh, is rooted in a
very real fact: Islamabad has thus far to take action against key militant groups directly impacting

Pakistan's feisty media-particularly the Urdu-language


outlets consumed by the vast majority of the population- make a habit of insulting the U.S.
government, contaminating much of its reportage with untruths that reflect
the conspiracy theories embraced by a wide segment of Pakistani society. And while some of these
America's fight in Afghansitan. Meanwhile,

theories-such as that Washington deploys security forces in Pakistan-have been proven accurate, otherssuch as that Washington somehow triggered last year's horrific flooding-are patently absurd.

The United States routinely issues threats as well, some of which bring into question
the very viability of the relationship. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared
last year that an attack against the United States "traced to be Pakistani" would
have "a very devastating impact on our relationship." Given the increasingly
global reach of Pakistani militant organizations such as Lashkar e-Taiba and the
Pakistani Taliban, and their demonstrated ability to cultivate ties with U.S.-based Pakistanis (consider
the case of Mumbai attack plotter David Coleman Headley, or the links the FBI has alleged between
several westerners and Pakistani militants),

the possibility of such an attack is far

from remote.

That Will Cause a Substantial Increase in US Military


Action in Pakistan This Sparks a War
By Haider Ali Hussein Mullick advised General (r) David H. Petraeus on
Pakistan in 2009 and 2010., October 24, 2011 The United States, Pakistan,
and the perils of brinkmanship
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/10/24/brinkmanship_tactics_in_paki
stan
Last May I asked Major General Niaz Muhammad Khan Khattak, the Deputy Director of the ISI, Pakistan's
premier intelligence agency, about his organization's links with the Haqqani Network. "If you always focus
on the mosaic," he said, pointing to the Afghan rug in his sumptuous office, "that's all you'll see." Today it
doesn't matter how Washington looks at this mosaic - as transnational terrorism or as Pakistan's anti-India
partner in Afghanistan - one thing is certain: elements within the ISI help fighters belonging to the Haqqani

The U.S.-Pakistan relationship is a tinderbox, one


spark - U.S. soldiers on Pakistani territory or the Haqqanis killing dozens of American troops - could
ignite war. That spark may be more plausible than we think . Recent dtente is
encouraging but only a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary
Network who kill American soldiers.

Clinton asked the ISI to facilitate talks between Washington and reconcilable Haqqanis, and yet warned of
"dire consequences" for Islamabad if the Pakistani military did not take action against the Haqqanis who
are unwilling to negotiate. The Pakistani response was "yes" to talks, but "no" to military operations. Today,
thousands of American troops are in the Haqqani Network's crosshairs in eastern Afghanistan during efforts
to root out Haqqani militants, such as Operation Steel Rain in Khowst. Unless Pakistani generals act against
the Haqqani Network's sanctuary in North Waziristan, which they have refused to do so far, American
casualties will increase. In that case, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress and the White House

if helicopters
carrying American Seals are shot down in North Waziristan ? How will America
to act unilaterally, quite possibly by putting boots on the ground. What will happen

respond to a major attack that kills 100 troops in Afghanistan, like the September attack that wounded 77

What if
American boots trigger a mutiny in the Pakistani army, leading to civil war ?
How will Washington secure Pakistani nuclear weapons? Unfortunately, many of these dangerous
scenarios are increasingly likely. A Pakistani official has told me that
American-supplied Pakistani F-16 fighters are on high alert against a probable
US raid. In March, Pakistani Air Force had orders to shoot down US predator and
reaper drones. Last year, Islamabad shut down NATO's largest supply line for
soldiers in east Kabul? What if the perpetrators escape to Karachi, beyond the range of drones?

days, and three years ago, General Ashfaq Kayani, head of the Pakistani military, ordered fire on a US
helicopter carrying U.S. Special Forces that had crossed into North Waziristan. The Pakistani parliament,
political parties and the media are supportive of the army's sentiments against the United States, but not

Anti-Americanism, always high, has reached unprecedented


levels within the military's ranks, especially amongst junior officers. This is
because most young officers are unaware of the past deals their generals have
made with the Americans, and some may act independently in the name of
national pride against an American incursion into Pakistan to target militants .
The United States is failing to change Pakistani public opinion because many
Pakistanis are oblivious to American good will, and ambivalent about
American aid as well as reconciliation with the insurgents. They hear about aid cuts
and Americans talking to the same insurgents Pakistanis are asked to kill. Pakistani generals and
politicians support such public confusion and often blame Washington for
Pakistan's problems in order to cover up their own incompetence and
corruption. More than 10 years and $20 billion worth of military and civilian aid has bought Washington
against the Haqqanis.

the heads of top al-Qaeda leaders, the elimination of critical safe havens (Swat valley and South
Waziristan), but not the Quetta Shura in Balochistan or the Haqqanis in North Waziristan. At the same time,
since 9/11 more than 30,000 Pakistanis have been victims of terrorism, of which 6,000 were soldiers and
policemen. The city of Karachi, which contributes half of Pakistan's national income, is home to a brutal

resurgent Balochi militants and Sindhi flood victims are


overstretching the military and an incompetent civilian government .
Hyperinflation of food and energy prices, water shortages, massive floods,
proliferating terrorists groups, and a fast-growing nuclear program are fast
making Pakistan a threat to itself and the world. To make matters worse, the Pakistanethnic war, and

based Haqqanis are killing American soldiers and disrupting the Afghan peace process, with what the

US military aid cuts have done little to


alter the ISI's support for the Haqqanis. Instead, General is not Kayani is rallying
United States says is support from the ISI. Clearly,

troops and political parties against expected U.S. raids into North Waziristan. He is pressing Washington's
weakest point: threatening to close crucial supply routes to Afghanistan, without which there would be
massive NATO fuel and ammunition shortages. It would take months, and improbable negotiations with the
Russians, to get a viable alternative to the "Northern Supply Network." It just a matter of Pakistani will, but
also Pakistani capabilities. There is great need for American helicopters and intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (ISR), and yes, some American boots on the ground in the form of trainers and advisers.
Even if Pakistani generals decide to attack the Haqqanis, they no longer have resources to clear and hold
North Waziristan, and contain the blowback that could come in the form of a national suicide bombing
wave. In 2009, suicide attacks increased by 220 percent from the previous year (from ten to 32), targeting
major cities: Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi. This placed massive strains on poorly
equipped national police forces. The same year, riding on an anti-insurgent public opinion wave, Pakistani
commandoes, Frontier Scouts and 11th Corps infantry men - many trained and equipped by the United
States - broke the insurgents' back in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan. Today the Pakistani Army has
no public support for a military operation against the Haqqanis. Furthermore, the population's opposition to
the Pakistani Taliban - public enemy no. 1 in 2009 - is fading. That was not always the case. In the summer
of 2010, Pakistan's Commanding General for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, told me,
"like Swat and South Waziristan [in 2009] with the help of the Pakistani public we will clean out North
Waziristan this winter [2010]." However, Pakistani intransigence regarding the Haqqanis, devastating
floods, the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and the killing of two Pakistanis in Lahore by an American
spy made the operation in North Waziristan impossible. To renew ties we must start by replicating the 2009
conditions. American development dollars, weapons and trainers were flying in and al-Qaeda members
were flying out or shot dead. U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, who rightly chides Pakistan today, said referring to
the Pakistani surge against Pakistani Taliban that he "couldn't give the Pakistani Army anything but an 'A'."

absent a national narrative against the Haqqanis that unites Pakistanis,


carved out of a transparent partnership with the U nited States, both countries
may slip into war. Time is running out.
But

We Will Use Nukes


Hal Brown February 27, 2007 Nuclear retaliation after an al Qaeda WMD
attack http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/2074
If the United States is attacked by al Qaeda and suffers very heavy casualties, a
nuclear strike may be our only option for retaliation . As a nationless enemy it is known
that al Qaeda operates from the mountainous region along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Here are excerpts

Scheuer had to say in an interview with Keith Olbermann on Feb. 20. He should
know. Hes the former head of the CIA bin Laden unit . We won the cities, but the Taliban and
from what Michael

al Qaeda escaped basically intact, and theyve been rebuilding and reequipping over the past five
years. the central place in terms of an attack inside the United States is Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When the next attack occurs in America, it will be planned and orchestrated
out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. the people who will plan the next attack in the United
States are those who are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, sir. The threat to the United States, inside the United
States, comes from al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to address the threat to
America, thats where it is. We dont treat thethis Islamist enemy as seriously
as we should. We think somehow were going to arrest them, one man at a time. These people are
going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States, and were going to have absolutely
nothing to respond against. LINK Al Qaeda isnt like North Korea or Iran against whom we could and
probably would launch a massive nuclear strike should they be so foolhardy to attack us or our allies with
nuclear weapons. Our defense against them is the assurance that we would obliterate their countries. I
have little doubt that al Qaeda leaders from Osama on down would gladly meet their maker if they could
do so knowing they had killed a million Americans in one glorious strike against the infidel. They would
launch such a strike in the belief that, should they die, those jihadists left alive would reconstitute

If al Qaeda used a weapon of mass


destruction against us, whether a thermonuclear device, a dirty bomb, or a
chemical or biological weapon , and killed tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of
themselves into a bigger and more lethal army for Allah.

Americans, there would be no al Qaeda country to bomb into the stone age. We would have to go after
them there and kill them. We would have to thwart the plan the martyr leaders had for a bigger and better
al Qaeda. I see only two ways to do this. Heres the first. The first is to mobilize a huge army of highly
trained mountain troops. By huge I envision 100,000 to 200,000 as the terrain, pockmarked with caves and
tunnels, is a guerilla armys dream. George Bush calls the area wilder than the Wild West, but which al
Qaeda calls home. It will make fighting an enemy in the jungles of Vietnam look like a walk in the park. Our
current forces in Iraq, and those who have been cycled through, have been trained in desert and urban
warfare. In order to get the military up to strength for an effective mountain campaign against the forces
wed face there, we would need a draft. It would take at least six months to get the first contingent of
mountain trained and equipped troops there. Without massive numbers and the best logistics they would

We would need to use nuclear


bombs to sanitize the border areas our intelligence showed to be likely
hideouts for al-Qaeda. On Sunday Vice President Cheney made a surprise visit to Pakistan and met
be at a terrible disadvantage. The second option is obvious.

with Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He is being portrayed as giving him a dose of the stern Cheney stuff, although
he seemed to be less than his usual belligerent self when he said that if aid to Pakistan is cut it will be due
to the feckless Domcratic Congress. I hope in private he really laid out the true dire consequenses to
Pakistan if theres an al Qaeda attack against the United States My hunch is that our atrophying testicular

should
the U.S. get attacked, retaliation will be swift and brutal. It will be nuclear strikes
against suspected al Qaeda strongholds along the Afghanistan Pakistan
border. He might have even hammered him with a power point presentation based on a the fact sheet,
veep warned him that unless he gets serious about going after al Qaeda bases (and Osama),

Nuclear Weapons Effects, from the American Federation of Scientists. LINK Whether we choose option one
or option two, we would still have to contend with the Talban and al-Qaeda who are already spread through
the non-mountainous parts of the country. To do this we would need to greatly augment the 40,000 forces
we already have there. These troops would have to come from Iraq, and they would have to come as
quickly as possible no matter the consequences for whoever is worth saving in Iraq. The news, I mean the
real news sans Anna Nicoles remains and Britney Spears bald head, is full of stories about the latest you
aint seen nothing yet proof that Iran is supplying really nasty weapons being used to kill our troops in
Iraq. All the pundits are speculating as to whether Bush plans an attack against Iran. Meanwhile, in a

matter of seconds, we could be deciding whether to retaliate against al Qaeda with nuclear bombs, and no
one wants to talk about this.

That Will Cause Pakistani Terrorists to Attack India


Anjana Pasricha October 21, 2011 US-Pakistan Tensions Could Harm
Regional Security
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/south/US-Pakistan-TensionsCould-Harm-Regional-Security-132304063.html
escalating tensions between the United States and Pakistan , Indias
upsets the region will have
devastating consequences for the developmental agenda of other countries ,
Referring to

Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna has warned that anything which

particularly India. Following talks Thursday with France's foreign minister in New Delhi, Krishna told
reporters that Washington and Islamabad should sort out their recent differences through a dialogue. The
Indian minister's comments came as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Islamabad and urged

In recent months, a war of words has erupted


between the two countries amid U.S. accusations that Pakistan's military spy
agency, the ISI, has links to the Haqqani militant network. The al-Qaida-linked
group has launched several high profile attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in
Pakistan to deny safe havens to insurgents.

Afghanistan. Islamabad denies providing support to the militant network. Bharat Karnad at New Delhis
Center for Policy Research says India could be adversely impacted if relations between the Washington and

If push comes to shove and things get so bad


[between Pakistan and the U.S.], then obviously there is going to be some
spillover effects on India, in the sense then that the ISI and their Pakistan army
controllers might feel they have absolutely nothing to lose because they have so much
on their platter, a little added danger of inciting those militant groups to strike at
Indian targets and so on would be worth the risk, " Karnad said. "That is the kind of thing
Islamabad further deteriorate.

perhaps what the government of India is worried about.

Extinction
Ghulam Nabi Fai, Kashmiri American Council, July 8, 2001, Washington
Times
The foreign policy of the United States in South Asia should move from the lackadaisical and distant

The
most dangerous place on the planet is Kashmir, a disputed territory
(with India crowned with a unilateral veto power) to aggressive involvement at the vortex.

convulsed and illegally occupied for more than 53 years and sandwiched between nuclear-capable

It has ignited two wars between the estranged South


Asian rivals in 1948 and 1965, and a third could trigger nuclear volleys
and a nuclear winter threatening the entire globe. The United States would
enjoy no sanctuary. This apocalyptic vision is no idiosyncratic view. The director of central
intelligence, the Defense Department, and world experts generally
place Kashmir at the peak of their nuclear worries. Both India and
Pakistan are racing like thoroughbreds to bolster their nuclear arsenals
and advanced delivery vehicles. Their defense budgets are climbing despite
India and Pakistan.

widespread misery amongst their populations. Neither country has initialed the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or indicated an inclination to ratify an
impending Fissile Material/Cut-off Convention.

Cloud Computing Advantage

1AC

Advantage ___: Cloud Computing


Bulk data collection kills U.S trust
Eoyang and Horwitz 13 (12-20 Mieke,- the Director of the National
Security Program and Gabriel,- is the Director of the Economic Program at
Third Way NSA Snooping's Negative Impact On Business Would Have The
Founding Fathers 'Aghast')
The revelations about the scope and scale of NSAs surveillance both at home and abroad have made many uneasy about the security of their data. This loss of trust could have ongoing consequences for the U.S.
economy and for the future development of the Internet. Policymakers must understand these implications as they make decisions on how to reform our surveillance efforts. First, what will this mean for American
competitiveness? For years, the Internet has been largely Made in America, but the technical architecture and data transcend national borders. European, Chinese, Russian, and other global competitors are vying

One major competitive global


advantage for U.S. companies is that Americas openness and freedoms have
brought an implied level of trust in the security and privacy
for the billions of consumers who currently use U.S. Internet services every dayfrom Google to Facebook to Ebay.

of the data flowing through their servers. But

when the U.S. government asserts that it can exploit electronic data abroad for intelligence purposes, it creates an international reaction with profound economic consequences. For example, Europes
Commissioner for digital affairs, Neelie Kroes, predicts the fallout from Snowdens leaks will have multi-billion Euro consequences for US businesses. The EU Commissions Vice President, Viviane Reding, is pushing
for Europe to adopt more expansive privacy laws that will help build market share for regional companiesthereby shutting American companies out.

consequences could be staggering

The economic

. Studies by leading Internet researchers at ITIF, Gartner, and Forrester examining the NSA surveillance revelations

impact project potential lost revenue for U.S. cloud computing companies ranging from $35 billion to $180 billion over the next three years. More than half of the overseas members of a cloud industry group, the
Cloud Security Alliance, said they were less likely to use U.S. cloud providers in the future. Ten percent of such members said they had cancelled a U.S. cloud services project as a result of the Snowden Incident.
While the true costs of the loss of trust are hard to quantify, and will be reported in future quarters, the potential losses are enormous. Second, what will this mean for the future of Internet governance? Since its
earliest days, the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has governed the web. As the Internet has expanded, several nations, especially China, have been pressing to end
American dominance and transfer control of Internet governance to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency within the United Nations. Worse still for prospects of continued American
dominance, the NSA revelations have prompted calls for extensive regional control of the Internet. For example, Brazil, which has long called for such regional control, will host an important Internet governance

Unless the U.S. government takes steps to restore some


degree of trust
a new approach
could
end U.S.
Internet leadership. This could leave management of the Internet to nations
like China or Russia that do not share Americas commitment to safety,
openness, competition, and growth.
conference in April that could challenge Americas role.

, the groundswell of international interest in

to Internet governance

undermine or

Recommendations for change are coming from many corners. President Obamas advisory group on NSA reform is

calling for an end to bulk collection of Americans metadata and other steps to restore protections abroad. Major Internet companies have called for greater restrictions on surveillance activities, saying the balance
has tipped too far from the individual. The government should heed these calls for reflection and reform.

implications
our economy could pay the price.

Without understanding the economic


our Internet dominance and

of our security policies and taking reasonable steps to restore trust in Americas surveillance efforts,

Fusion Centers steal vast amounts of data from private


corporations.
American Civil Liberties Union, 2/25/2009, "What's Wrong With Fusion
Centers," https://www.aclu.org/report/whats-wrong-fusion-centers-executivesummary
: Fusion Centers
were originally created to
improve the sharing of anti-terrorism intelligence among different
law
enforcement agencies
the scope of their
mission has quickly expanded
The types
of information they seek for analysis has broadened
to include
but public and private sector data
These fusion centers
raise very
serious privacy issues
threaten
Americans' privacy at an unprecedented level
A new institution is emerging in American life

. These state, local and regional institutions

state, local and federal

. Though they developed independently and remain quite different from one another, for many

- with the support and encouragement of the federal government - to cover "all crimes and all hazards."
also

over time

not just criminal intelligence,

, and participation in these centers has grown to include not just law enforcement, but other government entities, the

military and even select members of the private sector.

new

, over 40 of which have been established around the country,

at a time when new technology, government powers and zeal in the "war on terrorism" are combining to
.

This surveillance done by the Fusion Centers undermine


cloud computing
Lomas 13

(Natasha, NSA Spying Risks Undermining Trust In U.S. Cloud Computing Businesses, Warns Kroes, Tech
Crunch, July 4, 2013, Accessed April 8, 2015, http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/04/spying-bad-forbusiness/)//AD

undermining trust in U.S. cloud computing businesses, the European


calls for clarity and
transparency from the U.S. regarding the scope and nature of its surveillance and access to data on
The NSA spying scandal risks

Commissions vice-president, Neelie Kroes, has warned in a speech today. Kroes also reiterated

individuals and businesses living and conducting business in Europe in order to avoid a knock-on effect on cloud businesses. Loss of
Europeans trust could result in multi-billion euro consequences for U.S. cloud providers, she added. Kroes was speaking during a press
conference held in Estonia, following a meeting of the ECs European Cloud Partnership Steering Board, which was held to agree on EU-wide

cloud computing
businesses are at particular risk of fallout from a wide-reaching U.S.
government surveillance program because they rely on their customers trust
to function trust that the data entrusted to them is stored securely. Kroes said: If
businesses or governments think they might be spied on, they will have less
reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss
out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other
secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes?
Front or back door it doesnt matter any smart person doesnt want the
information shared at all. Customers will act rationally, and providers will miss out on a great opportunity.
specifications for cloud procurement. In her speech, part of which follows below, she argued that

Scenario one is warming:


Cloud computing key to climate modeling
Boyce 10
[Eric, technical writer and user advocate for The Rackspace Cloud,
September 14, 2010 http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2010/09/14/thefuture-of-cloud-computing-the-big-25-in-the-next-25/]
The promise of the cloud isnt just about gaming and the ability to safely store all those photos that you wish you hadnt

the most promising cloud-based applications also require


massive computational power. Searching a database of global DNA samples requires abundant, scalable
ever taken. Many of

processing power. Modeling protein folding is another example of how compute resources will be used. Protein folding is
linked to many diseases including Alzheimers and cancer, and analyzing the folding process can lead to new treatments
and cures, but it requires enormous compute power. Projects like Folding@home are using distributed computing to tackle

The cloud will offer a larger, faster, more scalable way to


process data and thus benefit any heavy data manipulation task . 6. Is it going to
be hot tomorrow? Like protein folding modeling, climate simulation and forecasting requires a
large amount of data storage and processing. Recently the German Climate Computing Center
(DKRZ) installed a climate calculating supercomputer that is capable of
analyzing 60 petabytes of data (roughly 13 million DVDs) at over 158 teraflops (trillion calculations
per second). In the next couple of decades, this level of computing power will be widely available and
will exist on remote hardware. Sophisticated climate models combined with
never before seen compute power will provide better predictions of climate
change and more rapid early warning systems
these modeling tasks.

Key to warming adaptation


Pope 10

[ Vicky Pope is the head of climate science advice at the Met Office Hadley
Centre, How science will shape climate adaptation plans, 16 September
2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/sep/16/scienceclimate-change-adaptation]
the demand for information on how climate change will affect
our future outstrips the current capability of the science and climate
models. My view is that as scientists, we can provide useful information, but we need to be clear about its
limitations and strive to improve information for the future. We need to be clear about the uncertainties
Some would argue that

in our projections while still extracting useful information for practical decision-making. I have been involved in developing climate models for
the last 15 years and despite their limitations we are now able to assess the probability of different outcomes for the first time. That means

we can quantify the risk of these outcomes happening. These projections the UK climate
projections published in 2009 - are already forming the backbone of adaptation decisions being made in the UK for 50 to 100 years ahead. A
project commissioned by the Environment Agency to investigate the impact of climate change on the Thames estuary over the next 100 years
concluded that current government predictions for sea level rise are realistic. A major outcome from the scientific analysis was that the worstcase scenarios for high water levels can be significantly reduced - from 4.2m to 2.7m because we are able to rule out the more extreme sea
level rise. As a result, massive investment in a tide-excluding estuary barrage is unlikely to be needed this century. This will be reviewed as
more information becomes available, taking a flexible approach to adaptation. The energy industry, working with the Met Office, looked at the
likely impact of climate change on its infrastructure. The project found that very few changes in design standards are required, although it did
highlight a number of issues. For instance, transformers could suffer higher failure rates and efficiency of some types of thermal power station
could be markedly reduced because of increasing temperatures. A particular concern highlighted by this report and reiterated in today's report
from the Climate Change Committee - the independent body that advises government on its climate targets - is that little is known about how
winds will change in the future - important because of the increasing role of wind power in the UK energy mix. Fortunately many people, from

Demand
for climate information is increasing, particularly relating to changes in the
short to medium term. More still needs to be done to refine the climate
projections and make them more usable and accessible. This is especially
true if we are to provide reliable projections for the next 10 to 30 years.
The necessary science and modelling tools are being developed, and the first
private industry to government, recognise the value of even incomplete information to help make decisions about the future.

tentative results are being produced. We need particularly to look at how we communicate complex and often conflicting results. In order to
explain complex science to a lay audience, scientists and journalists are prone to progressively downplay the complexity. Conversely, in
striving to adopt a more scientific approach and include the full range of uncertainty, we often give sceptics an easy route to undermine the
science. All too often uncertainty in science offers a convenient excuse for delaying important decisions. However, in the case of climate
change there is overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing in part due to human activities and that changes will accelerate if
emissions continue unabated. In examining the uncertainty in the science we must take care to not throw away what we do know. Science has

Scientists now need to press on in developing the


emerging tools that will be used to underpin sensible adaptation decisions
which will determine our future.
established that climate is changing.

Warming is inevitableonly adaptation can prevent


extinction
Romero 8
[Purple, reporter for ABS-CBN news, 05/17/2008, Climate change and human
extinction--are you ready to be fossilized? http://www.abscbnnews.com/nation/05/16/08/climate-change-and-human-extinction-are-youready-be-fossilized
Climate change killed the dinosaurs. Will it kill us as well? Will we let it destroy the human race? This was the
grim, depressing message that hung in the background of the Climate Change Forum hosted on Friday by the Philippine National Red Cross at

Maybe someday it will be our fossils that another


race will dig up in the future, " said Roger Bracke of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies, underscoring his point that no less than extinction is faced by the human race ,
unless we are able to address global warming and climate change in this generation. Bracke, however,
countered the pessimistic mood of the day by saying that the human race still has an opportunity to
save itself. This more hopeful view was also presented by the four other speakers in the forum. Bracke pointed out that all peoples of
the world must be involved in two types of response to the threat of climate change: mitigation and
adaptation. "Prevention" is no longer possible, according to Bracke and the other experts at the
forum, since climate change is already happening. Last chance The forum's speakers all noted the
the Manila Hotel. "Not one dinosaur is alive today.

increasing number and intensity of devastating typhoons --most recently cyclone Nargis in
Myanmar, which killed more than 100,000 people--as evidence that the world's climatic and weather
conditions are turning deadly because of climate change. They also reminded the audience
that deadly typhoons have also hit the Philippines recently, particularly Milenyo and Reming, which left hundreds of thousands of Filipino

this generation the last


chance for the human race" to do something and ensure that humanity
stays alive in this planet. According to Sao, while most members of our generation will be dead by the time the worst
families homeless. World Wildlife Fund Climate and Energy Program head Naderev Sao said that "

effects of climate change are felt, our children will be the ones to suffer. How will Filipinos survive climate change? Well, first of all, they have
to be made aware that climate change is a problem that threatens their lives. The easiest way to do this as former Consultant for the
Secretariats of the UN Convention on Climate Change Dr. Pak Sum Low told abs-cbnews.com/Newsbreak is to particularize the disasters that
it could cause. Talking in the language of destruction, Pak and other experts paint this portrait of a Philippines hit by climate change: increased
typhoons in Visayas, drought in Mindanao, destroyed agricultural areas in Pampanga, and higher incidence rates of dengue and malaria.
Saom said that as polar ice caps melt due to global warming, sea levels will rise, endangering coastal and low-lying areas like Manila. He said
Manila Bay would experience a sea level increase of 72 meters over 20 years. This means that from Pampanga to Nueva Ecija, farms and
fishponds would be in danger of being would be inundated in saltwater. Saom added that Albay, which has been marked as a vulnerable area
to typhoons, would be the top province at risk. Saom also pointed out that extreme weather conditions arising from climate change, including
typhoons and severe droughts, would have social, economic and political consequences: Ruined farmlands and fishponds would hamper crop
growth and reduce food sources, typhoons would displace people, cause diseases, and limit actions in education and employment. Thus, Sao
said, while environmental protection should remain at the top of the agenda in fighting climate change, solutions to the phenomenon "must
also be economic, social, moral and political." Mitigation Joyceline Goco, Climate Change Coordinator of the Environment Management Bureau
of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, focused her lecture on the programs Philippine government is implementing in
order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Goco said that the Philippines is already a signatory to global agreements calling for a
reduction in the "greenhouse gasses"--mostly carbon dioxide, chloroflourocarbons and methane--that are responsible for trapping heat inside
the planet and raising global temperatures. Goco said the DENR, which is tasked to oversee and activate the Clean Development Mechanism,
has registered projects which would reduce methane and carbon dioxide. These projects include landfill and electricity generation initiatives.
She also said that the government is also looking at alternative fuel sources in order do reduce the country's dependence on the burning of
fossil fuels--oil--which are known culprits behind global warming. Bracke however said that mitigation is not enough. "The ongoing debate
about mitigation of climate change effects is highly technical. It involves making fundamental changes in the policies of governments, making
costly changes in how industry operates. All of this takes time and, frankly, we're not even sure if such mitigation efforts will be successful. In

A few nations
and communities have already begun adapting their lifestyles to cope with
the effects of climate change. In Bangladesh, farmers have switched to
raising ducks instead of chickens because the latter easily succumb to weather disturbances and immediate effects, such as
floods. In Norway, houses with elevated foundations have been constructed to
the meantime, while the debate goes on, the effects of climate change are already happening to us." Adaptation

decrease displacement due to typhoons. In the Philippines main body for fighting climate change, the Presidential Task Force on Climate
Change, (PTFCC) headed by Department on Energy Sec. Angelo Reyes, has identified emission reduction measures and has looked into what
fuel mix could be both environment and economic friendly. The Department of Health has started work with the World Health Organization in

, bringing information hatched from PTFCCs


studies down to and crafting an action plan for adaptation with the communities in the barangay level
remains a challenge. Bracke said that the Red Cross is already at the forefront of efforts to prepare for disasters related to
strengthening its surveillance mechanisms for health services. However

climate change. He pointed out that since the Red Cross was founded in 1919, it has already been helping people beset by natural disasters.
"The problems resulting from climate change are not new to the Red Cross. The Red Cross has been facing those challenges for a long time.
However, the frequency and magnitude of those problems are unprecedented. This is why the Red Cross can no longer face these problems
alone," he said. Using a medieval analogy, Bracke said that the Red Cross can no longer be a "knight in shining armor rescuing a damsel in
distress" whenever disaster strikes. He said that disaster preparedness in the face of climate change has to involve people at the grassroots
level. "The role of the Red Cross in the era of climate change will be less as a direct actor and increase as a trainor and guide to other partners
who will help us adapt to climate change and respond to disasters," said Bracke. PNRC chairman and Senator Richard Gordon gave a picture of
how the PNRC plans to take climate change response to the grassroots level, through its project, dubbed "Red Cross 143". Gordon explained
how Red Cross 143 will train forty-four volunteers from each community at a barangay level. These volunteers will have training in leading
communities in disaster response. Red Cross 143 volunteers will rely on information technology like cellular phones to alert the PNRC about
disasters in their localities, mobilize people for evacuation, and lead efforts to get health care, emergency supplies, rescue efforts, etc.

Adaptation solves global wars


Werz and Conley 12 - Senior Fellow @American Progress where his
work as member of the National Security Team focuses on the nexus of
climate change, migration, and security and emerging democracies &
Research Associate for National Security and International Policy @ the
Center for American Progress [Michael Werz & Laura Conley, Climate
Change, Migration, and Conflict: Addressing complex crisis scenarios in the
21st Century, Center for American Progress, January 2012]
The costs and consequences of climate change on our world will define the 21st
century. Even if nations across our planet were to take immediate steps to rein in
carbon emissionsan unlikely prospecta warmer climate is inevitable. As the U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, noted in 2007, human-created warming of the climate

is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global


average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.1 As these ill effects
system

progress they will have serious implications for U.S. national security interests as well as global stabilityextending from the sustainability of
coastal military installations to the stability of nations that lack the resources, good governance, and resiliency needed to respond to the many

as these effects accelerate, the stress will impact


human migration and conflict around the world . It is difficult to fully understand the detailed causes of
migration and economic and political instability, but the growing evidence of links between climate
change, migration, and conflict raise plenty of reasons for concern . This is why its time
adverse consequences of climate change. And

to start thinking about new and comprehensive answers to multifaceted crisis scenarios brought on or worsened by global climate change. As
Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, argues, The question we must continuously ask ourselves in the face of
scientific complexity and uncertainty, but also growing evidence of climate change, is at what point precaution, common sense or prudent risk

In the coming decades climate change will increasingly


threaten humanitys shared interests and collective security in many parts of the world, disproportionately affecting the
management demands action.2

globes least developed countries. Climate change will pose challenging social, political, and strategic questions for the many different
multinational, regional, national, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to improving the human condition worldwide. Organizations as
different as Amnesty International, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the International Rescue Committee, and
the World Health Organization will all have to tackle directly the myriad effects of climate change. Climate change also poses distinct

Recent intelligence reports and war games, including some conducted


conclude that over the next two or three decades, vulnerable regions (particularly subSaharan Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia) will face the prospect of
food shortages, water crises, and catastrophic flooding driven by climate
change. These developments could demand U.S., European, and international
humanitarian relief or military responses, often the delivery vehicle for aid in crisis situations. This report provides the
challenges to U.S. national security.

by the U.S. Department of Defense,

foundation and overview for a series of papers focusing on the particular challenges posed by the cumulative effects of climate change,
migration, and conflict in some of our worlds most complex environments. In the papers following this report, we plan to outline the effects of
this nexus in northwest Africa, in India and Bangladesh, in the Andean region of South America, and in China. In this paper we detail that nexus
across our planet and offer wide ranging recommendations about how the United States, its allies in the global community, and the community
at large can deal with the coming climate-driven crises with comprehensive sustainable security solutions encompassing national security,
diplomacy, and economic, social, and environmental development. Here, we briefly summarize our arguments and our conclusions. The nexus
The Arab Spring can be at least partly credited to climate change. Rising food prices and efforts by authoritarian regimes to crush political
protests were linked first to food and then to political repressiontwo important motivators in the Arab makeover this past year. To be sure,
longstanding economic and social distress and lack of opportunity for so many Arab youth in the Middle East and across North Africa only
needed a spark to ignite revolutions across the region. But environmental degradation and the movement of people from rural areas to already
overcrowded cities alongside rising food prices enabled the cumulative effects of long-term economic and political failures to sweep across
borders with remarkable agility. It does not require much foresight to acknowledge that other effects of climate change will add to the pressure
in the decades to come. In particular the cumulative overlays of climate change with human migration driven by environmental crises, political
conflict caused by this migration, and competition for more scarce resources will add new dimensions of complexity to existing and future
crisis scenarios. It is thus critical to understand how governments plan to answer and prioritize these new threats from climate change,

No matter what steps the


global community takes to mitigate carbon emissions, a warmer climate is
inevitable. The effects are already being felt today and will intensify as climate change worsens. All of the worlds regions and nations
migration, and conflict. Climate change Climate change alone poses a daunting challenge.

will experience some of the effects of this transformational challenge. Heres just one case in point: African states are likely to be the most
vulnerable to multiple stresses, with up to 250 million people projected to suffer from water and food insecurity and, in low-lying areas, a rising
sea level.3 As little as 1 percent of Africas land is located in low-lying coastal zones but this land supports 12 percent of its urban population.4
Furthermore, a majority of people in Africa live in lower altitudesincluding the Sahel, the area just south of the Saharawhere the worst
effects of water scarcity, hotter temperatures, and longer dry seasons are expected to occur.5 These developments may well be exacerbated
by the lack of state and regional capacity to manage the effects of climate change. These same dynamics haunt many nations in Asia and the
Americas, too, and the implications for developed countries such as the United States and much of Europe will be profound. Migration

In the 21st century the world could see


substantial numbers of climate migrantspeople displaced by either the slow or sudden onset of the effects
Migration adds another layer of complexity to the scenario.

of climate change. The United Nations recent Human Development Report stated that, worldwide, there are already an estimated 700 million
internal migrantsthose leaving their homes within their own countriesa number that includes people whose migration isrelated to climate
change and environmental factors. Overall migration across national borders is already at approximately 214 million people worldwide,6 with
estimates of up to 20 million displaced in 2008 alone because of a rising sea level, desertification, and flooding.7 One expert, Oli Brown of the
International Institute for Sustainable Development, predicts a tenfold increase in the current number of internally displaced persons and
international refugees by 2050.8 It is important to acknowledge that there is no consensus on this estimate. In fact there is major
disagreement among experts about how to identify climate as a causal factor in internal and international migration. But even though the root
causes of human mobility are not always easy to decipher, the policy challenges posed by that movement are real. A 2009 report by

the

International Organization for Migration produced in cooperation with the United Nations University and the Climate Change, Environment
and Migration Alliance cites numbers that range from 200 million to 1 billion migrants
from climate change alone, by 2050,9 arguing that environmental drivers of migration are often coupled with
economic, social and developmental factors that can accelerate and to a certain extent mask the impact of climate change. The report also
notes that migration can result from different environmental factors, among them gradual environmental degradation (including
desertification, soil and coastal erosion) and natural disasters (such as earthquakes, floods or tropical storms).10 (See box on page 15 for a
more detailed definition of climate migrants.) Clearly, then,

climate change is expected to aggravate many

existing migratory pressures around the world. Indeed associated extreme weather events
resulting in drought, floods, and disease are projected to increase the number
of sudden humanitarian crises and disasters in areas least able to cope , such as
those already mired in poverty or prone to conflict.11 Conflict This final layer is the most unpredictable, both within nations and
transnationally, and will force the United States and the international community to confront climate and migration challenges within an
increasingly unstructured local or regional security environment. In contrast to the great power conflicts and the associated proxy wars that
marked most of the 20th century, the immediate post- Cold War decades witnessed a diffusion of national security interests and threats. U.S.
national security policy is increasingly integrating thinking about nonstate actors and nontraditional sources of conflict and instability, for
example in the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups. Climate change is among these newly visible issues sparking conflict. But
because the direct link between conflict and climate change is unclear, awareness of the indirect links has yet to lead to substantial and

the potential for the changing climate to


induce conflict or exacerbate existing instability in some of the worlds most vulnerable regions is now recognized
in national security circles in the United States, although research gaps still exists in many places. The climate-conflict
sustained action to address its security implications. Still

nexus was highlighted with particular effect by the current U.S. administrations security-planning reviews over the past two years, as well as

Center for Naval Analysis, which termed climate change a threat multiplier , indicating that it can
. The Pentagons latest Quadrennial Defense Review also recognized
climate change as an accelerant of instability or conflict, highlighting the operational challenges that
the

exacerbate existing stresses and insecurity 12

will confront U.S. and partner militaries amid a rising sea level, growing extreme weather events, and other anticipated effects of climate
change.13 The U.S. Department of Defense has even voiced concern for American military installations that may be threatened by a rising sea
level.14 There is also well-developed international analysis on these points. The United Kingdoms 2010 Defense Review, for example,
referenced the security aspects of climate change as an evolving challenge for militaries and policymakers. Additionally, in 2010, the Nigerian
government referred to climate change as the greatest environmental and humanitarian challenge facing the country this century,
demonstrating that climate change is no longer seen as solely scientific or environmental, but increasingly as a social and political issue
cutting across all aspects of human development.15 As these three threadsclimate change, migration, and conflictinteract more intensely,
the consequences will be far-reaching and occasionally counterintuitive. It is impossible to predict the outcome of the Arab Spring movement,
for example, but the blossoming of democracy in some countries and the demand for it in others is partly an unexpected result of the
consequences of climate change on global food prices. On the other hand, the interplay of these factors will drive complex crisis situations in

Several
regional hotspots frequently come up in the international debate on climate change , migration,
and conflict. Climate migrants in northwest Africa, for example, are causing communities across the region to
respond in different ways, often to the detriment of regional and international security concerns. Political and social
instability in the region plays into the hands of organizations such as Al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb. And recent developments in Libya, especially the large number of weapons looted from depots after strongman
which domestic policy, international policy, humanitarian assistance, and security converge in new ways. Areas of concern

Moammar Qaddafis regime fell which still remain unaccounted forare a threat to stability across North Africa. Effective solutions need not
address all of these issues simultaneously but must recognize the layers of relationships among them. And these solutions must also recognize
that these variables will not always intersect in predictable ways. While some migrants may flee floodplains, for example, others may migrate

Bangladesh, already well known for its disastrous floods,


faces rising waters in the future due to climate-driven glacial meltdowns in neighboring
India. The effects can hardly be over. In December 2008 the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., ran an
exercise that explored the impact of a flood that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring
India. The result: the exercise predicted a new wave of migration would touch off religious
conflicts, encourage the spread of contagious diseases, and cause vast damage to infrastructure.
India itself is not in a position to absorb climate-induced pressures never mind foreign
to them in search of greater opportunities in coastal urban areas.16

climate migrants. The country will contribute 22 percent of global population growth and have close to 1.6 billion inhabitants by 2050, causing
demographic developments that are sure to spark waves of internal migration across the country. Then theres the

Andean

region of South America, where melting glaciers

and snowcaps will drive climate, migration, and security concerns. The
average rate of glacial melting has doubled over the past few years, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service.17 Besides Peru, which
faces the gravest consequences in Latin America, a number of other Andean countries will be massively affected, including Bolivia, Ecuador,

will put water security, agricultural production, and


power generation at riskall factors that could prompt people to leave their homes and migrate. The IPCC report
argues that the region is especially vulnerable because of its fragile ecosystem .18
and Colombia. This development

Finally, China is now in its fourth decade of ever-growing internal migration, some of it driven in recent years by environmental change. Today,

China continues to experience the full spectrum of climate change related


consequences that have the potential to continue to encourage such migration. The Center
for a New American Security recently found that the consequences of climate change and continued internal
migration in China include water stress; increased droughts, flooding, or other severe events; increased
coastal erosion and saltwater inundation; glacial melt in the Himala as that could affect hundreds of millions ; and shifting
agricultural zonesall of which will affect food supplies . 19 Pg. 1-7
across its vast territory,

Scenario two is disease:


Cloud computing key to genome sequencing and disease
spread
Chansanchai 15
(Athima, Cloud computing contributes to individually tailored medical treatments of the future, Microsoft
News, Feb 2, 2015, Accessed April 8, 2015, http://news.microsoft.com/features/cloud-computingcontributes-to-individually-tailored-medical-treatments-of-the-future/)//AD

in a decade or less it could be


real science. To get to the point where technology can give people access to
their genetic profiles, cloud computing plays a pivotal role. By putting
resources to analyze genomes in the cloud, researchers can do their work
from a variety of devices, collaborate with each other more easily and save
time and money. Just a few years ago, sequencing a human genome, for example, used to cost $95 million. Now, its $1,000. And
by 2020, it may be a matter of pennies. Computing makes it possible to run simulations faster,
which leads to more efficient lab work that could produce scientific
breakthroughs. Feng and his team at Virginia Tech have developed tools to help other
researchers and clinicians in their quests to find cures for cancer, lupus and
other diseases.
For now, this level of personalized medicine is science fiction. But Feng thinks that

Genome sequencing is key to solve ABR disease


Koser et al 14
*ABR is anti-biotic resistant
*WGS is whole genome sequencing
1 Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 2Clinical Microbiology and Public
Health Laboratory, Public Health England, Cambridge, UK 3Cambridge University Hospitals National Health
Service Foundation Trust, Cambridge, UK 4Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome
Campus, Hinxton, UK (Claudio, Whole-genome sequencing to control antimicrobial resistance, Cell Press,
2014, Elsevier, Accessed April 8, 2015, http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0168952514001140/1-s2.0S0168952514001140-main.pdf?_tid=b6aec3dc-def8-11e4-9b5b00000aab0f6c&acdnat=1428612232_7e13b78f2121498282f37bd79b933b98)//AD

WGS has become an essential tool for drug development by enabling the
rapid identification of resistance mechanisms , particularly in the context of tuberculosis (TB), which
remains a global public health emergency [15,16]. In 2005 the first published use of 454
pyrosequencing (the first second-generation WGS technology) was to identify the F0 subunit ofthe ATP synthase as the
target of bedaquiline, which subsequently became the first representative of a novel class of anti-TB agents
to be approved in 40 years [16,17]. This has enabled researchers to sequence this gene in
phylogenetically diverse reference collections to ensure thatitis conserved across Mycobacterium canettii as well as the various lineages and

This represents an
important step because drug candidates are usually only tested against a
small number of isolates during the early phases of drug development. Similarly, only a limited number of MTBC
genotypes are sampled in clinical trials, depending on where these are conducted [19]. As a result, intrinsically
resistant strains might be missed, ashas been the case forPA-824, ananti-TB agent in Phase III trials [1921].
The early elucidation of resistance mechanisms using WGS also has
implications for the design of clinical trials. If resistance mechanisms are
species that comprise the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), the causative agents ofTB[18].

discovered that only result in marginally increased minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) compared with the wild type MIC
distributions, more frequent dosing or higher doses could be employed in clinical
trials to overcome this level of resistance. Moreover, the discovery of cross-resistance
between agents using WGS can influence the choice of antibiotics that are
included in novel regimens. TB is always treated with multiple antibiotics to minimise the chance of treatment failure as
a result of the emergence of resistance during treatment [22]. Regimens that contain agents to which a single mutation confers crossresistance should be avoided if these mutations arise frequently in vivo. WGS has recently highlighted that this may be the case with three
Phase II trial regimens that contain bedaquiline and clofazimine because the mutational upregulation of an efflux pump confers crossresistance to both drugs [23]. In addition to being a tool to design clinical trials, WGS has become an increasingly important tool during clinical

it is increasingly being used to distinguish exogenous reinfection from relapse of the primary
which is crucial in assessing the efficacy of the drug

trials. Specifically,

infection,
or regimens under investigation
[24,25]. Traditional epidemiological tools do not always provide the necessary resolution for this purpose. This is due to the fact that they only
interrogate minute parts of the genome {e.g., multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa analyses only 0.18% of the

WGS interrogates the complete (or near-complete) genetic repertoire of


an organism. Therefore, the resolution of WGS is only limited by the rate of evolution of the pathogen and will become
the gold standard for clinical trials of new antiTB agents and other infectious diseases
genome [26]}. By contrast,

associated with recurrent disease [27,28].

Drug-resistant diseases cause extinction.


Davies 8Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University
of British Columbia
(Julian, Resistance redux: Infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance and the future of mankind, EMBO Rep.
Jul 2008; 9(Suppl 1): S18S21, dml)

antibiotic-resistant pathogens have been recognized as one of the


main threats to human survival, as some experts predict a return to the preantibiotic era. So far, national efforts to exert strict control over the use of
antibiotics have had limited success and it is not yet possible to achieve worldwide concerted action
For many years,

to reduce the growing threat of multi-resistant pathogens: there are too many parties involved. Furthermore, the problem
has not yet really arrived on the radar screen of many physicians and clinicians, as antimicrobials still work most of the
timeapart from the occasional news headline that yet another nasty superbug has emerged in the local hospital.
Legislating the use of antibiotics for non-therapeutic applications and curtailing general public access to them is
conceivable, but legislating the medical profession is an entirely different matter. In order to meet the growing problem of

pathogens, the discovery and development of new


antibiotics and alternative treatments for infectious diseases , together with tools for
rapid diagnosis that will ensure effective and appropriate use of existing antibiotics, are imperative. How the
health services, pharmaceutical industry and academia respond in the coming
years will determine the future of treating infectious diseases. This challenge
is not to be underestimated: microbes are formidable adversaries and,
despite our best efforts, continue to exact a toll on the human race.
antibiotic resistance among

CASE Extensions

Cloud Computing Growing


Cloud Computing is on the rise, and is used in close to all
companies.
Adam Gifford, 6-13-2015, "Rise of cloud computing liberates companies,"
New Zealand Herald, http://m.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?
c_id=5&objectid=11464358
Chief

information officers

who have spent years filling up their

data centres

are now

clearing out space

so they can do new

things. That's the picture Jim Thompson, chief engineer and vice-president for engineering and supply chain at technology vendor Unisys, brought to last week's ninth annual CIO Summit. He talked on the rise of the

. Data centres, which are like fridges full of computers,


have been changing physically anyway under the effect of Moore's Law,
which describes the steady rate at which silicon chips become smaller, more
powerful and cheaper.
That sets up the conversation for
cloud computing, how to move some application and tasks off site
. IT in the
cloud is computing becoming a utility model, something you can get in
different ways
Banks want to be banks, airlines
want to be airlines. They don't want to be in the IT business, and they see the
cloud as the answer to all their problems. "You put it in the cloud and you
only pay for what you want to use, you get the elasticity you want.
digital business and how that is transforming the data centre

"The fridges are getting smaller. They're more like wine cellars now," he says from his home base in Philadelphia. But while servers have got smaller, the

average enterprise has added more of them to host applications that talk to the web and mobile technology.

. The analogy Thompson uses is

the early part of the industrial revolution, when factories would have their own power plants. "As the infrastructure matured, big factories got out of the power generation business

. "Business and IT have wrestled with how to deliver technology to the enterprise.

" Thompson says it's putting

even more pressure on IT departments to reduce costs. "Our friends at [analysis firm] Gartner say something like 25 per cent of IT costs have to come out by 2017, so a CIO looks at how to deliver value to the
enterprise, but also help innovate and grow and differentiate while taking costs out. "Most of these guys are also saying they are overwhelmed in one way or another, they have way more work than they can deal
with." Budgets are fixed or declining, expectations are rising, and new consumer technologies like phones and watches are demanding more of their time. "My car just told my phone I need an iWatch," jokes
Thompson, but the new technology will be no joke for IT departments. Thompson says as a rule of thumb two-thirds of spending on the data centre goes to run the operation at a steady state, 20 per cent goes
towards growth and what's left must pay for any innovation in the business. The bulk of costs are in labour and software licensing. Jim Thompson. Jim Thompson. "CIOs should look to minimise the number of
vendors, maximise the licence coverage, optimise cost and as much as possible optimise staff, and use co-lo services or any kind of cloud you can. "They need to recognise where the business differentials are,

what exactly is the secret sauce for business? Everything can go in the
cloud
It's not just applications but storage and
computing power that can be bought
the

else

." It's a bit like payroll, which most organisations outsourced decades ago.

when needed from disruptors like Amazon or Rackspace. It can be a solution or just raw assets to do testing

and development. "You can't push everything into the cloud so you have to be disciplined about what you do and where," Thompson says. "You need to recognise your differentiators, the places you want to
innovate and grow. "How does IT shift its position in the enterprise from a passive supplier to a business enabler? I think there is a mindset shift that CIOs have to take in the way they operate their IT component. It
shouldn't be viewed as just a boiler in the basement that keeps the lights on. It should be used as it can be used to create differentiated business value. It's about recognising the rise of digitalisation in business."
Every bit of new consumer technology influences the way businesses have to respond. "Every business has an app now, things you never expected to produce an application for a phone now do and some are pretty
worthwhile. That's what the customer expects whenever they make a transaction. "That is a stress on IT and they need to shift the pedestrian stuff that is now consuming two-thirds of their assets. They need to
take that the way of payroll. Get rid of that stuff and focus on what differentiates me and my business in the marketplace. How do I get in front of what customers want and need?" Thompson, who has almost three
decades with Unisys and holds technology patents in operating systems, storage and banking, looks back to the days when IBM and Unisys mainframes got eaten from the bottom because Intel produced an
inexpensive chip that ended up on the desktop. The days of needing big expensive computers on site doing a lot of processing are never coming back. As one of the longest surviving mainframe providers, Unisys
stopped producing its own chips and now uses Intel's X86 chip architecture. Thompson says having an enterprise standardise on an architecture like X86 makes sense. "You get agility by standardisation because as
things ebb and flow, you have interchangeable parts.

cloud.

That is the new IT and that is what enables use of the

" " Provisioning with cloud resource means it can be throttled down when needed. Unisys' main hunting ground in New Zealand is banks, the health sector and government agencies.

Cloud Computing is currently experiencing rapid growth,


and is forecasted to continue this growth.
Roger Strukhoff, 2-4-2015, "The Global Rise of Cloud Computing ," Cloud
Tweaks, http://cloudtweaks.com/2015/02/global-rise-cloud-computing/

rapid growth of cloud computing,


Estimates
more than $2 trillion
spent
worldwide in 2014 on enterprise IT growth projections for cloud remain
healthy
optimism in the air
its a good time to be optimistic not just in North America, but
throughout the world as a whole.
The Global Rise of Cloud Computing Despite the
spending.

the cloud still commands a small portion of overall enterprise IT

Ive seen put the percentage between 5% and 10% of the slightly

(not including telco)

. Yet

, and there is

. A recent roundup of projections in Forbes paints the picture. Cloud-IT The Global Picture From our studies at the Tau Institute

for Global ICT studies, we believe

There are bright spots in every region, with countries such as Jordan, Latvia, Morocco, and the Philippines joining better-

known places where IT is playing an increasing role in economic development. Research weve been conducting for the past several years has produced a picture of how more than 100 nations throughout the world
are progressing with their overall IT infrastructure, on a relative basis. We seek to find the nations that are doing the most with the economic resources they have, and we issue several specific groups of rankings.
Given robust underlying infrastructure, and reasonable socio-economic conditions, a

growth of cloud computing

nation

should be set to

benefit from the continuing

. Training & Education Are Key education-cloud An emphasis on operating expenses instead of capital expenditure, the ability to scale (and

de-scale) quickly, and provisioning in almost real-time are aspects of

single organizations

cloud computing

that can

benefit entire nations as well as

. There are significant issues of data sovereignty and security entangled in distributed cloud infrastructures that cross international borders, to be sure. But

inter-governmental organizations from the European Union (EU) to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the East African Community (EAC) and many more are stocked with serious-minded people
working to address and solve the political issues so that the technology may flow and improve the lives of their people. There will be no flow without proper, specific education and training. Although SaaS and PaaS
can insulate end-users as well as developers from the tricky particulars of dealing with the underlying infrastructure, there is tremendous complexityand opportunityinvolved in designing, deploying, and
provisioning that infrastructure. The opportunity lies in training the people of the world in the languages, frameworks, platforms, and architectures that form cloud computing in the whole.

Link
Large scale surveillance activities by the United States
harms the trust in cloud computing industries
Nerijus Adomaitis, 11-7-2013, "U.S. spying harms cloud computing, Internet
freedom: Wikipedia founder," Reuters,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/net-us-wikipedia-spyingidUSBRE9A613A20131107
The United States'
large-scale surveillance
harm the U.S.
cloud computing industry
U.S.
eavesdropping
poses a threat to Internet
freedoms
have a big impact on the cloud
computing industry as people are afraid to put data in the U.S.
alleged

of global communications networks will badly

, the founder of Wikipedia said on Thursday. Jimmy Wales, who launched the online encyclopaedia service 12 year ago, said the

, revealed by leaks from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, also

by giving an excuse to oppressive regimes to introduce more censorship. "It's going to

, but it's also devastating for the kind of

work I do," Wales told reporters after speaking at an IT event in Norway. "If you are BMW, a car maker in Germany,... you probably are not that comfortable putting your data into the U.S. any more," said the former

Cloud computing
is being adopted by big companies
costs and give flexibility to their IT departments
futures trader who is still a key player at Wikipedia, one of the most popular websites in the world.
business software that is run remotely via the Internet instead of on-site. It

is an umbrella term for activities ranging from web-based email to


and governments globally

to cut

. Snowden's leaks revealing the reach and methods of U.S. surveillance have

prompted angry calls for explanations from France to Brazil. Germany has been particularly annoyed by revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitored Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"EMBARRASSING" Wales said the revelations made it more difficult to convince oppressive regimes to respect basic freedoms and privacy as Wikipedia seeks to limit censorship of its content. "They (spying
revelations) give the Chinese every excuse to be as bad as they have been... It's really embarrassing," he said. "It's an enormous problem, an enormous danger." China and countries in the Middle East have been
most active in filtering Wikipedia content to restrict access to certain information, Wales said. He said Wikipedia had no plan to introduce advertising. "If we need to do that to survive, we will do what's needed to
survive, but we are not discussing that," he said. "Some places have to remain free of commerce... Wikipedia is a temple for the mind," Wales said. Wikipedia has been financed through a non-profit foundation
Wikimedia, which reported revenues of $38.4 million for the fiscal year 2011-2012, including $35.1 million in donations and contributions.

Reputation of Tech Companies, including cloud computing,


are taking massive hits to their customer relations &
trust.
Edward Wyatt & Claire Cain Miller, 12-9-2013, "Tech Giants Issue Call for
Limits on Government Surveillance of Users," New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/technology/tech-giants-issue-call-forlimits-on-government-surveillance-of-users.html?pagewanted=all
prominent technology companies, bruised by revelations of government
spying on their customers data and scrambling to repair the damage to their
reputations, are mounting a public campaign to urge President Obama and Congress to set new limits on
government surveillance. Executive Appeal Executives from prominent technology
companies called for greater limits on government surveillance of their users .
Reports about government surveillance have shown there is a real need for greater disclosure and new
limits on how governments collect information. The U.S. government should take this opportunity to lead this
Eight

reform effort and make things right. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Source: Reformgovernmentsurveillance.com Bits More Tech Coverage News from the technology
industry, including start-ups, the Internet, enterprise and gadgets. On Twitter: @nytimesbits. Enlarge This Image Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Larry Page, chief of

Google, called for reform of security laws worldwide, saying , We urge the U.S.
government to lead the way. On Monday the companies, led by Google and Microsoft,
presented a plan to regulate online spying and urged the United States to
lead a worldwide effort to restrict it. They accompanied it with an open letter, in the form of full-page ads in national
newspapers, including The New York Times, and a website detailing their concerns. It is the broadest and strongest effort by the companies, often archrivals, to speak with
one voice to pressure the government. The tech industry, whose billionaire founders and executives are highly sought as political donors, forms a powerful interest group
that is increasingly flexing its muscle in Washington. Its now in their business and economic interest to protect their users privacy and to aggressively push for changes,
said Trevor Timm, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The N.S.A. mass-surveillance programs exist for a simple reason: cooperation with the tech and
telecom companies. If the tech companies no longer want to cooperate, they have a lot of leverage to force significant reform. The political push by the technology

recent revelations about


government spying without the companies knowledge . The companies have also been making technical
changes to try to thwart spying and have been waging a public-relations campaign to convince users that they are protecting their privacy. People wont
companies opens a third front in their battle against government surveillance, which has escalated with

use technology they dont trust, Brad Smith, Microsofts general counsel, said in a statement. Governments
have put this trust at risk, and governments need to help restore it. Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, AOL and LinkedIn joined Google and
Microsoft in saying that they believed in governments right to protect their citizens. But, they said, the spying revelations that began last summer with leaks of National
Security Agency materials by Edward J. Snowden showed that the balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the
individual. The Obama administration has already begun a review of N.S.A. procedures in reaction to public outrage. The results of that review could be presented to the
White House as soon as this week. Having done an independent review and brought in a whole bunch of folks civil libertarians and lawyers and others to examine
whats being done, Ill be proposing some self-restraint on the N.S.A., and you know, to initiate some reforms that can give people more confidence, Mr. Obama said

Internet companies fight to maintain authority over


their customers data, their business models depend on collecting the same information that the spy agencies want, and they have long
Thursday on the MSNBC program Hardball. While the

cooperated with the government to some extent by handing over data in response to legal requests. The new principles outlined by the companies contain little
information and few promises about their own practices, which privacy advocates say contribute to the governments desire to tap into the companies data systems. The
companies are placing their users at risk by collecting and retaining so much information, said Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization. As long as this much personal data is collected and kept by these companies, they are always going
to be the target of government collection efforts. For instance, Internet companies store email messages, search queries, payment details and other personal information

Each disclosure
risks alienating users, and foreign governments are considering laws that
would discourage their citizens from using services from American Internet
companies. The cloud computing industry could lose $180 billion , or a quarter of its revenue,
by 2016, according to Forrester Research. Telecom companies, which were not included in the proposal to Congress, have had a closer working relationship with
to provide online services and show personalized ads. They are trying to blunt the spying revelations effects on their businesses.

the government than the Internet companies, such as longstanding partnerships to hand over customer information. While the Internet companies have published socalled transparency reports about government requests, for example, the telecoms have not. For the phone companies, said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia studying
the Internet and the law, help with federal spying is a longstanding tradition with roots in the Cold War. Its another area where theres a split between old tech and new
tech the latter taking a much more libertarian position. The new surveillance principles, the Internet companies said, should include limiting governments authority to
collect users information, setting up a legal system of oversight and accountability for that authority, allowing the companies to publish the number and nature of the
demands for data, ensuring that users online data can be stored in different countries and establishing a framework to govern data requests between countries. In a
statement, Larry Page, Googles co-founder and chief executive, criticized governments for the apparent wholesale collection of data, in secret and without independent
oversight. He added, Its time for reform and we urge the U.S. government to lead the way. In their open letter, the companies maintain they are fighting for their
customers privacy. We are focused on keeping users data secure, the letter said, deploying the latest encryption technology to prevent unauthorized surveillance on
our networks, and by pushing back on government requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope. The global principles outlined by the companies make
no specific mention of any country and call on the worlds governments to address the practices and laws regulating government surveillance of individuals and access to
their information. But the open letter to American officials specifically cites the United States Constitution as the guidepost for new restrictions on government
surveillance. Chief among the companies proposals is a demand to write sensible limitations on the ability of government agencies to compel Internet companies to
disclose user data, forbidding the wholesale vacuuming of user information. Governments should limit surveillance to specific known users for lawful purposes, and should
not undertake bulk data collection of Internet communications, the companies said.

Digital surveillance hurts the cloud computing industry


Kuehner-Hebert 15 [Katie, is a freelance writer based in
California. She has more than two decades of journalism
experience and expertise in financial writing, U.S. Digital
Surveillance Hurting Tech Sector, June 10, 2015]
The economic impact of digital surveillance practices on the U.S. technology
sector will likely far exceed $35 billion as the government continues to fail to
strengthen information security, a coalition of tech companies warn in a new report. The Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation, funded by Intel, Microsoft, and others, estimated in 2013 that even a modest drop in the expected foreign
market share caused by concerns about U.S. surveillance could cost domestic
cloud computing companies between $21.5 billion and $35 billion by 2016.
Since then, it has become clear that the U.S. tech industry as a whole, not
just the cloud computing sector, has underperformed as a result of the revelations of National Security
Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, ITIF said in a report released Tuesday. Therefore, the economic impact of U.S.
surveillance practices will likely far exceed ITIFs initial $35 billion estimate , it
concluded. The report faults U.S. lawmakers for fanning the flames of discontent by championing weak information security practices. Other countries are now

The
combined result is a set of policies both at home and abroad that sacrifices
robust competitiveness of the U.S. tech sector for vague and unconvincing
promises of improved national security, the group wrote.
implementing protectionist policies specifically targeting information technology, using anger over U.S. government surveillance as a cover, ITIF contends.

Fusion Centers, using a technology known as SAS Memex,


collects and manages data taken from private businesses.
Beau Hodai, 6-26-2015, "The Homeland Security Apparatus: Fusion Centers,
Data Mining and Private Sector Partners," PR Watch,
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12122/homeland-security-apparatusfusion-centers-data-mining-and-private-sector-partner
None of this activity-- let alone the bulk of Dowhan's use of social media and other means in the tracking of activists-- falls under Harrison's definition of appropriate, public safety-related, activist social media
monitoring. Nevertheless, records obtained by DBA/CMD show that Dowhan's, and ACTIC's, ability to troll Internet social media for "open source intelligence" took a massive leap forward in mid 2012. According to
records obtained from AZDOHS, PPD expended $606,890.35 out of the $1,016,897 "ACTIC Intelligence Analyst Project" SHGP funding in the purchase and installation of intelligence/investigation management
software. According to AZDOHS Assistant Director of Planning and Preparedness Lisa Hansen, this funding was used to purchase a SAS Memex Intelligence Center module. Records obtained by DBA/CMD reference
this system as being an "SAS Fusion Center Solution" (which is described as including an "SAS Confidential Informant Management Module"). According to these records, PPDHDB likely commenced installation of

analytical
software
provide
intelligence management and acquisition services to
fusion centers
Memex products are described as being
software and hardware products utilized in the collection and management of
intelligence data
private businesses
system provides automated
intelligence collection and collation services
this system in ACTIC in July of 2012.

The SAS Memex Intelligence Center is

produced by the North Carolina-based

firm SAS Institute, Inc., which purchased United Kingdom-based "intelligence management solutions" software developer Memex in June of 2010. SAS/Memex purports to
more than one dozen

According to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records associated with SAS/Memex technologies,

by military, law enforcement and

. Map of fusion centersWhile available information relating to the specific functions

of the SAS Memex Intelligence Center (or "SAS Fusion Center Solution") is vague at best, it is clear that the

to intelligence analysts by combining (or "fusing") data gleaned from both "open source"

intelligence streams and traditional intelligence sources (such as confidential informants), along with information contained in state databases (such as criminal and motor vehicle licensing/registration records), into
"actionable intelligence."

Through so called public-private partnerships, forced


through legislative actions and executive orders, Fusion
Centers partner with private corporations to constantly
monitor their information.
Beau Hodai, 6-26-2015, "The Homeland Security Apparatus: Fusion Centers,
Data Mining and Private Sector Partners," PR Watch,
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12122/homeland-security-apparatusfusion-centers-data-mining-and-private-sector-partner
mandated through a series of federal legislative actions and
presidential executive orders, fusion centers
work
with private corporations with the stated aim of protecting items
deemed to be "critical infrastructure/key resources" from "all hazards/all
crimes."
Homeland Security Presidential
Directive 7
calling for "critical infrastructure identification, prioritization
and protection."
protection of "critical infrastructure"
through public-private partnerships
Furthermore, as has been

(and the "counter terrorism" entities that they are comprised of)

closer proximity--

-- in ever

Public-Private Intelligence Sharing Partnerships On December 17, 2003, then-President W. Bush issued
(HSPD-7),

HSPD-7 reinforced two previously introduced directives: the

(as called for through a section of the "U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001" entitled "Critical Infrastructure Act of 2001"), and

the assessment and protection of "key resources" by U.S. DHS (as called for through the "Homeland Security Act of 2002"). As defined by the "U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001," items of "critical infrastructure" are defined
as: "systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic
security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters." As defined by the "Homeland Security Act of 2002," "key resources" are defined as: "publicly or privately controlled resources
essential to the minimal operations of the economy and government." As stated in HSPD-7, it is a matter of national policy to protect the nation's critical infrastructure and key resources from "terrorist acts" that
could-- in addition to causing general disruption of services, national governmental/economic collapse and loss of life-- "undermine the public's morale and confidence in our national economic and political
institutions." As such, Bush mandated that U.S. DHS, and other federal agencies, would work closely with members of the private sector, along with state and local governments, in an array of initiatives intended to
identify and prioritize the protection of "critical infrastructure and key resources." An example of such prioritization resultant from HSPD-7 is the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), a plan issued by U.S.
DHS that relies heavily on public-private intelligence sharing partnerships. NIPP is also used as a metric in determining amounts of U.S. DHS funding to certain public-private intelligence sharing partnerships active
in fusion centers nationwide.

The Economic Impact to the Tech Sector, and specifically


Cloud Computing companies, expects to greatly exceed
$35 billion by 2016, due to bulk surveillance.
Katie Kuehner-Hebert, 6-10-2015, "U.S. Digital Surveillance Hurts Tech
Sector," CFO, http://ww2.cfo.com/information-security-riskmanagement/2015/06/u-s-digital-surveillance-hurting-tech-sector/
he economic impact of digital surveillance practices on the U.S. technology
sector
far exceed $35 billion
coalition of tech
companies
estimated in 2013
cost domestic cloud computing
companies between $21.5 billion and $35 billion by 2016. Since then, it has
become clear that the U.S. tech industry as a whole, not just the cloud
computing sector, has underperformed as a result
the economic impact of U.S. surveillance practices will
likely far exceed ITIFs initial $35 billion estimate,
T

will likely

as the government continues to fail to strengthen information security, a

warn in a new report. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, funded by Intel, Microsoft, and others,

that even a

modest drop in the expected foreign market share caused by concerns about U.S. surveillance could

of the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward

Snowden, ITIF said in a report released Tuesday. Therefore,

it concluded. The report faults U.S. lawmakers for fanning the flames of

discontent by championing weak information security practices. Other countries are now implementing protectionist policies specifically targeting information technology, using anger over U.S. government
surveillance as a cover, ITIF contends. The combined result is a set of policies both at home and abroad that sacrifices robust competitiveness of the U.S. tech sector for vague and unconvincing promises of
improved national security, the group wrote. According to The Wall Street Journal, Snowdens revelations have led to a marketing bonanza for European software and service providers looking to compete with
hard-charging U.S. rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft. Weve opened floodgates to huge loss because we havent changed anything about U.S. surveillance policy, Daniel Castro, vice president of ITIF, told the
WSJ. ITIF recommends, among other things, that U.S. policymakers increase transparency about U.S. surveillance activities both at home and abroad, strengthen information security by opposing any government
efforts to weaken encryption, and work to establish international legal standards for government access to data. When historians write about this period in U.S. history it could very well be that one of the themes
will be how the United States lost its global technology leadership to other nations, the report warns.

Warming Ext.

Impacts
Even 1% risk of our impact means you vote affirmative
the impacts are already accelerating
Strom 7, Prof. Emeritus Planetary Sciences @ U. Arizona and Former Dir.
Space Imagery Center of NASA (Robert, , Hot House: Global Climate Change
and the Human Condition, Online: SpringerLink, p. 246)
Keep in mind that the current consequences of global warming discussed in previous chapters are
the result of a global average temperature increase of only 0.5 'C above the 1951-1980 average, and these

consequences are beginning to accelerate. Think about what is in store for us when
the average global temperature is 1 C higher than today. That is already in the pipeline, and there is
nothing we can do to prevent it. We can only plan strategies for dealing with the expected consequences,
and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by about 60% as soon as possible to ensure that we don't

There is also the danger of eventually


triggering an abrupt climate change that would accelerate global
warming to a catastrophic level in a short period of time. If that were
to happen we would not stand a chance. Even if that possibility had only
a 1% chance of occurring, the consequences are so dire that it would be
insane not to act. Clearly we cannot afford to delay taking action by waiting for additional research
experience even higher temperatures.

to more clearly define what awaits us. The time for action is now.

Solvency
Growth will radically increase adaptive capacity - their
studies discount it - produces huge over-estimates of
warming impacts
Goklany 11 [Indur M. , science and technology policy analyst and Assistant Director of PROGRAMS
, Science and Technology Policy for the United States Department of the Interior; was associated with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change off and on for 20 years as an author, expert reviewer and U.S.
delegate, December 2011, "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the
Impacts of Global Warming,"
online:http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf]

the countries that are today poorer will be extremely wealthy (by
todays standards) and their adaptive capacity should be correspondingly higher.
Indeed, their adaptive capacity should on average far exceed the U.S.s today . So, although
claims that poorer countries will be unable to cope with future climate change
may have been true for the world of 1990 (the base year), they are simply
inconsistent with the assumptions built into the IPCC scenarios and the Stern
Reviews own (exaggerated) analysis. If the world of 2100 is as richand warmas the
more extreme scenarios suppose, the problems of poverty that warming
would exacerbate (i.e. low agricultural productivity, hunger, malnutrition, malaria and other vectorborne diseases) ought to be reduced, if not eliminated, by 2100. Research shows that deaths
In other words,

from malaria and other vector-borne diseases is cut down to insignificant numbers when a societys
annual per capita income reaches about $3,100. 23 Therefore, even under the poorest scenario (A2),
developing countries should be free of malaria well before 2100, even assuming no technological change
in the interim. Similarly, if the average net GDP per capita in 2100 for developing countries is between
$10,000 and $62,000, and technologies become more cost-effective as they have been doing over the

farmers would be able to afford technologies that are


unaffordable today (e.g., precision agriculture) as well as new technologies that
should come on line by then (e.g., drought-resistant seeds). 24 But, since impact
assessments generally fail to fully account for increases in economic
development and technological change , they substantially overestimate
future net damages from global warming.
past several centuries, then their

Their studies dont assume accelerating technological


change as a result of growth-that artificially inflates
their impact
Goklany 11 [Indur M. , science and technology policy analyst and Assistant Director of PROGRAMS
, Science and Technology Policy for the United States Department of the Interior; was associated with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change off and on for 20 years as an author, expert reviewer and U.S.
delegate, December 2011, "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the
Impacts of Global Warming,"
online:http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf]

The second major reason why future adaptive capacity has been underestimated
(and the impacts of global warming systematically overestimated) is that few
impact studies consider secular technological change . 25 Most assume that no
new technologies will come on line, although some do assume greater adoption of existing
technologies with higher GDP per capita and, much less frequently, a modest generic improvement in

productivity. 26 Such an assumption may have been appropriate during the Medieval Warm Period, when

nowadays technological change is fast (as


and, arguably, accelerating. 27 It is unlikely that we will
see a halt to technological change unless so-called precautionary policies are
instituted that count the costs of technology but ignore its benefits , as some
the pace of technological change was slow, but
indicated in Figures 1 through 5)

governments have already done for genetically modified crops and various pesticides.28

This means their evidence vastly overestimate the


impacts of warming
Goklany 11 [Indur M. , science and technology policy analyst and Assistant Director of PROGRAMS,
Science and Technology Policy for the United States Department of the Interior; was associated with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change off and on for 20 years as an author, expert reviewer and U.S.
delegate, December 2011, "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the
Impacts of Global Warming,"
online:http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf]
**We disagree with the authors use of gendered language

how much of a difference in impact would consideration of both economic


development and technological change have made? If impacts were to be estimated
So

for five or so years into the future, ignoring changes in adaptive capacity between now and then probably
would not be fatal because neither economic development nor technological change would likely advance

the time horizon of climate change impact


assessments is often on the order of 35100 years or more. The Fast Track Assessments use
substantially during that period. However,

a base year of 1990 to estimate impacts for 2025, 2055 and 2085. 39 The Stern Reviews time horizon

Over such periods one ought to expect substantial


advances in adaptive capacity due to increases in economic development,
extends to 2100 2200 and beyond. 40

technological change and human capital . As already noted, retrospective


assessments indicate that over the span of a few decades, changes in economic
development and technologies can substantially reduce, if not eliminate, adverse
environmental impacts and improve human well-being, as measured by a variety of
objective indicators. 41 Thus, not fully accounting for changes in the level of
economic development and secular technological change would understate
future adaptive capacity, which then could overstate impacts by one or more orders
of magnitude if the time horizon is several decades into the future.

Growth means even the poorest countries can


successfully adapt to the IPCCs warmest scenario
Goklany 11 [Indur M. , science and technology policy analyst and Assistant Director of PROGRAMS
, Science and Technology Policy for the United States Department of the Interior; was associated with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change off and on for 20 years as an author, expert reviewer and U.S.
delegate, December 2011, "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the
Impacts of Global Warming,"
online:http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf]
**We disagree with the authors use of gendered language

It is often argued that unless greenhouse gases are reduced forthwith, the resulting
GW could have severe, if not catastrophic, consequences for people in poor
countries because they lack the economic and human resources to cope with GWs
consequences. But there are two major problems with this argument. First, although poor

countries adaptive capacity is low today, it does not follow that their ability to
cope will be low forever. In fact, under the IPCCs warmest scenario, which would increase
globally averaged temperature by 4C relative to 1990, net GDP per capita in poor countries
(that is, after accounting for losses due to climate change per the Stern Reviews exaggerated estimates)

will be double the U.S.s 2006 level in 2100 , and triple that in 2200. Thus developing
countries should in the future be able to cope with climate change substantially
better than the U.S. does today. But these advances in adaptive capacity , which are
virtually ignored by most assessments of the impacts and damages from global
warming, are the inevitable consequence of the assumptions built into the
IPCCs emissions scenarios. Hence the notion that countries that are currently
poor will be unable to cope with GW does not square with the basic assumptions
that underpin the magnitude of emissions, global warming and its projected
impacts under the IPCC scenarios.

Disease Ext.

Impacts
We are entering an era of global diseases that will kill
humans and destroy biodiversity
Kock 13 R. A. Kock of the Department of Pathology and Pathobiology,
Royal Veterinary College, Hawkshead Lane Hatfield, UK (23 October 2013,
"Will the damage be done before we feel the heat? Infectious disease
emergence, Cambridge University Press 2013 Animal Health Research
Reviews 14(2); 127132, ISSN 1466-2523, doi:10.1017/S1466252313000108,
ADL)
This initial progress in resolving age-old infectious disease problems might well turn out to be a false dawn. If we take a broader view on disease at the ecosystem level,

There are a growing number of diseases at


the interface between humans, animals and the environment (including plants), which
are having a significant impact on human well-being , mostly through food systems. For example, the USA
has suffered a series of highly significant and costly disease epidemics in the last decade West Nile Virus (WNV) in New York City, which subsequently
rather than human infection alone, the situation is not looking so promising.

spread to all 48 States of the continental USA, caused mortalities and sickness in a wide range of domestic animals, wild birds and people (Kilpatrick, 2011). Although the

showed how rapidly such disease events can occur and


there was nothing that could be done to stop the epidemic . This was followed
costs are still being calculated, WNV

shortly after by another epidemic disease coined white nose syndrome affecting bats (Blehert et al., 2009). This is caused by a fungus Geomyces destructans, most
probably introduced by travelers and cavers (Warnecke et al., 2012), which, to date, has killed an estimated 6.5 million bats. The consequences are a conservation crisis
and a multi-billion dollar cost to the agricultural industry from lost predation on agricultural pests, a significant ecosystem service provided by bats (Boyles et al., 2011).

a global insidious spread of a fungal disease of amphibians is resulting in an


unexpected and premature extinction crisis , long before the planet heats up (Berger et al., 1998; Rosenblum et al.,
Similarly,

2010). Over a third of amphibian species are expected to disappear in the coming years but these extinctions are not only a result of this disease (Heard et al., 2011).

These taxa have provided significant unappreciated benefits to humanity


through the control of mosquitos and other vectors of serious infectious
diseases. Moreover, if this is not enough, there are numerous tree diseases that are spreading globally, some fungal and others insect-based, which are
devastating woodlands and individual tree species populations in North America and Europe with wide spread economic consequences. It seems the rapid
increase in transportation networks and frequency of human and animal
movements by air and sea, a consequence of free market capitalism and globalization, has created a perfect
storm for infectious disease emergence across ecosystems (Brown, 2004). It is
rather like humans picking up Pandoras box, giving it a thorough
shake, and then sending its contents to every corner of the earth . A
massive experiment in human-assisted pathogen evolution and spread, gives
every advantage to the microorganisms to gain access to immunologically
naive hosts and for them to gain dominance over larger organisms , the latter too sluggish
in their ability to respond immunologically and adapt. This physical reassortment and distribution of current
pathogens alone could drive an era of plague and pestilence affecting
most biological taxa. Unfortunately the story does not stop here, human
engineering of landscapes and biological systems are associated with
pathogen evolution and disease emergence at the interface, but almost without exception the drivers are poorly
researched (Jones et al., 2013). These events are not all new but we are only just beginning to appreciate the
extent of our influence on their occurrence . Wolfe et al., 2007 elegantly described how several major human diseases,
including smallpox, malaria, campylobacteriosis, rotavirus, measles, diphtheria, mumps, HIV-AIDS and influenza virus, are derived from our domestication of animals and/or
harvesting of wild animals over the millennia. These diseases became firmly established in humans, no longer driven or dependent on zoonotic cycles. This is on top of
approximately 900 zoonotic infections recorded; of which about 292 are significant pathogens, most associated with domestic animals but many originating from wildlife,
sometimes directly (e.g. Ebola virus) (Cleaveland et al., 2001). It seems that this process is accelerating, with the majority (75%) of emerging human pathogens being

The trend in zoonotic disease emergence correlates with the


expansion of domestic animal populations in parallel to that of human growth .
This has fundamentally altered the epidemiological environment . Paradoxically, increasing
animal production for human use, through industrialization of crop and animal agriculture, has resulted in an increasing
zoonotic (Taylor et al., 2001).

opportunity for pathogen evolution (Arzt et al., 2010; Jones et al., 2013). These larger epidemiological
units of plants and animals, with considerable homogeneity, when densely packed (ironically for reasons of biosecurity and production
efficiency) are perfect pathogen factories. The recent bird flu panzootic is an example of this. The emergence of the atypical, highly
pathogenic influenza virus H5N1 was coincident with a massive expansion of the duck and poultry industry in South East Asia. Water birds are natural hosts of avian
influenza viruses and are highly tolerant of infection (Alexander, 2007). However, the growth in domestic duck farms including exploitation of semidomestic ducks in close
proximity to both wild bird populations and densely packed chicken farms, created an opportunity for the rapid evolution of this highly virulent strain of avian influenza, its
amplification and spread. H5N1 was first isolated in 1997 (Xu et al., 1999) with epidemics recorded in Hong Kong in 1998 and with a significant wild bird epidemic between
2005 and 2007 (Chen et al., 2006). The infection spread rapidly across Eurasia between poultry systems and as far as Egypt (Abdelwhab and Hafez, 2011) and Nigeria
(Newman et al., 2008). Wild bird cases reported appear to be mostly during epidemics or spillover cases from poultry epidemics (Feare and Yasue, 2006; Lebarbenchon et
al., 2010; Soliman et al., 2012), and wild bird epidemics appear to have been largely independent of domestic bird disease. The infections burned out in wildlife with no
evidence of a long-term reservoir and only rare cases based on circumstantial evidence of spillover from wild birds to poultry (Hars et al., 2008), predators (Desvaux et al.,

The great fear has been that should this


virus, which rarely infects humans, evolve into a form that is highly transmissible
among humans, it will then cause a severe pandemic. Whilst the immediate threat has subsided,
2009; Globig et al., 2009) and humans (bird hunters) (Newman et al., 2008).

with apparent resilience in the wild bird populations to H5N1 increasing (Siembieda et al., 2010) and with mass vaccination and slaughter of poultry providing temporary
relief, endemic foci in domestic birds still persist. This strain of virus has been recently joined by a new, more sinister low pathogenic strain (in poultry) of H7N9, which is
lethal in humans and can be transmitted more readily between humans than was the case with H5N1. The main reason for failure to stop the emergence of these diseases
is the continued expansion of agroecological systems and industry, which cause the problem in the first place. It is not always necessary to have a farm for these spillover
events, other concentrations of mixed animal species in e.g. food markets has led to emergence, exemplified by the SARS epidemic. Here a bat virus was involved, most
probably spilling into a market and replicating in (probably) a number of species, adapting and amplifying until it was established in humans and an epidemic ensued.
Globally, the virus infected approximately 8000 people and caused several hundred deaths. The remarkable fact is that this pathogen jump probably only took a period of
23 years (Wang et al., 2005; Zhao, 2007; Tang et al., 2009). Another important driver of disease at the interface has been changing landscapes, with increasing incursion
into and modification of diverse habitats for settlement and exploitation of resources. An example is the creation of new vector niche habitats, mostly through urban
development (Globig et al., 2009) enabling persistence and emergence of significant problems e.g. dengue fever virus; once only found in primates (Mackenzie et al.,
2004). HIV is the most famous example, where frequent spillover of SIV to humans through their exploitation of chimpanzee and gorilla for food, resulted in the
establishment of human infection and adaptation of the virus (Gao et al., 1999). However, it was not until road networks were put into the Congo basin that the epidemic
really took hold. There were probably a series of stuttering epidemics until the virus entered the urban environment and then the world. It is sobering to note that the
African mortality statistics (WHO, 2012) indicate that, far from following the pattern in the Western world, the life expectancy from birth in two of the richest nations, South
Africa and Botswana, has significantly decreased between 1990 and 2010; and this was from the impact of only one emerging disease, HIVAIDS.

What if

we have ten novel diseases occurring simultaneously?

Disease has played a role in every state collapse in


history pandemics go nuclear
Morris, professor of history at Stanford University, 3/22/ 2013
(Ian, The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate
of Nations, Carnegie Council, Lexis)
When we look
back at history
This is always in the mix
previously separate
disease pools merge Epidemic diseases
lead to
state failure Governments cannot cope with catastrophe on this scale The
collapse of the governments tends to
breakdown in
trade
There are several periods when we get discontinuities, when we get collapses in social development scores. You can see several very clear examples on this graph.
the

of what happens when we get these great collapses in social development, every time we see the same five forces involved: Mass migrations that the societies of the day

cannot cope with.

. The mass migrations often lead to huge epidemic diseases, as

get

d.

regularly killing half the population, it would seem, tend to

lead to

long-distance

. Famines ensue, many, many more

people die. And then, always there in the mix in some way, although it varies in every case, is climate change. It always plays into this. Now, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you these are forces that plenty of
people are talking about as threats we are facing in the early 21st century. It seems to me perfectly possible that the 21st century is going to see another collapse of the kind we have seen so many times in the

the 21st century might be a rerun of what has happened many


times before but with one big difference We now have nuclear weapons
if we stumble into a collapse
we should
expect
these being used It's quite possible the
21st century will see a disaster that dwarfs anything we have seen
past. So in some ways it's possible

ancient people didn't have. The Romans would have loved nuclear weapons. Luckily, they didn't have them. I think
I'm talking about here,

seriously

there is a possibility of

, which

do

on the scale that

that

earlier.

Pandemics cause global civil wars regression analysis


proves
Letendre, Fincher, Department of Biology at the University of New
Mexico, and Thornhill, Department of Computer Science at the University
of New Mexico, 2010

(Kenneth, Corey, and Randy, Does infectious disease cause global variation
in the frequency of intrastate armed conflict and civil war?, Biological
Reviews, p. 669)
Geographic and cross-national variation in

the frequency of

intrastate

armed conflict and civil war is

of great
We

a subject

interest
present the parasite-stress model of intrastate conflict
by linking frequency of
civil war to the intensity of infectious
disease across countries
High intensity of infectious disease leads to the
emergence of xenophobic and ethnocentric cultural norms These cultures
suffer greater poverty and deprivation
Resource competition among xenophobic and ethnocentric groups
within a nation leads to increased frequency of civil war
with regression analyses We find
a direct effect of infectious disease on
intrastate armed conflict and
the incidence of civil war
. Previous theory on this variation has focused on the influence on human behaviour of climate, resource competition, national wealth, and cultural characteristics.

, which unites previous work on the correlates of intrastate

conflict

the outbreak of such conflict, including

of the world.

due to the morbidity and mortality caused by disease, and as a result of decreased investment in public

health and welfare.

. We present support for the parasite-stress model

support for

support for an indirect effect of infectious disease on

via its

negative effect on national wealth. We consider the entanglements of feedback of conflict into further reduced wealth and increased incidence of disease, and discuss implications for international warfare and
global patterns of wealth and imperialism.

Those go nuclear
Shehadi, Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies, 1993
(Kamal, Ethnic Self Determination And the Break Up of States, Dec 1993, p.
81)
self-determination conflicts have direct adverse consequences on
international security As they
tear nuclear states apart the likelihood of
nuclear weapons falling into hands
willing to use them or trade
them to others will reach frightening levels This likelihood increases if a
conflict over self-determination escalates into a war between two nuclear
states
Ethnic conflicts
spread within a state and from one state to the next
The conflict may also spread by contagion from
one country to another
This paper has argued that

begin to

the

of individuals or groups

to

. The Russian Federation and Ukraine may fight over the Crimea and the Donbass area; and India and Pakistan may fight over Kashmir.
both

may also

. This can happen in countries where more than one ethnic self-

determination conflict is brewing: Russia, India and Ethiopia, for example.

if the state is weak politically and militarily and cannot contain the conflict on its doorstep. Lastly, there is a real danger that regional conflicts will

erupt over national minorities and borders.

Disease Sub Scenario Economic Decline


Drug Resistance costs the world 100 trillion USD and
causes extreme suffering
The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, Chaired by Jim

ONeill, Economist, December 2014

The findings in this paper are based on two of the scenarios modeled by RAND Europe and
KPMG. Further details of the two studies are set out in the box on the following page and the
full papers are available on our website. The two teams modeled an increase in AMR rates
from where they are today, each using their own methodology, to understand the impact this
would have on the world population and its economic output. Both studies were hampered by
a lack of reliable data, in particular regarding bacterial infections, and as a consequence they
most likely underestimate the true cost of AMR. The studies estimate that, under

300 million people are expected to die prematurely


because of drug resistance over the next 35 years and the worlds GDP will
be 2 to 3.5% lower than it otherwise would be in 2050 . This means that between
now and 2050 the world can expect to lose between 60 and 100 trillion USD worth
of economic output if antimicrobial drug resistance is not tackled. This is
equivalent to the loss of around one years total global output over the period, and will
create significant and widespread human suffering. Furthermore, in the nearer
term we expect the worlds GDP to be 0.5% smaller by 2020 and 1.4% smaller
by 2030 with more than 100 million people having died prematurely. The two
the scenarios described below,

studies also show a different economic impact for each of the drug resistant infections they
considered. E. coli, malaria and TB are the biggest drivers of the studies results.
Malaria resistance leads to the greatest numbers of fatalities, while E. coli is the largest
detractor from GDP accounting for almost half the total economic impact in RANDs results.
Because malaria and TB vary far more by region than E. coli in the studies, they are the largest
drivers of differences between countries and regions.

Poverty is the deadliest form of structural violence it is


equivalent to an ongoing nuclear war.
Gilligan, 96 [James, Former Director of Mental Health for the Massachusetts
Prison System, Violence, p.]
every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative
poverty as would be killed in a nuclear that caused 232 million deaths; and every
single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world
as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the
equivalent of an ongoing, unenending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or
genocide, perpetuated on the weak and poor ever year of every decade, throughout
the world.
In other words,

Disease Sub Scenario CRE


Its everywhere
Reuters 2013 Reuters is a news organization that focuses on
international news, Doctors warned to be vigilant for warn new deadly virus
sweeping the globe from Middle East, 3/8/13,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290033/Doctors-warned-vigilantwarn-new-deadly-virus-sweeping-globe-Middle-East.html//OF
CDC announced concerns over an increasing
number of infections from a 'nightmare bacteria' found in U.S. hospitals. Public health
officials have warned that in a growing number of cases existing antibiotics do not
work against the superbug, Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). Patients
became infected with the bacteria in nearly four per cent of US hospitals and
in almost 18 per cent of specialist medical facilities in the first half of 2012 ,
Warnings of the deadly virus come as the

according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr Tom Frieden, director of the CDC,

the strongest antibiotics 'don't work and patients are left


with potentially untreatable infections .' He said scientists were 'raising the
alarm' over the problem following increasing concern. Increasing numbers of patients
said in a statement that

in US hospitals have become infected with CRE, which kills up to half of patients who get bloodstream

more than 70 types of


Enterobacteriaceae bacteria - including E-coli - have become gradually resistant over a
long period of time, even to so-called, 'last resort drugs' called carbapenem. During
the last 10 years, the percentage of Enterobacteriaceae that are resistant to these
last-ditch antibiotics rose by 400 percent. One type of CRE has increased by a
factor of seven over the last decade, Fox News reports. CRE infections usually affect patients
infections from them, according to a new CDC report. Some of the

being treated for serious conditions in hospitals, long-term acute-care facilities and nursing homes. Many
of these people will use catheters or ventilators as part of their treatment - which are thought to be used
by bacteria to enter deep into the patient's body.

And it decimates the global population


Adams 7/17 Mark Adams (Citing Doctors and the CDC) is a reporter for
Naturalnews.com, an online news source specializing in medicine and natural
sciences, Drug-resistant superbug infections explode across U.S. hospitals:
500% increase foreshadows 'new plague' caused by modern medicine,
7/17/14, Natural News,
http://www.naturalnews.com/046041_CRE_superbugs_drugresistant_infections_modern_plague.html#//OF
Drug-resistant superbug infections have reached near-epidemic
levels across U.S. hospitals, with an alarming 500% increase now
documented in a study just published in the August issue of Infection Control and Hospital
(NaturalNews)

Epidemiology (the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America). (1) Lead author of the

"This dangerous bacteria is finding its way into


healthcare facilities nationwide... A CRE epidemic is fast approaching... Even
this marked increase likely underestimates the true scope of the problem given
study, Dr. Joshua Thaden, warned

variations in hospital surveillance practices." The study also found that an astonishing 94 percent of CRE
infections were caused by healthcare activities or hospital procedures. CRE superbugs explained

CRE

(carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae)

is an incredibly dangerous superbug causing


nearly a fifty percent fatality rate once a patient is infected . The World Health
Organization calls it "one of the three greatest threats to human health," and all
known antibiotics are useless in treating it. CRE arose out of the systematic abuse of
antibiotics by doctors, who inadvertently created the perfect breeding ground for deadly bacteria by using
narrowly-targeted chemical medications that lack the kind of full-spectrum action found in nature (in herbs
like garlic, for example). Because of their highly-targeted chemical approach, antibiotics encouraged
bacteria to develop molecular defenses that resulted in widespread resistance to Big Pharma's drugs. The

the entire pharmaceutical industry has no drug, no


chemicals and no experimental medicines which can kill CRE superbugs. Even
situation is so bad today that

worse, there are virtually no new antibiotics drugs in the research pipelines, either. Drug companies have
discovered that it's far more profitable to sell "lifestyle management" drugs like statin drugs and blood
pressure drugs than to sell antibiotics which treat acute infections. Antibiotics simply aren't very profitable
because relatively few people acquire such infections. Meanwhile, everyone can be convinced they might
have high cholesterol and therefore need to take a statin drug for life. Drug companies, in other words,
have all but abandoned the industry of treating infections. Instead, they now primarily engage in the
promotion of disease symptoms while selling drugs that attempt to alter measurable markers of those
symptoms such as cholesterol numbers. Even though drug companies caused the superbug pandemic
that's now upon us, in other words, they have deliberately abandoned humanity in defending against those
superbugs because it's simply not profitable to do so. The end of antibiotics has arrived:

Humanity

faces a new plague caused by modern medicine The CDC has admitted that we are now living in a
"post-antibiotics era." As Infection Control Today states, " Antibiotic resistance is no longer a
prediction for the future. It is happening right now in every region of the
world and has the potential to affect anyone ." (2) Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, associate director
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, went even further in a PBS interview, stating: (3) We've
reached the end of antibiotics, period... We're here. We're in the post-antibiotic era. There are patients for
whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an
infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can't. Keep in mind that
doctors refuse to use natural substances to treat infections, which is why they believe no defenses against
superbugs exist. Their indoctrination into the world of pharmaceuticals is so deeply embedded in their
minds, in other words, that they cannot even conceive of the idea that an herb, a food or something from
Mother Nature might provide the answer to superbugs. See this Natural News article on natural antibiotics
that kill superbugs. The list includes honey. Hospitals are the perfect breeding grounds for superbugs By
their very design, hospitals are prefect breeding grounds for superbugs for six very important reasons: 1)
They put all the infected people under one roof, creating a high density infectious environment. 2) They
allow doctors and medical staff to quickly and easily carry and transmit infectious diseases to new
patients. Previous studies have documented how superbugs easily ride on doctors' ties, for example, or
their mobile phones. 3) Medical staff still don't wash their hands as frequently as they should. The intense
time demands placed on them discourage careful hand washing, causing many to skip this crucial step
between patient visits. 4) Hospitals almost universally refuse to use broad-spectrum antibacterial remedies
which are not drugs. Natural substances like honey and garlic show extraordinary multi-faceted
antibacterial properties, as do certain metals such as silver and copper. Yet because these substances are
not developed by pharmaceutical companies which dominate the field of medical practice, they are simply
ignored even though they could save many lives. (And a doctor who prescribes "honey" doesn't sound as
amazing and all-knowing as a doctor who prescribes "the latest, greatest laboratory breakthrough
patented chemical medication.") 5) Hospital practices suppress human immune function to the point of
systemic failure. Rather than boosting immune function, conventional medical treatments such as
antibiotics and chemotherapy cause immune system failure. Hospitals lack sunlight and hospital food lacks
key immune-boosting minerals such as zinc and selenium. On top of that, most of the drugs prescribed to
patients by hospitals deplete key nutrients required for healthy immune function, leaving patients even
more susceptible to superbug infections. 6) Hospital staff spread infectious diseases to their private
homes. After acquiring an infection at work (at the hospital), staffers easily spread those infections to their

We are right now living


through the early stages of a global plague caused by modern medicine. The industry
that created this plague is utterly defenseless against it, leaving humanity to fight for survival
own family members at home. The antibiotics plague is upon us

in a world that's now far more dangerous than the one that existed before the invention of antibiotics.
Antibiotics have indeed saved millions of lives, and they forever have an important place in any medical
practice. Yet their careless use -- combined with medicine's willful and foolish abandonment of natural

antibiotics that work far better -- has led humanity down the path of its own destruction. Today,

simple scrape of your arm or leg might now be fatal. Infections that occur during
routine medical procedures which would have once been considered minor issues are now deadly. And the

bacteria continue to evolve more elaborate defenses against


drugs while increasing their transmissibility. Human hospitals (and entire
cities) are, by design, ideal pandemic hubs that rapidly spread disease. Like it or not,
humanity has created the perfect storm for a pandemic decimation of the
global population.
worst part is that the

Disease Sub Scenario Tuberculosis


Resistant TB is a global threat
Kate Kelland, Reuters, Oct 22, 2014
Multi drug-resistant tuberculosis remains at crisis levels, with about 480,000
new cases this year, and various forms of the lung disease killed about 1.5 million people in 2013,
the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. In recent years, the emergence of multi
drug-resistant TB -- a manmade problem caused by regular TB patients being given the wrong
medicines, the wrong doses, or failing to complete their treatment -- has posed an increasing global
health threat. About 9 million people contracted tuberculosis during the year and about 3.5 percent
of those had a strain that was to some extent drug-resistant -- cases that are much harder to treat and
have significantly poorer cure rates, it said. "There are severe epidemics in some regions,
particularly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia," the U.N. health agency said in its annual assessment of
the global burden of TB, noting that in many places, the treatment success rate is "alarmingly low".
Furthermore, extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), which is even more expensive and difficult to treat
than multi drug-resistant (MDR-TB) strains, has now been reported in 100 countries around the world.

drugresistant TB from person to person in the former Soviet Union is of critical concern, along with
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres TB expert, Grania Brigden, said the "alarming spread of

the growth in MDR-TB and XDR-TB cases". "Access to proper treatment is drastically low: only one in five
people with multidrug-resistant TB receives treatment; the rest are left to die, increasing the risk to their
families and communities and fuelling the epidemic," she said in a statement. Once known as the "white
plague" for its ability to render its victims skinny, pale and feverish, TB causes night sweats, persistent
coughing, weight loss and blood in the phlegm or spit. It is spread through close contact with infected
people.

Of all infectious diseases, only the human immunodeficiency virus


(HIV) that causes AIDS kills more people than TB . The Geneva-based agency also
warned that a lack of funding is hampering efforts to combat the global epidemic. An estimated $8 billion
is needed each year to be able to tackle the disease fully, it said, and an annual shortfall of about $2 billion
means that is not possible for now.

And it collapses Russia


Tucker 2001 JONATHAN B. TUCKER is Director of the Chemical and
Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute,
Contagious Fears; Infectious Disease and National Security., 6/22/2001,
Harvard International Review,
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Harvard-InternationalReview/75213388.html//OF
in the hardest-hit countries of the developing and
former communist worlds, the persistent burden of infectious disease is likely
to aggravate and even provoke economic decay, social fragmentation, and
political polarization. Already, the collapse of public health systems in Russia
and the former Soviet republics has led to a dramatic rise in HIV infection and drugresistant tuberculosis in those countries. By 2010, AIDS and malaria combined will reduce the gross domestic
In the short term, the NIE predicts that,

products of several sub-Saharan African countries by 20 percent or more, bringing these nations to the brink of economic
collapse as they lose the most productive segment of their populations. If current trends continue, a decade from now
some 41.6 million children in 27 countries will have lost one or both parents to AIDS, creating a "lost generation" of
orphans with little hope of education or employment. These young people may become marginalized or easily exploited
for political ends, as in the increasingly pervasive phenomenon of the child-soldier, putting AIDS-stricken countries at risk

by the year 2020,


AIDS and tuberculosis will account for the overwhelming majority of infectious
of further economic decay, increas8ed crime, and political instability. The NIE suggests that

disease deaths in the developing world.

Nevertheless, a somewhat more hopeful picture has


emerged in recent months as growing political pressure has led multinational pharmaceutical companies to lower the
price of AIDS drugs sold to poor countries. The NIE on the global infectious disease threat provides unsettling but

that unless the United States helps to contain the


spread of infectious diseases such as AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in the developing and
former communist worlds, the resulting socioeconomic collapse could require massive
infusions of emergency aid and perhaps even the deployment of US troops to
enlightening reading. It strongly suggests

restore order. The Bush administration, which unlike its predecessor has shown little interest in nontraditional threats,
would do well to heed this warning.

That causes nuclear lashout


Blank December 13
Stephen, served as the Strategic Studie
s Institutes expert on the Soviet
bloc and the post-Soviet world from 1989 to 2013. Prior to that, he was
Associate Professor of Soviet Studies at the Center for Aerospace Doctrine,
Research, and Education, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL; he taught at the
University of Texas, San Antonio; and he taught at the University of California,
Riverside, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN PUTINS RUSSIA: WHAT DO THEY
MEAN FOR THE U.S. ARMY?, In SSIs POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN PUTINS
RUSSIA, ed. Blank
The defense and security implications of this dysfunctional and archaic system are equally
negative. Currently, there is a huge defense buildup that aims to spend $716
billion between now and 2020 to make the Russian armed forces a
competitive high-tech armed force, with 70 percent of its weapons being modern (whatever that category means
to Moscow). Yet this system already has shown repeatedly that it cannot deliver
the goods and that the attempt to remilitarize at this relatively breakneck speed
(relative to other comparable powers) is failing to produce the weapons Moscow wants.
Consequently, it is clear not only that nuclear weapons will remain the mainstay of
Russian military might through 2020, but it is also equally likely, from the current vantage point, that
this nuclear preeminence will remain well into the decade 2020-30 as well. This
means that, for a whole range of contingencies, Moscow will have to rely
more than any other comparable power on nuclear threats and
deterrence, and deterrence presupposes a hostile relationship with the targets of that strategy. Apart from issues of democracy
promotion and regional security in Eurasia, this conclusion has sobering implications for U.S. defense policy as a whole because it will place
limits on what can be achieved through arms control treaties, obstruct the Barack Obama administrations declared ambition to move on to a

given the
postulate presented here of a deteriorating domestic situation due to an
increasingly sclerotic economic-political formation, we could well encounter a situation where a
revolutionary situation inside Russia due to the blockage of progress intersects with a massive
security crisis that could, as in 1991, involve a coup and the danger of seizure
of nuclear weapons and potential wars across Eurasia . Or, we could see a
diversionary war as the Russo-Japanese war was launched in part in order to busy giddy minds with foreign wars. Arguably, we are
witnessing the first signs in todays Russia of the advent of a long-term crisis
culminating in such a domestic and then international crisis. This crisis would combine mounting
disaffection, if not protest, and continuing subpar economic performance is a situation that
zero nuclear weapons trajectory, and inhibit a genuine military and political partnership with Russia. Furthermore,

approximates Vladimir Lenins 1915 definition of a revolutionary situation. According to Lenins oft-quoted definition: What, generally speaking,
are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when
it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the

upper classes, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed
classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for the lower classes not to want to live in the old way; it is also
necessary that the upper classes should be unable to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have
grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses,
who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in peace time, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the

none of this
suggests the imminence of a revolution. Rather, it suggests the imminence
of a structural crisis leading to the situation defined here by Lenin and which evermore
characterized Tsarist Russia after the great reforms of the 1860s and the Soviet state after Leonid
Brezhnev. Neither we, nor any other reputable observer , expect an
imminent collapse of the Putin system. But Russia already appears to be visibly bearing the seeds of
crisis and by the upper classes themselves into independent historical action.13 (italics in original) To be sure,

its own entropy and ultimate collapse. Distinguished Russian scholars like Lilia Shevtsova and Olga Kryshtanovskaya openly state that Russia
has slipped into a revolutionary situation.14 That process took some 50 years in Tsarist Russia and a generation in Soviet Russia, suggesting
the acceleration of large-scale socio-political change and its growing department, even if we are talking about a long-gestating process. But if
this assessment has merit, then we are only at its inception, not its conclusion, and many more negative phenomena and Russian behaviors
can be expected before the advent of a crisis that could occur, if this acceleration of protest trends and institutional entropy occur by 2030.

Potential contingencies could even possibly entail the use of force either at
home (and not just in a counterinsurgency mode against jihadi rebels as in the North Caucasus) or beyond Russias
borders as in the Russo-Georgian war of 2008. Indeed, as the regime moves
further along its current trajectory, such belligerent behavior
increasingly appears to be the norm. As Andrei Illarionov, a former economic
advisor to Putin, has observed: Since its outset, the Siloviki regime has been aggressive.
At first it focused on actively destroying centers of independent political, civil, and economic life within Russia. Upon achieving those goals, the
regimes aggressive behavior turned outward beyond Russias borders. At least since the assassination of the former Chechen President

aggressive behavior by SI (Siloviki-men of the structures of


force-author) in the international arena has become the rule rather than the
exception. Over the last five years the regime has waged ten different wars
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Doha, Qatar, on 14 February 2004,

(most of them involving propaganda, intelligence operations, and economic coercion rather than open military force) against neighbors and

The most recent targets have included Ukraine

other foreign nations.


(subjected to a
second gas war in early 2009), the United States (subjected to a years-long campaign to rouse anti-American sentiment), and, most
notoriously, Georgia (actually bombed and invaded in 2008). In addition to their internal psychological need to wage aggressive wars, a

War furnishes the best opportunities to


distract domestic public opinion and destroy the remnants of the political and
intellectual opposition within Russia itself. An undemocratic regime worried about the prospect of domestic
rational motive is also driving the Siloviki to resort to conflict.

economic social and political crisessuch as those that now haunt Russia amid recession and falling oil prices is likely to be pondering

the probability that Siloviki


Incorporated well be launching new wars seems alarmingly high.15 Accordingly,
even though no observer expects a comparable revolution anytime soon, the signs of
crisis are also quite visible for anyone who cares to look for them. At the same time, the advent
further acts of aggression. The note I end on, therefore, is a gloomy one: To me

of social and information technologies, as well as Russias partial integration into the global economy, suggests that any repeat performance
will take even less time than this, so it is not inconceivable that within 10-20 years, we could see a Russia openly enmeshed in a structural

Given Russias strategic


weight and military capability, this prognosis poses immense questions, if not
problems, for the U.S. Government as a whole as it seeks to grapple with the realities of Russian policy. Were this a
crisis from which there is no way out other than large-scale transformation, if not revolution.

monograph on the subject of U.S.-Russian relations, it would take a long report to work through all those issues. But here, we must content
ourselves with recommendations for the U.S. Army in its activities. To do that, we must view the Army in its current strategic context.

AT: Off-Case

AT: Politics

2AC Fusion Centers Unpopular


Congressional leaders are strongly opposed to fusion
centers and acknowledge their misuse of funds and
violation of civil liberties
PrivacySOS 14 [November 18, 2014, So-called 'counterterror' fusion
center in Massachusetts monitored Black Lives Matter protesters,
https://www.privacysos.org/node/1603]
There are nearly 100 fusion centers nationwide, and two in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth Fusion
Center in Maynard is run by the Massachusetts State Police. The Boston Regional Intelligence Center, also
known as the BRIC, is located at Boston Police Department headquarters in Roxbury and run by the BPD.

fusion centers were established with funds from the Department of Homeland Security, and
rely heavily on federal counterterrorism grants. Fusion centers have long
come under fire from congressional leaders and democracy advocates as being
largely wasteful, duplicative of other local/federal counterterrorism efforts, and violative of
civil rights and civil liberties. In Boston, the ACLU disclosed internal intelligence files showing that
BRIC officials used their federally-funded counterterrorism infrastructure to monitor
peaceful protesters including Veterans for Peace and CODEPINK, labeling
them as domestic extremists and homeland security threats. The Boston
fusion center even kept track of the political activities of Marty Walsh, currently the
citys mayor. Fusion center officials in Pennsylvania got caught spying on anti-fracking activists,
Both

apparently in league with natural gas companies. An Arkansas fusion center director told the press his spy
office doesnt monitor US citizens, just anti-government groupshowever thats defined. Washington state
fusion centers have insinuated that activism is terrorism. There are many, many other examples
nationwide of these so-called fusion centers getting caught red handed monitoring protest movements and

fusion centers,
meanwhile, have never once stopped a terrorist attack. Its not clear what
beyond monitoring dissidents and black people through so-called gang databases
these fusion centers actually do. We here in Boston know one thing for sure:
they dont stop terrorism.
dissidents, conflating First Amendment protected speech with crime or terrorism. The

Cutting Fusion Centers Has Bipartisan Support


Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations 12 [Investigative
Report Criticizes Counterterrorism Reporting, Waste at State & Local
Intelligence Fusion Centers US SENATE, October 3, 2012
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/investigative-report-criticizescounterterrorism-reporting-waste-at-state-and-local-intelligence-fusion-centers ]

A two-year bipartisan investigation by the U. S. Senate


Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found that Department of
Homeland Security efforts to engage state and local intelligence fusion centers has
not yielded significant useful information to support federal counterterrorism
intelligence efforts. Its troubling that the very fusion centers that were designed
to share information in a post-9/11 world have become part of the problem. Instead of
strengthening our counterterrorism efforts, they have too often wasted
money and stepped on Americans civil liberties, said Senator Tom Coburn
(R), the Subcommittees ranking member who initiated the investigation. The investigation determined
(WASHINGTON, D.C.)

that senior DHS officials were aware of the problems hampering effective counterterrorism work with the
fusion centers, but did not always inform Congress of the issues, nor ensure the problems were fixed in a

DHS has resisted oversight of these centers. The


Department opted not to inform Congress or the public of serious problems
plaguing its fusion center and broader intelligence efforts . When this Subcommittee
timely manner. Unfortunately,

requested documents that would help it identify these issues, the Department initially resisted turning
them over, arguing that they were protected by privilege, too sensitive to share, were protected by
confidentiality agreements, or did not exist at all. The American people deserve better. I hope this report
will help generate the reforms that will help keep our country safe, Dr. Coburn said. Fusion centers may
provide valuable services in fields other than terrorism, such as contributions to traditional criminal
investigations, public safety, or disaster response and recovery efforts, said Senator Carl Levin (D),
Subcommittee chairman. This investigation focused on the federal return from investing in state and local
fusion centers, using the counterterrorism objectives established by law and DHS. The report recommends

The
Department of Homeland Security estimates that it has spent somewhere
between $289 million and $1.4 billion in public funds to support state and
local fusion centers since 2003, broad estimates that differ by over $1 billion.
The investigation raises questions about the value this amount of funding and
the nations more than 70 fusion centers are providing to federal
counterterrorism efforts.
that Congress clarify the purpose of fusion centers and link their funding to their performance.

AT: Terror DA

2AC Fusion Centers Dont Stop Terrorism


Fusion Centers Are Not Equipped To Stop the Next Major
Terrorist Attack
Sosadmin 15 "So-called 'counterterror' Fusion Center in Massachusetts
Monitored Black Lives Matter Protesters." So-called 'counterterror' Fusion
Center in Massachusetts Monitored Black Lives Matter Protesters. N.p., 28
Nov. 2014. Web. 24 June 2015.
Law enforcement officials at the Department of Homeland Security-funded Commonwealth Fusion Center spied on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of Black Lives
Matter protesters in Boston earlier this week, the Boston Herald reports. The reference to the so-called fusion spy center comes at the very end of a news story quoting
Boston protesters injured by police in Tuesday nights demonstrations, which was possibly the largest Ferguson related protest in the country the day after the nonindictment of Darren Wilson was announced. The state police Commonwealth Fusion Center monitored social media, which provided critical intelligence about protesters
plans to try to disrupt traffic on state highways, state police said

. There are nearly 100 fusion centers

nationwide,

and two in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth Fusion Center in Maynard is run by the Massachusetts State Police.
The Boston Regional Intelligence Center, also known as the BRIC, is located at Boston Police Department headquarters in Roxbury and run by

Both fusion centers were established with funds from the


Department of Homeland Security, and rely heavily on federal
counterterrorism grants. Fusion centers have long come under fire
from congressional leaders and democracy advocates as being largely wasteful, duplicative of
other local/federal counterterrorism efforts, and violative of civil
rights and civil liberties. In Boston, the ACLU disclosed internal intelligence files showing that BRIC officials used
the BPD.

their federally-funded counterterrorism infrastructure to monitor peaceful protesters including Veterans for Peace and CODEPINK, labeling
them as domestic extremists and homeland security threats. The Boston fusion center even kept track of the political activities of Marty Walsh,

Fusion center officials in Pennsylvania got caught


spying on anti-fracking activists, apparently in league with natural
gas companies. An Arkansas fusion center director told the press his
spy office doesnt monitor US citizens, just anti-government groups
however thats defined. Washington state fusion centers have
insinuated that activism is terrorism. There are many, many other examples nationwide of these socurrently the citys mayor.

called fusion centers getting caught red handed monitoring protest movements and dissidents, conflating First Amendment protected speech

. The fusion centers, meanwhile, have never once


stopped a terrorist attack. Its not clear what beyond monitoring
dissidents and black peoplethrough so-called gang databases
these fusion centers actually do. We here in Boston know one thing for sure:
they dont stop terrorism. Some people might say that counterterrorism analysts at the Commonwealth Fusion
with crime or terrorism

Center should be monitoring the tweets and Facebook posts of Black Lives Matter activists, if those activists intend to shut down highways.
We can agree to disagree about that, but please dont say these fusion centers are primarily dedicated to stopping terrorism when they are
doing things like this. Stopping traffic for a few hours is civil disobedience, not terrorism. A supposed anti-terrorism center has no business
monitoring public social media accounts looking for intelligence about civic protest movements.

AT: Neoliberalism

Plan Solves It
Fusion centers embrace neoliberal rational
Monahan & Palmer 09, Torin Monahan (Associate Professor of Human & Organizational
Development and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. His main theoreti- cal
interests are in social control and institutional transformations with new technolo- gies), Neal A. Palmer
(doctoral student in the Department of Human & Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University),
Security Dialoguevol.40 ,no.6, December 2009, The Emerging Politics of DHS Fusion Centers,
http://publicsurveillance.com/papers/FC-SD.pdf. PE

Fusion centers provide a window into dominant forms and logics of


contemporary securitization. They clearly embody an all-hazards orientation
that pervades emergency-preparedness discourses and operations today
(Lakoff, TorinMonahan&NealA.PalmerThe Emerging Politics of DHS Fusion
Centers633 2006) and they develop within and contribute to a riskmanagement approach to policing and governance that seeks to control
rather than elimi- nate threats and social problems (Simon, 2006; Wacquant,
2009). Moreover, even as highly secretive organizations, fusion centers
embrace neoliberal rationalities of privatization and
responsibilization. Publicprivate partner- ships are key to fusion-center
operations, as is the use of private security analysts. Whereas
responsibilization is typically theorized in terms of individuals who must
consume security products and services not provided by the state (Rose,
1999; Katz, 2006; Monahan, 2009a), in this case it is state and local
governments that are burdened with unfunded mandates and concomitant
pressures to staff fusion centers even while cutting other social services. One
could proffer a generous reading of mission creep by fusion centers and say
that these are laudable efforts by state agents and others to make their work
relevant to the perceived needs of their communities. Be that as it may, this
article suggests that such efforts lend themselves to the violation of civil
liberties and privacy, while rendering ambiguous laws and policies governing
intelligence operations.

Fusion centers are key to a neoliberal agenda


Monahan 11, Torin Monahan (Associate Professor of Human & Organizational Development and
an Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. His main theoretical interests are in social
control and institutional transformations with new technologies), The Future of Security? Surveillance
Operations at Homeland Security Fusion Centers, Social Justice Vol. 37, Nos. 23 (20102011),
http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/archive/120_37_2-3/120_07Monahan.pdf. PE
Thus,

there is also a neoliberal dimension to fusion centers, in that they purchase


data from the private sector, sometimes hire private data analysts, and share
information with industry partners (Monahan, 2009). By forming information-sharing partnerships,
analysts at fusion centers seek to connect the dots to prevent future terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, government
officials are very interested in figuring out ways in which DHS in general and
fusion centers in particular can assist the private sector, presumably by
enabling and protecting the ability of companies to profit financially
(Monahan, 2010). As DHS Under Secretary Caryn Wagner stated in her 2010 testimony before the House

will continue to
advocate for sustained funding for the fusion centers as the linchpin of the
evolving homeland security enterprise. While I&As support to state, local and tribal partners is
steadily improving, there is still work to be done in how best to support the private
sector. We intend to explore ways to extend our efforts in this area beyond the established relationships with the
Subcommittee on Homeland Security: I&A [DHSs Office of Intelligence and Analysis]

critical infrastructure sectors (Wagner, 2010; emphasis added).

*** Fusion Centers Neg

Case Args

AT: Movements Advantage

Movements Wont Grow Social Media


Limitations of Social Media Will Prevent Large Scale
Attention to the Movement
Morozov 13 [Morozov, Evgeny. Why Social Movements Should Ignore
Social Media. 2/5/13. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112189/socialmedia-doesnt-always-help-social-movements]
If one assumes that political reform is long, slow, and painful,
hierarchies and centralizing strategies can be productive . After all, they
can keep the movement on target and give it some coherent shape. Ideas on their own
do not change the world; ideas that are coupled with smart
institutions might. Not by memes alone would be an apt slogan for any contemporary
social movement. Alas, this basic insightthat political reform cannot be
reduced to the wars of memes and aesthetics alone, even if the
Internet offers an effective platform for waging themhas mostly
been lost on the Occupy Wall Street crowd.9 Challenging power
requires a strategy that in many circumstances might favor
centralization. To reject the latter on philosophical grounds rather than strategic grounds
because it is anti-Internet or anti-Wikipediaborders on the suicidal.

Movements Wont Grow Public Support


The public does not support protest movements
Herrnson and Weldon 14 [Paul and Cathleen respectively, Herrnson
is an Expert in American politics, Executive Director of the Roper Center, and
a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, Kathleen is a
Research Coordinator for the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at
UConn, Going Too Far: The American Public's Attitudes Toward Protest
Movements, October 22, 2014]
Few generalizations can be made about the public's support for protest
movements in general; level of support varies by issue. But perhaps because
personal experience with protest is rare -- just 10 percent said they had ever
participated in a protest in a 2013 AP/Gfk Knowledge Networks poll -- the
public's overall attitude toward mass demonstrations seems to range from
skepticism to outright condemnation. Even the most popular protest events
have support levels that hover below half, and positive responses are rarely
higher than negative ones. The public is particularly uncomfortable with
protest during wartime. The flip side of the "rally-round-the-flag" effect, which
unites Americans in opposition to an external threat, is less tolerance for
internal dissent. Thirty-one percent in a 2003 Freedom Forum/American
Journalism Review poll believed that individuals should not be allowed to
protest during a time of active military combat. Similarly, 34 percent in a
1991 LA Times poll thought that protests against the Gulf War were
inappropriate once forces were in combat. In a 1970 Harris poll, 37 percent
said antiwar protests should be made illegal. However, Americans can be
quite supportive of protests on other shores, particularly in countries where
the government is seen as particularly repressive. In a 1979 Carnegie
Endowment for Peace/Response Analysis poll, 79 percent said they thought
blacks in South Africa were justified in conducting boycotts, sit-ins, and
demonstrations in order to improve their situation. A 1989 Harris poll found
nine in ten thought the students in Tiananmen Square were right in their
demands. Eighty-two percent in a 2011 Gallup poll said they were
sympathetic to those protesting for a change of government in Egypt. Despite
the demonstrable successes of the Civil Rights movement only a decade
before, 1976 Gallup poll found that the public was skeptical that protests
could bring about change. Just 6% thought protests were very effective in
influencing how our government is run and what laws are passed, and 22
percent thought they were fairly effective. But the public's perception of
whether a particular protest is likely to help the cause it champions varies
considerably by attitudes toward the issue overall. During the civil rights
movement, blacks thought demonstrations helped the cause, while whites
thought they hurt it. Only 29 percent of the public in a 2003 Gallup poll said
they agreed with the views of those protesting the Iraq War, so it is
unsurprising that very few (5 percent) said the protests made them more
sympathetic. On the other hand, over a third of the public said the 2009 town

hall meeting protests against the controversial health care bill made them
more sympathetic to the protestors' views.

Protests Dont Work


Non-violent protests are ineffective and enacting real
change
Carrington No Date [Chris Carrington is a PhD student in the Security,
Peace and Conflict subfield interested in civil and ethnic conflict and
combined statistical and qualitative methods. After completing his undergrad
in political science and history at the University of Notre Dame, he took a
year to explore other career options before deciding on the academy, When
Nonviolent Resistance Fails: The Strategic Logic of Insurrection for
SelfDetermination Movements, No Date.]
Self-determination movements will have trouble expanding their simple
revolutionary potential beyond their particular social segments because their
nationalist, and therefore almost necessarily ethnic, attributes make them
vulnerable to a host of problems that the literature associates with ethnic
conflicts. General ethnic antipathy tops the list. Making a comparison to other
nonviolent movements, Zunes writes, More problematic are the cases of
suppressed ethnic minorities, who would have particular difficulty winning the
support of majority sectors against government repression thanks to
widespread popular prejudice.46 This point is important: the central
populationthe group of nonmembers of the independence-seeking group
is unlikely to support an independence movement, even in private, simply
due to prejudice. The possibilities of conflicting nationalist myths or economic
interests reduce the probability of central support still furtherand one would
expect at least the latter in such conflicts, if not the former as well. Even if
some members of the central population did support the independence
movement, the material and social risks of action47 and lack of direct
personal benefit would prevent most of those people from acting on their
beliefs. Ethnic antipathies and national interests thus preclude the expansion
of revolutionary potential48 to the central population, rendering nonviolent
tactics an ineffective option. In addition to remaining socially restricted,
independence movements will be unlikely to achieve much success in
converting regime elements. When an ethnic group is excluded from power,
both government institutions and the military may be dominated by rival
ethnic groups.49 This exclusion combined with ethnic prejudices will make
conversions extremely difficult. Furthermore, openings in the political
opportunity space that some scholars associate with nonviolent political
change50 will not be forthcoming in an exclusionary context. Finally, the
regime may be able to use harsh repression with less fear of wider backlash;
if the central population views the movement or its constituents with
prejudice, as illegitimate, or as inimical to its interests, it may not censure a
harsh regime crackdown. The central population may even support
government repression against an ethnic population if it fears unrest amongst
or increased power for that group.51 Security forces and decision-makers will
also be more willing to use harsh repression measures if they suffer from

prejudices. Because of their ethnic character, self-determination movements


not only have low revolutionary potential, but the conversion mechanism by
which nonviolent resistance operates will be unlikely to function for them.

AT: Counter-Terrorism Advantage

1NC Fusion Centers Effective


Their criticism of fusion centers is outdated the
programs have been overhauled and there are
mechanisms in place to ensure effectiveness

Barnosky 15 "Fusion Centers: What's Working and What Isn't." The


Brookings Institution. N.p., 17 Mar. 2015. Web. 26 June 2015.
<http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2015/03/17-fusion-centersbarnosky>.
One of the more contentious debates in homeland security over the past several years has concerned
fusion centersstate and local run organizations dedicated to information sharing and analysis. These
centers, which are funded by state and local governments but also receive federal support, have raised
concerns with civil libertarians who argue that they threaten civil rights. These centers have also rankled

while fusion centers


certainly saw their share of shortcomings in their early years,
they've made substantial progress since then and now play an
important role in addressing problems identified after the 9/11
attacks. Fusion centers began to emerge in the early 2000s when state and local governments sought
good government advocates who question their effectiveness. But

to promote greater collaboration and information sharing in an effort to prevent future acts of terrorism.
The number of fusion centers grew dramatically, from nine in 2003 to 78 by 2014. Most states have one,
and a number have more than that. Massachusetts, for instance, has a statewide fusion center in Maynard
and an urban center in Boston. California similarly has a statewide center, and it also has regional centers
in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orange County, Sacramento, and San Diego. At their core, the purpose of
all fusion centers is largely similar: they receive, analyze, gather, and share information about threats.

while some focus


on terrorism, the responsibilities of others have evolved to include
different threats, such as crime and natural disasters. Fusion centers
typically issue bulletins and other analytical products, and they act
as hubs, sending information up to the federal government and out
to members of their community, as well as to other fusion centers
around the country. The federal government has given significant support to these efforts. The
However, as state- and locally-run organizations, they often vary. For example,

Department of Homeland Security, working with the Department of Justice, has developed guidelines for
the centers that address performance, privacy, governance, and other areas. Fusion centers can receive
funding through grant programs that FEMA administers, but the funding must be used to improve
shortcomings in meeting these standards. The federal government also provides training and deploys
personnel to the centers to play a variety of supporting roles. In fact, the Government Accountability Office
(GAO) found nearly 300 representatives from agenciessuch as the Department of Homeland Security's
Office of Intelligence and Analysis, TSA, the FBI, and the DEA, among othersat fusion centers around the

their benefits are obvious, fusion centers have also


drawn a fair amount of criticismsome of it warranted, some less so .
One of the most significant critiques came from the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on
country in 2013. While

Investigations, which issued a scathing report in 2012. (Note: While I didn't work for the subcommittee that
produced this report, I did work for the full committee when the report was issued and advised the

It argued that fusion centers provided low-quality


intelligence to the federal government and were not contributing in
a meaningful way to counterterrorism efforts. The report also raised
concerns that the centers were monitoring lawful political and
religious activities, charges that have been echoed by the ACLU and
NYU's Brennan Center. Moreover, it found that FEMA was doing a poor job tracking the funding
chairman on the subject.)

it awarded. There was truth to some of these claims. FEMA has long had problems with grant monitoring,

for example, although this is an issue that extends beyond fusion centers. But in evaluating their

the report limited its analysis to the information fusion centers sent
up to the federal government and neglected to examine what they sent out
to other state and local agencies. Moreover, federal officials challenged the
idea that the centers were not contributing to counterterrorism
efforts and pointed to cases that showed otherwisesuch as the
"Raleigh Jihad" case in 2009 and the 2011 disruption of a plot to
attack a Seattle military recruiting center. In recent years, we've
seen progress on some of these problems, although not all . In 2013,
effectiveness,

Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Representative Peter

a report that offered a more positive view of fusion


centers. It pointed to numerous instances where they had proven
beneficialsuch as in Colorado, where the state fusion center had helped
streamline information sharing concerning wildfires, and in Arizona,
where the center had played a key role in a significant drug
investigation. GAO has examined the subject as well and late last year reported that the
King (R-NY) released

Department of Homeland Security has helped centers improve their capabilities and address performance
problems. But this is not to suggest that all is perfect. There are still problems that need to be addressed.
FEMA continues to struggle to track the amount of federal funding going to fusion centers. In its review,
GAO found that FEMA had improved its process for keeping tabs on the funding but that it was still
unreliable. This problem needs to be corrected. Without knowing how much federal funding goes to fusion
centers, it's difficult to evaluate whether it's well spent. Moreover, the federal government needs to
prioritize the support it provides. As the House Committee on Homeland Security pointed out in its report,
when trying to find the balance between state and local priorities and national ones, fusion centers tend to
lean on the former. Fusion centers are free to do this, but federal support needs to focus on the latter.

Fusion Centers Are Key to solve stove-piping


By Stew Magnuson February 2007 Fusion centers aim to connect
federal, state, local agencies
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2007/February/Pages/Fusion
centers2732.aspx
While the ultimate goal is to correct the well-documented mistakes that led to
the 9/11 attacks, the centers are increasingly being used to track crimes not
typically associated with terrorism, said Rapp, who also serves as the chief of the Baltimore
Police Department. Founded in 2003, MCAC is one of the first fusion centers to get off the ground. For
almost all the agencies, this was new, Rapp said in a meeting room where a large poster describing 28
international terrorist organizations hung on the wall. Interaction

between state, federal


and local law enforcement had never happened before in a fusion center
concept. The U.S. military and intelligence agencies have struggled to break
down the so-called stove-pipes of information , often characterized by turf battles over
who controls access to what top secret information. Prior to 9/11,the stovepiping between
state, local and federal police agencies, was just as acute , Rapp said. DHS Secretary
Michael Chertoff told police chiefs in a speech last year that the centers will seek to thwart plots arising in
local communities, involving local people, American citizens, who may become radicalized over the

To put an end to the turf battles, the


government-wide solution is currently the fusion concept a bricks
Internet or because of a recruiter

and mortar location where all stakeholders are represented, and can communicate face-to-face and build
personal relationships while accessing some of the dozens of high-security law enforcement databases.
The intelligence agencies have come together at the National Counterterrorism Center in Northern Virginia
to keep track of multi-national threats. A pilot program, Project SeaHawk in Charleston, S.C., keeps tab on

seaport security with representatives of Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, and state and
local officials. The concept, so far,
some growing pains.

is succeeding in Maryland, Rapp said. But the center had

AT: Senate Report


Senate Report is false and analyzes a small sample
size of data collection efforts
HSGAC 12. "Menu." Majority Media| Homeland Security & Governmental
Affairs Committee| Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee.
N.p., 3 Oct. 2012. Web. 26 June 2015.
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman
Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Wednesday reacted critically to a subcommittee report
on fusion centers. I strongly disagree with the reports core
assertion that fusion centers have been unable to meaningfully
contribute to federal counterterrorism efforts, Lieberman said. This
statement is not supported by the examples presented in the report
and is contrary to the public record, which shows fusion centers
have played a significant role in many recent terrorism cases and
have helped generate hundreds of tips and leads that have led to
current FBI investigations. The report does include valuable findings in some areas. It cites examples of inappropriate use of
homeland security grant funds and accurately notes that FEMA has struggled to account for how homeland security grant funds are allocated and used, a longstanding
concern of mine. But the report also contradicts public statements by the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the FBI, who have acknowledged the value

Without
fusion centers, we would not be able to connect the dots. Fusion
centers have been essential to breaking down the information silos
and communications barriers that kept the government from
detecting the most horrific terrorist attack on this country - even though federal,
fusion centers provide to the intelligence community. Fusion centers have stepped up to meet an urgent need in the last decade, Lieberman said.

state, and local officials each held valuable pieces of the puzzle.

Fusion Centers Key Data Analysis


Fusion Centers are key to analyzing intel only way to
test validity of the information
Chad Foster, chief policy analyst,The Council of State Governments and
Gary Cordner, professor, College of Justice & Safety, Eastern Kentucky
University 2005 The Impact of Terrorism on State Law Enforcement The
Council of State Governments and Eastern Kentucky University Joint Report
CSG convened an expert work group in 2004 to consider these changing conditions and a broad range of
alternatives to improve terrorism prevention at the state level. As states develop strategies concerning
prevention and to a lesser extent, emergency response, they should consider the following

According to the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan


is the portion of the intelligence process that
transforms the raw data into products that are useful ...without this portion of
the process, we are left with disjointed pieces of information to which
no meaning has been attached.13 Consensus among experts suggests that improved
recommendations.

released in 2004, Analysis

intelligence analysis at all levels of government will greatly contribute to the terrorism and general crime

To meet this new need, states should pursue and develop an


intelligence fusion center, specialized intelligence analysts and improved analytical tools. The
centralization of intelligence sharing and analysis at the state level, through
one physical center or network of facilities, provides a means to gather and
analyze disparate networks of information more effectively and efficiently.
Furthermore, intelligence analysts provide the necessary human backbone to the
states analytical capabilities. Working with computer-based programs and mapping tools,
prevention mission.

analysts help translate raw data into intelligence to better inform decision making in the field.

AT: Fusion Centers Cause Redundancy


Fusion Centers Solve Redundancy Thats Key to Efficient
Surveillance
By Stew Magnuson February 2007 Fusion centers aim to connect
federal, state, local agencies
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2007/February/Pages/Fusion
centers2732.aspx
The report is forwarded to the analysts who look for patterns. If necessary, they may write up a threat
assessment or an intelligence bulletin to be distributed to interested agencies. They also monitor open
source information found in the media. If the threat is deemed urgent, there is the Rapid Reach telephone
system that calls agencies to send alerts so the bulletin isnt sitting in someones in-box for hours, Rapp
said. MCAC has also been using federal grants to train local and state analysts to get them on the same
page. Many have done criminal intelligence, for example, but have no experience in terrorism analysis, he
said. The center has also provided threat assessments for the governors inauguration and major sporting

The linking of databases is an ongoing issue , but one that is slowly


improving, he added. We feel we have a pretty good group of databases. We feel all we need
to do the job now is just hooking them up and having them talk to each other
so we dont have to do multiple searches through multiple databases. Despite
events.

the efforts, 2006 saw a steady stream of criticism from state and local law enforcement officers who stated

said if
there is pertinent information, the department will find a way to quickly push
it down to the appropriate officials, regardless of whether they have a fusion
center. As far as sharing threat warning information we find ways to share
it, and share it immediately, Allen told National Defense.
that critical information is not flowing in their direction. Charles Allen, DHS intelligence officer,

1NC Counter Terror Strategies Cant Stop


Terrorism
Counter Terrorism is Ineffective
Sedney 15. David. TIME. Americas Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing
Sedney is a writer at TIME, and was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia from 2009-2013 and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for East Asia from 2007-2009. He is now a senior fellow
at the Atlantic Council and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. http://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorismpolicy-is-failing/
The U.S. approach to countering violent extremism is failing badly .
Our current light footprint, counter-terrorism approach, posits that a combination of precisely targeted
drone strikes, U.S. special forces raids, and training small, elite units of local forces can kill enough of the
extremists core leadership to render those groups incapable. But ,

there has never been a


strategy behind this hope, never an articulated theory of the case to
explain where we were headed. These methods have, for limited periods, degraded
extremists capabilities. But, today it is clear they are fundamentally flawed and
severely counter-productive. Rather than reducing threats, our tactics produce
more dangerous, more committed extremists. The crucible of the
pressures we have created has not destroyed the extremists, instead it has
evolved them into more virulent forms. Our singular focus on killing, without any
serious attempt to ameliorate basic societal problems and the absence of a moral core for our actions
have led huge swathes of the world to see us as the evil doers. Extremists today seek revenge for those
we have killed, to punish us for abuses they suffer, and to end our support for abusive, corrupt rulers.

2NC EXT Counter Terror Ineffective


Twelve years after 9/11, we still have no idea how to fight
terrorism.
Matthews 9/11, 2013
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/11/twelveyears-after-911-we-still-have-no-idea-how-to-fight-terrorism-2/)
Remembercoloralerts?Thatwasprettysilly.(AP)Counterterrorism

may be the most significant


area of government policy where we still have no idea what the hell we're
doing. Everywhereelse,policymakersareatleasttryingtoknowwhatthey'redoing.Development researchers
and education wonks have become obsessive about running randomized
controlled trials to evaluate interventions .Indeed,thepopularityofcharterschoolsisdueinparttothe
factthattheirfrequentuseoflotterybasedadmissionmakesthemgoodwaystorandomlytestdifferentschooldesigns.Criminologists
haverunexperimentsonavarietyofpolicetactics,probationdesigns,antiganginitiatives,approachestodomesticviolence,and
more.AndWhilethere'sstillplentywedon'tknowaboutwhathealthmeasureswork,theAffordableCareActisdevotingmillionsto
buildingupmoreevidence,andbigdealhealthpolicyexperimentsliketheOregonMedicalStudyreceivetheattentiontheydeserve.
Butterrorism?Wehavenoidea.TheAfghanistanwarhascost$657.5billionsofar,wespend

$17.2 billion in
classified funds a year fighting terrorism through the intelligence community,
and the Department of Homeland Security spent another $47.4 billion last
year. And we have very little idea whether any of it is preventing terrorist
attacks. Someofthisisjustthatit'shardertocollectgoodevidencethanitisinotherpolicyareas.Youcan'trandomlyselect
someairportstohavesecurityscreeningsandsometonotandmeasurehowmanyhijackingoccurattheoneswithorwithoutthem
or,atleast,youcan'tdothatandconformtoanythingremotelyresemblingresearchethics.Butmerelybecausetrueexperimentsare
oftenimpossibledoesn'tmeanthatyoucan'tevaluatepolicyinterventionsusingothermeans.

The internet is too vast CT cannot hope to combat terror


Schneier 06. March 9 Data Mining for Terrorists Schneier is Chief
Technology Officer of Resilient Systems, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman
Center, and a board member of EFF.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_for.html
In the post 9/11 world, there's much focus on connecting the dots. Many believe that data mining is the crystal ball that
will enable us to uncover future terrorist plots. But even in the most wildly optimistic projections, data mining isn't tenable
for that purpose. We're not trading privacy for security; we're giving up privacy and getting no security in return. Most
people first learned about data mining in November 2002, when news broke about a massive government data mining
program called Total Information Awareness. The basic idea was as audacious as it was repellent: suck up as much data as
possible about everyone, sift through it with massive computers, and investigate patterns that might indicate terrorist
plots. Americans across the political spectrum denounced the program, and in September 2003, Congress eliminated its
funding and closed its offices. But TIA didn't die. According to The National Journal, it just changed its name and moved
inside the Defense Department. This shouldn't be a surprise. In May 2004, the General Accounting Office published a
report that listed 122 different federal government data mining programs that used people's personal information. This list
didn't include classified programs, like the NSA's eavesdropping effort, or state-run programs like MATRIX. The promise of
data mining is compelling, and convinces many. But it's wrong. We're not going to find terrorist plots through systems like
this, and we're going to waste valuable resources chasing down false alarms. To understand why, we have to look at the
economics of the system. Security is always a trade-off, and for a system to be worthwhile, the advantages have to be
greater than the disadvantages. A national security data mining program is going to find some percentage of real attacks,
and some percentage of false alarms. If the benefits of finding and stopping those attacks outweigh the cost -- in money,

Data
mining works best when there's a well-defined profile you're searching for, a
liberties, etc. -- then the system is a good one. If not, then you'd be better off spending that cost elsewhere.

reasonable number of attacks per year, and a low cost of false alarms. Credit card fraud is one of data mining's success
stories: all credit card companies data mine their transaction databases, looking for spending patterns that indicate a
stolen card. Many credit card thieves share a pattern -- purchase expensive luxury goods, purchase things that can be
easily fenced, etc. -- and data mining systems can minimize the losses in many cases by shutting down the card. In
addition, the cost of false alarms is only a phone call to the cardholder asking him to verify a couple of purchases. The

cardholders don't even resent these phone calls -- as long as they're infrequent -- so the cost is just a few minutes of
operator time. Terrorist plots are different. There is no well-defined profile ,
and attacks are very rare. Taken together, these facts mean that data mining systems won't uncover any terrorist plots
until they are very accurate, and that even very accurate systems will be so flooded with false alarms that they will be
useless. All data mining systems fail in two different ways: false positives and false negatives. A false positive is when the
system identifies a terrorist plot that really isn't one. A false negative is when the system misses an actual terrorist plot.
Depending on how you "tune" your detection algorithms, you can err on one side or the other: you can increase the
number of false positives to ensure that you are less likely to miss an actual terrorist plot, or you can reduce the number
of false positives at the expense of missing terrorist plots. To reduce both those numbers, you need a well-defined profile.
And that's a problem when it comes to terrorism. In hindsight, it was really easy to connect the 9/11 dots and point to the
warning signs, but it's much harder before the fact. Certainly, there are common warning signs that many terrorist plots
share, but each is unique, as well. The better you can define what you're looking for, the better your results will be. Data
mining for terrorist plots is going to be sloppy, and it's going to be hard to find anything useful. Data mining is like
searching for a needle in a haystack. There are 900 million credit cards in circulation in the United States. According to the
FTC September 2003 Identity Theft Survey Report, about 1% (10 million) cards are stolen and fraudulently used each year.
Terrorism is different. There are trillions of connections between people and events -- things that the data mining system
will have to "look at" -- and very few plots. This rarity makes even accurate identification systems useless. Let's look at

We'll assume the system has a 1 in 100 false


positive rate (99% accurate), and a 1 in 1,000 false negative rate
(99.9% accurate). Assume one trillion possible indicators to sift
through: that's about ten events -- e-mails, phone calls, purchases, web surfings, whatever -per person in the U.S. per day. Also assume that 10 of them are actually terrorists plotting. This
unrealistically-accurate system will generate one billion false alarms for every real terrorist plot it uncovers. Every
day of every year, the police will have to investigate 27 million potential
plots in order to find the one real terrorist plot per month. Raise that falsepositive accuracy to an absurd 99.9999% and you're still chasing 2,750
false alarms per day -- but that will inevitably raise your false negatives, and you're going
to miss some of those ten real plots. This isn't anything new. In statistics, it's called the "base rate fallacy,"
some numbers. We'll be optimistic.

and it applies in other domains as well. For example, even highly accurate medical tests are useless as diagnostic tools if
the incidence of the disease is rare in the general population. Terrorist attacks are also rare, any "test" is going to result in

we saw with the NSA's


eavesdropping program: the New York Times reported that the computers spat out
thousands of tips per month. Every one of them turned out to be a false
alarm. And the cost was enormous: not just the cost of the FBI agents running around chasing dead-end leads
an endless stream of false alarms. This is exactly the sort of thing

instead of doing things that might actually make us safer, but also the cost in civil liberties. The fundamental freedoms
that make our country the envy of the world are valuable, and not something that we should throw away lightly. Data
mining can work. It helps Visa keep the costs of fraud down, just as it helps Amazon.com show me books that I might want
to buy, and Google show me advertising I'm more likely to be interested in. But these are all instances where the cost of
false positives is low -- a phone call from a Visa operator, or an uninteresting ad -- and in systems that have value even if
there is a high number of false negatives. Finding terrorism plots is not a problem that lends itself to data mining. It's a
needle-in-a-haystack problem, and throwing more hay on the pile doesn't make that problem any easier. We'd be far
better off putting people in charge of investigating potential plots and letting them direct the computers, instead of
putting the computers in charge and letting them decide who should be investigated.

1NC No Impact to Terrorism


No impact to terrorism they are too unorganized to pull
off big attacks
John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart 2012, Senior Research Scientist at
the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and Adjunct Professor in
the Department of Political Science, both at Ohio State University, and Senior
Fellow at the Cato Institute AND Australian Research Council Professorial
Fellow and Professor and Director at the Centre for Infrastructure Performance
and Reliability at the University of Newcastle, "The Terrorism Delusion,"
Summer, International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1,
politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller//absisfin.pdf
In 2009, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a lengthy report on protecting the
homeland. Key to achieving such an objective should be a careful assessment of the character, capacities,
and desires of potential terrorists targeting that homeland. Although the report contains a section dealing
with what its authors call the nature of the terrorist adversary, the section devotes only two sentences to
assessing that nature: The number and high profile of international and domestic terrorist attacks and
disrupted plots during the last two decades underscore the determination and persistence of terrorist

Terrorists have proven to be relentless, patient, opportunistic, and


flexible, learning from experience and modifying tactics and targets to exploit
perceived vulnerabilities and avoid observed strengths .8 This description may
organizations.

apply to some terrorists somewhere, including at least a few of those involved in the September 11

scarcely describes the vast majority of those individuals picked up


on terrorism charges in the United States since those attacks. The inability of the DHS to
consider this fact even parenthetically in its fleeting discussion is not only
amazing but perhaps delusional in its single-minded preoccupation with the
extreme. In sharp contrast, the authors of the case studies, with remarkably few exceptions, describe
attacks. Yet, it

their subjects with such words as incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, inadequate,
unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational, and foolish.9 And in
nearly all of the cases where an operative from the police or from the Federal Bureau of Investigation was
at work (almost half of the total), the most appropriate descriptor would be gullible. In all, as Shikha

would-be terrorists need to be radicalized enough to die for


their cause; Westernized enough to move around without raising red flags;
ingenious enough to exploit loopholes in the security apparatus; meticulous
enough to attend to the myriad logistical details that could torpedo the
operation; self-sufficient enough to make all the preparations without
enlisting outsiders who might give them away; disciplined enough to
maintain complete secrecy; andabove allpsychologically tough enough to
keep functioning at a high level without cracking in the face of their own
impending death.10 The case studies examined in this article certainly do not abound
with people with such characteristics . In the eleven years since the September 11
attacks, no terrorist has been able to detonate even a primitive bomb in the
United States, and except for the four explosions in the London transportation system in 2005, neither
has any in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the only method by which Islamist terrorists
have managed to kill anyone in the United States since September 11 has
been with gunfireinflicting a total of perhaps sixteen deaths over the period (cases 4, 26, 32).11
Dalmia has put it,

This limited capacity is impressive because, at one time, small-scale terrorists in the United States were
quite successful in setting off bombs. Noting that the scale of the September 11 attacks has tended to
obliterate Americas memory of pre-9/11 terrorism, Brian Jenkins reminds us (and we clearly do need
reminding) that the 1970s witnessed sixty to seventy terrorist incidents, mostly bombings, on U.S. soil

The situation seems scarcely different in Europe and other


Western locales. Michael Kenney, who has interviewed dozens of government officials and
every year.12

intelligence agents and analyzed court documents, has found that, in sharp contrast with the boilerplate

Islamist militants in
those locations are operationally unsophisticated, short on know-how,
prone to making mistakes, poor at planning, and limited in their
capacity to learn.13 Another study documents the difficulties of network
coordination that continually threaten the terrorists operational unity, trust,
cohesion, and ability to act collectively.14 In addition, although some of the plotters in
the cases targeting the United States harbored visions of toppling large buildings, destroying
characterizations favored by the DHS and with the imperatives listed by Dalmia,

airports, setting off dirty bombs, or bringing down the Brooklyn Bridge (cases 2, 8, 12, 19, 23, 30, 42), all

were nothing more than wild fantasies, far beyond the plotters
capacities however much they may have been encouraged in some instances
by FBI operatives. Indeed, in many of the cases, target selection is effectively a
random process, lacking guile and careful planning . Often, it seems, targets
have been chosen almost capriciously and simply for their convenience . For
example, a would-be bomber targeted a mall in Rockford, Illinois, because it was nearby (case 21). Terrorist
plotters in Los Angeles in 2005 drew up a list of targets that were all within a 20-mile radius of their shared
apartment, some of which did not even exist (case 15). In Norway, a neo-Nazi terrorist on his way to bomb
a synagogue took a tram going the wrong way and dynamited a mosque instead.15

2NC EXT No Terrorism Impact


Terrorists dont have the money needed to conduct
operations
Katz & Walcott 12, (Ian Katz and John Walcott, Al-Qaeda Members
Gripe Over Cash Crunch, 1/8/2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/201201-09/al-qaeda-members-gripe-over-cash-crunch-as-u-s-goes-after-terrorfunding.html)
people noticed Saudi Arabias three-day conference in September on
disrupting terrorism financing. For a team at the U.S. Treasury Department ,
though, it was a long-sought victory in the fight against al-Qaeda. While drone
attacks and covert operations such as the raid that killed Osama bin Laden get headlines,
terrorism relies just as much on cash as on car bombs . With that in
mind, a cadre of intelligence analysts at the Treasury wage a quiet war to
choke off terrorists money supplies. The financial dimension is critical ,
said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a terrorism researcher at the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies in Washington , in a telephone interview. The Saudi session brought
Few

together regional officials involved in countering money laundering and terrorism. Conducted with the help
of officials from the Treasury and other U.S. agencies,

the conference provided training in

financial investigative techniques.

Like the Saudi meeting, many of the efforts to obstruct


terrorist financing draw little public notice, particularly because it is difficult to show that they may have

less money has been flowing from wealthy Persian Gulf


sympathizers to the terrorist groups remaining leaders in Pakistan since the
Saudis got serious about terrorism financing in recent years , said a senior U.S.
helped prevent attacks. Still,

intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because intelligence issues are classified.
Money Gripes Al-Qaedas depleted core in Pakistan has been forced to economize, said a second U.S.
intelligence official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for the same reasons. The anti-financing
efforts have forced terrorist groups to reduce spending on training, recruiting and payments to terrorists

The U.S. has detected many more complaints from


al-Qaeda members about money shortages , he said. By 2009 and 2010, we were able to
surviving family members, he said.

say that al-Qaeda was in its weakest financial condition since 2001, said David Cohen, the Treasurys
undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

1NC No Nuke Terror


No risk of nuclear terrorism technically impossible
Michael, 12 - Professor Nuclear Counterprolif and Deterrence at Air Force
Counterprolif Center, (George, March, Strategic Nuclear Terrorism and the
Risk of State Decapitation Defence Studies, Vol 12 Issue 1, p 67-105, T&F
Online
Despite the alarming prospect of nuclear terrorism, the obstacles to obtaining
such capabilities are formidable. There are several pathways that terrorists could take to acquire a
nuclear device. Seizing an intact nuclear weapon would be the most direct method. However, neither nuclear
weapons nor nuclear technology has proliferated to the degree that some
observers once feared. Although nuclear weapons have been around for over 65 years, the so-called nuclear
club stands at only nine members. 72 Terrorists could attempt to purloin a weapon from a nuclear stockpile; however,

absconding with a nuclear weapon would be problematical because of tight


security measures at installations. Alternatively, a terrorist group could attempt to
acquire a bomb through an illicit transaction, but there is no real welldeveloped black market for illicit nuclear materials . Still, the deployment of tactical nuclear
weapons around the world presents the risk of theft and diversion. 73 In 1997, the Russian General, Alexander Lebed,
alleged that 84 suitcase bombs were missing from the Russian military arsenal, but later recanted his statements. 74
American officials generally remain unconvinced of Lebeds story insofar as they were never mentioned in any Soviet war

the financial requirements for a transaction involving nuclear


weapons would be very high, as states have spent millions and billions of
dollars to obtain their arsenals. 76 Furthermore, transferring such sums of money
could raise red flags, which would present opportunities for authorities to
uncover the plot. When pursuing nuclear transactions, terrorist groups would be vulnerable to sting operations.
77 Even if terrorists acquired an intact nuclear weapon, the group would still
have to bypass or defeat various safeguards, such as permissive action links (PALs),
and safing, arming, fusing, and firing (SAFF) procedures. Both US and Russian nuclear
weapons are outfitted with complicated physical and electronic locking
mechanisms. 78 Nuclear weapons in other countries are usually stored partially
disassembled, which would make purloining a fully functional weapon very
challenging. 79 Failing to acquire a nuclear weapon, a terrorist group could endeavor to fabricate its own
plans. 75 Presumably,

Improvised Nuclear Device (IND). For years, the US government has explored the possibility of a clandestine group
fabricating a nuclear weapon. The so-called Nth Country Experiment examined the technical problems facing a nation that
endeavored to build a small stockpile of nuclear weapons. Launched in 1964, the experiment sought to determine
whether a minimal team in this case, two young American physicists with PhDs and without nuclear-weapons design
knowledge could design a workable nuclear weapon with a militarily significant yield. After three man-years of effort, the
two novices succeeded in a hypothetical test of their device. 80 In 1977, the US Office of Technology Assessment
concluded that a small terrorist group could develop and detonate a crude nuclear device without access to classified
material and without access to a great deal of technological equipment. Modest machine shop facilities could be
contracted for purposes of constructing the device. 81 Numerous experts have weighed in on the workability of

Bethe, the Nobel laureate who worked on the Manhattan


Project, once calculated that a minimum of six highly-trained persons
representing the right expertise would be required to fabricate a nuclear
device. 82 A hypothetical scenario developed by Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist for the Arms Control and
constructing an IND. Hans

Disarmament Agency, and Jeffrey G. Lewis, the former executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard
Universitys Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, concluded that a team of 19 persons could build a nuclear

The most crucial step in the IND pathway is


acquiring enough fissile material for the weapon . According to some estimates, roughly
25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium or 8 kilograms of weapons-grade
plutonium would be required to support a self-sustaining fission chain
device in the United States for about $10 million. 83

reaction. 84 It would be virtually impossible for a terrorist group to create its own fissile material. Enriching uranium,
or producing plutonium in a nuclear reactor, is far beyond the scope of any terrorist organization. 85 However, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which maintains a database, confirmed 1,562 incidents of smuggling
encompassing trade in nuclear materials or radioactive sources. Fifteen incidents involved HEU or plutonium. 86 Be that

the total of all known thefts of HEU around the world


between 1993 and 2006 amounted to less than eight kilograms, far short of
the estimated minimum 25 kilograms necessary for a crude improvised
nuclear device. 87 An amount of fissile material adequate for a workable nuclear device would be difficult to
as it may, according to the IAEA,

procure from one source or in one transaction. However, terrorists could settle on less demanding standards. According to
an article in Scientific American, a nuclear device could be fabricated with as little as 60 kilograms of HEU (defined as
concentrated to levels of 20 percent for more of the uranium 235 isotope). 88 Although enriching uranium is well nigh
impossible for terrorist groups, approximately 1,800 tons of HEU was created during the Cold War, mostly by the United
States and the Soviet Union. 89 Collective efforts, such as the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the G-8 Partnership
against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, have done much to secure nuclear
weapons and fissile materials, but the job is far from complete. 90 And other problems are on the horizon. For instance,
the number of nuclear reactors is projected to double by the end of the century, though many, if not most, will be fueled
with low-enriched uranium (LEU). With this development, comes the risk of diversion as HEU and plutonium stockpiles will
be plentiful in civilian sectors. 91 Plutonium is more available around the world than HEU and smuggling plutonium would

Constructing an
IND from plutonium, though, would be much more challenging insofar as it would
require the more sophisticated implosion-style design that would require
highly trained engineers working in well-equipped labs . 93 But, if an implosion device does
be relatively easy insofar as it commonly comes in two-pound bars or gravel-like pellets. 92

not detonate precisely as intended, then it would probably be more akin to a radiological dispersion device, rather than a
mushroom. Theoretically, plutonium could be used in a gun-assembly weapon, but the detonation would probably result in
an unimpressive fizzle, rather than a substantial explosion with a yield no greater than 10 to 20 tons of TNT, which would

even assuming that fissile


material could be acquired, the terrorist group would still need the technical
expertise to complete the required steps to assemble a nuclear device . Most
still be much greater than one from a conventional explosive. 94 But

experts believe that constructing a gun-assembly weapon would pose no significant technological barriers. 95 Luis Alvarez
once asserted that a fairly high-level nuclear explosion could be occasioned just by dropping one piece of weapons-grade
uranium onto another. He may, however, have exaggerated the ease with which terrorists could fabricate a nuclear

the hurdles that a terrorist group would have to overcome to


build or acquire a nuclear bomb are very high. If states that aspire to obtain
nuclear capability face serious difficulties, it would follow that it would be
even more challenging for terrorist groups with far fewer resources and a
without a secure geographic area in which to undertake such a project . The
device. 96 In sum,

difficulty of developing a viable nuclear weapon is illustrated by the case of Saddam Husseins Iraq, which after 20 years
of effort and over ten billion dollars spent, failed to produce a functional bomb by the time the country was defeated in
the 1991 Gulf War. 97 Nevertheless, the quality of a nuclear device for a non-state entity would presumably be much
lower as it would not be necessary to meet the same quality standards of states when fabricating their nuclear weapons.

In order to be successful,
terrorists must succeed at each stage of the plot. With clandestine activities,
the probability of security leaks increases with the number of persons
involved. 98 The plot would require not only highly competent technicians, but also unflinching loyalty and discipline
from the participants. A strong central authority would be necessary to coordinate the
numerous operatives involved in the acquisition and delivery of the weapon.
Substantial funding to procure the materials with which to build a bomb
would be necessary, unless a weapon was conveyed to the group by a state or some criminal entity. 99 Finally,
Nor would the device have to be weaponized and mated with a delivery system.

a network of competent and dedicated operatives would be required to arrange the transport of the weapon across
national borders without detection, which could be challenging considering heightened security measures, including
gamma ray detectors. 100 Such a combination of steps spread throughout each stage of the plot would be daunting. 101

in setting the parameters of nuclear


terrorism, the laws of physics are both kind and cruel. In a sense, they are kind insofar as the
essential ingredients for a bomb are very difficult to produce . However, they are also
As Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier once pointed out,

cruel in the sense that while it is not easy to make a nuclear bomb, it is not as difficult as believed once the essential
ingredients are in hand. 102 Furthermore, as more and more countries undergo industrialization concomitant with the
diffusion of technology and expertise, the hurdles for acquiring these ingredients are now more likely to be surmounted,

though HEU is still hard to procure illicitly. In a global economy, dual-use technologies circulate around the world along
with the scientific personnel who design and use them. 103 And although both the US and Russian governments have
substantially reduced their arsenals since the end of the Cold War, many warheads remain. 104 Consequently, there are
still many nuclear weapons that could fall into the wrong hands.

2nc at: build nukes


No chance of building a successful nukeexperts are on
our side.
Mueller 09 Prof Political Science @ Ohio State University, John, The
Atomic Terrorist?, Paper Prepared for the International Commission on
Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, April 30,
http://www.icnnd.org/research/Mueller_Terrorism.pdf
Some observers

have insisted that it would be easy for terrorists to


assemble a crude bomb if they could get enough fissile material. But there
are those who beg to differ. ChristophWirz and Emmanuel Egger, two
senior physicists in charge of nuclear issues at Switzerlands Spiez
Laboratory, bluntly conclude that the task could hardly be accomplished
by a subnational group. They point out that precise blueprints are required, not
just sketches and general ideas, and that evenwith a good blueprint the
terrorist group would most certainly be forced to redesign. They also
stress that the work, far from being easy, is difficult,dangerous,
andextremely exacting, and that the technical requirements in several
fields verge on the unfeasible.29 LosAlamos research director Younger has
made a similar argument, expressing his amazement at self-declared nuclear weapons experts,
many of whom have never seen a real nuclear weapon, who hold forth on how easy it is to make a functioning
nuclear explosive. Information

is readily available for getting the general idea


behind a rudimentary nuclear explosive, but none of this is detailed
enough to enable the confident assembly of a real nuclear explosive.
Although he remains concerned that a terrorist group could buy or steal a nuclear device or be given one by an
established nuclear country, Younger is quick to enumerate the difficulties the group would confront when attempting
to fabricate one on their own. He stresses that uranium

is exceptionally difficult to
machine while plutonium is one of the most complex metals ever
discovered, a material whose basic properties are sensitive to exactly how
it is processed, and both require specialmachining technology. Stressing
the daunting problems associated with material purity, machining, and a
host of other issues, Younger concludes, to think that a terrorist group,
working in isolation with an unreliable supply of electricity and little access
to tools and supplies could fabricate a bomb or IND is far-fetched at
best.30

Terrorists cant get scientists to build nukes.


Mueller 09 Prof Political Science @ Ohio State University, John, The
Atomic Terrorist?, Paper Prepared for the International Commission on
Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, April 30,
http://www.icnnd.org/research/Mueller_Terrorism.pdf
Once outside the country with their precious booty, terrorists

would need to set up a large and


well-equipped machine shop to manufacture a bomb and then to populate
it with a very select team of highly skilled scientists, technicians, and
machinists. The process would also require good managers and organizers. The group would have
to be assembled and retained for the monumental task while no

consequential suspicions are generated among friends, family, and police


about their curious and sudden absence from normal pursuits back home.
Pakistan, for example, maintains a strict watch on many of its nuclear
scientists even after retirement.28 Members of the bomb-building team
would also have to be utterly devoted to the cause, of course. And, in addition,
they would have to be willing to put their lives, and certainly their careers, at high risk because after their bomb was
discovered, or exploded, they would likely become the targets in an intense worldwide dragnet operation facilitated by
the fact that their skills would not be common ones.

No risk of WMD terrorism dont have the resources or


focus
Mueller, and Stewart 12 - Professor PolSci Ohio State, Professor
Infrastructure Performance at U of Newcastle, (John- Senior Research Scientist
Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Mark- Australian Research
Council Professorial Fellow, Summer, The Terrorism Delusion: Americas
Overwrought Response to September 11 International Security, Vol 37 No 1,
ProjectMuse)
an al-Qaida computer seized
in Afghanistan in 2001 indicated that the groups budget for research on
weapons of mass destruction (almost all of it focused on primitive chemical weapons work)
was $2,000 to $4,000.49 In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, officials now have
many more al-Qaida computers, and nothing in their content appears to
suggest that the group had the time or inclination, let alone the money, to set
up and staff a uranium-seizing operation, as well as a fancy, super-hightechnology facility to fabricate a bomb. This is a process that requires trusting
corrupted foreign collaborators and other criminals, obtaining and
transporting highly guarded material, setting up a machine shop staffed with
top scientists and technicians, and rolling the heavy, cumbersome, and
untested finished product into position to be detonated by a skilled crewall
while attracting no attention from outsiders .50 If the miscreants in the
American cases have been unable to create and set off even the simplest
conventional bombs, it stands to reason that none of them were very close to
creating, or having anything to do with, nuclear weaponsor for that matter
biological, radiological, or chemical ones. In fact, with perhaps one exception, none
seems to have even dreamed of the prospect ; and the exception is Jos Padilla (case 2),
Few of the sleepless, it seems, found much solace in the fact that

who apparently mused at one point about creating a dirty bomba device that would disperse radiation
or even possibly an atomic one. His idea about isotope separation was to put uranium into a pail and then
to make himself into a human centrifuge by swinging the pail around in great arcs.51 [End Page 98]

Even if a weapon were made abroad and then brought into the United States,
its detonation would require individuals in-country with the capacity to
receive and handle the complicated weapons and then to set them off. Thus far,
the talent pool appears, to put mildly, very thin

1NC Terrorists Cant Get WMDs


Al Qaeda wants WODs but hasnt made progress
accomplishing their goal
Benson 10 CNN National Security Producer, Official: Terrorists seek nuclear
material, but lack ability to use it
The president's top counterterrorism adviser says
there is indisputable evidence that dozens of terrorist groups have
sought weapons of mass destruction. But a U.S. intelligence official who is not
authorized to speak for attribution said although al Qaeda clearly wants a nuclear
weapons capability, it hasn't gotten very far. "At this point, they don't
appear to have made much progress, but we continue to review every bit of
Washington (CNN) --

information that comes in to determine whether they've advanced their efforts in any way whatsoever,"
said the official. "Developing

a nuclear device involves a highly


sophisticated technical process, and al Qaeda doesn't seem to have
mastered it based on what we know now." The concern that terrorists will get hold
of nuclear material and use it in an attack is a far greater threat than the older concern of global nuclear
war, according to the president's Nuclear Posture Review. At a briefing kicking off President Obama's
nuclear security summit on Monday, presidential adviser John Brennan said al Qaeda in particular has been
actively trying to acquire a nuclear weapon for the past 15 years. "Al Qaeda is especially notable for its
longstanding interest in weapons [of] useable nuclear material and the requisite expertise that would allow
it to develop a yield-producing improvised nuclear device," said Brennan. With a nuclear capability, al
Qaeda would be able to achieve what Brennan called its sole objective. "They would have the ability not
only to threaten our security and world order in an unprecedented manner, but also to kill and injure many
thousands of innocent men, women and children," he said. Video: Ukraine to remove uranium stockpile
Video: Nukes: Should we still be afraid? Video: Protecting against loose nukes Officials are concerned not
only about the possibility that terrorists could get full-fledged nuclear weapons, but also about the threat
that radioactive material could be spread by simpler devices. CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen
wrote in 2008 that "there is plenty of evidence that [al Qaeda] has experimented with crude chemical and
biological weapons, and also attempted to acquire radioactive materials suitable for a 'dirty' bomb, a
device that marries conventional explosives to radioactive materials." Organized crime and criminal gangs
are well aware of the terrorist group's interest in acquiring bomb-making materials, which has led criminals
to pursue getting those items for their own profit, according to Brennan. When pressed by reporters about
whether there was specific intelligence indicating an active threat now, Brennan would only say, "I think
you can point to a lot of al Qaeda activities and public statements that underscore their determination to
carry out attacks against the U.S. and Western interests." Nuclear weapons expert David Albright said it is
unclear whatterrorists are up to and when they might act. " All

the evidence supports that


al Qaeda is looking to try to gather the capabilities to make a
nuclear weapon. It's not easy to do. But they're learning ," he told CNN on
Tuesday. "They're doing the things that one would need to do to get nuclear weapons -- get help from
those who know, start looking around for loose nukes ... look into black markets, can you buy it? That's
why this summit is so important. We do need to secure the nuclear explosive materials much better. And it
has to be done internationally." A new report released on Monday indicates there have been 18
documented cases of theft or loss of the two key ingredients of anuclear weapon. "Securing the Bomb
2010," a report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, cites two incidents in particular. In November 2007, a
group of armed men attacked a nuclear facility in South Africa that contained hundreds of kilograms of
highly enriched uranium. The men were stopped, but they escaped capture. And in February 2006, a
Russian man was arrested in the country of Georgia with nearly 80 grams of highly enriched uranium.
There was some evidence suggesting the uranium came from a Russian nuclear fuel plant. The author of a
book called "Peddling Peril," Albright also worries about whether Pakistan's nuclear stockpile is secure,
despite assurances from both the United States and Pakistan that it is. Pakistan "has had many leaks from
its program of classified information and sensitive nuclear equipment, and so you have to worry that it
could be acquired in Pakistan," Albright said. However the U.S. intelligence official said there is no
indication that terrorists have gotten anything from Pakistan, and added there is confidence right now in
Pakistan's security apparatus. The Pakistanis store their nuclear stockpile in a way that makes it difficult to

put the pieces together; that is, components are located in different places. The official said Pakistan has
put the appropriate safeguards in place.

AT: Cloud Computing Advantage

1NC Fusion Centers Key to Cloud Computing


Fusion Centers Are Key to Cloud Computing
By Raymond Guidetti, Lieutenant, New Jersey State Police, Newark, New
Jersey February 2010 Rethinking the Purpose of Fusion Centers
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?
fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=2017&issue_id=22010
In June 2009, the world witnessed the power of Web 2.0 technologies originating in, of all places, Iran. After the
presidential election, the cries of protest from supporters of opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, were the most
strident in a medium that did not even exist the last time Iran had an election. Twitter, a social networking service
categorized as highly mobile, extremely personal, and very quick, became the ideal communication enterprise for a
mass protest movement. Twitter is simple to use, hard to control, and free of charge. The thousands of Iranian protesters
who used Twitter to communicate their circumstances demonstrated the speed and power of spreading information in a
Web 2.0 world. In contrast, every day, interoperability barriers prevent the sharing of routine information in police
organizations throughout the United States. Many of these agencies neighbor one another, and the inability for them to
share routine information constrains their capacity for identifying threats and hazards. Interestingly, a central tenet of
intelligence-led policing is the ability of organizations to proactively interpret their environments to identify patterns in
order to predict threat activity. Fusion centers are beginning to participate in national programs that facilitate information
sharing to interpret the criminal environment. One such program is the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative
(NSI). The NSI is an outgrowth of a number of separate but related activities over the last several years that respond
directly to the mandate to establish a unified process for reporting, tracking, and accessing suspicious activity reports in
a manner that rigorously protects the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, as called for in the National Strategy for
Information Sharing. The long-term goal is that most federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement organizations will
participate in a standardized, integrated approach to gathering, documenting, processing, analyzing, and sharing
information about suspicious activity. The NSI requires participants to use technology to integrate routine information
across the nations many police agencies. But to truly develop a police culture that can exchange data, information, and
intelligence to interpret the criminal environment and address threats and hazards in near real time, law enforcement
organizations must make broad changes to the way they manage their information technology. Although there is still
much room for improvement with social media technologies, such as the one used by the Iranians to collaborate in
response to their elections, in terms of security, law enforcement can learn a great deal from the current applications of

Fusion centers are in a principal position to challenge


the old norms that have produced information silos . By assuming a leading role
and setting a new stage for information sharing among the nations law enforcement community, fusion
centers can demonstrate that if they share everything, anything is
possible. Of course, opening law enforcement information systems requires a high-assurance approach to the
social media technologies.

government-to-government exchange of sensitive information to ensure that safeguards are in place to protect civil

Once cloud computing becomes available, the benefits


derived from increased opportunities for information exchange will be
boundless.7 A new virtual community can enable and harness the
knowledge of nontraditional partners to solve crime and homeland security problems. Take, for example, an
liberties and privacy.

initiative under way in one fusion center aimed at analyzing shooting incidents. By inviting health professionals and
trauma experts to combine their own data about shooting victims, the fusion center can capture the full promise of
collaboration. For instance, trauma experts can assign a dollar value, for the cost of emergency care, for the shooting
incidents the police investigate. The comparison of shooting data from disparate communities fuels the public policy

Fusion centers can


perform a key function for law enforcement and homeland security by
debate on the public health crisis involving shooting violence that plagues many cities.

providing platforms needed to advance not just collaboration but also information assurance. By employing Web 2.0 and
enterprise technologies, fusion centers can harness disparate information feeds, analyze them, and channel the results to
customers who occupy trusted virtual communities.

1NC Warming Not Real


Global Warming is fake and definitely not anthropocentric:
Co-Founder of the Weather Channel
Vamien McKalin, Tech Times, 10-25-2014, "Global warming is a big fat lie and the
science behind it is fake: John Coleman,"
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/18641/20141025/global-warning-is-a-big-fat-lieand-the-science-behind-it-is-fake-john-coleman.htm
co-founder of the Weather Channel
there is little
scientific evidence to prove that global warming is real, and that the whole thing has
become nothing but a political tool that is not backed by true scientific evidence
John Coleman,

, shocked the world and the scientific community when he claimed that

. We understand

that Coleman wrote an open letter to organizers of the Hammer Forum at UCLA that is aimed at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Oct. 23 forum topic was "Tackling Climate Change Nationally and Globally," and
Coleman urged fourm organizers to re-examine their plan to present two speakers who believe scientific evidence supports climate change. Coleman claims that reports of ice sheets melting away are lies, and that heat waves are not

The ocean is not rising significantly. The polar


ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar bears are increasing in number. Heat waves
have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or
strength of storms (in fact, storms are diminishing)," says Coleman. "I have studied this
topic seriously for years. It has become a political and environment agenda item, but
the science is not valid."
increasing, but diminishing instead. He also claimed that the polar bear population is rising rather than falling. "

Coleman went on to add that he based most of his views on the findings of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), an international body that

says "because it is not a government agency, and because its members are not predisposed to believe climate change is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, NIPCC is able to offer an independent 'second opinion' of the evidence

There is no significant man-made global


warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear
any in the future
Efforts to prove the theory that carbon dioxide is a significant
greenhouse gas and pollutant causing significant warming or weather effects have
failed. "There has been no warming over 18 years."
this is probably one of the biggest
reveals in the history of man
reviewed - or not reviewed - by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the issue of global warming." "

," Coleman writes. "

From the statements he's making, it is clear that Coleman believes wholeheartedly that he's

correct, and is willing to put his neck on the line to bring this to the attention of the world. If the man is indeed telling the truth, then

. We await anything the global warming community has to say about Coleman's statement, along with responses from scientists and politicians alike. It would be

very interesting to see what they have to say to what Coleman is claiming, and if they can come up with the proof to shut him down.

2NC Warming Not Real


Climate change might be inevitable but theres still no
impact even the IPCC agrees
Ridley 6/19/14, (Matt Ridley is the author of The Rational Optimist, a
columnist for the Times (London) and a member of the House of Lords. He
spoke at Ideacity in Toronto on June 18., PCC commissioned models to see if
global warming would reach dangerous levels this century. Consensus is no
, [ http://tinyurl.com/mgyn8ln ] , //hss-RJ)
The debate over climate change is horribly polarized From the way it is
conducted, you would think that only two positions are possible: that the
whole thing is a hoax or that catastrophe is inevitable. In fact there is room
for lots of intermediate positions, including the view I hold, which is that manmade climate change is real but not likely to do much harm, let alone prove
to be the greatest crisis facing humankind this century. After more than 25
years reporting and commenting on this topic for various media
organizations, and having started out alarmed, thats where I have ended up.
But it is not just I that hold this view. I share it with a very large international
organization, sponsored by the United Nations and supported by virtually all
the worlds governments: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) itself. The IPCC commissioned four different models
.

of what might happen to the world economy, society

and technology in the 21st century and what each would mean for the climate, given a certain assumption about the atmospheres sensitivity to carbon dioxide. Three of the models show a moderate, slow and

Now two degrees


is the threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous, according to the
scientific consensus. That is to say, in three of the four scenarios considered
by the IPCC, by the time my childrens children are elderly, the earth will still
not have experienced any harmful warming, let alone catastrophe. But what
about the fourth scenario?
Frankly, I was gobsmacked. It is a world that is
very, very implausible. For a start, this is a world of continuously increasing
global population so that there are 12 billion on the planet. This is more than
a billion more than the United Nations expects, and flies in the face of the
fact that the world population growth rate has been falling for 50 years and is
on course to reach zero i.e., stable population in around 2070. More
people mean more emissions. Second, the world is assumed in the RCP8.5
scenario to be burning an astonishing 10 times as much coal as today,
mild warming, the hottest of which leaves the planet just 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than today in 2081-2100. The coolest comes out just 0.8 degrees warmer.

This is known as RCP8.5, and it produces 3.5 degrees of warming in 2081-2100. Curious to know what assumptions lay behind this model, I

decided to look up the original papers describing the creation of this scenario.

producing 50% of

its primary energy from coal, compared with about 30% today. Indeed, because oil is assumed to have become scarce, a lot of liquid fuel would then be derived from coal. Nuclear and renewable technologies
contribute little, because of a slow pace of innovation and hence fossil fuel technologies continue to dominate the primary energy portfolio over the entire time horizon of the RCP8.5 scenario. Energy efficiency
has improved very little.

These are highly unlikely assumptions.

With abundant natural gas displacing coal on a huge scale in the United States

today, with the price of solar power plummeting, with nuclear power experiencing a revival, with gigantic methane-hydrate gas resources being discovered on the seabed, with energy efficiency rocketing upwards,

Notice, however,
that even so, it is not a world of catastrophic pain. The per capita income of
the average human being in 2100 is three times what it is now. Poverty would
be history. So its hardly Armageddon.
and with population growth rates continuing to fall fast in virtually every country in the world, the one thing we can say about RCP8.5 is that it is very, very implausible.

But theres an even more startling fact. We now have many different studies of climate sensitivity based on

observational data and they all converge on the conclusion that it is much lower than assumed by the IPCC in these models. It has to be, otherwise global temperatures would have risen much faster than they have
over the past 50 years. As Ross McKitrick noted on this page earlier this week, temperatures have not risen at all now for more than 17 years. With these much more realistic estimates of sensitivity (known as
transient climate response), even RCP8.5 cannot produce dangerous warming. It manages just 2.1C of warming by 2081-2100. That is to say, even if you pile crazy assumption upon crazy assumption till you have
an edifice of vanishingly small probability, you cannot even manage to make climate change cause minor damage in the time of our grandchildren, let alone catastrophe. Thats not me saying this its the IPCC
itself. But what strikes me as truly fascinating about these scenarios is that they tell us that globalization, innovation and economic growth are unambiguously good for the environment. At the other end of the scale
from RCP8.5 is a much more cheerful scenario called RCP2.6. In this happy world, climate change is not a problem at all in 2100, because carbon dioxide emissions have plummeted thanks to the rapid development
of cheap nuclear and solar, plus a surge in energy efficiency. The RCP2.6 world is much, much richer. The average person has an income about 15 times todays in real terms, so that most people are far richer than
Americans are today. And it achieves this by free trade, massive globalization, and lots of investment in new technology. All the things the green movement keeps saying it opposes because they will wreck the
planet. The answer to climate change is, and always has been, innovation. To

worry now in 2014 about a very small, highly

implausible set of circumstances in 2100 that just might, if climate sensitivity


is much higher than the evidence suggests, produce a marginal damage to
the world economy, makes no sense
. Think of all the innovation that happened between 1914 and 2000. Do we really think there will be less in this

century? As for how to deal with that small risk, well there are several possible options. You could encourage innovation and trade. You could put a modest but growing tax on carbon to nudge innovators in the right
direction. You could offer prizes for low-carbon technologies. All of these might make a little sense. But the one thing you should not do is pour public subsidy into supporting old-fashioned existing technologies that
produce more carbon dioxide per unit of energy even than coal (bio-energy), or into ones that produce expensive energy (existing solar), or that have very low energy density and so require huge areas of land
(wind). The IPCC produced two reports last year. One said that the cost of climate change is likely to be less than 2% of GDP by the end of this century. The other said that the cost of decarbonizing the world
economy with renewable energy is likely to be 4% of GDP. Why do something that you know will do more harm than good?

Warming might be inevitable but temperature rises are


too small and negligible reject their inaccurate models
Michaels and Knappenberger 11/19/13, (*Chip Knappenberger is
the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato
Institute, and coordinates the scientific and outreach activities for the Center.
He has over 20 years of experience in climate research and public outreach,
including 10 years with the Virginia State Climatology Office and 15 years as
the Research Coordinator for New Hope Environmental Services, Inc, **Patrick
J. Michaels is the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato
Institute. Michaels is a past president of the American Association of State
Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied
Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. He was a research
professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for thirty years.
Michaels was a contributing author and is a reviewer of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chanage, which was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2007, With or Without a Pause Climate Models Still Project
Too Much Warming, [ http://www.cato.org/blog/or-without-pause-climatemodels-still-project-too-much-warming ] //hss-RJ)
A new paper just hit the scientific literature that argues that the apparent pause in the rise in global average surface temperatures during the past 16 years was really just a slowdown. As you may imagine, this
paper, by Kevin Cowtan and Robert Way is being hotly discussed in the global warming blogs, with reaction ranging from a warm embrace by the global-warming-is-going-to-be-bad-for-us crowd to revulsion from the

After all, the


pause as curious as it is/was, is not central to the primary argument that,
yes, human activities are pressuring the planet to warm, but that the rate of
warming is going to be much slower than is being projected by the collection
of global climate models (upon which mainstream projections of future
climate changeand the resulting climate alarm (i.e., calls for emission
regulations, etc.)are based). Under the adjustments to the observed global
temperature history put together by Cowtan and Way, the models fare a bit
better than they do with the unadjusted temperature record. That is, the
observed temperature trend over the past 34 years (the period of record
analyzed by Cowtan and Way) is a tiny bit closer to the average trend from
the collection of climate models used in the new report from the U.N.s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) than is the old
temperature record. Specifically, while the trend in observed global
temperatures from 1979-2012 as calculated by Cowtan and Way is
0.17C/decade, it is 0.16C/decade in the temperature record compiled by
the U.K. Hadley Center (the record that Cowtan and Way adjusted). Because
of the sampling errors associated with trend estimation, these values are not
significantly different from one another. Whether the 0.17C/decade is
significantly different from the climate model average simulated trend during
human-activities-have-no-effect-on-the-climate claque. The lukewarmers (a school we take some credit for establishing) seem to be taking the results in stride.

that period of 0.23C/decade is discussed extensively below. But, suffice it to


say that an insignificant difference of 0.01C/decade in the global trend
measured over more than 30 years is pretty small beer and doesnt give
model apologists very much to get happy over. Instead, the attention is being
deflected to The Pausethe leveling off of global surface temperatures
during the past 16 years (give or take). Here, the new results from Cowtan
and Way show that during the period 1997-2012, instead of a statistically
insignificant rise at a rate of 0.05C/decade as is contained in the old
temperature record, the rise becomes a statistically significant
0.12C/decade

. The Pause is transformed into The Slowdown and alarmists rejoice because global warming hasnt stopped after all. (If the logic sounds backwards, it does to us as well,

if you were worried about catastrophic global warming, wouldnt you rejoice at findings that indicate that future climate change was going to be only modest, more so than results to the contrary?) The science

. The main idea is that the


existing compilations of the global average temperature are very data-sparse
in the high latitudes.
behind the new Cowtan and Way research is still being digested by the community of climate scientists and other interested parties alike

And since the Arctic (more so than the Antarctic) is warming faster than the global average, the lack of data there may mean that the global average

temperature trend may be underestimated. Cowtan and Way developed a methodology which relied on other limited sources of temperature information from the Arctic (such as floating buoys and satellite
observations) to try to make an estimate of how the surface temperature was behaving in regions lacking more traditional temperature observations (the authors released an informative video explaining their
research which may better help you understand what they did). They found that the warming in the data-sparse regions was progressing faster than the global average (especially during the past couple of years)
and that when they included the data that they derived for these regions in the computation of the global average temperature, they found the global trend was higher than previously reportedjust how much
higher depended on the period over which the trend was calculated. As we showed, the trend more than doubled over the period from 1997-2012, but barely increased at all over the longer period 1979-2012. Figure
1 shows the impact on the global average temperature trend for all trend lengths between 10 and 35 years (incorporating our educated guess as to what the 2013 temperature anomaly will be), and compares that
to the distribution of climate model simulations of the same period. Statistically speaking, instead of there being a clear inconsistency (i.e., the observed trend value falls outside of the range which encompasses
95% of all modeled trends) between the observations and the climate mode simulations for lengths ranging generally from 11 to 28 years and a marginal inconsistency (i.e., the observed trend value falls outside of
the range which encompasses 90% of all modeled trends) for most of the other lengths, now the observations track closely the marginal inconsistency line, although trends of length 17, 19, 20, 21 remain clearly

Still, throughout the entirely of the 35-yr period (ending in


2013), the observed trend lies far below the model average simulated trend
(additional information on the impact of the new Cowtan and Way
adjustments on modeled/observed temperature comparison can be found
here). The Cowtan and Way analysis is an attempt at using additional types of
temperature information, or
There are
concerns about the appropriateness of both the data sources and the
methodologies applied to them. A major one is in the applicability of satellite
data at such high latitudes. The nature of the satellites orbit forces it to look
sideways in order to sample polar regions. In fact, the orbit is such that the
highest latitude areas cannot be seen at all. This is compounded by the fact
that cold regions can develop substantial inversions of near-ground
temperature, in which temperature actually rises with height such that there
is not a straightforward relationship between the surface temperature and
the temperature of the lower atmosphere where the satellites measure the
temperature. If the nature of this complex relationship is not constant in time,
an error is introduced into the Cowtan and Way analysis. Another unresolved
problem comes up when extrapolating land-based weather station data far
into the Arctic Ocean. While land temperatures can bounce around a lot, the
fact that much of the ocean is partially ice-covered for many months. Under
well-mixed conditions, this forces the near-surface temperature to be
constrained to values near the freezing point of salt water, whether or not the
associated land station is much warmer or colder.
inconsistent with the collection of modeled trends.

extracting information from records that have already told their stories, to fill in the missing data in the Arctic.

You can run this experiment yourself by filling a glass with a mix of ice and

water and then making sure it is well mixed. The water surface temperature must hover around 33F until all the ice melts. Given that the near-surface temperature is close to the water temperature, the limitations
of land data become obvious. Considering all of the above, we advise caution with regard to Cowtan and Ways findings. While adding high arctic data should increase the observed trend, the nature of the data
means that the amount of additional rise is subject to further revision. As they themselves note, theres quite a bit more work to be done this area. In the meantime, their results have tentatively breathed a small
hint of life back into the climate models, basically buying them a bit more timetime for either the observed temperatures to start rising rapidly as current models expect, or, time for the modelers to try to

Weve also
taken a look at how sensitive the results are to the length of the ongoing
pause/slowdown. Our educated guess is that the bit of time that the
Cowtan and Way findings bought the models is only a few years long, and it is
fix/improve cloud processes, oceanic processes, and other process of variability (both natural and anthropogenic) that lie behind what would be the clearly overheated projections.

a fact, not a guess, that each additional year at the current rate of
lukewarming increases the disconnection between the models and reality.

Tech and adaptive advances prevent all climate impacts


warming wont cause war
Dr. S. Fred Singer et al 11, Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of
Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, President of the Science and Environmental Policy
Project, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Member of the
International Academy of Astronautics; Robert M. Carter, Research Professor at James Cook University
(Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia), palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine
geologist and environmental scientist with more than thirty years professional experience; and Craig D.
Idso, founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change,
member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union,
American Meteorological Society, Arizona-Nevada Academy of Sciences, and Association of American
Geographers, et al, 2011, Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, online:
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/FrontMatter.pdf

Decades-long empirical trends of climate-sensitive measures of human wellbeing, including the percent of developing world population suffering from chronic hunger, poverty rates,
and deaths due to extreme weather events, reveal dramatic improvement during the twentieth
century, notwithstanding the historic increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The
magnitude of the impacts of climate change on human well-being depends on society's
adaptability (adaptive capacity), which is determined by, among other things, the wealth
and human resources society can access in order to obtain, install, operate, and maintain
technologies necessary to cope with or take advantage of climate change impacts. The
IPCC systematically underestimates adaptive capacity by failing to take
into account the greater wealth and technological advances that will be
present at the time for which impacts are to be estimated . Even accepting the
IPCC's and Stern Review's worst-case scenarios, and assuming a compounded annual growth rate
of per-capita GDP of only 0.7 percent, reveals that net GDP per capita in developing
countries in 2100 would be double the 2006 level of the U.S. and triple
that level in 2200. Thus, even developing countries' future ability to cope
with climate change would be much better than that of the U.S. today.
The IPCC's embrace of biofuels as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was premature, as many
researchers have found "even the best biofuels have the potential to damage the poor, the climate, and
biodiversity" (Delucchi, 2010). Biofuel production consumes nearly as much energy as it generates,
competes with food crops and wildlife for land, and is unlikely to ever meet more than a small fraction of

The notion that global warming might cause war and


is not only wrong, but even backwards - that is, global cooling has
led to wars and social unrest in the past, whereas global warming has coincided
with periods of peace, prosperity, and social stability.
the world's demand for fuels.
social unrest

No Impact Global Warming is on pause temperature


records prove
Michaels and Knappenberger 6/24/14, (*Chip Knappenberger is
the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato
Institute, and coordinates the scientific and outreach activities for the Center.

He has over 20 years of experience in climate research and public outreach,


including 10 years with the Virginia State Climatology Office and 15 years as
the Research Coordinator for New Hope Environmental Services, Inc, **Patrick
J. Michaels is the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato
Institute. Michaels is a past president of the American Association of State
Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied
Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. He was a research
professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for thirty years.
Michaels was a contributing author and is a reviewer of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chanage, which was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2007, Oops: Got the Sign Wrong Trying to Explain Away the
Global Warming Pause, [http://www.cato.org/blog/oops-got-sign-wrongtrying-explain-away-global-warming-pause] //hss-RJ)
A couple of years ago, when it was starting to become obvious that the
average global surface temperature was not rising at anywhere near the rate
that climate models projected, and in fact seemed to be leveling off rather
than speeding up, explanations for the slowdown sprouted like mushrooms in
compost. We humbly suggested a combination of natural variability and a
lower sensitivity of surface temperature to rising carbon dioxide. Now,
several years later, the pause continues

. Natural variability is now widely accepted as making a significant contribution and our argument

for a lowered climate sensitivitywhich would indicate that existing climate models are not reliable tools for projecting future climate trendsis buoyed by accumulating evidence and is gaining support in the
broader climate research community. Yet is largely rejected by federal regulators and their scientific supporters. These folks prefer rather more exotic explanations that seek to deflect the blame away from the

The problem with exotic explanations is that


they tend to unravel like exotic dancers. Such is the case for the explanation
popular with the press when it was first proposedthat an increase in
aerosol emissions, particularly from China, was acting to help offset the
warming influence of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The
suggestion was made back in 2011 by a team of researchers led by Boston
Universitys Robert Kaufmann and published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. Shortly after it appeared, we were critical of it
in these pages, pointing out how the explanation was inconsistent with
several lines of data. Now, a new paper appearing in the peer-reviewed
scientific literature takes a deeper view of aerosol emissions during the past
15 years and finds that, in net, changes in aerosol emissions over the period
1996-2010 contributed a net warming pressure to the earths climate.
climate models and thus preserve their over-heated projections of future global warming.

So in other words,

rather than acting to slow global warming during the past decade and a half as proposed by Kaufmann et al. (2011), changes in anthropogenic aerosol emissions (including declining emissions trends in North

This means that the


pause, or whatever you want to call it, in the rise of global surface
temperatures is even more significant than it is generally taken to be,
because whatever is the reason behind it, it is not only acting to slow the
rise from greenhouse gas emissions but also the added rise from
changes in aerosol emissions.
America and Europe) have acted to enhance global warming (described as contributing to a positive increase in the radiative forcing in the above quote).

Until we understand what this sizeable mechanism is and how it works, our ability to reliably look into the future and

foresee what climate lies ahead is a mirage. Yet, somehow, the Obama Administration is progressing full speed ahead with regulations about the kinds of cars and trucks we can drive, the appliances we use, and the

As we repeatedly point out, not only will the


Obama Administrations actions have no meaningful impact on the amount of
future climate change, but it is far from clear that the rate of future
change will even be enough to mitigateor even to worry about.
types of energy available, etc., all in the name of mitigating future climate change.

1NC Adaptation Wont Solve


Adaptation wont solve; must focus on cutting emissions.
Harvey 13 {Fiona, Guardian Environment Reporter, IPCC climate report: human impact is
'unequivocal', http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/27/ipcc-climate-report-un-secretarygeneral
World leaders must now respond to an "unequivocal" message from climate scientists and act with policies
to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nations secretary-general urged on Friday. Introducing a
major report from a high level UN panel of climate scientists, Ban Ki-moon said, "The heat is on. We must

The world's leading climate scientists, who have been meeting in all-night
said there was no longer room for doubt
that climate change was occurring, and the dominant cause has
been human actions in pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In their starkest warning
yet, following nearly seven years of new research on the climate, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was "unequivocal" and
that even if the world begins to moderate greenhouse gas emissions, warming is likely to
cross the critical threshold of 2C by the end of this century. That would have serious
act."

sessions this week in the Swedish capital,

consequences, including sea level rises, heatwaves and changes to rainfall meaning dry regions get less
and already wet areas receive more. In response to the report, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said in
a statement: "This is yet another wakeup call: those who deny the science or choose excuses over action

the science grows clearer, the case grows


more compelling, and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything
that anyone with conscience or commonsense should be willing to
even contemplate," he said. He said that livelihoods around the world would be impacted. "With
are playing with fire." "Once again,

those stakes, the response must be all hands on deck. It's not about one country making a demand of
another. It's the science itself, demanding action from all of us. The United States is deeply committed to
leading on climate change." In a crucial reinforcement of their message included starkly in this report for

the IPCC warned that the world cannot afford to keep


emitting carbon dioxide as it has been doing in recent years. To
avoid dangerous levels of climate change, beyond 2C, the world can
only emit a total of between 800 and 880 gigatonnes of carbon. Of this,
the first time

about 530 gigatonnes had already been emitted by 2011. That has a clear implication for our fossil fuel
consumption, meaning that humans cannot burn all of the coal, oil and gas reserves that countries and
companies possess. As the former UN commissioner Mary Robinson told the Guardian last week, that will
have "huge implications for social and economic development." It will also be difficult for business interests
to accept. The central estimate is that warming is likely to exceed 2C, the threshold beyond which
scientists think global warming will start to wreak serious changes to the planet. That threshold is likely to
be reached even if we begin to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, which so far has not happened,
according to the report. Other key points from the report are: Atmospheric concentrations of carbon
dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are now at levels "unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years."
Since the 1950's it's "extremely likely" that human activities have been the dominant cause of the
temperature rise. Concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased
to levels that are unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. The burning of fossil fuels is the main reason
behind a 40% increase in C02 concentrations since the industrial revolution. Global temperatures are
likely to rise by 0.3C to 4.8C, by the end of the century depending on how much governments control
carbon emissions. Sea levels are expected to rise a further 26-82cm by the end of the century. The
oceans have acidified as they have absorbed about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted. Thomas Stocker,
co-chair of the working group on physical science, said

the message that greenhouse

gases must be reduced was clear. "We give very relevant guidance on the total amount
of carbon that can't be emitted to stay to 1.5 or 2C. We are not on the path that would lead us to respect
that warming target [which has been agreed by world governments]." He said: " Continued

emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and

changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate


change will require substantial and sustained reductions of
greenhouse gas emissions." Though governments around the world have agreed to curb
emissions, and at numerous international meetings have reaffirmed their commitment to holding warming
to below 2C by the end of the century, greenhouse gas concentrations are still rising at record rates.
Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, said it was for governments to take action based on the science
produced by the panel, consisting of thousands of pages of detail, drawing on the work of more than 800
scientists and hundreds of scientific papers. The scientists also put paid to claims that global warming has
"stopped" because global temperatures in the past 15 years have not continued the strong upward march
of the preceding years, which is a key argument put forward by sceptics to cast doubt on climate science.

the longer term trends were clear: "Each of the last three
decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than
any preceding decade since 1850 in the northern hemisphere [the earliest date for reliable
But the IPCC said

temperature records for the whole hemisphere]." The past 15 years were not such an unusual case, said
Stocker. "People always pick 1998 but [that was] a very special year, because a strong El Nio made it
unusually hot, and since then there have been some medium-sized volcanic eruptions that have cooled the
climate." But he said that further research was needed on the role of the oceans, which are thought to

The scientists have faced


sustained attacks from so-called sceptics, often funded by "vested
interests" according to the UN, who try to pick holes in each item of
evidence for climate change. The experts have always known they must make their work
watertight against such an onslaught, and every conclusion made by the IPCC must
pass scrutiny by all of the world's governments before it can be
published. Their warning on Friday was sent out to governments around the globe, who convene and
have absorbed more than 90% of the warming so far.

fund the IPCC. It was 1988 when scientists were first convened for this task, and in the five landmark

the research has become ever clearer. Now, scientists say


they are certain that "warming in the climate system is unequivocal
and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the
climate system that are unprecedented over decades to millennia." That
warning, from such a sober body, hemmed in by the need to submit
every statement to extraordinary levels of scrutiny, is the starkest
yet. "Heatwaves are very likely to occur more frequently and last longer. As the earth warms, we expect
reports since then

to see currently wet regions receiving more rainfall, and dry regions receiving less, although there will be
exceptions," Stocker said. Qin Dahe, also co-chair of the working group, said: " As

the ocean
warm, and glaciers and ice sheets reduce, global mean sea level will
continue to rise, but at a faster rate than we have experienced over
the past 40 years." Prof David Mackay, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and
Climate Change, said: "The far-reaching consequences of this warming are becoming understood, although

The most significant uncertainty, however, is how


much carbon humanity will choose to put into the atmosphere in the
future. It is the total sum of all our carbon emissions that will
determine the impacts. We need to take action now, to maximise our
chances of being faced with impacts that we, and our children, can deal
with. Waiting a decade or two before taking climate change action will certainly lead to greater harm
some uncertainties remain.

than acting now."

1NC Disease Wont Cause Extinction


Diseases wont cause extinction burnout or variation
York, 6/4/2014 (Ian, head of the Influenza Molecular Virology and Vaccines team in the
Immunology and Pathogenesis Branch, Influenza Division at the CDC, former assistant professor in
immunology/virology/molecular biology (MSU), former RA Professor in antiviral and antitumor immunity
(UMass Medical School), Research Fellow (Harvard), Ph.D., Virology (McMaster), M.Sc., Immunology
(Guelph), Why Don't Diseases Completely Wipe Out Species? 6/4, http://www.quora.com/Why-dontdiseases-completely-wipe-out-species#THUR)

diseases don't drive species extinct. There are several reasons for that. For one, the most
dangerous diseases are those that spread from one individual to another . If the
disease is highly lethal, then the population drops , and it becomes less likely that individuals will
contact each other during the infectious phase . Highly contagious diseases
tend to burn themselves out that way. Probably the main reason is variation. Within the host and the
pathogen population there will be a wide range of variants . Some hosts may be
naturally resistant. Some pathogens will be less virulent. And either alone or in combination, you end
up with infected individuals who survive . We see this in HIV, for example. There is a small fraction of humans who are
But mostly

naturally resistant or altogether immune to HIV, either because of their CCR5 allele or their MHC Class I type. And there are a handful of people who were infected with
defective versions of HIV that didn't progress to disease. We can see indications of this sort of thing happening in the past, because our genomes contain many instances
of pathogen resistance genes that have spread through the whole population. Those all started off as rare mutations that conferred a strong selection advantage to the
carriers, meaning that the specific infectious diseases were serious threats to the species.

No Pandemic Extinction --- Our evidence assumes


mutations and unlikely worst case scenarios
Brooks 12 (Michael Brooks, Consultant for New Scientist, Deep future: Why we'll still be here,
New Scientist, Volume 213, Issue 2854, March, p. 3637, Science Direct)//NR

unlikely to be extinguished by a killer virus pandemic. The worst


pandemics occur when a new strain of flu virus spreads across the globe. In
this scenario people have no immunity, leaving large populations exposed .
Four such events have occurred in the last 100 years the worst, the 1918 flu pandemic, killed less than 6 per cent of the
world's population. More will come, but disease-led extinctions of an entire species only occur when the
population is confined to a small area, such as an island . A severe outbreak will kill many millions but
We are also

there is no compelling reason to think any future virus mutations will trigger our total demise.

Diseases wont cause extinction humans will outgrow


disease
National Geographic, 2004 (Our Friend, The Plague: Can Germs Keep Us Healthy?
September 8, http://www.promedpersonnel.com/whatsnew.asp?intCategoryID=73&intArticleID=443)

Disease

become less virulent over time When it was first recognized


syphilis killed
within months The progression of the disease
limited the ability of syphilis to spread So a new form evolved, one
that gave carriers years to infect others. For the same reason, the common
cold has become less dangerous
This process has already weakened
all but one virulent strain of malaria
Europe around 1495,

organisms can, in fact,

its human hosts

infection to death

quick

in

from

. Milder strains of the virus spread by people out and about, touching things, and shaking hands have an evolutionary

advantage over more debilitating strains. You cant spread a cold very easily if youre incapable of rolling out of bed.

: Plasmodium falciparum succeeds in part because bedridden victims of the disease are more vulnerable to

mosquitoes that carry and transmit the parasite. To mitigate malaria, the secret is to improve housing conditions. If people put screens on doors and windows, and use bed nets, it creates an evolutionary incentive
for Plasmodium falciparum to become milder and self-limiting. Immobilized people protected by nets and screens cant easily spread the parasite, so evolution would favor forms that let infected people walk around
and get bitten by mosquitoes. There are also a few high-tech tricks for nudging microbes in the right evolutionary direction. One company, called MedImmune, has created a flu vaccine using a modified influenza
virus that thrives at 77 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the normal human body temperature. The vaccine can be sprayed in a persons nose, where the virus survives in the cool nasal

someday
well barely notice when we get colonized by disease
Theyll be
tolerable If a friend sees us sniffling, well just say, Oh, its
nothing just a touch of the plague.
passages but not in the hot lungs or elsewhere in the body. The immune system produces antibodies that make the person better prepared for most normal, nasty influenza bugs. Maybe
organisms. Well have co-opted them.

like in-laws, a little annoying but

2NC EXT Disease Burnout


Virus burnout solves the impact
The Guardian, 2003 (Second Sight, September 25,
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1048929,00.html)

Take the case of everyone's favorite evil virus, Ebola. This is so


virulent that it kills up to 90% of infected hosts within one to two weeks . There is
no known cure. So how come the entire population hasn't dropped dead from
hemorrhaging, shock or renal failure? The "organism" is just too deadly: it kills
too quickly and has too short an incubation period, so the pool of infected
people doesn't grow.
The parallel with the natural world is illustrative.

Ebola Proves It
Morse, 4 (Stephen Morse, director of the Center for Public Helth Preparedness, at
the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, 04 ActionBioscience.org,
Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases: A Global Problem", 2004,
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/morse.html)

many infections that


get introduced
like Ebola, burn themselves out because they
kill too quickly or they dont have a way to get from person to person
it is a lucky thing that they dont have an efficient means of
transmission
ActionBioscience.org: How do infectious diseases become pandemic? Morse: A pandemic is a very big epidemic. It requires a number of things. There are
from time to time in the human population and,

. They are a terrible

tragedy, but also, in a sense,

. In some cases, we may inadvertently create pathways to allow transmission of infections that may be poorly transmissible, for example, spreading HIV through needle sharing,

the blood supply, and, of course, initially through the commercial sex trade. The disease is not easily transmitted, but we provided, without realizing it, means for it to spread. It is now pandemic in spite of its
relatively inefficient transmission. We also get complacent and do not take steps to prevent its spread.

Disease cant cause extinction epidemiology proves


Lenihan et al 13 (Professor of Applied UC Santa Barbra, Tal Ben-Horin, Post Doctoral
Researcher, Kevin Lafferty Research ecologist USGS, Variable intertidal temperature explains why disease
endangers black abalone in Ecology, http://hsrl.rutgers.edu/abstracts.articles/BenHorin.et.al.2013.ecology.pdf \\ME)

Epidemiological theory holds that host-specific infectious diseases will rarely


drive hosts to extinction because transmission eventually breaks down due
to a decline in susceptible hosts (Anderson and May 1992, de Castro and Bolker 2005). This phenomenon,
known as epizootic fade out, implies that a disease will die out when the host population falls
below a threshold density (Lloyd-Smith et al. 2005). Accordingly, infectious diseases have played only a
minor role in global species loss, and have rarely provided the sole cause of
threat for species listed under either the U.S. Endangered Species Act or IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Smith et al. 2006). Yet there are
cases of infectious diseases threatening species with extinction on local scales (McCallum et al. 2009). In these cases, pathogens maintain high incidence and the
ability to spread efficiently even as the susceptible host population declines, either through frequency-dependent transmission or the presence of a reservoir host
species (de Castro and Bolker 2005). Here, we consider a less appreciated pathway to host extinction, a disease that spreads rapidly through a tolerant host
population followed by host mortality linked to an environmental stressor.

1NC Antibiotics Solve Disease


Current treatment effectively curtails resistant bacteria
growth
Morran 13 1/15/2013-PHD, NIH postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University, research recently
featured on BBC (Levi, Averting the Approaching Apocalypse, Nothing In Biology.org,
http://nothinginbiology.org/2013/01/15/averting-the-approaching-apocalypse/)
A paper by Quan-Guo Zhang and Angus Buckling (2012) takes an experimental evolution approach to begin addressing this issue empirically. In search of a different

strategy for

curbing the evolution of antibiotic resistance


Zhang and Buckling treated their bacterial populations with either antibiotics,
a bacteriophage or phage (a virus that attacks bacteria), or a combination
of the antibiotic and phage.
bacterial
mutations that confer resistance to antibiotics generally do not also confer
resistance to phage
Zhang and Buckling evolved their bacterial populations
under the 3 different treatments
in their experimental populations of the bacterial species Pseudomons flourences,

Zhang and Buckling predicted that the combination treatment might be more effective than either antibiotics or phage alone because the

combination treatments should better reduce bacterial population sizes and limit their response to selection (Alisky et al. 1998, Chanishvili 2001, Comeau 2007). Additionally,

, so evolution of resistance to the combination treatments would likely require at least two mutations, and thus require more time to evolve resistance than the

other treatments (Chanishvili 2001, Kutateladze 2010).

(in addition to a control in which they allowed the bacterial populations to grow under normal conditions) for 24 days. A total

of 24 replicate populations were exposed to each treatment. After 24 days of bacterial evolution none of the replicate populations exposed to control conditions or phage went extinct (Figure 1). In contrast, 12 of the
replicate populations exposed to only the antibiotic were extinct

treatment went extinct

while 23 of the populations exposed to combination

(Figure 1). Therefore, the combination treatment was the most effective treatment for killing the bacteria. However, that single population that

survived the combination treatment could mean trouble. Intense natural selection, like that imposed by the combination treatment, could have produced a super-strain of the bacteria. Creation of a super-strain, in
this case a strain resistant to both the antibiotic and phage with little cost of maintaining such resistance, would be troubling because the antibiotic-phage combination treatment strategy would have only

evolution of resistance comes with fitness costs,


like significantly reduced growth rates in absence of the antibiotic or phage
Zhang
and Buckling tested the fitness of their surviving populations
They found that in a short term loans scenario,
only the control bacteria increased in fitness relative to the ancestor when
competed under control conditions
the fitness of the single
surviving population from the combination treatment was less than half of the
ancestors fitness in the absence of antibiotic and phage
Therefore, the
antibiotic plus phage treatment resulted in the extinction of 23 out of 24
bacterial replicate populations, while the lone surviving population was far
from being a super-strain
accelerated the arms race rather than curbing it. However, in many cases the

. These

fitness costs are thought to stop the spread of some antibiotic resistant strains simply because the strains cannot successful compete with strains in nature when the antibiotic is not present.

in competition with the ancestral bacterial

population that represents the starting point for evolution in this experiment.

(Figure 2). More importantly, they observed that

(Figure 2).

. The ability of the surviving bacterial populations to grow under normal conditions was assessed relative to their ancestral bacterial population.

Here, any deviation from 0 is indicative of evolutionary change (a change from the ancestor population). Control populations increased in fitness under normal growth conditions, while populations exposed to either
phage or antibiotic exhibited reduced fitness. Most importantly, the population that survived the combined treatment of antibiotic and phage evolved greatly reduced fitness under normal conditions (Zhang and
Buckling 2012).

2NC EXT Antibiotics Solve


New drugs overcome the factors that cause resistance.
AIDS Weekly 9 ("HIV/AIDS Co-Infection; Beating the Number-One Killer in
AIDS: Tuberculosis", p.72, 1-1, ProQuest)
Researchers from PolyMedix and the University of Pennsylvania reported their
findings in a poster, "Antimicrobial Molecules for Treatment of Multi-drug Resistant (MDR) and Extensively Drug Resistant (XDR) Strains
of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis," at the HIV DART conference on antiretroviral therapies , held in
Puerto Rico December 9-12, 2008. Investigators screened a library of PolyMedix's HDP mimics in
collaboration with the Tuberculosis Antimicrobial Acquisition Facility, a branch of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Three of the antimicrobial compounds exhibited
high antimicrobial activity (IC90 < 5 g/ml) against H37Rv, a common laboratory strain of M. tuberculosis,
with selectivity greater than 30-120 fold for TB versus mammalian cells. Because they have a biophysical
mechanism of action, and do not operate through known biological pathways
or specific molecular targets, PolyMedix's HDP mimics are unlikely to cause
antimicrobial resistance -- the mechanism by which antibiotic drugs lose their
effectiveness over time. PolyMedix has confirmed the lack of experimental resistance to these and other of its HDP mimic
antibiotic compounds against a wide range of infectious agents through "serial passaging" studies. These tests involve re-culturing the
infective organism, grown in the presence of the drug, for many generations. No increase in minimum inhibitory concentration has been noted
for any bacterium paired with a PolyMedix HDP mimic compound.

Status quo vaccinations solve


Landry and Heilman 5 (Sarah Landry and Carole Heilman, the associate director of policy
and program operations, National Vaccine Program Office, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
and director of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Disease, Future Directions In Vaccines: The Payoffs Of Basic Research, May 2005,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com.fetch.mhsl.uab.edu/universe/document?
_m=51cf6e9a7f9bd548830ee047df23ba89&_docnum=4&wchp=dGLzVlzzSkVb&_md5=d4451074a68f45367fedda32084e521c)
Promise of new technologies. The payoffs from these standard approaches are now beginning to plateau. In fact, most of the "easy" vaccines have been developed, and

New technologies may provide stronger, broader,


and more durable immune responses than those induced by some earlier
vaccines. New vaccines are also likely to exploit genomics and highthroughput screening approaches that are based on computational methods.
These methods will allow for development of rationally based approaches
that select potential antigens more effectively and precisely . In addition, future
vaccines will use these new tools to get around the challenges of the
remaining infectious diseases. [n2] These challenges include the inherent ability
of many viruses to change (antigenic variation), as is seen with HIV and influenza; the
need to develop vaccines that rely on cell-based immunity for protection for
infections such as tuberculosis; and tools for addressing a pathogen's ability
to outsmart the immune system--immune evasion strategies, such as seen with hepatitis C. [n3] Impact of new immune concepts.
Research on the immune system has helped identify new ways of fighting
infections and is helping define the mechanisms needed for successful
immunization. Most currently licensed vaccines protect by producing neutralizing antibodies, made by the B cells of the immune system. One of the
advantages of stimulating this arm of the immune system is that it can be easily measured. Researchers believe that vaccines
against many of the infections that are of highest priority ( HIV, TB, and malaria) will
need to have the other arm of the immune system--the cellular component, or
many challenges lie ahead for new and improved vaccines.

T cells--pulled into action. [n4]

For the first time in sixty years, new TB vaccines are in clinical

trials. [n5]

The end of illness is closer than we thinkmedicine


advancing fast
Siegel-Itzkovich, 13 Judy Siegel-Itzkovich Is the health and science
editor at the Jerusalem Post. The End of Illness 6/08/2013
http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/The-end-of-illness-315870)
After myriad clinical studies on how to prevent disease, there are clear guidelines on what people generally need to do and eat to have a shot a longevity. Yet, from time to
time, recommendations fall to the wayside as new discoveries result in course corrections on the path to long life and health. Gobbling multivitamins, for example, is now

Prof. David Agus, a prominent 48-yearold


oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and author of the
bestselling book The End of Illness, has aimed beyond increasing the
numbers of nonagenarians around the world. He dispenses medical advice
aimed at helping people to live robustly until their last breath like Moses the
prophet was gathered unto his fathers without first suffering from any
debilitating illness. Originally published in 2011 in English by the Free Press Division of Simon and Schuster, the book has just been translated into
out and working out in the morning following by a day of office work is out.

Hebrew by Matar. (One hopes that the Hebrew edition will expunge the original endorsement that appears on the English version from Lance Armstrong, the disgraced
seven-time Tour de France winner.) Agus, who comes from a prominent Jewish family his grandfather, Rabbi Jacob Agus, was a theologian and the author of books on

. The author was invited to attend the


Presidential Conference by President Shimon Peres who is well known for his
own healthy longevity. Agus graduated from Princeton University and
received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of
Medicine. He then did his residency at Baltimores Johns Hopkins Hospital and
completed his oncology fellowship training at New Yorks famed Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he also headed the tumor biology lab.
His dealings with cancer led to his exploration of genetic influences and his
co-founding of two California companies Navigenics, a personal genetic
testing company, and Applied Proteomics, which searches the blood for
biomarkers that provide early warning or prevention of disease . Agus us currently a professor of
Jewish history and philosophy is coming to Jerusalem later this month

medicine and engineering at the University of Southern Californias Keck School of Medicine. The 335-pageThe End of Illness, his first book, was on The New York Times

theres little
hope for survival in many cases, and the cure is as evasive today as it ever
was. Im infuriated by the statistics, disappointed in the progress that the
medical profession has made and exasperated by the backward thinking that
science continues to espouse, which no doubt cripples our hunt for the magic
bullet. He continues: The war on cancer might be ugly and destructive on
many levels. But on a positive note there are many lessons learned in the
experience of this war that can then be used to prevent future wars and
maximize peace. After all, the goal should be to avoid ever having to go to war rather than to win a war. And in the health realm, this is especially true.
HIS IDEAL end of life is to live robustly to a ripe old age of 100 or more. Then, as if your
master switch clicked off, your body just goes kaput. You die peacefully in
your sleep after your last dance that evening. You dont die of any particular
illness, and you havent gradually been wasting away under the spell of some
awful, enfeebling disease that began years or decades earlier. The end of
illness, he writes, is closer than you might think.
bestseller list. At the outset, Agus notes that colleagues were surprised he went to treating and researching cancer because, with exceptions,

1NC Superbugs Arent Real


Superbugs are a delusion based on a perverse love of
panic the threat is exaggerated CRE is not as big an
issue as posed
Sepkowitz, 13. Kent Sepkowitz is an infectious-disease specialist in New
York City. He writes for The New York Times, Slate, and O magazine. He also
writes academic medical articles. Why Im Not Worried About Dying From a
Superbug, and You Shouldnt be Either. March 8, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/08/why-i-m-not-worried-aboutdying-from-a-superbug-and-you-shouldn-t-be-either.html
Pity the poor public-health official: in the midst of an epidemic, he must adopt a soothing avuncular tone of near-boredom, a weve seen this, not to worry
sort of yawn to calm people who otherwise seem ready to run screaming into the streets. But on the other hand, in this day of sequestered public-health
funding, he has to raise a major ruckus about some other problem that might happen, swearing that the earth may end soon if we dont wake up now and face

The cavalcade of past get-ready-for-the-big-one hits includes drug-resistant TB,


avian flu, swine flu, and drug-resistant gonorrhea among others, each introduced with
shrill press releases and snapshots of grim faces peering through microscopes. It is no
surprise, therefore, to see the CDC roll out the heavy artillery this week by
proclaiming the dangers of the latest superbug. This one is ugly for sure, a resistant-to-almost-everything bacteria that
the music.

preys on the hospitalized patient. Called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, to denote the class of antibiotics (carbapenems) to which it is
resistant, and the group of bacterial organismsEnterobacteriaceae, bacteria that reside in the gutto which it belongs, CRE is being seen increasingly in
hospitals across the U.S. Unheard of before 2001, CRE now is in 181 (4.6 percent) U.S. acute-care hospitals, affecting hundreds of patients. In August 2012, the

The CDC and


other public-health officials are particularly alarmed by this latest wrinkle because the
carbapenem class was the last thoroughly modern group of antibiotics with predictable
activity against gut bacteria. With the carbapenem hegemony now wobbling, the next
(and last) antibiotic is an oldie from the 1960s, pulled from the market then because
of concerns about toxicity, but now being used in many hospitals and ICUs to treat CRE
infection. If and when CRE becomes resistant to this old-timer, the cupboard is truly
bare. This sort of progressive resistance to antibiotics is standard operating procedure for bacteria exposed to high doses of potent antibiotics over time;
NIH Clinical Center had a widely reported outbreak from a CRE that killed six of 18 patients, the mortality rate seen in most series.

resistance can and must occur according to the most basic principle of evolution: survival of the fittest. If a billion bacteria are exposed to an antibiotic and
just one bacterium, because of a chance mutation, is resistant to the antibiotic while the other near-billion are not, that single organism will survive while the
others will die off. The resistant organism will then have the run of the place with enough nutrition to support the billion now-absented brethren, allowing the

. We have been here before of course: methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) played through the hospitals and the headlines
(and even the National Football League) last decade, alarming the public and spurring
new regulations to contain it as well as the application of money, sort of, to develop
new weapons. Perhaps because of all the hubbub, MRSA now seems almost quaint and
surely not a headline-screaming scourge: mostly contained, a nuisance, a problem, but
being dealt with at the right place by the right people. In other words, it has assumed
its proper proportion in the world of threats and dangers. The same likely will happen with CRE. More cases will
resistant clone to take root and get in position to spread

occur, hospitals will make the necessary adjustments suggested by the CDC, specialists will learn their way around the diseases, and eventually the threat and

The
problem though is this: the mix of steady CDC concern about a real issue that requires
attention, a world with infinite capacity for both news and news, and a perverse
public enjoyment of being frightened has succeeded in little other than scaring the
crap out of people who might need medical care. Indeed, hospitals seem to occupy the
same imagined place as the Overlook Hotel, the cavernous inn Jack Nicholson prowled
in The Shiningthe last place on earth a sane person would go. Health care in general
and hospitals specifically are viewed these days by just about everyone as a veritable
the excitement around it will flatten out. And then the next red-hot development on some other front will emerge rendering the acronym to oblivion.

killing field, the place where the two inevitabilitiesdeath and taxesmeet daily as
people are fleeced then killed. Such is not the case. Honest. Yes, I know I am tainted goods because of my
conflict of interest: I work in a hospital and I believe in medical care. But please remember that people in ICUs, where CRE and so many other deadly
infections lurk, are not denizens of executive suites. They are already quite ill, usually with multiorgan failure from the heart attack or stroke or high-speed
automobile crash that brought them to emergency medical care. They then are exposed to the high-tech ballet of life-sustaining futuristic machines, venous
and urinary catheters, potent and often toxic medications, and all the rest. They also are exposed to the bacteria in their own intestines, mouth, and skin, as
well those in the environment, much less the imperfectly cleaned hands of hospital staff. Horrible, heartbreaking, and fully preventable things happen in ICUs,

The demonization of health care has occurred simultaneously with


our deepening fascination of the promise of tomorrow, an almost religious belief that
medicine is just inches away from conquering just about everything. These two
fantastic extremes pervert reality with equal force and fully obscure the truth about
medical care in 2013: we are neither in a hell of ineptitude and willful neglect nor just
inches from the next great golden age of health. And though hospitals are
complicated, difficult places to spend time, the view that, to preserve health, it is
safer to avoid care than to seek it is a dangerous and troubling delusion.
but so too are many lives saved.

2NC EXT No Superbugs Impact


Superbugs arent as serious as the population assumes.
Sermonis 7 (Nathan Sermonis is a writer for the Cornell Daily Sun.
Gannett:No Need for Outcry Over Super Bug
http://cornellsun.com/node/25491)
A recent series of deadly methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus
infections the super bug have driven the nation into a panic, but some
health officials are saying this widespread fear is a severe overreaction. Its
not a threat to the average person. It can cause minor to serious cases only
under specific circumstances, said Claire Pospisil, spokesperson for the New
York State Department of Health. This specific staph-infection causing bacteria strain, identified over 40 years ago, typically occurs
in healthcare settings, but recent media coverage has emphasized dangers posed to the general population from community-associated MRSA which is spread by poor
hygiene and close personal contact. Stories of high school and college students becoming severely ill, in some cases even dying, from MRSA have forced many people to

However, according to Sharon


Dittman, associate director of community relations at Gannett, many of the
concerns erupting from this coverage and drastic prevention measures being
taken closing schools, canceling sports events, disinfecting entire facilities
top to bottom are out of proportion with the real problem. This has really
scared people into making decisions that may or may not be called for, she
said. While she encouraged people to take precautions against the bacteria,
like washing hands and not sharing personal items such as razors andtowels,
Dittman said the potential risk for developing a serious MRSA infection is
quite low, even for collegestudents living in close-quarters conditions. Usually present
think seriously about the potential dangers posed by the bacteria and take precautions against it.

as a mild skin condition, MRSA infections appear as reddened skin rashes that may develop into boils or pimples, causing fevers and pain. Pospisil said that at this stage,
the infection is not serious as long as it is taken care of. She said, I think for community-associated MRSA cases, the important thing for people to know is if they have a
skin infection, they should have a doctor look at it. The sooner they identify it, the better. Although the MRSA strain is resistant to methicillin, an antibiotic in the same
family as penicillin, infection is treatable. According to Christine Pearson, spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these cases can easily be taken

Blaming a misinterpretation
of a recent CDC report that found 19,000 people died in 2005 from the
antibiotic-resistant bacteria, Pearson said the nation has become overly
concerned with MRSA. The study indicated that invasive MRSA cases are a
serious problem in hospitals and healthcare clinics, but did not indicate
heightened risks for most of the general population. There are two different
things here, she said. According to the CDC, invasive MRSA cases often
cause serious complications by infecting bloodstreams and spreading
throughout the body, but the more common MRSA skin infections usually do
not become this serious. Different people are susceptible to different stages of MRSA infection. Healthy individuals with infections can
care of and are no cause for alarm. Most MRSA skin infections are mild and dont cause death, she said.

typically isolate the problem and easily treat it. On the other hand, people with weak immune systems run a higher risk of developing a case of the potentially deadly

While health officials across the country are making attempts to calm
down frantic parents and students, many welcome the opportunity to educate
people on how to avoid MRSA infections, issuing guidelines and fact sheets
about the bacteria. Pearson said, It never hurts to remind people about how
to stay safe. Finding a positive side to the recent nationwide media
attention, Dittman said that at least those who do run the risk of developing a
life-threatening infection from MRSA will now be aware of the condition.
Crediting the CDC report, she said she thinks people will be more likely to
understand just how deadly MRSA can be under certain conditions and take
the necessary precautions.
invasive MRSA.

Protective measures are already in place to stop the


spread of Super Bugs.
Churchill 7, Bernard M. Churchill is the Chairman in Pediatric Urology at
Mattel Childrens Hospital UCLA. Superbug are dangerous, but we are not
powerless against them. November 7, 2007.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119439254844384511.html)
Regarding the recent article "Attack of the Superbugs" (Scott Gottlieb, op-ed,
Oct. 30), it is correct to point out that the Food and Drug Administration is
largely to blame for the lack of new antibiotics against superbugs such as
methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). But Dr. Gottlieb
incorrectly diminishes the effectiveness of preventive measures Numerous
studies show that screening and cleaning can reduce MRSA infections in
hospitals by as much as 90%, even in the absence of new drugs. Screening
means identifying incoming patients carrying the germ, and then taking
precautions to prevent it from spreading to other patients
.

. Recent studies at Rush Medical College in Chicago and

Boston University in Massachusetts show that training cleaners not to overlook surfaces and to allow detergents to remain on surfaces for at least three minutes, rather than just giving a quick spray and wipe, can
curb the spread of germs from patient to patient. Can hospitals afford screening and cleaning? They cannot afford not to do it. The evidence is compelling that these steps actually make hospitals more profitable,

This two step strategy will


save patients lives immediately, no matter how the bacteria morph. Betsy
McCaughey, Ph.D. Chairman, Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths New York
Dr. Gottlieb's op-ed carries an important message for all Americans. I agree
with everything in his article, but he does not present the full extent of the
problem nor does he address new and hopeful, innovative diagnostic and
therapeutic developments. He discusses antibiotic resistance in wellpublished "superbugs" such as MRSA, but antibiotic resistance is also a
growing threat in such common problems as urinary tract infection in nursing
homes.
and require almost no capital outlay. While waiting for the miracle cures, hospitals should implement MRSA screening and thorough cleaning.

Approximately 85 such infections per 100 long-term care beds occur each year. These organisms show increasing resistance to even potent antibiotics. Dr. Gottlieb also does not mention the

dangers of biofilm and nosacomial (hospital acquired) infections. Biofilm is a slime like matrix produced by micro-organisms as a defense mechanism against their environment. Biofilm is particularly dangerous to
hospital patients whose first line defense against infection (their skin) has been breached by injury, surgery (particularly involving implants) and various types of catheters. This is the main cause of nosacomial

A
group that includes UCLA, the Veterans Administration of Greater Los Angeles
and GeneFluidics Inc. of Santa Monica, Calif., and which is funded by the
National Institutes of Health, published a promising new technique in the
Journal of Clinical Microbiology last year. The diagnostic technique can rapidly
(under 30 minutes) identify uropathogens in clinical urine by using an
electrochemical DNA biosensor. The biosensor turns the genetic information
of the bacteria into an electrical signal. This is analogous to a telephone,
which turns voice into an electrical signal. Other new methods for rapidly
testing antibiotic susceptibility are also currently being evaluated. Dr. Gottlieb
outlines the limitations of current antibiotics and problems of bringing new
antibiotics to the market. Antibiotics are substances produced or derived from
one micro-organism which destroys or inhibits the growth of other microorganisms. New antibiotics will be developed. However progress in
antimicrobials will also be made
infection, which involves two million patients and 90,000 deaths per year in the U.S. Antibiotics are ineffective in preventing and treating biofilm infections. The good news is that help may be on the way.

. A new group of hopeful antimicrobial compounds called Aganocides (developed by Nova Bay Pharmaceuticals) are based on

small molecules generated by our own white cells that defend against invading pathogens. In the body these compounds are produced "on demand" and are transient. Important safety features include long shelf
life, stability and very high therapeutic index (kills pathogens at concentrations significantly lower than concentration where it begins to harm human cells). Aganocides also unlikely to be rejected by the immune
system and are unlikely to provoke bacterial resistance. They are also likely to kill bacteria in minutes, kill most, if not all species of bacteria, and kill certain viruses, yeast and fungi. And Aganocides may even kill
resistant bacteria and destroy bacteria protected by biofilm. Current evidence indicates that a normal adult human has more bacteria in his body than his own DNA. In optimal condition, bacteria are divided every
20 to 30 minutes producing billions of pathogens in a single day.

These two facts alone guarantee that bacteria will

always present problems for medical science. But new diagnostic and
therapeutic developments will continue to allow us to be masters of our
bodies.

Disadvantage Links

Politics Links

Counter Terror Popular


Counter terror efforts popular
Julian Hattem 6/25. Author, writer for The Hill. Amid rising fears, House
chairman pushes focus on extremism The Hill.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/246167-amid-rising-fears-housechairman-pushes-focus-on-extremism
The head of the House Homeland Security Committee introduced
new legislation on Thursday aiming to combat what he calls a scourge
of Americans inspired by violent extremists. The Countering Violent
Extremism Act will help prevent the radicalization from happening in the first
place, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said in a statement. We cannot afford
to complacently watch the threats mushroom, he added. It is time for
action, and to treat this issue like the priority that it is, he said. Intelligence
and national security officials have repeatedly raised alarms about the
ability of isolated individuals to grow radicalized online by following the
Twitter accounts, blog posts and forums of extremists. Adherents of the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have attracted the most attention,
though some focus has begun to turn to domestic anti-government
extremists and white supremacists in the wake of last weeks deadly shooting
in Charleston, S.C. McCauls new legislation would create a new Office of
Coordination for Countering Violent Extremism within the Department of
Homeland Security. That office would be responsible for coordinating efforts
to stop violent extremism across the department, as well as setting up a
counter-messaging program and coordinating with other federal agencies
to combat the threat. Though McCauls statement introducing the bill
appeared to be focused on the threat posed by ISIS, the legislation does not
appear to distinguish Islamic extremism from other types of domestic
terrorism. Instead, it defines violent extremism as ideologically motivated
terrorist activities. Some critics have worried that the government
especially Republicans have spent too much time worrying about
jihadists at the expense of defending against domestic terrorists. Earlier
this week, the top Democrat on McCauls committee Rep. Bennie
Thompson (Miss.) pleaded with McCaul to hold a hearing on domestic
terrorism, which he said had so far been given a short shift by Congress.
McCaul on Thursday said that the committee will soon hold a hearing on
countering both international and domestic forms of violent terrorism. A date
and list of witnesses have yet to be announced.

DHS Programs Popular


Congress has bipartisan support to fund Homeland
Security
Erica Werner 15, 2-25-2015, "Congress offers bipartisan support to fund
Homeland Security," PBS NewsHour,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/pressure-centers-house-gophomeland-security-bill/
WASHINGTON Senate Democrats have agreed to a Republican plan
to fund the Homeland Security Department without the immigration
provisions opposed by President Barack Obama. Minority Leader Harry Reid
told reporters on Wednesday that he welcomed the opportunity to vote on
the measure and said every Democrat will back it. Reid said he looked
forward to working with Republicans to get the measure done in the
next 24 hours. Reid spoke after a closed-door Democratic meeting. Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell has proposed decoupling the DHS funding from
immigration ahead of Fridays midnight deadline for the agency. Earlier
Wednesday, House Republicans reacted tepidly at best to calls from the
upper reaches of both political parties for legislation funding the Department
of Homeland Security without immigration-related provisions opposed by the
White House.

Funding for homeland security, fusion centers, causes


political fights
Carl Hulse and Ashley Parker 15, 2-23-2015, "Funding Fight Over
Homeland Security Poses Dangers for the G.O.P.," New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/us/homeland-security-funding-fight-overimmigration-poses-risks-for-republicans.html
WASHINGTON After promising an era of responsible governing and an end
to federal shutdowns, congressional Republicans find themselves mired in an
immigration fight that could cause funding for the Department of Homeland
Security to run out on Friday. It is a risky moment for the new congressional
majority. A nasty partisan impasse over funding for a vital agency would
probably damage the partys brand just months after Republicans took
power, and the impact could carry over into the next election cycle. I dont
think shutdowns and showdowns are the way to win the presidency in 2016,
said Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican and a respected
party strategist. He and many other lawmakers believe a last-minute
resolution is possible, particularly given new terrorism threats, including one
against the Mall of America in Minnesota. And Senator Mitch McConnell, the
Kentucky Republican and majority leader, took the first steps toward trying to
break the impasse on Monday night by proposing a measure that would allow
the Senate to register its disapproval by blocking the presidents 2014 actions

on immigration in one bill, while approving the security money in another.


Its another way to get the Senate unstuck, Mr. McConnell said. He acted
after Senate Democrats for a fourth time blocked Republicans in their efforts
to force debate on a $40 billion Homeland Security measure that would gut
President Obamas executive actions on immigration. The vote was 47 to 46,
well short of the 60 needed. The prospect of an agency shutdown was seen
as almost laughable until recently, most notably because Republicans are
typically predisposed to fund security matters. But now the chances are
increasingly serious. If the agency is shut down, roughly 30,000 of its 230,000
employees will be furloughed. The rest, deemed essential, would be expected
to continue working, but without receiving their regular biweekly paychecks.
Transportation Security Administration officers at airports, Border Patrol
agents, frontline law enforcement officials and members of the Coast Guard
would be required to report to work. But many administrative and front office
staff members would be sent home, creating concerns about the day-to-day
operations of the department. At the T.S.A., which screens 1.8 million
passengers daily, roughly 5,500 or about 10 percent of its employees
would be furloughed, forcing some of the security screeners and officials in
the field to be diverted to help with those administrative tasks. Law
enforcement officers serving in the Federal Air Marshal Service, however,
would be exempt. One potential way out of the stalemate a decision last
week by a federal judge in Texas to block the presidents executive actions
clearing the way for millions of illegal immigrants to obtain work permits
did not change many minds on Capitol Hill about how to proceed, though it
may eventually be crucial to a resolution. Some Democrats and Republicans
argued that with the immigration policy stymied in the courts, Congress could
move ahead with the funding bill and let the third branch of government
referee the dispute between the White House and Capitol Hill. Instead, the
court action emboldened some congressional Republicans who said that since
the presidents action was blocked, Democrats should go ahead and drop
their filibuster of the spending bill. Senate Dems filibustering DHS funding
over executive amnesty that was halted by federal judge is senseless,
Representative Tom Price, the Georgia Republican who chairs the Budget
Committee, said in a Twitter post. By Monday evening, however, at least a
handful of more moderate Republicans had begun suggesting that the courts
ruling might allow them to pass a clean spending bill. Ive always thought
the judicial system was an alternative way to deal with the presidents
overreach last November, and now that one court has ruled to put a stay on
his executive order, perhaps that frees us to go forward and get the
department fully funded, said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine.
Unlike the provisions the House sent over to halt Mr. Obamas executive
actions, Mr. McConnells proposal does not seek to undo the legal protections
provided to the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers
something even some Republicans said they thought was too harsh. As the
administration on Monday requested a stay of the Texas ruling, Mr. Obama
told a gathering of the nations governors that a shutdown would hurt the
rebounding economy. We cant afford to play politics with our national

security, he said. Many Republicans acknowledge that they will get most of
the blame, just as they did in October 2013 and, for that matter, in 1995
during the shutdown in the Clinton administration. House members return
Tuesday, leaving only three days to find a solution. Top House Republicans
insist that it is up to the Senate to find a way out. But Mr. McConnell is in a
procedural box where it is difficult for him to move either forward or
backward, and his proposal on Monday was an effort to gain some
maneuvering room. The current thinking is that the funding deadline needs to
be imminent before House Republicans can relent and consider a bill that
strips out the immigration provisions for a later fight. Or a short-term bill,
which was emerging as a distinct possibility, may be the answer. But as in the
past, events can slip out of the leaderships control and end up with no
settlement and furlough notices going to thousands of agency employees
while many others in jobs deemed critical will have to work without pay and
only the expectation that they will ultimately get a check. Some
conservatives say they are willing to allow the Homeland Security funding to
lapse since most employees would have to report to work anyway.
Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, said, Its not clear
what the impact is because there are a lot of things that are supposedly
funded anyway, so the impact may be smaller than we think. Jeh Johnson,
the Homeland Security secretary, said in an interview that it was indulging in
a fantasy to believe you can shut down the Department of Homeland Security
and there be no impact to homeland security itself. This is not the time to
be shutting down the Department of Homeland Security by failure to act, Mr.
Johnson added. He cited new challenges from global terrorism, cybersecurity
threats, an exceptionally harsh winter in the Northeast and the South, and
the possibility of another spike in illegal immigration on the Southwest border.
The funding fight has stifled momentum that Republicans carried into the
new Congress. They posted a few quick victories, including approval of a
lapsed terrorism insurance program and a veterans suicide prevention
measure that had been blocked in December. They also pushed through a
measure to expedite construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and allowed
a robust fight on the floor in line with Mr. McConnells pledge to restore
regular order in the Senate. But the funding fight has tied the Senate in
knots for weeks, preventing Republicans from moving ahead on other
legislation they had hoped to advance. As they brace for a possible
shutdown, leading Republicans say their colleagues need to embrace the
reality that their new congressional majorities simply do not give them the
power to force through provisions that Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats are
dead set against. People demanding what cant be done are making a
political mistake, Mr. Cole said.

Terror Disad Links

1NC
Fusion Centers Are Key to Data Collection
David Cole, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center et al.
2012
Recommendations For Fusion Centers Members of The Constitution
Projects Liberty and Security Committee Endorsing the Recommendations for
Fusion Centers, ACLU
[additional authors: David A. Keene, former Chairman, American Conservative
Union, Azizah al-Hibri, Professor Emerita, The T.C. Williams School of Law,
University of Richmond, Bob Barr, former Member of Congress (R-Ga), David
E. Birenbaum, Of Counsel, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP; Senior
Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Phillip J. Cooper,
Professor, Mark O. Hatfield School of
Government, Portland State University, Mickey Edwards, Vice President,
Aspen Institute;
Eugene R. Fidell, Of Counsel, Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell, LLP; Senior
Research Scholar in Law and Florence Rogatz, Visiting Lecturer in Law, Yale
Law School, Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, American Civil Liberties
Union, former Adjunct Professor, National Defense University School for
National Security Executive Education]
While fusion centers are not federal entities and have no federal legal status,
they are a central element of homeland security policy and receive
substantial federal support and guidance.19 As Secretary of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano put it, Fusion Centers will be the centerpiece of state, local [and]
federal intelligence-sharing for the future.20 Federal funding matches this
rhetoric: between 2004 and 2007, DHS provided $254 million to state and
local governments to support fusion centers .21 Federal funding accounts for 20 to 30
percent of state fusion center budgets.22 In addition to financial support, the federal
government supports fusion centers by providing guidance, training,
technological and logistical assistance and personnel.23 The Office of Intelligence
and Analysis at DHS takes lead responsibility for coordinating with fusion centers, but both DHS and
DOJ provide assistance.24 Together, the two agencies have established guidelines (the Fusion Center
Guidelines) and basic operational standards (the Baseline Capabilities) for fusion centers.25 They also

provide technological and logistical support to fusion center personnel and


help them to obtain federal security clearances. 26 And, as described above, many
fusion centers have been assigned federal personnel. Fusion centers are
integrated into federal information-sharing programs. Qualified fusion centers
form part of the federal Information Sharing Environment, which is intended to facilitate
information sharing among law enforcement and intelligence agencies.27

2NC Fed Support of Fusion Centers Key


Fed Support of Fusion Centers Key

DHS 15. "Fusion Center Success Stories." Fusion Center Success Stories.
N.p., 24 July 2014. Web. 26 June 2015. <http://www.dhs.gov/fusion-centersuccess-stories>.
fusion centers to improve information
sharing and analysis within their local jurisdiction on a range of
threats. These centers, which are state and locally owned and operated, were built upon existing
criminal intelligence efforts resident in state and major city police
departments. By building upon their experience and expertise in
addressing criminal threats, fusion centers were uniquely positioned to identify
and detect crimes or threats that may have a national security or
homeland security implication. Fusion centers have since evolved to
play a unique role in protecting their communities, informing
decision making, and enhancing information sharing activities
among law enforcement and homeland security partners. The DHS Office of
Following 9/11, some state and local entities established

Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) helps the National Network of Fusion Centers to develop and implement their capabilities by leading federal interagency efforts to share
information and products, conduct training, deploy personnel, and provide connectivity to classified and unclassified systems. After 10 years of supporting the

DHS has led the implementation of federal


interagency governance processes to facilitate support for fusion
centers, as well as the implementation of robust processes for
assessing, tracking, and monitoring the capabilities and
performance of the National Network. These efforts enable the federal government to leverage the unique skills
and capabilities of the National Network. With timely, accurate information on potential threats , fusion centers can directly
contribute to and inform investigations initiated and conducted by
federal entities. The success stories featured here illustrate the value of the National Network in preventing, protecting against, and responding to
criminal and terrorist threats. They also underscore the value that federal support, including
that from DHS I&A, provides in achieving these accomplishments.
development of these capabilities,

Fusion Centers Key to Counter Terrorism


Fusion Centers are Key to Counter Terrorism
Lieberman 12
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe
Lieberman, ID-Conn., Wednesday reacted critically to a subcommittee report
on fusion centers.
I strongly disagree with the reports core assertion that fusion
centers have been unable to meaningfully contribute to federal
counterterrorism efforts, Lieberman said. This statement is not
supported by the examples presented in the report and is contrary
to the public record, which shows fusion centers have played a
significant role in many recent terrorism cases and have helped
generate hundreds of tips and leads that have led to current FBI
investigations. The report does include valuable findings in some
areas. It cites examples of inappropriate use of homeland security grant
funds and accurately notes that FEMA has struggled to account for how
homeland security grant funds are allocated and used, a longstanding
concern of mine. But the report also contradicts public statements by the
Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the FBI, who have
acknowledged the value fusion centers provide to the intelligence
community. Fusion centers have stepped up to meet an urgent need
in the last decade, Lieberman said. Without fusion centers, we
would not be able to connect the dots. Fusion centers have been
essential to breaking down the information silos and
communications barriers that kept the government from detecting
the most horrific terrorist attack on this country - even though
federal, state, and local officials each held valuable pieces of the
puzzle.

AT: Senate Report


Senate Report is false and analyzes a small sample size of
data collection efforts

HSGAC 12. "Menu." Majority Media| Homeland Security & Governmental


Affairs Committee| Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee.
N.p., 3 Oct. 2012. Web. 26 June 2015.
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman
Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Wednesday reacted critically to a subcommittee report
on fusion centers. I strongly disagree with the reports core
assertion that fusion centers have been unable to meaningfully
contribute to federal counterterrorism efforts, Lieberman said. This
statement is not supported by the examples presented in the report
and is contrary to the public record, which shows fusion centers
have played a significant role in many recent terrorism cases and
have helped generate hundreds of tips and leads that have led to
current FBI investigations. The report does include valuable findings in some areas. It cites examples of inappropriate use of
homeland security grant funds and accurately notes that FEMA has struggled to account for how homeland security grant funds are allocated and used, a longstanding
concern of mine. But the report also contradicts public statements by the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the FBI, who have acknowledged the value

Without
fusion centers, we would not be able to connect the dots. Fusion
centers have been essential to breaking down the information silos
and communications barriers that kept the government from
detecting the most horrific terrorist attack on this country - even though federal,
fusion centers provide to the intelligence community. Fusion centers have stepped up to meet an urgent need in the last decade, Lieberman said.

state, and local officials each held valuable pieces of the puzzle.

White Nationalism DA

1NC
White extremist radicalism is on the rise and it is getting
harder to track
By Judy L. Thomas 2015 Only a matter of time? Kansas City Star
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/19374360
Larry Steven McQuilliams wouldnt hurt a fly and was a loyal volunteer, his friends and others say. He
performed at Renaissance festivals, dog-sat for neighbors. But in November, McQuilliams, 49, fired more
than 100 rounds at several buildings in Austin, Texas, where he had moved from Wichita. The targets
included a police headquarters, federal courthouse and Mexican consulate. After police shot and killed him,
they found his map pinpointing nearly three dozen targets, two of them churches. Authorities said
McQuilliams who had the words Let Me Die written on his chest held racist and anti-Semitic beliefs.
Police Chief Art Acevedo called McQuilliams a homegrown American extremist. Hate was in his heart,

McQuilliams is the face of domestic extremism today:


nondescript, placid, a helpful neighbor. The wall between extremism and
mainstream has really come down significantly, said Brian Levin, director of the Center
for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino. Domestic
terrorists used to be easier to identify. Twenty years ago, after the shocking wake-up
he said. In many ways,

call of the Oklahoma City bombing, authorities began cracking down on a subculture of extremist groups,
many arming themselves in preparation for a showdown with what they saw as an oppressive federal

at a time when much of


law enforcements focus has shifted from domestic to foreign terrorism , a
network of extremism is again spreading throughout the land. Were
just a penny dropping away from one or more McVeighs, said J.J. MacNab, an
government. The numbers of such groups sharply declined. But today,

author who for two decades has been tracking anti-government extremists, referring to the Oklahoma City

And this time, extremists are harder to track. Anti-government


groups are more loosely organized, making them more difficult to infiltrate.
White nationalist groups have few strong leaders and are splintering . And while
groups sometimes seem to fight one another as much as their perceived enemies, that
only adds to the noise that law enforcement tries to monitor. Theres no head to this
bomber.

thing, said Leonard Zeskind, president of the Kansas City-based Institute for Research and Education on
Human Rights, who has monitored extremist groups for decades. Without

leaders, theyre

out there under no ones control.

Continued surveillance is key to combat these groups


the plan stops it
FBI 12 (Domestic Threat: White Supremacy Extremism, 5/22/12, Accessed
May 20, 2015, http://www.fbi.gov/n...ism_052212)//AD
The Bureau has been investigating the criminal activities of white supremacy
extremists like Ku Klux Klan members since as early as 1918. Todays
extremists are more challenging than ever. Theyre affiliated with a variety of white
supremacy groups, and they can be motivated by any number of religious or political ideologies. Were
also seeing more lone offenders and small, violent factions of larger groups at
work, which makes detection of these crimes tougher . White supremacy extremists
specifically target racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; the federal government; and in some instances,
even each other. Their tactics include assault, murder, threats and intimidation, and bombings. They also
commit other kinds of crimeslike drug trafficking, bank and armored car robberies, and counterfeiting

to fund their hate-filled activities. Over the years, the federal government has successfully charged white
supremacy extremists using a number of federal statutes, including civil rights violations, racketeering,
solicitation to commit crimes of violence, firearms violations, explosives violations, counterfeiting and

In recent months, the FBI has led or participated in


several significant investigations involving violence or attempted aviolence
by self-admitted white supremacists. A few examples: In February 2012, an Arizona
man was sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to possessing and
transporting improvised explosive devices near the U.S.-Mexico border . Details
In January 2012, the last of four Arkansas defendants charged with firebombing the
home of an interracial couple was sentenced to federal prison . Details In December
2011, a Washington man was sentenced to 32 years in prison for attempting to
bomb a Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Day march in Spokane . Details In May 2010, an
Oregon man pled guilty to mailing a hangmans noose to the home of the
president of a local NAACP chapter in Ohio. Details Moving forward, we see three keys
to turning back the ongoing scourge of white supremacy extremism :
Our increased emphasis on the lawful gathering, analyzing, and sharing
of intelligence on current and emerging trends, tactics, and threats.
forgery, and witness tampering.

Lack of Monitoring Allows White Supremacy to Run


Rampant
Scaminaci 09

[James Scaminaci III, September 25th, 2009,


http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/09/24/immigrants-out-to-destroy-us-washington-times-columnist-warns/]

If you put the FAIR-inspired Washington Times article into context, the white
supremacists in the Radical Rightincluding John Tantons networkare
preparing for revolution and secession which are code words for a racial civil
war to create a white Christian theocracy. The context of Minutemen bearing
arms to intimidate immigrant workers and children; of bringing weapons to
town hall meetings; threatening to kill union workers who come to the same
health care town hall meetings; threatening to come armed at the next Tea
Party march on Washington, D.C.; threatening a million man, armed militia
march on D.C.; threatening to kill federal law makers who do not vote to
make English the official language; Chuck Norris call to fly a revolutionary
flag for a revolutionary movement; and, the right-wing smear of liberal
treachery all lead to the conclusion that comprehensive immigration reform
that includes a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants
could be the last straw for the white supremacist movement.

That Causes a Race War


Rowan 96 [Carl T. Rowan, Washington Post, The Coming Race War in
America]
If decent Americans become afraid to stand up to the threats and violence of
the white supremacists, things will become worse very fast. Pierce and his
followers will believe that they are in what he calls "a revolutionary phase" in
which the federal government "can be defeated." The conflict that I foresee

will be as crazily complex as it will be violent, cruel, and heinous. We now see
the skinheads and Ku Klux Klansmen emboldened in their campaigns against
blacks, Jews, Catholics. We see the Muslims at war not only against Jews, but
against the Italian mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, and against America
as a whole, as reflected in terrorist bombings. We hear black students talk
about "the basis of truth" in a speech full of anti-Semitic invective by Nation
of Islam minister Khalid Muhammad at Kean College in New Jersey. We see
blacks in political struggle with Hispanics. And from Los Angeles to Detroit to
New York, we see a growing underclass at war against "the establishment."
This dreadful upsurge in hurting and hatred in America, the increase in
murders that are both random and born of rage, flows in part from the denied
but obvious racism and contempt for the poor that were so venomous during
the Reagan years, and before that from the spineless neglect and indifference
of the Nixon and Ford years. But that is history. A race war of destructive
proportions that will shock the world is probable because of these facts.

2NC Movements Growing


Charleston proves the supremacist movements are
growing
By Melissa Clyne | Monday, 22 Jun 2015 Southern Poverty Law Center:
White Nationalist Movement in US, Beyond
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Southern-Poverty-Law-Center-whitenationalist-Dylann-Roof-Charleston/2015/06/22/id/651671/#ixzz3eICt7FKM
The racially motivated killings of nine worshipers at a black church in
Charleston, S.C., by a 21-year-old white supremacist are illustrative of the "growing
globalization of white nationalism," according to the Southern Poverty Law Centers Morris
Dees and J. Richard Cohen, the organizations founder and president, respectively. " The days of
thinking of domestic terrorism as the work of a few Klansmen or
belligerent skinheads are over," warn Dees and Cohen in an op-ed published in The New
York Times. "We know Islamic terrorists are thinking globally , and we confront that threat.
Weve been too slow to realize that white supremacists are doing
the same." The symbols donned by the accused Charleston shooter, Dylann Roof patches of South
African and Rhodesian regimes during a time of "brutally enforced white minority rule," and a litany of
photos displaying the Confederate flag combined with a 2,500-word manifesto calling on whites to take
"drastic action," are just a couple of the red flags pointing to Roofs white supremacist beliefs. Mother Jones
reports that the white supremacy group Council of Conservative Citizens the website Roof purportedly
used as a resource to glean much of the information in his manifesto has issued a statement defending
Roofs "legitimate grievances" but condemning his "murderous actions." " Our

society's silence

about [such] crimesdespite enormous amounts of attention to 'racially tinged' acts by whites
only increase the anger of people like Dylann Roof," the Council of Conservative
Citizens writes, according to Mother Jones. "This double standard only makes acts of murderous frustration
more likely [emphasis theirs]. In his manifesto, Roof outlines other grievances felt by many whites. Again,
we utterly condemn Roofs despicable killings, but they do not detract in the slightest from the legitimacy

Far-right domestic terrorism," like the


Charleston shootings, needs to be viewed in the same "international
dimension" as Islamic terror, Dees and Cohen write, adding that blaming
multiculturalism for undermining the "white race" is occurring well beyond
the United States. "Europe has also seen the rise of a powerful, far-right
political movement that rejects multiculturalism. The anti-Semitic Jobbik Party in
of some of the positions he has expressed."

Hungary and the neo-fascist Golden Dawn in Greece are prime examples. In Germany, there has been a
series of murders by neo-Nazis. Britain, too, is experiencing an upswing of nationalist, anti-immigrant
politics. "The

message of white genocide is spreading. White nationalists look


beyond borders for confirmation that their race is under attack, and they
share their ideas in the echo chamber of racist websites."

White supremacist hate groups are on the rise and


committed to violence against otherized populations
LCCHR 15 Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (The State of Hate: White
Supremacist Groups Growing, Copyright 2015 The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human
Rights/The Leadership Conference Education Fund)//AD

The number of hate groups operating in the United States continued to rise
2008 and has grown by 54 percent since 2000 an increase fueled last year by immigration fears, a

in

failing economy, and the successful campaign of Barack Obama, according to the Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC).

The SPLC identified 926 hate groups active

in 2008, up more than four

percent from the 888 groups in 2007 and far above the 602 groups documented in 2000.15 " Barack

Obama's election has inflamed racist extremists who see it as another sign
that their country is under siege by nonwhites," said Mark Potok, editor of the
Intelligence Report, a SPLC quarterly investigative journal that monitors the radical right. "The idea of a
black man in the White House, combined with the deepening economic crisis and continuing high levels of
Latino immigration, has given white supremacists a real platform on which to recruit."16 The DHS
assessment on right-wing extremism, which was provided to federal, state, and local law enforcement,

right-wing extremists "may be gaining new recruits by playing on


their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the
election of the first African American president present unique drivers for
rightwing radicalization and recruitment." In the days prior to the presidential election,
warned that

Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tennessee and Paul Schlesselman, 18, of West Helena, Arkansas

arrested by federal agents for allegedly plotting to assassinate Obama


followed by a plan to engage in a multi-state "killing spree." The men met
through the Internet and planned to shoot 88 African Americans and behead
another 14. Targets included a predominantly African-American school . At the
were

end of the alleged spree, the men intended to try to kill Obama. "88," an important number in skinhead
numerology, means "Heil Hitler" as "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet. "14" likely refers to the "14
Words," a white supremacist slogan that originated with the late David Lane. Lane died last year in prison
while serving a sentence for his role in an assassination plot carried out by The Order, a white supremacist
terrorist group that was destroyed in 1984. One of the suspects, Cowart, is a known member of a new
skinhead hate group, the Supreme White Alliance (SWA), formed at the beginning of 2008, according to the
Southern Poverty Law Center. He attended a birthday party for Adolf Hitler held last April by the group.
SWA is headed by Steven Edwards, son of Ron Edwards, who leads the Imperial Klans of America.17

Anti-Government protests are on the rise


By Judy L. Thomas 2015 Only a matter of time? Kansas City Star
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/19374360
The anti-government Patriot movement the other main faction of extremists focuses
less on racial issues and opposes what it sees as government oppression.
The number of Patriot groups skyrocketed after President Barack Obama was first
elected, going from 149 groups in 2008 to 874 in 2014, according to a report released in March by the
Southern Poverty Law Center. About one-fourth of the current groups are armed militias, the center said.

Authorities and watchdog groups are seeing a new surge in violent incidents.
Anti-government groups have accounted for an uptick in domestic terrorism
a recent Department of Homeland Security assessment links 24 violent
incidents to sovereign citizens since 2010.

AT: They Are Easy to Track


White radicalism is on the rise and harder to profile
tracking systems are key
By Judy L. Thomas 2015 Only a matter of time? Kansas City Star
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/19374360
Over the past year, The Kansas City Star interviewed members of domestic extremist groups. It found that

yesterdays movements have metastasized into a widespread and sometimes


chaotic network of organizations and individuals : The profile of extremists is
changing. They seem to be getting younger, and they are more Web savvy. The militias
now include some veterans of overseas wars who are trained, unhappy and searching for the camaraderie

the Ku Klux Klan now called the


Knights Party remains a name brand for white nationalists, separate groups
have sprouted, including a KKK based in eastern Missouri. This month, three members of that Klan
that the groups provide. While the Arkansas-based Knights of

were charged in Florida with plotting to murder a black man. Two online forums see hundreds of posts a
day bashing minorities and the government. The cumulative effect of so much venomous rhetoric has
inspired some to commit violence, even murder, experts say. An effort is underway in Montana to
establish whites-only communities whose residents will run everything from the mayors office to the
schools. A similar effort failed in North Dakota when the neo-Nazi organizing it was charged with terrorizing

While extremist groups are constantly moving and changing ,


Zeskind said, their ideology has remained constant. For white nationalists , for
example, its a belief in an international Jewish conspiracy, racial superiority and
an out-of-control government. They remain a sewer of violence, promoting
racism, promoting anti-Semitism and serving as a breeding ground for violent
attacks, Zeskind said.
local residents.

Movement splintering means its too hard to track them


without Fusion Centers
By Judy L. Thomas 2015 Only a matter of time? Kansas City Star
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/19374360
Theres

a resurgence, said Jeff Schoep of Detroit, commander of the National Socialist Movement. As
bad as things are with the economy, in times like that theres always going to be
resurgences because people are looking for answers . Metzger, however, said the
organizations are in flux. Its individuals all over the place, with all kinds of ideas, and sometimes theyre able to work

white supremacist from Indiana. But Metzger said hes


movement is splintered. If I could help splinter it more, I will, he said. They need to go to
lone-wolf, leaderless resistance and forget about trying to build above-ground
organizations because theyre just going to get infiltrated and trapped and
end up in prison. New faces The face of extremism in America today isnt
necessarily a wild-eyed, bearded compound dweller, an AK-47 in one hand
and The Anarchist Cookbook in the other. It could just as easily be your
insurance agent. Your co-worker. Your childs teacher. The candidate
running in your district. Even your mayor.
together and sometimes theyre not, said the longtime
glad that the

Movements are localizing Makes Them Harder to Track


By Judy L. Thomas 2015 Only a matter of time? Kansas City Star
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/19374360

The worst act of domestic terrorism on U.S. soil brought intense scrutiny upon
the militia movement. Authorities infiltrated several groups and thwarted
some violent plots. By 2000, the numbers had sharply dwindled. In recent years, though, the
militias and their sister group, the sovereign citizen movement, have been making a
comeback. In 2007, we were tracking about 50 active militia groups , the ADLs
Pitcavage said. Now its over 260. Militia leaders say the movement has gone
through a transformation. The militia movement has grown, but its changed,
said Mike Vanderboegh, former leader of the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment Constitutional Militia and a

The militias, he said, learned a lot of lessons from


the 90s. One was to have no big public movement because theyre
susceptible to infiltration, he said. So they now keep their focus local on their
town, neighborhood. A lot are doing search and rescue and turning out for natural
disasters.
longtime figure in the Patriot movement.

AT: Number of Hate Groups Declining


Numbers Arent Declining They Are Becoming Anonymous
By Judy L. Thomas 2015 Only a matter of time? Kansas City Star
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/19374360
White nationalists have carried out their own attacks. F. Glenn Miller Jr., who is accused of killing three
people in a shooting rampage at Overland Park Jewish centers a year ago this month, is an avowed neo-

There are currently 784 hate groups operating across the country,
They include white nationalists, Klansmen,
neo-Nazis, skinheads, border vigilantes and even black separatists. The
number is down from 939 groups in 2013, but that doesnt tell the real
story, said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the law center. It appears that extremists are leaving
these groups for the anonymity of the Internet, which allows their message to
reach a huge audience, he said in the report. Moreover, he said, the drop in the number
of extremist groups hasnt been accompanied by any real reduction in
extremist violence. Some white nationalist groups have Missouri connections, such as the
Nazi.

according to the Southern Poverty Law Center .

Vanguard News Network, a racist online site run by Alex Linder of Kirksville, and the St. Louis-based
Council of Conservative Citizens, which promotes preservation of the white race. (Former U.S. Senate
majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and numerous other politicians got in hot water for speaking at
some of that groups events.)

Old, new or reinvented, the groups all are motivated by

the same factors, said Zeskind, author of Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist
Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. The U.S. is undergoing a tremendous
demographic transformation in which white people will become a minority , he
said. That is the turning point for these people . When you lose majority status,
you lose the ability to democratically control.

Internet Monitoring is key to curtail white power


movements
By Judy L. Thomas 2015 Only a matter of time? Kansas City Star
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/19374360
Online sites, including one based in Missouri, have pulled the movement into the 21st
century, connecting legions of extremists at warp speed. Every day,
hundreds sometimes thousands of users post messages on the forums
under names like Proud Anglo Saxon and Hammershark88. (White supremacists
often refer to the number 88, which represents heil Hitler, based on the eighth letter of the alphabet.)
On the forums, users comment on everything from breaking news to politics and provide information on
upcoming events. Some recent topics: The white elite are as much our enemies as Jews, if not more,
Favorite pictures from the Third Reich and What Six Million? or Jewish Math, referring to the belief that
the Holocaust did not occur. Stormfront, run by Don Black, was the first white nationalist Web forum in the
country, and it remains the biggest. Its motto: White Pride World Wide. Black himself has major
movement cred. He succeeded David Duke in the late 1970s as grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan. (He is married to Dukes former wife and lives in Florida.) In 1981, federal authorities arrested Black
and nine others for plotting an invasion of the Caribbean island of Dominica to help put an ousted prime
minister back in power. Black was sentenced to three years in prison. Black left the Klan in 1987 and in
1995 launched Stormfront, which now has nearly 300,000 registered users who have written 11 million
posts. Longtime white supremacist Linder, of Kirksville, Mo., launched a rival website, the Vanguard News
Network, in 2000. The network, whose motto is No Jews. Just Right, includes an online forum with more
than 160,000 threads. One about last years shootings at the Jewish sites in Overland Park has had more
than 116,000 views and more than 900 posts. Linder, a former member of the National Alliance,
sometimes tags his own posts this way: If we exterminate termites because they destroy the foundations

of our houses, how much more lenient should we be in our treatment of jews, who destroy the foundations
of our society? Miller posted regularly on the Vanguard News Network forum. Using the name Rounder,
Miller authored 12,683 posts on the site over 10 years. Online, Miller found a community among whom he
could share his ideas. He corresponded with, among others, Kevin Harpham, who pleaded guilty to planting
a bomb in 2011 along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. parade in Spokane, Wash. Millers last post
was the day before the Overland Park shootings. He wrote that he had talked to a neo-Nazi friend, who had
updated him on his charge of terrorizing a North Dakota town. A study released last year by the Southern
Poverty Law Center found that more than a dozen people in the past five years had been murdered on
American soil by registered members on the Stormfront forum. For example, in 2009, Richard Poplawski
ambushed and killed three Pittsburgh police officers with an AK-47 just hours after logging on to his

Some argue that the Internet


actually curtails violence by providing an outlet for racists to vent instead of
acting on their anger. This right here is the very reason that our enemies should be glad that
Stormfront account, according to the law center study.

forums like Stormfront and (Vanguard) exist, said Jason 916 on the Vanguard forum a year ago, referring
to the Overland Park shootings. If people are able to talk about it, theyre less likely to snap and go on a
rampage. When they take away free speech, theres really nothing left but violence. Who knows how many

Pitcavage, director of investigative


research for the Anti-Defamation League, doesnt buy that argument. With
just a few mouse clicks, or a few taps on a smartphone, they could be connected to
thousands and thousands of other people who think exactly the same thing and
reinforce their views and empower them and make them more bold and
energized, he said.
lives these forums have actually saved? Mark

White Backlash Link Generic


The climate of social anxieties in America allows the GOP
to continue its racial project. The affs reforms will
become an excuse for white supremacist backlash that
increases racism and discrimination
Calmore 97 [John O. Calmore, Professor of Law and W. Joseph Ford Fellow,
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. Law and Inequality, Winter 1997. Real World
of Race: An Essay for "Naked People Longing to Swim Free"]
From its beginnings, the deep politicization of race has marked this nation's history. As Omi and Winant discuss ,

there

has been an identifiable racial order since the colonial period which has
linked political rule to the racial classification of individuals and groups. n90
They claim that the racial order of white supremacy has structured major
institutions and social relationships. n91 A dialectical trajectory has reflected
an historical change in this racial order, i.e., a "pattern of conflict and
accommodation which takes shape over time between racially based social
movements and the policies and programs of the state." n92 The present
environment offers an opportune time to consider the political conflict over
race. The national political correspondents for the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, have observed: "As the
summer of 1995 turned toward fall, almost everything in American politics appeared up for grabs at once." n93 Indeed, in
their assessment, "turmoil is the defining characteristic of American politics in the 1990s." n94 This tumultuous period
stems, in part, from "social and political upheaval that has alienated Americans from their political leadership." n95

there is now a political setting in which "rapid, unpredictable political


change has become increasingly commonplace." n96 Americans' anxiety
about the future of their country - perceived economic stagnation that
prevents broad-scale upward mobility, and perceived cultural fragmentation
that reinforces racial and ethnic division - exacerbates the political times. The
Furthermore,

American Dream, to which most aspire, requires an assurance that successive generations will fare better economically
than their parents. Although most Americans today do have a higher stan- [*43] dard of living than their parents, they

this anxiety is
an ideal climate for the Republican Party to continue to advance its dominant
racial projects. Hence, in this contextual setting, the political conflict over race is more significant now than it has
increasingly doubt that their children will be able to live better than they did. n97 In many ways

been for years, largely because so much is at stake, and because the paradigm shift from left to right is profoundly in

Relatedly, conservative egalitarianism


represents a political and scholarly backlash, in the context of social and race
relations. n99 This backlash, however, is not new, it has been going on since the 1950s (although less salient at
motion, ascending but not inevitably destined. n98

some times than others). For instance, prior to modern civil rights and antidiscrimination legislation, there was a period of

Today's backlash dates back to this


pre-mid-1960s social movement. "The complexity and depth of American
racism were reflected in the fact that, even while the Brown decision was
opening the doors to the civil rights movement, the seeds of racial backlash
were being sown." n101 Indeed, in the spring of 1956, 101 congressmen from the Old Confederacy's eleven
persistent direct action protest and movement politics. n100

states issued their "Southern Manifesto," which declared that the Brown decision was "unwarranted" and "a clear abuse of
judicial power" [*44] that reflected the substitution of the Justices' "personal political and social ideas for the established

After Brown, but prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 and the urban disorders from 1965 on, national seeds of
backlash were planted. n103 "As early as 1963, political commentators began to speak presciently of
"thunder on the right' in American politics." n104 In terms of broadly politicizing racial
backlash, the first significant manifestation was probably George Wallace's
law of the land." n102

campaign in the 1968 presidential election . Shocking the nation, the Alabama governor segregation now, segregation forever - won thirty-five percent of the vote in the Wisconsin Democratic primary. n105
Capitalizing on strong support among working-class white ethnic voters, Wallace went on to capture thirty percent of the

In the 1968
election, Richard Nixon's adoption of Wallace's appeal to white backlash
became known as his "Southern strategy," although he directed and applied
the strategy nationally on behalf of a so-called "silent majority." n107 [*45]
vote in the Indiana primary and forty-three percent of the vote in the Maryland primary. n106

Although Reaganism represented the paradigm of conservative egalitarianism, I think is insightful to view conservative
egalitarianism as a continuum that runs from Wallace to Nixon to Reagan to Bush to Newt Gingrich, who is "Reaganism at
warp speed." n108 We must understand, then, that Ronald Reagan was not only an extension of Richard Nixon, but also
George Wallace. Reagan looked back to them, more than forward. "In many respects, Ronald Reagan in his quest for the
presidency consolidated, updated, and refined the right-populist, race-coded strategies of Wallace and Nixon." n109

Accordingly, Reagan opposed the desegregation of public schools through


busing, n110 opposed affirmative action programs to compensate for past
discrimination against groups, n111 politicized the United States Civil Rights
Commission by appointing as director a black man, Clarence Pendleton
(whose role was similar to Clarence Thomas' role as head of the Federal Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)) n112 - who vetoed the Civil
Rights Restoration Act n113 - and appointed William Bradford Reynolds
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. During his term, Reynolds
abandoned the aggressive enforcement of civil rights. n114 When asked to
justify his civil rights record, Reagan "simply noted that his actions in civil rights were consistent with his
general objective of reducing the scope and intrusiveness of government in all policy areas." n 115 To reiterate, we
underestimate the hegemony of the right by simply focusing on the bad twelve years of the Reagan-Bush administrations.
From 1964 through 1996, the right-wing continuum slowed down but did not derail. Jimmy Carter interrupted the
continuum from 1976-1980 and Bill Clinton has interrupted it from 1992 to the present. Both Democratic administrations,
however, represent(ed) only brief interruptions in the Republican movement, not reversals. The Watergate scandal largely
ushered in Carter's election and Clinton represents a significant political move to the right of center, rather than one that
is far left of the Reagan-Bush programs. n116 The 1994 and 1996 congressional elections, which gave Republicans control
of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, indicate that Republicans still represent not a "thousand points of
light," but the train at the end of the tunnel, a train that began rolling with Governor Wallace n117 (despite his Democratic
affiliation) and became a run-away locomotive under Reagan and Bush. n118 Under my analysis, the 1980s do not reflect
political innovation by the Reagan-led Republicans so much as an attempt to adjust, renew and strengthen messages and
programmatic agendas [*47] whose roots were two decades old. This is why right-wing racial projects represent
convergence more than antagonism. Also, more than any other politician who sought to establish a right-wing coalition,
Wallace "provided a sense of moral legitimacy to those whites who felt themselves under siege in the civil rights

The
most powerful elements of today's right-wing Republicans have, in turn, taken
the baton from Reagan, not Bush. According to Balz and Brownstein, "Conservative Republicans
revolution." n119 Reagan, in a sense, received this baton from Wallace and Nixon and brought it home in 1980.

routinely say they have reached for inspiration back beyond Bush to Ronald Reagan." n120 If that thought is not scary
enough for the left, consider that "in fact, their ambitions now dwarf Reagan's." n121 These ambitions are supported
through an interlocking institutional arrangement that has been aptly described as the "conservative iron triangle." n122
The three points of this triangle are (1) the Republican majority in Congress; (2) the increasing power in state politics,
where Republicans control thirty one of the fifty governor seats and nineteen state legislatures; and (3) the United States
Supreme Court's dominance by five Republican-appointed justices, including the Chief Justice. n123 B. The Continuing

Ronald Reagan was very much the


president of white people. More particularly, he was the president of white
males, many of whom characterized themselves as "angry," "innocent" and
"victimized" by reverse race and gender discrimination. n124 In the 1984 election, a
Significance of Reaganism for Analyzing Right-Wing Racial Projects

formidable voting bloc of white males voted for Reagan in unprecedented numbers: seventy-four percent in the South,
sixty-eight percent in the West and sixty-six percent in the [*48] nation overall. n125 In contrast, only twelve percent of
black men and seven percent of black women voted for Reagan. n126 By 1986, fifty-six percent of blacks viewed him as a
racist. n127 This trend continued in 1988 when sixty-three percent of white men and fifty-six percent of white women

Today, against a backdrop of growing racial division, n129


powerful right-wing politicians still consider Reagan their leader, eschewing
the centrist rhetoric of a "kinder, gentler" America voiced by George Bush. n13 Although
voted for George Bush. n128

political commentators continue to place Reagan within the converged racial projects of the new right and the
neoconservatives, n131 he is more properly associated with the far right as well. Although this association is facially

tenuous,

Reagan served the interests of the far right by implicitly encouraging


and promoting a general tolerance for aspects of its racial project. Moreover,
his administration legitimized the organization of whites against blacks and
made claims of discrimination fungible enough that white rights and claims of
discrimination were allowed to actually displace black rights and claims of
discrimination. n132 As Merle Black notes: Reagan's ... civilized the racial issue. He's taken what Wallace never
could do and made it acceptable. It fits in with [white peoples'] sense of perceived injustice, with what they see as the
status of being a white person not being as high as it was 15, 20 or 30 years ago. n133 [*49] This view places Reagan's

The far right has explicitly attempted to reestablish and legitimate white identity and naked white supremacy which the
civil rights movement successfully challenged. n134 As indicated in Table 1,
that identity viewed race in strictly biological terms and associated racial
purity and racial superiority as inherently the preserve of white people. In
other words, the far right sought to revive white supremacist notions of race
and adopted an explicitly racist project. According to the far right, the civil rights movement not
racial project in close association with the far right.

only subverted the natural order of things, but it did so by eliminating the rights of white people: rights that the nation
had legitimately accorded whites to undergird their proper positions of privilege and domination over people of color. n135

the far right has many historical precedents that rely on a


populist impulse to attract white support among those "who felt dislocated by
the changes around them." n136 Such groups tend to see racial "justice"
exclusively in terms of white supremacy and, in the far right's assessment,
that supremacy "is perpetually threatened and the legitimate authorities are
always too weak, naive, or corrupt to maintain America's "true' identity."
n137 This assessment has often stimulated vigilante action "as white
supremacist groups sought to restore "white honor' and a "just' racial order."
n138
As Omi and Winant point out,

2NC Secessionism Impact


Secessionist civil war draws in Russia
Glaister 10 [Tony Glaister The Occidental Quarterly 10 Considering
Secession]
Whites in the US are probably deluding themselves if they think they can
achieve secession alone and unaided. Secessionist movements need friends
and allies. Very roughly these can be put into one of three groups: friendly
outside nations, support or complaisance given from within the ruling state,
and other secessionist movements. What friendly outside nations could a
white secessionist movement hope to have? Perhaps one day Russia, if Russia
emerges as the last white- ruled world power, but this is highly speculative.

That encourages Russian expansionism


Collins and Collins 09 [Phillip D. Collins acted as the editor for The Hidden Face of Terrorism. He
co-authored the book The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship, which is available at www.amazon.com. It is also
available as an E-book at www.4acloserlook.com. Phillip has also written articles for Paranoia Magazine, MKzine, News
With Views, B.I.P.E.D.: The Official Website of Darwinian Dissent and Conspiracy Archive Paul D. Collins has studied
suppressed history and the shadowy undercurrents of world political dynamics for roughly eleven years. In 1999, he
earned his Associate of Arts and Science degree. In 2006, he completed his bachelor's degree with a major in liberal
studies and a minor political science. Paul has authored another book entitled The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The Dark Side
of Social Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11. The Ruling Class-Sponsored Race War and the Balkanization of
America Part Five: Secession Fever]

So far, the secessionist movement has benefitted the Western elite by


providing a pretext for police state measures and an argument that the
nation-state is an outmoded, antiquated concept. However, the Western elite
only desire secessionists that they can manage. A splintering of the United
States that they could not control would weaken the American Empire long
enough to allow Eastern competitors to rise up and become serious
contenders in the game to establish a new world order. Panarin and the
Kremlin game players hope to influence the splintering of America so that the
resultant fragments can be merged into a superstate with Russia as the
center of power.

Russian expansionism causes world war 3


Hellman 08 [Martin Hellman, Soaring, cryptography and nuclear weapons, Asia Times, Oct 23, 2008, pg.
http://www.atimes. professor of electrical engineering @ Stanford University. A renowned mathematician who has worked
for over 25 years during nuclear war risk assessment com/atimes/Front_Page/JJ23Aa01.html]
A similar situation exists with nuclear weapons. Many people point to the absence of global war since the dawn of the
nuclear era as proof that these weapons ensure peace. The MX missile was even christened the Peacekeeper. Just as the
laws of physics are used to ensure that a pilot executing a low pass will gain enough altitude to make a safe landing, a law
of nuclear deterrence is invoked to quiet any concern over possibly killing billions of innocent people: Since

World

War III would mean the end of civilization, no one would dare start it. Each side is deterred
from attacking the other by the prospect of certain destruction. That's why our current strategy is called nuclear
deterrence or mutually assured destruction (MAD). But again, it's important to read the fine print. It is true that

no

one in his right mind would start a nuclear war, but when people are highly
stressed they often behave irrationally and even seemingly rational decisions can lead to places that
no one wants to visit. Neither US president John F Kennedy nor Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev
wanted to teeter on the edge of the nuclear abyss during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, but
that is exactly what they did. Less well known nuclear near misses occurred

during

the Berlin crisis of 1961, the Yom Kippur War of 1973

and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's)

Able Archer exercise of 1983. In each of those episodes, the law of unintended consequences combined with the danger
of irrational decision-making under stress created an extremely hazardous situation. Because the last date for a nuclear
near miss listed above was 1983, it might be hoped that the end of the Cold War removed the nuclear sword hanging over
humanity's head. Aside from the fact that other potential crises such as Taiwan were unaffected, a closer look shows that
the Cold War, rather than ending, merely went into hibernation. In the West,

the reawakening of this

specter is

usually attributed to resurgent Russian nationalism , but as in most


disagreements the other side sees things very differently.
The Russian perspective sees the United States behaving irresponsibly in recognizing Kosovo, in putting missiles (albeit
defensive ones) in Eastern Europe, and in expanding NATO right up to the Russian border. For our current purposes, the
last of these concerns is the most relevant because it involves reading the fine print - in this case, Article 5 of the NATO

It is partly
for that reason that a number of former Soviet republics and client states
have been brought into NATO and that President George W Bush is pressing for Georgia and the Ukraine
charter, which states that an attack on any NATO member shall be regarded as an attack on them all.

to be admitted. Once these nations are in NATO, the thinking goes, Russia would not dare try to subjugate them again since that would invite
nuclear devastation by the United States, which would be treaty bound to come to the victim's aid. But, just as the laws of physics depended
on a model that was not always applicable during a glider's low pass, the law of deterrence which seems to guarantee peace and stability is
model-dependent. In the simplified model, an attack by Russia would be unprovoked. But what if Russia should feel provoked into an attack
and a different perspective caused the West to see the attack as unprovoked? Just such a situation sparked World War I. The assassination of
Austria's Archduke Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist led Austria to demand that it be allowed to enter Serbian territory to deal with terrorist
organizations. This demand was not unreasonable since interrogation of the captured assassins had shown complicity by the Serbian military
and it was later determined that the head of Serbian military intelligence was a leader of the secret Black Hand terrorist society. Serbia saw
things differently and rejected the demand. War between Austria and Serbia resulted, and alliance obligations similar to NATO's Article 5 then
produced a global conflict. When this article was first written in May 2008, little noticed coverage of a dispute between Russia and Georgia
reported that "both sides warned they were coming close to war". As it was being revised, in August, the conflict had escalated to front page
news of a low-intensity, undeclared war. If Bush is successful in his efforts to bring Georgia into NATO, we would face the unpleasant choice of
reneging on our treaty obligations or threatening actions which risk the destruction of civilization. A similar risk exists between Russia and
Estonia, which is already a NATO member. Returning temporarily to soaring, although I will not do low passes, I do not judge my fellow glider
pilots who choose to do them. Rather, I encourage them to be keenly aware of the risk. The pilot in the photo has over 16,000 flight hours, has
been doing low passes at air shows for over 30 years, will not do them in turbulent conditions, ensures that he has radio contact with a trusted
spotter on the ground who is watching for traffic, and usually does them downwind so that he only has to do a "tear drop" turn to land. The
fact that such an experienced pilot exercises that much caution says something about the risk of the maneuver. The danger isn't so much in
doing low passes as in becoming complacent if we've done them 100 times without incident. In the same way, I am not arguing against
admitting Georgia to NATO or suggesting that Estonia should be kicked out. Rather, I encourage us to be keenly aware of the risk. If we do
that, there is a much greater chance that we will find ways to lessen the true sources of the risk, including patching the rapidly fraying fabric
of Russian-American relations. The danger isn't so much in admitting former Soviet republics into NATO as in becoming complacent with our
ability to militarily deter Russia from taking actions we do not favor Substates Part of society's difficulty in envisioning the threat of nuclear
war can be understood by considering Figure 2. The circle on the left represents the current state of the world, while the one on the right

World War III is a state of no return, there is


no path back to our current state. Even though an arrow is shown to indicate the possibility of a
transition from our current state to one of global war, that path seems impossible to most
represents the world after a full-scale nuclear war. Because

people.
How could we possibly transit from the current, relatively peaceful state of the world to

World War III? The

answer lies in recognizing that what is depicted as a single, current state of the world is much more
complex. Because that single state encompasses all conditions short of World War III, as depicted below, it is really
composed of a number of substates - world situations short of World War III, with varying degrees of risk: Society is partly
correct in thinking that a transition from our current state to full-scale war is impossible because, most of the time, we
occupy one of the substates far removed from World War III and which has little or no chance of transiting to that state of

it is possible to move from our current substate to one slightly


closer to the brink, and then to another closer yet. As described below, just such a sequence of
steps led to the Cuban missile crisis and could lead to a modern day crisis
of similar magnitude involving Estonia, Georgia, or other some other hot spot
no return. But

where we are ignoring the warning signs.

You might also like