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While the global press largely focused on Iran, China, and the Middle East during the lead-up to the appointment of John Kerry as the new secretary of state, Kerry's comments revealed the possibility of a revamped American diplomatic approach to Latin America. With Latin America in a transitional moment, stronger U.S engagement is critical. To reenergize the effort, Kerry will need a new, knowledgeable team in Washington as well as diplomats on the ground. Most importantly, the role of the U.S. assistant secretary must be given enough power that the person can be recognized and respected among Latin America’s diplomatic entourage. Kerry will embark on, what is sure to be, a rugged road toward re-establishing friendlier relations with Latin America. He has already experienced a bit of an introduction to this struggle in the form of harsh criticism in Caracas after commenting that the situation in Venezuela was uncertain due to Hugo Chavez’s illness. A stated commitment toward Latin America will be refreshing to a waning U.S. presence in the region, but in order to accomplish anything there, Washington needs fresh faces associated with this region. In the last three decades, many of the ambassadors have been mired in turbulent relationships. One clear example was Myles Frechette, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia in the mid-1990s, who strongly criticized then-Colombian President Ernesto Samper’s connections with the Cali Cartel, which financed his 1994 presidential campaign. Frechette’s position against Samper, as well as his disavowing of Colombia’s fight against narco-trafficking, earned him numerous rebukes from then-Interior Minister Horacio Serpa who called him a “gringo maluco (disagreeable)." WikiLeaks cables, for better or worse, revealed the adversity several U.S. ambassadors have faced in dealing with Latin American affairs. For instance, in 2011 U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, questioned the Mexican Army’s effectiveness in tackling drug cartels. Mexican President Felipe Calderon expressed his discomfort regarding these comments, which led to Pascual’s resignation in order to assuage U.S. Mexican relations. In the last two years, hemispheric affairs have deteriorated because of a lack of an active, knowledgeable diplomatic corps. For example, Arturo Valenzuela, then U.S. assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, who resigned on July 15, 2011, was criticized in several countries—most notably in Argentina when the late Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner rebuked Valenzuela for criticizing Argentina’s judicial powers. It took several months to fill Valenzuela’s position. The Obama administration appointed Roberta S. Jacobson as the new assistant secretary state for western hemisphere affairs on March 30, 2012 for her expertise in budget matters and her role in laying out the Free Trade Agreements with Mexico and Canada. However, her role in recent developments in the region has been questioned. Several pundits criticized Jacobson’s lack contact with Venezuela’s Vice President Nicolás Maduro during Chávez’s prolonged absence in power. Another example of the dismissal of key Latin American experts in Washington came in August 2012, when President Barack Obama relieved Dan Restrepo, senior director for the western hemisphere on the National Security Council, after a string of problems during last year’s Summit of Americas, including the Secret Service scandal and the verbal attacks by heads of state against Washington. Ricardo Zúniga, an expert in Cuban affairs, took Restrepo’s place and will have the responsibility of advising the White House on Latin American policy. His expertise on Cuba’s human rights and work with Havana activists may bring further changes to U.S. Cuba affairs. The Obama administration has already lifted restrictions on Cuban-Americans to travel and send money to the island. The replacement of Restrepo with Zúniga could be helpful in another one of Kerry’s plans. While Kerry is known for supporting the Cuban embargo, his overall position regarding the country is more relaxed. He has criticized U.S. pro-democracy programs like Radio/TV Martí for perpetuating an “anachronistic Cold War standoff” between the U.S. and the island, and supported the 2009 Freedom to Travel Back to Cuba Act, a bill that would have allowed citizens to travel without restrictions. This suggests that Kerry could reverse U.S. attempts to isolate Cuba from the Organization of American States—a goal that may be accomplished now that he has an expert in Cuban affairs as senior director for the western hemisphere. Another U.S.-backed scenario where Cuba has been ostracized was the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA), a failed initiative that sought to eliminate or reduce trade barriers across all countries in the Americas but Cuba. The U.S. opposition to integrate Cuba into the FTAA led to the creation of the left-leaning Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), led by Venezuela.
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Robert Valencia, Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and is a contributing writer for Global Voices, 2-11-13, [“Diplomatic Efforts in Latin America Require Fresh Faces,” http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/02/11/diplomatic-efforts-latin-america-require-fresh-faces]
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stronger U.S engagement is critical diplomats on the ground rugged road anything fresh faces associated
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Kerry would have to get involved in economic relations with Latin America – It would require him on the ground
| 4,998 | 110 | 103 | 759 | 20 | 15 | 0.02635 | 0.019763 |
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Moreover, trying to advance the ball on so many different fronts simultaneously carries its own risks. In particular, it provides governments that are opposed to some or all of Washington's agenda with an obvious way to respond: they can "just say no." In Taming American Power, I labeled this strategy "balking," (a term suggested to me by Seyom Brown) and I argued that it was a common way for weak states to prevent a dominant power from imposing its will. In a world where the United States remains significantly stronger than any other power, few states want to get into a direct test of strength with Washington. But American power is not so vast that it can simply snap its fingers and expect everyone to do its bidding. Why? Because exercising leverage is itself costly, and the more you do in one area, the more latitude that opponents somewhere else are likely to have. There are still only 24 hours in a day, and the White House can't devote equal attention and political capital to every issue. So states that don’t want to do what Obama wants can delay, dither, obfuscate, drag their feet, or just say no, knowing that the United States doesn’t have the resources, attention span, staying power, or political will to force their compliance now or monitor it afterwards. An even better tactic (perfected by a number of close U.S. allies) is to pretend to comply with American wishes while blithely going ahead with their own agendas. So NATO allies promise to increase their defense efforts but never manage to do much; Israel promises to stop building settlements but somehow the number of illegal settlers keeps growing, the Palestinians pledge to reform but make progress at a glacial pace, Pakistan suppresses jihadis with one hand and subsidizes them with the other, Iran agrees to negotiate but continues to enrich, China says it will crack down on copyright violations but the problem remains pervasive, and so on. In On War, Carl von Clausewitz famously described what he termed the "friction" of warfare; the accumulated set of minor obstacles and accidents that made even the simplest of objectives difficult to achieve. The same problem can arise in foreign policy: even when everything is simple, "the simplest things are very difficult." States that oppose what the United States is trying to do have lots of ways of increasing that friction without triggering an actual crisis. In other words, Obama's foreign policy may fail not because he loses some dramatic confrontation, but simply because a whole array of weaker actors manage to grind him down. In this scenario he doesn't get vanquished, just "nibbled to death by ducks." Obama took office with energy, a new vision, an experienced team, and lengthy "to-do" list. But one can already sense the forward motion slowing, which will encourage opponents to dig their heels in deeper and throw more obstacles in his path. If the administration keeps trying to do everything at once, there is a real danger that their actual foreign policy achievements will be quite modest. The sooner they decide which goals they think they can actually bring off, and focus their energies there, the more likely they are to succeed. And a few tangible successes now might actually make the other items on their agenda easier to accomplish later on.
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Walt, 7/27/2009 (Stephen M. – professor of international affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Nibbled to death by ducks?, Foreign Policy, p. http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/27/nibbled_to_death_by_ducks)
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many different fronts simultaneously costly one area more latitude only 24 hours in a day equal attention political capital every issue U S resources attention span political will even when everything is simple everything at once quite modest focus their energies more likely they are to succeed
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Diplomatic capital is finite. Even simple items undermines negotiation power and foreign policy.
| 3,311 | 96 | 295 | 559 | 13 | 47 | 0.023256 | 0.084079 |
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Greater international environmental regulation can increase international tension. Foreign policy is a bag of goods that includes issues from free trade to arms trading to human rights. Each new issue in the bag weighs it down, lessening the focus on other issues and even creating conflicts between issues. Increased environmental regulations could cause countries to lessen their focus on international threats of violence such as the sale of ballistic missiles or border conflicts between nations. As countries must watch over more and more issues arising in the international policy arena, they will stretch the resources necessary to deal with traditional international issues. As Schaefer (2000, 46) writes, “Because diplomatic currency is finite . . . it is critically important that the United States focus its diplomatic efforts on issues of paramount importance to the nation. Traditionally, these priorities have been opposing hostile domination of key geographic regions, supporting our allies, securing vital resources, and ensuring access to foreign economies.”
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Anderson, 2000 (Terry L., Executive Director of the Environment Research Center, “The Greening of Foreign Policy”, http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps20.pdf)
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bag of goods lessening the focus between issues diplomatic currency is finite
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The plan undermines APEC negotiations – expanding diplomacy fronts trades-off with priorities and undermines leverage. Even simple additions weaken U.S. foreign policy. That’s Walt. Prefer him because he is an IR professor at Harvard.
| 1,075 | 234 | 77 | 159 | 34 | 12 | 0.213836 | 0.075472 |
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Regardless of Kerry’s record on Cuba policy in the Senate, analysts say he will face several obstacles to major change, not least of which will be the man likely to replace him as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), a Cuban American.¶ If Menendez becomes chairman, then the committee responsible for shaping US foreign policy in the upper house will be led by a hardliner who wants to ratchet up — not dial back — the US squeeze on Havana. So while Kerry may have some latitude to adjust Cuba policy from inside the White House, Latin America experts don’t expect sweeping change — like an end to the Cuba Embargo — which requires Congressional action.¶ “On Latin America, in general, I think Kerry has a longer and broader vision,” said Robert Pastor, professor of international relations at American University. But when it comes to Cuba, he cautioned, “Kerry is also a political realist.”¶ “Changing US policy is not a high priority for him, but not changing US policy is the only priority for Bob Menendez,” Pastor said.¶ In 2011, Kerry delayed the release of nearly $20 million in federal funds for pro-democracy Cuba projects run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), questioning their effectiveness and insisting on greater oversight.¶ “There is no evidence that the ‘democracy promotion’ programs, which have cost the US taxpayer more than $150 million so far, are helping the Cuban people,” Kerry said at the time. “Nor have they achieved much more than provoking the Cuban government to arrest a US government contractor.”¶ The US government contractor is Alan Gross, jailed on the island since December 2009. Cuban authorities arrested Gross while he worked on a USAID project to set up satellite communications gear that would allow members of Cuba’s Jewish community to connect to the internet without going through government servers.¶ Cuba sentenced him to 15 years in prison, but now says its willing to work out a prisoner swap for the “Cuban Five,” a group of intelligence agents who have been serving time in a US federal prison.¶ The Obama administration has refused to negotiate, calling on Havana to release Gross unconditionally, and even US lawmakers who advocate greater engagement with Cuba say no change will be possible as long as he’s in jail.¶ The Castro government insists it’s not willing to give up Gross for nothing.¶ Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat and scholar of US-Cuba relations at the University of Havana, said a resolution to the Gross case and other significant changes in US policy would “require a big investment of political capital” by Kerry and Obama.¶ “The question is if Kerry will be willing and able to convince Obama that he should push for change, and if they can neutralize Menendez,” Alzugaray said.¶ “If that happens, then we will see change,” he said. “If not, it will be more of the same: minimal and timid changes but nothing big.”
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Miroff ’13, Nick Miroff, Pulitzer price winning journalist at Global post, 1/2/13, “Can Kerry Make Friends with Cuba?” http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/121231/kerry-cuba-secretary-of-state-obama
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changes in US policy would “require a big investment of political capital” by Kerry and Obama
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Engagement with Cuba devastates Kerry’s diplomatic capital.
| 2,971 | 59 | 93 | 498 | 7 | 16 | 0.014056 | 0.032129 |
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According to Kerry, the United States will never stop supporting human rights in Cuba, simply because they are fundamental values of American society. After all, the United States has continued pushing for civil and political liberties in Vietnam since ending its embargo. Washington does so not because it opposes Hanoi's leaders or to impose a regime change, but as part of a rational strategy of promoting a peaceful evolution to a more open Vietnamese political system. Washington wants stable relationships with the whole Vietnamese nation, not only with the government. Peoples of the world, no matter how suspicious of U.S. motives they may be, appreciate human rights promotion within the framework of international law.¶ President Obama's designation of John Kerry is also consistent with the political changes that have occurred in the Cuban-American community, expressed by the elevated Cuban diaspora vote for Democrats in the last election. Like Kerry, and as then-Senate candidate Obama stated in 2004, most Cuban-Americans believe that the embargo has failed and that it is time to influence the processes of economic reform and political liberalization that began in Cuba after the retirement of Fidel Castro.¶ Once public opinion turned against the war in Vietnam, the political leadership in the U.S. found it had no choice but to follow suit. Kerry is better positioned than anyone to be a leader and see that point of departure when it comes to U.S. policy and Cuba.
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Arturo Lopez Levy 04/19/2013, Lecturer and Doctoral Candidate at the University of Denver “Kerry's Cuba Sanity” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arturo-lopez-levy/kerrys-cuba-sanity_b_3112491.html
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Kerry is better positioned than anyone to be a leader and see that point of departure when it comes to U.S. policy and Cuba.
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If the U.S. removed the embargo Kerry would lead the transition
| 1,486 | 63 | 124 | 238 | 11 | 24 | 0.046218 | 0.10084 |
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High-level US diplomats have concluded that Cuba should no longer be designated a state sponsor of terrorism, raising the prospect that Secretary of State John F. Kerry could remove a major obstacle to restoring relations with the Cold War-era foe, government officials said.¶ Cuba no longer actively supports terrorist groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, or former members of Spain’s Basque Fatherland and Liberty, also known as the ETA, according to State Department findings.¶ And interviews with a series of top administration officials and members of Congress indicate there is a growing consensus in policy and intelligence circles that Cuba’s support for terrorist groups has been terminated and the country should be removed from the list — much like the George W. Bush administration did with North Korea in 2008. Kerry has met in recent days with officials to review the Cuba policy.
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Bryan Bender FEBRUARY 21, 2013, (staff writer for Boston Globe “Talk grows of taking Cuba off terror list” http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/02/21/cuba-label-terrorist-state-longer-justified-some-officials-say/CmVFXsVC4M1R1WbHE8lb0H/story.html)
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Kerry has met in recent days with officials to review the Cuba policy.
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Removing Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorist list requires meetings between Kerry and Cuban leaders
| 935 | 105 | 70 | 150 | 16 | 13 | 0.106667 | 0.086667 |
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For the rest of Latin America, where leaders say they’re eager for Washington to modernize its view of the region and engage in new ways, Cuba remains “a litmus test” for the Obama presidency, according to Julia Sweig, director of Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The strategic benefits of getting Cuba right would reverberate throughout the Americas,” said Sweig, calling Kerry “ideally suited to the task.” “Kerry’s instincts and experience in Latin America are to see past lingering and often toxic ideology in the US Congress and bureaucracy in favor of pragmatism and problem solving,” she said.
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NICK MIROFF Staff writer since 2006 he has a Master’s degree at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism “Can Kerry make friends with Cuba?” http://www.salon.com/2013/01/02/can_kerry_make_friends_with_cuba/
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“Kerry’s instincts and experience in Latin America are to see past lingering and often toxic ideology
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Kerry is key to effective Cuban policy
| 628 | 38 | 101 | 101 | 7 | 16 | 0.069307 | 0.158416 |
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The U.S. Foreign Service, the civilian professionals who staff State Department and usaid missions abroad and those agencies' headquarters in Washington is simply not able to do its job. It has nowhere near the number of people it needs to carry out its traditional duties, much less the new demands the Bush administration has imposed on it. Many fsos simply lack the skills and training they need to do their work. The Foreign Service has been starved of the resources it needs to have the impact abroad that both political parties want it to have. And apart from a minimal last-minute increase in the 2008 fiscal year supplemental appropriation for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has not received the major new investments that would allow it to engage in the sort of nation building activities that many believe are CondoleeZZa Rices fundamental to protecting the United States in the twenty-first century. Signature initiative Diplomacy is not capital intensive; its to transform U.S. primary resource is the people who carry it out. InJune 2oo8, there were only 6,636 fsos and ddiplomacy has failed. 4,919 support staff in the State Department? just ten percent more than 25 years ago, when there were 24 fewer countries in the world and U.S. national interests were far more concen trated in Europe and Northeast Asia. By comparison, in mid-2008, there were 1.6 million active-duty military personnel, nearly 1.6 million members of the Reserves and the National Guard, and 673,000 civilian employees in the Defense Department. Unlike the U.S. military, which presently bases only 21 percent of its personnel abroad, 68 percent of the Foreign Service is "forward deployed" overseas. As a result, it has no surge capacity at all. The per sonnel situation is so tight that fsos receive little training because providing it would mean leaving a position empty in the interim. Given that regional expertise and knowledge of obscure languages are among the service's core strengths, the lack of funding has a pernicious long-term impact. Presently, the vacancy rate overseas is 21 percent; in Africa, it is 30 percent. With such shortages, a lot of work must simply be ignored. The staffing situation is even worse at usaid, which houses the government's few experts in postconflict reconstruction; the number of fsos in the agency's ranks has declined by 75 percent since the 1970s. To do what is expected of it, the Foreign Service needs two to three times as many people as the 11,555 ^ currently has. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly called for increased funding for the State Department and usaid. He has testified to Congress that "the State foreign affairs is the proper place to oversee all of the elements of American foreign policy" but that "Congress has not been willing, decade in and decade out, to provide the kind of resources, people and authority that it needs to play its proper role in American foreign policy." Diplomacy is, as the old adage goes, a nations first line of defense. The U.S. government is shortsightedly neglecting this basic and inexpensive tool of national security at its peril. As bipartisan groups of experts call for greater use of "soft power," the United States' capacity to meet traditional diplomatic responsibilities? such as engaging with Iran and guiding Russia back toward the international mainstream?is rapidly deteriorating. And despite the Bush administrations ambitious pledge to transform U.S. diplomacy, Foggy Bottom continues to suffer from a lack of people, programs, and training.
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J Anthony Holmes, Cyrus Vance Fellow in Diplomatic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was previously President of the American Foreign Service Association and U.S. Ambassador to Burkina Faso, 1/2-09, [“Where Are the Civilians? How to Rebuild the U.S. Foreign Service,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 1 (January/February 2009), pp. 148-160, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699439]
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not able new demands no surge capacity so tight two to three times
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Independently – The requirement of diplomats on the ground stresses limited State Department staff and causes tradeoffs
| 3,560 | 120 | 66 | 579 | 17 | 13 | 0.029361 | 0.022453 |
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Any one of the above steps would go far in reestablishing U.S. legitimacy in Latin America. Taken together they could serve as a diplomatic revolution, one which would not weaken U.S. power but consolidate it much the way the Good Neighbor Policy did, allowing Washington to project its power in the region through stable multilateral mechanisms freed from the burdens of confrontation and militarism. A retooled FTAA, updated for the post-Great Recession world and stripped of the ideological baggage of failed neoliberal globalization, might provide a blueprint for a sustainable regional economy, one that balances national development and corporate profit.4 And like the Good Neighbor Policy, a reinvigorated hemispheric diplomacy could serve as a model for the rest of the world, a design for a practical twenty-first century multilateralism, capable of responding to transnational problems—both those that concern liberals, such as climate change, poverty, and migration, and those that concern conservatives, such as crime and terrorism—while respecting, at least rhetorically, the sovereignty of individual nations. In short, the Western Hemisphere offers an unparalleled opportunity to realize the vision of Barack Obama's September 2009 address to the United Nations—hailed by many as a clarion call for a new internationalism—to, in his words, "embrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect." It's not going to happen. Efforts to implement any one of the above policy changes would be blocked by powerful domestic interests. Take biofuels. The idea to liberalize the U.S. agricultural market—and have the rhetoric of free trade somewhat match the reality—is recommended by all mainstream think tanks, including the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, as an important step to win back Brazil. Obama recognizes the importance of Brazil, having nominated George W. Bush's outgoing assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Thomas Shannon—respected in establishment circles as, according to the journal Foreign Policy, "the most talented and successful individual" to serve as Washington's envoy to Latin America [End Page 17] "in at least two decades"—as its ambassador. Yet Shannon's confirmation had been threatened by Senator Chuck Grassley, representing the agro-industry state of Iowa, who objected to the then-nominee's comment during his confirmation hearings that removing a fifty-four-cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol would be good for U.S. foreign policy. The White House immediately declared that it had no plans to change tariff policy, and Grassley allowed the confirmation to proceed.5 The White House's quick buckling probably has to do with its fruitless attempt to win over Grassley for health care reform, a further indicator of how foreign policy is held hostage by domestic politics. Similar obstacles stand in the way of other foreign policy reforms. The Cuban lobby, along with the broader conservative Right, prevents a normalization of relations with Havana. Fear of the National Rifle Association halts a renewal of the assault weapons ban. As to the "War on Drugs," the Democratic Party is deeply committed to "Plan Colombia," the centerpiece of that war. It is, after all, a legacy of Bill Clinton's foreign policy, and much of the $6 billion spent to fight it thus far goes directly into the coffers of corporate sponsors of the Democratic Party like Connecticut's United Technologies and other northeastern defense contractors (it was Bill Clinton who in 1997, acting on behalf of Lockheed Martin, lifted a twenty-year ban on high-tech weapons sales to Latin America, kicking off an arms build-up, in which Colombia, Chile, and Brazil have taken the lead).6 As to immigration reform—also recommended by influential establishment groups to improve U.S. standing in Latin America—Obama, in Mexico, said it would have to wait until next year. He has a near-filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a large majority in the House, yet he says there aren't enough votes and "there is not, by any means, consensus across the table."7 Obama could easily assemble a majority coalition on this issue—comprised of business interests who want cheap labor, Hispanics, progressives, social justice Catholics, and members of the labor movement (who long ago signaled their support for immigration reform)—yet fear of a backlash fueled by a contracting economy has led him to back-burner the issue. The same conditions that make Latin America the best venue in which to modernize U.S. diplomacy—namely that there is no immediate threat emerging from the region, no equivalent of North Korea or Iran on the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb, no insurgency bogging down U.S. troops as in Afghanistan, and no conflict threatening access to vital resources (Washington's main antagonist in the region, Venezuela, continues to sell most of its oil to the U.S.)—also mean that there are no real incentives for Obama's fledgling foreign policy coalition to expend political capital on trying to improve policy there. Analysts of the American empire—from Charles A. Beard in the 1930s to William Appleman Williams in the 1960s and 1970s—have emphasized the U.S.'s unique ability to subsume competing economic, ideological, and sectional interests into a flexible and vital diplomacy in defense of a general "national interest," which has led America to unprecedented global power.8 Yet now—confronted [End Page 18] with a sustained economic contraction, the fallout from a disastrous overleveraging of military power in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the emergence of a post-Cold War, post-neoliberal world with multiple power centers—expansion has given way to involution. The U.S. political system seems to be literally devouring itself from within, paralyzing the ability of foreign policymakers to adjust to a rapidly changing world. Unable to leverage its soft, smart power even in its own hemisphere, Washington is ever more dependent on the military and corporate mercenary forces that have transformed Colombia into a citadel of U.S. hard power in the Andes.
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Greg Grandin, teaches history at New York University. He is the author of a number of books, and a member of the North American Congress on Latin America's editorial committee, Winter 10, [“1 Empire's Senescence: U.S. Policy in Latin America,” New Labor Forum Volume 19, Number 1, Winter 2010, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_labor_forum/v019/19.1.grandin.html]
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engagement It's not going to happen any one powerful domestic interests foreign policy is held hostage by domestic politics no real incentives fledgling foreign policy coalition expend political capital devouring Unable to leverage its power
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Engagement causes political backlash – No incentive to try now but even trying jacks the foreign policy agenda
| 6,147 | 110 | 241 | 946 | 18 | 35 | 0.019027 | 0.036998 |
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Technology Increases Freedom¶ Latin America represents 8 percent of the globe’s total Internet usage, with 25 million daily users in Mexico alone. Nearly 82 percent of Internet users in Latin America regularly use online social networking platforms, and 78 percent have Facebook accounts. Across the region, activists such as Colombia’s Oscar Morales, who rallied 12 million to oppose narco-terrorism, are employing new technologies to inform and conduct peaceful civic activism, strengthening the connecting fabric that supports democratic institutions and open governments.¶ This technological revolution has passed over Cuba. Havana continues to place its own interest in prolonging its permanence in power above the Cuban people’s interests and the basic right to freedom of expression. Havana fears that if Cuba’s people obtain unfettered access to information, its days will soon be numbered.¶
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Walser and Wachtenheim 3/21/12 (Ray Walser, Ph.D. , is Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation, and Marc Wachtenheim is an independent scholar. “Leveraging Technology to Support Free Access to Information in Cuba” <http://www.i-policy.org/2012/03/leveraging-technology-to-support-free-access-to-information-in-cuba.html>) NM
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Technology Increases Freedom Nearly 82 percent of Internet users in Latin America regularly use online social networking platforms, and 78 percent have Facebook accounts activists , are employing new technologies to inform and conduct peaceful civic activism, strengthening the connecting fabric that supports democratic institutions and open governments.¶ This technological revolution has passed over Cuba. Havana continues to place its own interest in prolonging its permanence in power above the Cuban people’s interests and the basic right to freedom of expression. Havana fears that if Cuba’s people obtain unfettered access to information, its days will soon be numbered
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Technology key to freedom
| 899 | 25 | 677 | 131 | 4 | 98 | 0.030534 | 0.748092 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,310 |
There is deep bipartisan support in Congress for robust U.S. engagement to secure digital freedom around the world. In fact, the Senate Global Internet Freedom Caucus, led by Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and myself, and the House Global Internet Freedom Caucus, led by Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.) are teaming up today with the Center for a New American Security for a discussion of U.S. policy to promote Internet freedom globally.¶ The Internet can be used as a tool of liberation, as we saw in revolutions that swept the Arab world last spring, or of repression, as we continue to witness in places such as Iran and China. Popular movements and entrenched governments both clearly see how the unique power of the Internet can spread democratic ideas and demands for human rights and basic freedoms.¶ These fundamental values, which should be granted to citizens around the world as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are central to who we are as Americans.¶ We must continue to pursue an American foreign policy that protects the "right to connect" as a U.S. foreign policy priority. The Senate Global Internet Freedom Caucus advocates for the promotion of policies that promotes rights of all people to use the Internet and other forms of technology to exercise basic freedoms globally. In order to achieve this goal, we must engage with governments, individuals, and the private sector to preserve the Internet as an open platform for commerce and communication.¶ Led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, this administration has recognized the "right to connect" as a fundamental human right, and the American people have already made a significant investment of more than $70 million since 2008 in protecting and promoting Internet freedom globally. This funding has supported a number of projects, including the development of censorship-circumvention technology, cyber self-defense training, and equipping people to evade repression.
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Coons 5/10/12 (Chris Coons is a senator from Deleware, “Internet Freedom Is a Human Right” < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-coons/internet-freedom-is-a-hum_b_1506042.html>) NM
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There is deep bipartisan support in Congress for robust U.S. engagement to secure digital freedom around the world he Senate Global Internet Freedom Caucus, led by Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and myself, and the House Global Internet Freedom Caucus, led by Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.) are teaming up today with the Center for a New American Security for a discussion of U.S. policy to promote Internet freedom globally.¶ The Internet can be used as a tool of liberation, as we saw in revolutions that swept the Arab world last spring, or of repression Popular movements and entrenched governments both clearly see how the unique power of the Internet can spread democratic ideas and demands for human rights and basic freedoms.¶ T Americans.¶ We must continue to pursue an American foreign policy that protects the "right to connect" as a U.S. foreign policy priority. The Senate Global Internet Freedom Caucus advocates for the promotion of policies that promotes rights of all people to use the Internet and other forms of technology to exercise basic freedoms globally. In order to achieve this goal, Led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, this administration has recognized the "right to connect" as a fundamental human right
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Bipart Support for Internet freedom
| 1,989 | 36 | 1,260 | 314 | 5 | 204 | 0.015924 | 0.649682 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,311 |
President Obama promised on Wednesday to "fight hard" to protect Internet freedom and said the Democratic Party will include the position in its 2012 platform.¶ The Republican Party included support for Internet freedom in its 2012 platform, which it released on Tuesday.¶ ¶ Obama made the comment while answering questions on social-media site reddit, which was one of the leading organizers against controversial online piracy legislation earlier this year.¶ Reddit, along with Wikipedia and thousands of other sites, blacked out in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would have required search engines and other sites to delete links to foreign sites dedicated to copyright infringement. ¶ "Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too," Obama wrote.¶ "We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody — from those who are expressing an idea to those to [sic] want to start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle — and it will be reflected in the platform," he wrote.¶ When SOPA was still under consideration, the White House released a statement expressing concerns about the bill and emphasizing its support for Internet freedom. But in the statement, the administration also called for tougher measures to crack down on foreign sites offering pirated material
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The Hill 08/29/12 (Brendan Sasso is a technology writer for the hill “Obama to 'fight hard' for Internet freedom” < http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/246525-obama-promises-to-fight-hard-for-internet-freedom>) NM
|
President Obama promised on Wednesday to "fight hard" to protect Internet freedom and said the Democratic Party will include the position in its 2012 platform.¶ The Republican Party included support for Internet freedom in its 2012 platform ¶ "Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too," Obama wrote.¶ "We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody — from those who are expressing an idea to those to [sic] want to start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle — and it will be reflected in the platform,
|
Republicans and Democrats both want to increase internet freedom and the plan is a win for Obama
| 1,462 | 96 | 689 | 233 | 17 | 116 | 0.072961 | 0.497854 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,312 |
There is an alternative approach to resolving this dilemma. Another longstanding U.S. policy goal, articulated both rhetorically and in such legislation as the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, 22 U.S.C. 6001, is to support the Cuban people in their daily struggles to cope with the deprivations of life in a closed authoritarian regime. Facilitating contact within families is certainly one way to ease the strain of separation among loved ones, both on and off the island. To that end, U.S. law allows, inter alia, the sale and donations of food, the export of medicines and medical supplies, and the provision of telecommunications facilities “in such quantity and of such quality as may be necessary to provide efficient and adequate telecommunications services between the United States and Cuba.” 22 U.S.C. 6004. In other words, Congress has already authorized transactions that permit the kind of “efficient and adequate” ICT services that we take for granted today.
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Piccone et al 10 (Theodore J. Piccone, senior fellow and deputy director for Foreign Policy at Brookings, specializes in U.S.-Latin American relations; global democracy and human rights; and multilateral affairs, serves as an advisor to the Club of Madrid and has served on the National Security Council, at the State Department and Pentagon, Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas and founder and editor-in-chief of the hemispheric policy magazine Americas Quarterly, chair at the Cuba Working group, and Carlos Saladrigas, Chairman and Chief Executive of Concordia Behavioral Health, July 2010, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2010/7/15%20cuba%20communications/07_cuba_telecommunications_piccone, Bridging Cuba’s Communication Divide: How U.S. Policy Can Help. SMJ)
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U.S. policy goal is to support the Cuban people in their daily struggles to cope with the deprivations of life in a closed authoritarian regime. Facilitating contact within families is certainly one way to ease the strain of separation among loved ones, both on and off the island U.S. law allows, inter alia, the sale and donations of food, the export of medicines and medical supplies, and the provision of telecommunications facilities Congress has already authorized transactions that permit the kind of “efficient and adequate” ICT services that we take for granted today.
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Congress supports ICT funding
| 968 | 29 | 577 | 154 | 4 | 93 | 0.025974 | 0.603896 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,313 |
We affirm our friendship with the People of Cuba and look toward their reunion with the rest of our hemispheric family. The anachronistic regime in Havana which rules them is a mummified relic of the age of totalitarianism, a state-sponsor of terrorism. We reject any dynastic succession of power within the Castro family and affirm the principles codified in U.S. law as conditions for the lifting of trade, travel, and financial sanctions: the legalization of political parties, an independent media, and free and fair internationally-supervised elections. We renew our commitment to Cuba’s courageous pro-democracy movement as the protagonists of Cuba’s inevitable liberation and democratic future. We call for a dedicated platform for the transmission of Radio and TV Marti and for the promotion of Internet access and circumvention technology as tools to strengthen the pro-democracy movement. We support the work of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba and affirm the principles of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, recognizing the rights of Cubans fleeing Communism. The war on drugs and the war on terror have become a single enterprise. We salute our allies in this fight, especially the people of Mexico and Colombia.
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Republican Platform Report 12 (No Specific Date, “We Believe In America”, Republican Platform report quoted on http://www.gop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012GOPPlatform.pdf, SMJ)
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We affirm our friendship with the People of Cuba and look toward their reunion with the rest of our hemispheric family. affirm the principles codified in U.S. law as conditions for the lifting of trade, travel, and financial sanctions: the legalization of political parties, an independent media, and free and fair internationally-supervised elections. We renew our commitment to Cuba’s courageous pro-democracy movement as the protagonists of Cuba’s inevitable liberation and democratic future We call for a dedicated platform for for the promotion of Internet access and circumvention technology as tools to strengthen the pro-democracy movement.
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Republican support or Cuban Assistance
| 1,235 | 39 | 648 | 195 | 5 | 95 | 0.025641 | 0.487179 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,314 |
WASHINGTON – The House Energy and Commerce Committee today unanimously approved bipartisan legislation written by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) to affirm the policy of the United States regarding Internet governance. The legislation (H.R. 1580), which was approved by voice vote, will promote a global Internet free from government control. Last Congress, a similar measure unanimously passed the House and Senate. In light of continued international efforts to regulate the Internet, members voted today to make it official U.S policy rather than merely a sense of the Congress.¶ “Let me be clear why we are here today: the continuing threat to the Internet is very real,” Rep. Walden said.¶ “Under the multi-stakeholder governance model, non-regulatory institutions manage and operate the Internet by developing best practices with public and private sector input. Governments’ hands-off approach has enabled the Internet to grow at an astonishing pace and become perhaps the most powerful engine of social and economic freedom and job creation the world has ever known,” Rep. Walden continued.¶ Rep. Walden concluded, “By elevating this language from a resolution to U.S. policy, this bill will show our country’s resolve to oppose efforts by authoritarian regimes to subvert the Internet for their own purposes, and I hope to encourage other nations to join our cause.”¶ The bill was approved unanimously after Rep. Walden made changes to accommodate concerns from Democratic members of the Committee. At the markup, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), the Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Ca.), the Ranking Member of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, thanked Rep. Walden for his work to address their concerns.¶ Last week, the bill was approved by the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, which Rep. Walden chairs. The next stop is a vote by the entire U.S. House of Representatives.
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Walden 4/17/13 (Greg Walden is a Republican member of congress. “Walden bill to advance internet freedom moves forward in Congress” <http://walden.house.gov/s2013/walden-bill-to-advance-internet-freedom-moves-forward-in-congress/>) NM
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The House Energy and Commerce Committee today unanimously approved bipartisan legislation written by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) to affirm the policy of the United States regarding Internet governance. promote a global Internet free from government control , members voted today to make it official U.S policy rather than merely a sense of the Congress.¶ Let me be clear why we are here today: the continuing threat to the Internet is very real,” . Governments’ hands-off approach has enabled the Internet to grow at an astonishing pace and become perhaps the most powerful engine of social and economic freedom and job creation the world has ever known,” .”¶ The bill was approved unanimously after Rep. Walden made changes to accommodate concerns from Democratic members of the Committee. At the markup, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), the Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Ca.), the Ranking Member of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, , the bill was approved by the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, which Rep. Walden chairs
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Pushed by committees – bipart support
| 1,942 | 37 | 1,089 | 300 | 6 | 172 | 0.02 | 0.573333 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,315 |
In Chapter 1.6, Chris Williams, Davide Strusani, David ¶ Vincent, and David Kovo from Deloitte LLP argue that ¶ the mobile telecommunication sector continues to offer ¶ unprecedented opportunities for economic growth in ¶ both developing and developed markets, and that mobile ¶ communication services have become an essential part ¶ of how economies work and function.¶ As technology develops, mobile telephony has ¶ the potential to impact economic development further ¶ through the provision of high-value 3G and 4G data ¶ services accessed via smartphones, tablets, and ¶ dongles that deliver mobile data services to businesses ¶ and consumers. For the first time, applying econometric ¶ analysis, the authors studiy the impact, on GDP ¶ per capita growth, of consumers substituting a 2G ¶ connection with a 3G connection and, based on data ¶ from Cisco Systems, the impact of increasing usage of ¶ mobile data per 3G connection. This study finds that:¶ • For a given level of mobile penetration, a 10 percent ¶ increase in 3G penetration increases GDP per capita ¶ growth by 0.15 percentage points.¶ • A doubling of mobile data use is associated with an ¶ increase in the GDP per capita growth rate of 0.5 ¶ percentage points.¶ These results suggest that policy activity should ¶ focus on increasing 3G penetration and mobile data ¶ consumption. This focus should include making ¶ spectrum available for mobile broadband and ¶ encouraging the substitution of basic mobile services ¶ with more-advanced 3G connections.
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Bilbao-Osrio, Dutta, Lanvin 13 [Beñat Bilbao-Osorio, Soumitra Dutta, and Bruno Lanvin, Editors, “The Global Information Technology Report 2013; Growth and Jobs in a Hyperconnected World”, 2013, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GITR_Report_2013.pdf] TH
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the mobile telecommunication sector continues to offer ¶ unprecedented opportunities for economic growth in ¶ both developing and developed markets mobile ¶ communication services have become an essential part ¶ of how economies work and function. mobile telephony has ¶ the potential to impact economic development further ¶ through the provision of high-value 3G and 4G data ¶ services accessed via smartphones, tablets, and ¶ dongles that deliver mobile data services to businesses ¶ and consumers A doubling of mobile data use is associated with an ¶ increase in the GDP per capita growth rate of 0.5 ¶ percentage points policy activity should ¶ focus on increasing 3G penetration and mobile data ¶ consumption.
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Telecommunication is key to economic competitiveness – mobile sector
| 1,522 | 68 | 715 | 248 | 9 | 114 | 0.03629 | 0.459677 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,316 |
Healthcare has become an increasingly dominant topic ¶ of discussion in recent years because of rising costs ¶ and the need to improve the efficiency and quality of ¶ healthcare delivery. Although ICTs cannot, alone, provide ¶ the solution for overcoming these issues, they are seen ¶ by many governments as potentially playing a significant ¶ role as enablers of the changes required in health ¶ systems.¶ In light of this, a critical question now facing ¶ policymakers is how to realize the full potential of ¶ these technologies, particularly since the challenges to ¶ achieving widespread ICT adoption and use are proving ¶ daunting.¶ In Chapter 1.7, Elettra Ronchi from the Organisation ¶ for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ¶ Julia Adler-Milstein and Genna R. Cohen from the ¶ University of Michigan, and Laura P. Winn and Ashish ¶ K. Jha from the Harvard School of Public Health argue ¶ that countries have much to gain by combining their ¶ efforts and sharing the burden of developing comparable ¶ measures for evidence-based policy in this sector. Risk, ¶ delay, and cost can be minimized by learning from good ¶ international practices.¶ The chapter reviews what is currently known ¶ about the state of implementation of ICTs in the health ¶ sector across OECD countries and the benefits that ¶ can be realized from these technologies, including the ¶ opportunities for economic growth. It then discusses ¶ the efforts, led by the OECD, to develop a common set ¶ of indicators, describing the policy motivation for this ¶ work, the process followed, the current status of these ¶ measures, and the key remaining challenges.
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Bilbao-Osrio, Dutta, Lanvin 13 [Beñat Bilbao-Osorio, Soumitra Dutta, and Bruno Lanvin, Editors, “The Global Information Technology Report 2013; Growth and Jobs in a Hyperconnected World”, 2013, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GITR_Report_2013.pdf] TH
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ICTs are seen ¶ by many governments as potentially playing a significant ¶ role as enablers of the changes required in health ¶ systems countries have much to gain by combining their ¶ efforts and sharing the burden of developing comparable ¶ measures for evidence-based policy in this sector. Risk, ¶ delay, and cost can be minimized by learning from good ¶ international practices. implementation of ICTs in the health ¶ sector across OECD countries and the benefits that ¶ can be realized from these technologies, including the ¶ opportunities for economic growth.
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ICT key to international cooperation – that is key to economic growth
| 1,647 | 69 | 567 | 274 | 12 | 93 | 0.043796 | 0.339416 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,317 |
Access to ICT standards is a critical factor in a country’s global economic competitiveness. These standards can provide a common platform on which innovation can proceed, giving developing countries the opportunity to create products for a world market. Conversely, if standards are not available (or if their use requires high royalty payments), there is less chance for emerging markets to become competitive. In the context of ICT globalization, technical interoperability is a precursor to economic links.
|
ITU News 09 [ITU News (International Telecommunications Union), “Bridging the standardization gap — ITU–T Research Project: Measuring and Reducing the Standards Gap,” December 2009, http://www.itu.int/net/itunews/issues/2010/02/27.aspx] TH
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Access to ICT standards is a critical factor in a country’s global economic competitiveness These standards can provide a common platform on which innovation can proceed, giving opportunity to create products for a world market if standards are not available there is less chance for emerging markets to become competitive
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ICT is key to global economic competitiveness
| 510 | 45 | 322 | 76 | 7 | 50 | 0.092105 | 0.657895 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,318 |
The interoperability afforded by standards leads to new ways for knowledge to be exchanged, within countries and around the world. This provides citizens in developing countries with access to online education, for example, and allows them to participate more actively in economic, cultural and political life.¶ Problems resulting from not adopting universal standards can drive up the cost of day-to-day business, government and consumer activities. While governments must spend limited resources wisely, not using ICT standards well can result in inefficient and costly technology infrastructure, or products that are not well suited to the country’s needs.¶
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ITU News 09 [ITU News (International Telecommunications Union), “Bridging the standardization gap — ITU–T Research Project: Measuring and Reducing the Standards Gap,” December 2009, http://www.itu.int/net/itunews/issues/2010/02/27.aspx] TH
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interoperability afforded by standards leads to new ways for knowledge to be exchanged, within countries and around the world This provides citizens in developing countries with access to online education and allows them to participate more actively in economic, cultural and political life Problems from not adopting standards can drive up the cost of day-to-day business, government and consumer activities not using ICT standards well can result in inefficient and costly technology infrastructure, or products that are not well suited to the country’s needs.¶
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ICT standards improve quality of life for citizens globally
| 660 | 59 | 563 | 96 | 9 | 84 | 0.09375 | 0.875 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,319 |
The use of ICT standards can improve the functioning of government by, for instance, helping agencies to work together and reliably exchange information. Following natural disasters, it is vital for government agencies, rescue workers and others to be able to communicate using interoperable technologies. National security is another area in which technical standards play an increasing role, such as in protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. Governments can better manage data in digital archives using a standardized interface, and standards underpin the provision of information and services to citizens online.¶
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ITU News 09 [ITU News (International Telecommunications Union), “Bridging the standardization gap — ITU–T Research Project: Measuring and Reducing the Standards Gap,” December 2009, http://www.itu.int/net/itunews/issues/2010/02/27.aspx] TH
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The use of ICT standards can improve the functioning of government by helping agencies to work together and reliably exchange information natural disasters vital for government agencies, rescue workers and others to be able to communicate using interoperable technologies. National security is another area in protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks Governments can better manage data in digital archives using a standardized interface, and standards underpin the provision of information and services to citizens online.
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ICT improves government function – natural disasters, national security and government stability
| 631 | 96 | 534 | 89 | 12 | 74 | 0.134831 | 0.831461 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,320 |
Decisions about how a standard is defined can have implications for a wide range of public policy issues. For instance, the design of encryption standards affects not only national security, but also individual privacy online and the security of financial transactions. The emerging area of e-health has the potential to improve access to medical services in the developing world. Whether there is a standardized format for electronic medical (and other) records can determine the degree of interoperability among systems, and the security, privacy, and accessibility of these data.
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ITU News 09 [ITU News (International Telecommunications Union), “Bridging the standardization gap — ITU–T Research Project: Measuring and Reducing the Standards Gap,” December 2009, http://www.itu.int/net/itunews/issues/2010/02/27.aspx] TH
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Decisions about how a standard is defined can have implications for a wide range of public policy issues The emerging area of e-health has the potential to improve access to medical services in the developing world Whether there is a standardized format for electronic medical (and other) records can determine the degree of interoperability among systems, and the security, privacy, and accessibility of these data.
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ICT key to medical services
| 582 | 28 | 416 | 88 | 5 | 65 | 0.056818 | 0.738636 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,321 |
Communications, which allow terrorists the ability to receive, store, manipulate, and exchange information. The methods by which terrorists communicate are numerous and varied. Our enemies rely on couriers and face-to-face contacts with associates and tend to use what is accessible in their local areas as well as what they can afford. They also use today’s technologies with increasing acumen and sophistication. This is especially true with the Internet, which they exploit to create and disseminate propaganda, recruit new members, raise funds and other material resources, provide instruction on weapons and tactics, and plan operations. Without a communications ability, terrorist groups cannot effectively organize operations, execute attacks, or spread their ideology. We and our partners will continue to target the communication nodes of our enemy. Propaganda operations, which are used by terrorists to justify violent action as well as inspire individuals to support or join the movement. The ability of terrorists to exploit the Internet and 24/7 worldwide media coverage allows them to bolster their prominence as well as feed a steady diet of radical ideology, twisted images, and conspiracy theories to potential recruits in all corners of the globe. Besides a global reach, these technologies allow terrorists to propagate their message quickly, often before an effective counter to terrorist messages can be coordinated and distributed. These are force multipliers for our enemy. Deny terrorists entry to the United States and disrupt their travel internationally. Denying our enemies the tools to travel internationally and across and within our borders significantly impedes their mobility and can inhibit their effectiveness. They rely on illicit networks to facilitate travel and often obtain false identification documents through theft or in-house forgery operations. We will continue to enhance the security of the American people through a layered system of protections along our borders, at our ports, on our roadways and railways, in our skies, and with our international partners. We will continue to develop and enhance security practices and technologies to reduce vulnerabilities in the dynamic transportation network, inhibit terrorists from crossing U.S. borders, and detect and prevent terrorist travel within the United States. Our efforts will include improving all aspects of aviation security; promoting secure travel and identity documents; disrupting travel facilitation networks; improving border security and visa screening; and building international capacity and improving international information exchange to secure travel and combat terrorist travel. Our National Strategy to Combat Terrorist Travel and our National Strategy for Maritime Security will help guide our efforts. Defend potential targets of attack. Our enemies are opportunistic, exploiting vulnerabilities and seeking alternatives to those targets with increased security measures. The targeting trend since at least September 11 has been away from hardened sites, such as official government facilities with formidable security, and toward softer targets – schools, restaurants, places of worship, and nodes of public transportation – where innocent civilians gather and which are not always well secured. Specific targets vary, but they tend to be symbolic and often selected because they will produce mass casualties, economic damage, or both.
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US Department of State 09 (State government, January 20, 2009, “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism”, http://2001-2009.state.gov/s/ct/rls/wh/71803.htm, ak)
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Communications, which allow terrorists the ability to receive, store, manipulate, and exchange information. The methods by which terrorists communicate are numerous and varied. They also use today’s technologies with increasing acumen and sophistication. This is especially true with the Internet, which they exploit to create and disseminate propaganda, recruit new members, raise funds and other material resources, provide instruction on weapons and tactics, and plan operations. Without a communications ability, terrorist groups cannot effectively organize operations, execute attacks, or spread their ideology. We and our partners will continue to target the communication nodes of our enemy. The ability of terrorists to exploit the Internet and 24/7 worldwide media coverage allows them to bolster their prominence these technologies allow terrorists to propagate their message quickly, often before an effective counter to terrorist messages can be coordinated and distributed. These are force multipliers for our enemy. We will continue to develop and enhance security practices and technologies to reduce vulnerabilities in the dynamic transportation network, inhibit terrorists from crossing U.S. borders, and detect and prevent terrorist travel within the United States. Our enemies are opportunistic, exploiting vulnerabilities and seeking alternatives to those targets with increased security measures. The targeting trend since at least September 11 has been away from hardened sites, such as official government facilities with formidable security, and toward softer targets – schools, restaurants, places of worship, and nodes of public transportation – where innocent civilians gather and which are not always well secured. Specific targets vary, but they tend to be symbolic and often selected because they will produce mass casualties, economic damage, or both.
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Internet Access in Cuba makes it more likely to have terrorist attacks – empirics prove
| 3,459 | 87 | 1,882 | 501 | 15 | 266 | 0.02994 | 0.530938 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,322 |
Internet usage in the Middle East has increased 1,825% since 2000, compared to 432% across the rest of the world. Many have argued the proliferation of the Internet would usher in a new era of free speech and democratization across the region; however, this has not been the case.¶ On the contrary, Saudi Arabia and numerous Gulf States have designed an Internet infrastructure capable of filtering out nearly 100% of censored content. This is truly an astonishing feat given the sheer volume of “unauthorized” content available online.¶ In a recent speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized, according to Human Rights Watch's account, “that an open internet is not just a matter of human rights, but integral to economic development and political stability”. Intuitively, I agree.¶ When governments heavily regulate Internet content, they dampen ingenuity, cultural richness, and entrepreneurialism. Arab nations are in need of innovative minds. Water shortages, dwindling oil reserves, over-population, and international business competition are among the pressing issues facing the region today.¶ Who isn’t curious how technology policy in the Middle East will adapt to a population hungry for the Internet? If the region opens the doors of free communication, a new era of innovation, collaboration, and economic prosperity could emerge. We could all witness Arab collaboration bring to pass innovative enterprises the likes of Twitter, Skype, Facebook, or Groupon.¶ However, history has shown that a shift towards the proliferation of communication tools does not necessarily promote democratization. As far back as 1940 it was commonly speculated that the innovation of long-distance calling would usher in an era of equality, peace, and democracy. However, WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War shortly followed. The flaw in this theory is that all types of groups and institutions can benefit from the Internet, not just democratic ones.¶ Is democracy the natural evolution of Internet freedom? No. Societies have different needs and priorities. Some face high rates of violence and corruption, thereby valuing security over freedom of speech. Others may look upon the excesses of capitalism with disgust. While others may simply be appeased – or even prefer – command-capitalism, socialism, or another hybrid political or economic system. In the end, I argue that democracy is not the natural evolutionary end-result when societies procure the benefits of Internet freedom.
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Joesph Martin 10, Joseph is a Policy Fellow at the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an organization focused on building a free and democratic Syria. He is a second year MA Middle East Studies candidate at George Washington University, 3 years ago, Does Internet Freedom Lead to Democracy?, http://www.policymic.com/articles/524/does-internet-freedom-lead-to-democracy , PML
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Many have argued the proliferation of the Internet would usher in a new era of free speech and democratization across the region; however, this has not been the case Saudi Arabia and numerous Gulf States have designed an Internet infrastructure capable of filtering out nearly 100% of censored content history has shown that a shift towards the proliferation of communication tools does not necessarily promote democratization. As far back as 1940 it was commonly speculated that the innovation of long-distance calling would usher in an era of equality, peace, and democracy. However, WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War shortly followed The flaw in this theory is that all types of groups and institutions can benefit from the Internet, not just democratic ones. Is democracy the natural evolution of Internet freedom? No. . Some face high rates of violence and corruption, thereby valuing security over freedom of speech. Others may look upon the excesses of capitalism with disgust democracy is not the natural evolutionary end-result when societies procure the benefits of Internet freedom.
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[cross-apply their terror terminal impact, or read it here]
| 2,504 | 59 | 1,107 | 382 | 9 | 175 | 0.02356 | 0.458115 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,323 |
The longest economic expansion is U.S. history ended in early 2001 (NBER 2002). As the econ- omy languishes, the pressure for stimulus in- tensifies. Near the top of potential industrial interventions to jump-start economic growth is telecommunications, its status driven by regu- latory instability and the nation's current fas- cination with the Internet. Proposals to stimu- late investment in this particular sector of the economy are numerous and vary widely, typi- cally involving either more or less competition or more or less regulation.¶ Implicit in the proposals to stimulate investment in the telecommunications industry is the assumption that such investment causes economic growth. The purpose of this analysis is to address this seemingly critical issue – does investment by telecommunications firms cause economic growth, or, alternately, does eco- nomic growth cause such investment? Some insight into the true nature of this relationship could shed considerable light on important questions concerning both economic and tele- communications policy.¶ While causal relationships are ideally determined by theoretical means, economic theory provides three plausible causality scenarios¶ between investment and output. The first is based on a simple aggregate production func- tion, where output is typically modeled as a function of the private capital stock, the amount of labor employed, and government spending. The classic example of such a model was proposed by Ram (1986), now a standard tool in the analysis of economic development. In this type model, output is “caused” by in- vestment or, similarly, changes in the capital stock.¶ This particular causal view is contradicted by a second and alternative explanation known as the acceleration principle. Cullem (1988) pro- vides a recent application. For this alternative, the level of investment is determined by the change in aggregate income, so that the causal relationship flows from output to investment, but not vice versa.¶ Finally, it is possible for the causal relationship to go both ways. When the causal relationships hold jointly, the effect of one relation feeds back onto the other, and the other then feeds back onto the one, and so forth (Röller and Waverman 2002).¶ * Beil and Jackson: Department of Economics, Auburn University, Alabama 36849. Ford: Z-Tel Communications, Inc., Tampa, Florida 33602.¶ With theoretical ambiguity, empirical methods are required to determine which of the three views, if any, are best supported by the data. To this end, an empirical model of causality is applied to a long series of data on investment by telecommunications firm and Gross Domes- tic Product in the United States. The causality tests confirm that economic output causes tele- communications investment, but investment by telecommunications firms does not cause output. This finding is robust across alterna- tive lag specifications.
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RICHARD O. BEIL et al. June 2003 Richard O. Beil ¶ Auburn University - College of Business¶ George S. Ford ¶ Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies¶ John D. Jackson ¶ Auburn University - Department of Economics “http://www.aestudies.com/library/granger.pdf
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Near the top of potential industrial interventions to jump-start economic growth is telecommunications, its status driven by regu- latory instability and the nation's current fas- cination with the Internet. Proposals to stimu- late investment in this particular sector of the economy are numerous Implicit in the proposals to stimulate investment in the telecommunications industry is the assumption that such investment causes economic growth While causal relationships are ideally determined by theoretical means, economic theory provides three plausible causality scenarios¶ between investment and output The first is based on a simple aggregate production func- tion, where output is typically modeled as a function of the private capital stock, the amount of labor employed, and government spending. The classic example of such a model was proposed by Ram (1986), now a standard tool in the analysis of economic development. In this type model, output is “caused” by in- vestment or, similarly, changes in the capital stock.¶ This particular causal view is contradicted by a second and alternative explanation known as the acceleration principle For this alternative, the level of investment is determined by the change in aggregate income, so that the causal relationship flows from output to investment, but not vice versa an empirical model of causality is applied to a long series of data on investment by telecommunications firm and G D P in the United States. he causality tests confirm that economic output causes tele- communications investment, but investment by telecommunications firms does not cause output.
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Causality analysis proves telecommunications are a product of economic growth-not vice versa
| 2,927 | 92 | 1,628 | 443 | 12 | 246 | 0.027088 | 0.555305 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
|
2013
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1,324 |
Shortages of skilled labor constitute the foremost challenge confronting U.S. manufacturers who face growing competition from manufacturers in Asia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Demand for professionals with university degrees is rising as manufacturing becomes increasingly high tech. But the U.S. educational system is not producing enough highly educated native-born manufacturing workers to meet this growing demand. Moreover, the pending retirements of Baby Boom generation workers will further constrain the growth of the manufacturing labor force. Bridging this gap between the supply and demand for skilled workers requires new investments in the U.S. educational system and the formulation of immigration policies that respond to the labor needs of the U.S. economy. Yet current immigration policies, especially since 9/11, have made it more difficult for highly skilled professionals from abroad to enter the United States.
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Bartlett 06 [David Bartlett is president of the Global Economics Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 08/23/06, “Building A Competitive Workforce: Immigration And The US Manufacturing Sector”, http://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0823-bartlett.shtm] TH
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Shortages of skilled labor constitute the foremost challenge confronting U.S. manufacturers who face growing competition from manufacturers in Asia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere Demand for professionals with university degrees is rising as manufacturing becomes increasingly high tech But the U.S. educational system is not producing enough highly educated native-born manufacturing workers to meet this growing demand pending retirements of Baby Boom generation workers will further constrain the growth of the manufacturing labor force Bridging this gap requires new investments in the U.S. educational system and the formulation of immigration policies that respond to the labor needs of the U.S. economy current immigration policies have made it more difficult for highly skilled professionals from abroad to enter the United States.
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b) Shortage of skilled labor – education system & immigration policies
| 935 | 70 | 838 | 133 | 11 | 119 | 0.082707 | 0.894737 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,325 |
U.S. economic competiveness is in decline. Since 2009, the U.S. ranking has dropped from number 15 to 19 of the 144 nations evaluated by the Fraser Institute http://www.freetheworld.com/release.html. ¶ The primary factor damaging the U.S. ranking was the escalating size of the federal government with U.S. federal spending as a percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) climbing from 21.8 percent in 2008 to 24.1 percent in 2012. ¶ Moreover, between 2008 and 2012, overall private employment declined by 2.5 percent while federal employment increased by 1.2 percent. As the size of the federal government rose, the national debt soared from $9.4 trillion in 2008 to $15.9 trillion in 2012, advancing by approximately 70 percent as the overall economy expanded by only 9 percent. ¶ As a result of the massive U.S. debt, Standard and Poor’s downgraded U.S. bonds in 2011. But the U.S. Federal Reserve has delayed the “debtageddon” by buying U.S. debt and effectively turning on the dollar printing presses and risking rampant inflation in the years ahead. Moreover, global investors, afraid to invest in stocks, have put their funds in U.S. bonds driving rates lower even with downgrades and the cheaper dollar. ¶ However, with 300,000 baby boomer retiring each month pushing social security spending and Medicare outlays higher, there will be a day of reckoning for the U.S. taxpayer and bond investor, but no economist knows when that is. However, the sure signal is when bond investors begin abandoning (selling) U.S. debt. This action will send the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds skyrocketing. ¶ How high could they go? Today’s rate of 1.7 percent will surely bounce to something approaching Spain’s current 6-7 percent. This will mean more and more federal tax collections will be devoted to the payment of interest.
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Goss 12 [Ernie Goss, Economist, “U.S. Economic Competitiveness in Decline: Growing Size of Government at Fault”, October 16th, 2012, http://economictrends.blogspot.com/2012/10/us-economic-competitiveness-in-decline.html] TH
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U.S. ranking has dropped The primary factor damaging the U.S. ranking was the escalating size of the federal government with U.S. federal spending overall private employment declined by 2.5 percent while federal employment increased by 1.2 percent the size of the federal government rose, the national debt soared from $9.4 trillion in 2008 to $15.9 trillion in 2012, advancing by approximately 70 percent as the overall economy expanded by only 9 percent global investors, afraid to invest in stocks, have put their funds in U.S. bonds driving rates lower even with downgrades and the cheaper dollar.
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National debt is the largest factor in decreasing U.S. economic competitiveness
| 1,841 | 79 | 601 | 298 | 11 | 96 | 0.036913 | 0.322148 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
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1,326 |
The United States has slipped further down a global ranking of the world's most competitive economies, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey released on Wednesday.¶ The world's largest economy, which was placed 5th last year, fell two positions to the 7th spot - marking its fourth year of decline.¶ A lack of macroeconomic stability, the business community’s continued mistrust of the government and concerns over its fiscal health were some of the reasons for the downgrade, according to the annual survey.¶ "A number of weaknesses are chipping away at its competitiveness...the U.S. fiscal imbalances and continued political deadlock over resolving these challenges," said Jennifer Blanke, Economist at the Geneva-based WEF.¶ Political deadlock over reducing the unsustainable federal government budget deficit – projected to hit $1.1 trillion this year – prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the country’s credit rating by one notch to AA+ from AAA last August.¶
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Harjani 12 [Ansuya Harjani, Writer, CNBC Asia, “US Slips Down the Ranks of Global Competitiveness”, September 5th, 2012, http://www.cnbc.com/id/48905756] TH
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The United States has slipped further down a global ranking of the world's most competitive economies A lack of macroeconomic stability the business community’s continued mistrust of the government and concerns over its fiscal health were some of the reasons for the downgrade A number of weaknesses are chipping away at its competitiveness...the U.S. fiscal imbalances and continued political deadlock over resolving these challenges Political deadlock over reducing the unsustainable federal government budget deficit prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the country’s credit rating
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Competitiveness slipping due to a number of factors – plan cannot solve.
| 980 | 72 | 587 | 150 | 12 | 84 | 0.08 | 0.56 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,327 |
The United States continues the decline that ¶ began a few years ago, falling two more positions ¶ to take 7th place this year. Although many structural ¶ features continue to make its economy extremely ¶ productive, a number of escalating and unaddressed ¶ weaknesses have lowered the US ranking in recent ¶ years.
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Schwab 12 [Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum Editor, “The Global¶ Competitiveness Report¶ 2012–2013”, 2012, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport_2012-13.pdf] TH
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The United States continues the decline that ¶ began a few years ago, falling two more positions ¶ to take 7th place this year a number of escalating and unaddressed ¶ weaknesses have lowered the US ranking in recent ¶ years.
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US competitiveness declining now – impact should’ve already been triggered
| 315 | 74 | 225 | 54 | 10 | 41 | 0.185185 | 0.759259 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,328 |
On the other hand, some weaknesses in particular ¶ areas have deepened since past assessments. The ¶ business community continues to be critical toward ¶ public and private institutions (41st). In particular, its trust ¶ in politicians is not strong (54th), perhaps not surprising ¶ in light of recent political disputes that threaten to push ¶ the country back into recession through automatic ¶ spending cuts. Business leaders also remain concerned ¶ about the government’s ability to maintain arms-length ¶ relationships with the private sector (59th), and consider ¶ that the government spends its resources relatively ¶ wastefully (76th). A lack of macroeconomic stability ¶ continues to be the country’s greatest area of weakness ¶ (111th, down from 90th last year). On a more positive ¶ note, measures of financial market development continue ¶ to indicate a recovery, improving from 31st two years ¶ ago to 16th this year in that pillar, thanks to the rapid ¶ intervention that forced the deleveraging of the banking ¶ system from its toxic assets following the financial crisis.
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Schwab 12 [Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum Editor, “The Global¶ Competitiveness Report¶ 2012–2013”, 2012, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport_2012-13.pdf] TH
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On the other hand, some weaknesses in particular ¶ areas have deepened since past assessments. The ¶ business community continues to be critical toward ¶ public and private institutions In particular, its trust ¶ in politicians is not strong (54th), perhaps not surprising ¶ in light of recent political disputes that threaten to push ¶ the country back into recession through automatic ¶ spending cuts Business leaders also remain concerned ¶ about the government’s ability to maintain arms-length ¶ relationships with the private sector and consider ¶ that the government spends its resources relatively ¶ wastefully A lack of macroeconomic stability ¶ continues to be the country’s greatest area of weakness
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Alt causes to lack of US economic competitiveness – private sector, untrustworthy politicians and wasteful spending
| 1,087 | 115 | 710 | 175 | 16 | 111 | 0.091429 | 0.634286 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,329 |
That conclusion is inescapable, Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban National Assembly, indicated in Havana last week, referring to the five Cuban men still imprisoned in the United States, despite a 2005 decision by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that the deprivation of the liberty of Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labaniño and René González was arbitrary. “The United States has been accustomed, is accustomed, to ignore international law, to ignore the world,” he said. In stark contrast to the international response to the September 11 attacks in the United States, and as a sad indictment of the selective consciences of member countries of the United Nations Security Council, terrorist attacks against Cuba were to all intents and purposes ignored by the international community for many decades. “For practically half a century Cuba has been the object of terrorist paramilitary attacks coming from US territory. First we tried to persuade the US bilaterally, through an unending list of diplomatic notes and denunciations, then we tried to get the international community to act, specifically the United Nations Security Council. I personally remember after months of insistence being able to have a Security Council meeting to discuss the issues of terrorism against Cuba, to no avail. Do you know how many speakers took the floor? Two. Myself and my denunciation, and the American Ambassador to refute it. Every other member of the Security Council didn’t even open their mouth, and the Security Council did nothing.” Faced with the refusal of either US governments or the international community to intervene, and a sustained series of bombings at tourist installations in the 1990’s causing substantial damage, numerous injuries, and the killing an Italian tourist, the Cuban government was forced to take matters into their own hands. Unlike the US with Iraq and Afghanistan, Cuba did not invade Miami, nor launch military offensives. Rather, they sent an unarmed group of Cuban agents to Miami to work with other Cuban Americans to infiltrate Miami terrorist groups in an attempt to prevent further death and destruction at home and abroad. Alarcon is the first to admit that the men were guilty of some administrative breaches. “Of course, they did violate the US law, first of all they didn’t report to the Justice Department what they were doing.
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Julie Webb-Pullman 2010 (reporter for the NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO FREE THE CUBAN FIVE, March 2, 2010, “Interview with Ricardo Alarcon (Part 1)”, http://www.freethefive.org/updates/IntlMedia/IMScoop030210.htm, ak)
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Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban National Assembly, indicated in Havana last week, referring to the five Cuban men still imprisoned in the United States, In stark contrast to the international response to the September 11 attacks in the United States, and as a sad indictment of the selective consciences of member countries of the United Nations Security Council, terrorist attacks against Cuba were to all intents and purposes ignored by the international community for many decades. Cuba has been the object of terrorist paramilitary attacks coming from US territory. First we tried to persuade the US bilaterally, through an unending list of diplomatic notes and denunciations, then we tried to get the international community to act, specifically the United Nations Security Council. Do you know how many speakers took the floor? Two. Myself and my denunciation Every other member of the Security Council didn’t even open their mouth, and the Security Council did nothing.” Faced with the refusal of either US governments or the international community to intervene, and a sustained series of bombings at tourist installations in the 1990’s causing substantial damage, numerous injuries, and the killing an Italian tourist, the Cuban government was forced to take matters into their own hands.
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The UN does nothing about terrorism in Cuba
| 2,426 | 44 | 1,305 | 385 | 8 | 204 | 0.020779 | 0.52987 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
|
Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,330 |
Some analysts have made a compelling case that the fear of nuclear proliferation, or the spread of nuclear weapons, has been exaggerated. Some go even further and argue that proliferation may actually increase global stability. It is an argument peculiar to nuclear weaponry, as it does not apply and is not made with regard to other so-called weapons of mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons. Nuclear weapons are simply so destructive, this school of thought argues, that using them is such a high bar that it would be madness itself to launch against a nuclear-armed foe. Put another way, nuclear states should know better than to fight wars with each other. The argument that proliferation is not necessarily a dire threat has been made in expansions both lateral – to other countries – and vertical – in the growth of nuclear stockpiles. ‘Since 1945’, remarked Michael Mandelbaum, 25 years ago, ‘the more nuclear weapons each has accumulated, the less likely, on the whole, it has seemed that either side would use them’. Others have made similar arguments. Kenneth Waltz maintains, for example, that nuclear weapons preserve an ‘imperfect peace’ on the subcontinent between India and Pakistan. Responding to reports that all Pentagon war games involving India and Pakistan always end in a nuclear exchange, Waltz argues that ‘Has everyone in that building forgotten that deterrence works precisely because nuclear states fear that conventional military engagements may escalate to the nuclear level, and therefore they draw back from the brink?’
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Oxford University Press 09, USA, Do nuclear weapons make the world a safer place?, March 26, 2009. http://blog.oup.com/2009/z03/nuclear-weapons/.
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the fear of nuclear proliferation, or the spread of nuclear weapons, has been exaggerated. Some go even further and argue that proliferation may actually increase global stability. The argument that proliferation is not necessarily a dire threat has been made in expansions both lateral – to other countries – and vertical – in the growth of nuclear stockpiles. Waltz maintains, for example, that nuclear weapons preserve an ‘imperfect peace’ on the subcontinent between India and Pakistan. Responding to reports that all Pentagon war games involving India and Pakistan always end in a nuclear exchange, Waltz argues that ‘Has everyone in that building forgotten that deterrence works precisely because nuclear states fear that conventional military engagements may escalate to the nuclear level, and therefore they draw back from the brink?’
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The threat of proliferation is exaggerated – if anything, prolif increases stability
| 1,569 | 84 | 842 | 251 | 12 | 129 | 0.047809 | 0.513944 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,331 |
The conclusion is in two parts. After saying what follows for American policy from my analysis, I briefly state the main reasons for believing that the slow spread of nuclear weapons will promote peace and reinforce international stability.¶ ¶ I have argued that the gradual spread of nuclear weapons is better than no spread and better than rapid spread. We do not face a set of happy choices. We may prefer that countries have conventional weapons only, do not run arms races, and do not fight. Yet the alternative to nuclear weapons for some countries may be ruinous arms races with high risk of their becoming engaged in debilitating conventional wars.¶ ¶ Countries have to care for their security with or without the help of others. If a country feels highly insecure and believes that nuclear weapons will make it more secure, America’s policy of opposing the spread of nuclear weapons will not easily determine theirs. Any slight chance of bringing the spread of nuclear weapons to a full stop exists only if the United States and the Soviet Union constantly and strenuously try to achieve that end. To do so carries costs measured in terms of their other interests. The strongest means by which the United States can persuade a country to forgo nuclear weapons is a guarantee of its security, especially if the guarantee is made credible by the presence of American troops. But how many commitments do we want to make and how many countries do we want to garrison? We are wisely reluctant to give guarantees, but we then should not expect to decide how other countries are to provide for their security. As a neighbour of China, India no doubt feels more secure, and can behave more reasonably, with a nuclear weapons capability than without it. The thought applies as well to Pakistan as India’s neighbour. We damage our relations with such countries by badgering them about nuclear weapons while being unwilling to guarantee their security. Under such circumstances they, not we, should decide what their national interests require.¶ ¶ If the United States and the Soviet Union lessen their opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons, will not many states jump on the nuclear bandwagon? Some have feared that weakening opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons will lead numerous states to make them because it may seem that ‘everyone is doing it’.¶ ¶ Why should we think that if the United States relaxes, numerous states will begin to make nuclear weapons? Both the United States and the Soviet Union were more relaxed in the past, and these effects did not follow. The Soviet Union initially furthered China’s nuclear development. The United States continues to help Britain maintain her deterrent forces. By 1968 the CIA had informed President Johnson of the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons, and in July of 1970 Richard Helms, Director of the CIA, gave this information to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. These and later disclosures were not followed by censure of Israel or by reductions of assistance to her. And in September of 1980 the Executive Branch, against the will of the House of Representatives but with the approval of the Senate, continued to do nuclear business with India despite her explosion of a nuclear device and despite her unwillingness to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.¶ ¶ Assisting some countries in the development of nuclear weapons and failing to oppose others has not caused a nuclear stampede. Is the more recent leniency towards India likely to? One reason to think so is that more countries now have the ability to make their own nuclear weapons, more than forty of them according to Joseph Nye.¶ ¶ Many more countries can than do. One can believe that American opposition to nuclear arming stays the deluge only by overlooking the complications of international life. Any state has to examine many conditions before deciding whether or not to develop nuclear weapons. Our opposition is only one factor and is not likely to be the decisive one. Many countries feel fairly secure living with their neighbours. Why should they want nuclear weapons? Some countries feeling threatened, have found security through their own strenuous efforts and through arrangements made with others. South Korea is an outstanding example. Many South Korean officials believe that South Korea would lose more in terms of American support if she acquired nuclear weapons than she would gain by having them. Further, on occasion we might slow the spread of nuclear weapons by not opposing the nuclear weapons programmes of some countries. When we oppose Pakistan’s nuclear programme, we are saying that we disapprove of countries developing nuclear weapons no matter what their neighbours do. Failing to oppose Pakistan’s efforts also sends a signal to potential nuclear states, suggesting that if a country develops nuclear weapons, a regional rival may do so as well and may do so without opposition from us. This message may give pause to some of the countries that are tempted to acquire nuclear weapons. After all, Argentina is to Brazil as Pakistan is to India.¶ ¶ Neither the gradual spread of nuclear weapons nor American and Russian acquiescence in this has opened the nuclear floodgates. Nations attend to their security in ways they think best. The fact that so many more countries can make nuclear weapons than do make them says more about the hesitation of countries to enter the nuclear military business than about the effectiveness of American policy. We can sensibly suit our policy to individual cases. sometimes bringing pressure against a country moving towards nuclear weapons capability and sometimes quietly acquiescing. No one policy is right for all countries. We should ask what our interests in regional peace and stability require in particular instances. We should also ask what the interests of other countries require before putting pressure on them. Some countries are likely to suffer more in cost and pain if they remain conventional states than if they become nuclear ones. The measured and selective spread of nuclear weapons does not run against our interests and can increase the security of some states at a price they can afford to pay.¶ ¶ It is not likely that nuclear weapons will spread with a speed that exceeds the ability of their new owners to adjust to them. The spread of nuclear weapons is something that we have worried too much about and tried too hard to stop.
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Kenneth Waltz 81, Political scientist and professor at berkely and columbi, leader in his field on International Relations, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Better,” Adelphi Papers, Number 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981, https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/waltz1.htm , PML
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the slow spread of nuclear weapons will promote peace and reinforce international stability he gradual spread of nuclear weapons is better than no spread and better than rapid spread. Countries have to care for their security with or without the help of others. If a country feels highly insecure and believes that nuclear weapons will make it more secure, America’s policy of opposing the spread of nuclear weapons will not easily determine theirs The strongest means by which the United States can persuade a country to forgo nuclear weapons is a guarantee of its security But how many commitments do we want to make and how many countries do we want to garrison? We are wisely reluctant to give guarantees, Why should we think that if the United States relaxes, numerous states will begin to make nuclear weapons? Both the United States and the Soviet Union were more relaxed in the past, and these effects did not follow Assisting some countries in the development of nuclear weapons and failing to oppose others has not caused a nuclear stampede. Is the more recent leniency towards India likely to? Many more countries can than do. One can believe that American opposition to nuclear arming stays the deluge only by overlooking the complications of international life. Any state has to examine many conditions before deciding whether or not to develop nuclear weapons. Our opposition is only one factor and is not likely to be the decisive one Many South Korean officials believe that South Korea would lose more in terms of American support if she acquired nuclear weapons than she would gain by having them. Further, on occasion we might slow the spread of nuclear weapons by not opposing the nuclear weapons programmes of some countries. Neither the gradual spread of nuclear weapons nor American and Russian acquiescence in this has opened the nuclear floodgates. Nations attend to their security in ways they think best. The fact that so many more countries can make nuclear weapons than do make them says more about the hesitation of countries to enter the nuclear military business than about the effectiveness of American policy. It is not likely that nuclear weapons will spread with a speed that exceeds the ability of their new owners to adjust to them. The spread of nuclear weapons is something that we have worried too much about and tried too hard to stop.
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Prolif creates stability and US can’t stop prolif
| 6,475 | 49 | 2,381 | 1,075 | 8 | 401 | 0.007442 | 0.373023 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
|
1,332 |
Unsurprisingly, concerns about nuclear proliferation have percolated through foreign-policy and IR scholarship. In policy circles, no consensus has emerged in the heated debate on the best counterproliferation approach: engagement, containment, or preventive war. In scholarly circles, recent articles have shed light on the dynamics of nuclear proliferation, both from the supply and demand sides, and formal approaches are increasingly used to highlight the determinants of military investment. Yet, we argue, we are still missing a theory capable of predicting the success of counterproliferation efforts and the likelihood they will result in preventive war. This paper presents a first step in that direction. In our view, attempts to deter nuclear proliferation are unlikely to succeed when the potential shift in the balance of power resulting from nuclearization is sufficiently small relative to the costs of preventive war.2 Under such conditions, the threat of preventive war is not credible, and proliferation will occur
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Debs and Monteiro 10, Alexandre Debsy and Nuno Monteiroz Dept. of Political Science, Yale University, November 5, 2010, Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself?¶ Nuclear Proliferation and Preventive War, http://www.yale.edu/leitner/resources/papers/DebsMonteiro2011-01.pdf , PML
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we are still missing a theory capable of predicting the success of counterproliferation efforts and the likelihood they will result in preventive war attempts to deter nuclear proliferation are unlikely to succeed when the potential shift in the balance of power resulting from nuclearization is sufficiently small relative to the costs of preventive war.2 Under such conditions, the threat of preventive war is not credible, and proliferation will occur
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Prolif will happen, counter-prolif measures fail
| 1,028 | 48 | 451 | 151 | 6 | 69 | 0.039735 | 0.456954 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,333 |
But the predictions of successive waves of pessimism about the future of non-proliferation have failed to materialize. In fact, one of the greatest puzzles of international politics since 1945 is “the failure of nuclear proliferation to assume a pandemic-like dynamic” (Muller and Schmidt, 2010, 124). Even strong pessimists acknowledge that – with the possible exception of North Korea – “[t]here are no more nuclear weapons states now than there were at the end of the Cold War” (Allison, 2010). We believe the more pessimistic predictions about nuclear proliferation are unwarranted. The absence of a systemic balance of power, contrary to what is commonly believed, places an important brake on proliferation dynamics. In the post Cold War, power preponderance increases the effect of nuclearization. At the same time, it decreases the costs of (U.S.-launched) preventive war. Taken together, these two factors make proliferation less likely – and preventive war more likely, even against non-proliferating states. Our argument has important implications for the deterrence literature. The model described above highlights theoretically how deterrence – in this case, counterproliferation – may fail despite credible threats. The would-be proliferator’s uncertainty about whether compliance will be rewarded generates the possibility of proliferation in the face of credible threats of preventive 30military action. This failure of deterrence caused by non-credible assurances is particularly important in situations of lower war costs, as when a powerful state is attempting to deter a relatively weak state
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Debs and Monteiro 10, Alexandre Debsy and Nuno Monteiroz Dept. of Political Science, Yale University, November 5, 2010, Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself?¶ Nuclear Proliferation and Preventive War, http://www.yale.edu/leitner/resources/papers/DebsMonteiro2011-01.pdf , PML
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the predictions of successive waves of pessimism about the future of non-proliferation have failed to materialize. the failure of nuclear proliferation to assume a pandemic-like dynamic We believe the more pessimistic predictions about nuclear proliferation are unwarranted. The absence of a systemic balance of power places an important brake on proliferation dynamics At the same time, it decreases the costs of (U.S.-launched) preventive war these two factors make proliferation less likely – and preventive war more likely, even against non-proliferating states counterproliferation – may fail despite credible threats. The would-be proliferator’s uncertainty about whether compliance will be rewarded generates the possibility of proliferation in the face of credible threats of preventive
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Counter prolif measures will fail and there is a very small chance of proliferation
| 1,611 | 83 | 794 | 237 | 14 | 111 | 0.059072 | 0.468354 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
|
Affirmatives
|
2013
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1,334 |
Our theory shows how these tensions are resolved. When the impact of nuclearization on the balance of power is small relative to the cost of preventive war, proliferation occurs and peace prevails. Intuitively, if the costs of preventive war are great relative to the additional concessions that the target will be able to extract from the deterrer as a result of its newly-acquired nuclear 5capability, preventive war is not a rational option. Under such circumstances, the deterrer’s threat to launch a preventive strike should the target pursue nuclear weapons is not credible. Knowing this, the target develops nuclear weapons undeterred.
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Debs and Monteiro 10, Alexandre Debsy and Nuno Monteiroz Dept. of Political Science, Yale University, November 5, 2010, Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself?¶ Nuclear Proliferation and Preventive War, http://www.yale.edu/leitner/resources/papers/DebsMonteiro2011-01.pdf , PML
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When the impact of nuclearization on the balance of power is small relative to the cost of preventive war, proliferation occurs and peace prevails , if the costs of preventive war are great relative to the additional concessions that the target will be able to extract from the deterrer as a result of its newly-acquired nuclear 5capability, preventive war is not a rational option. the deterrer’s threat to launch a preventive strike should the target pursue nuclear weapons is not credible. Knowing this, the target develops nuclear weapons undeterred.
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Prolif will occur and nothing will happen, preventive wars are irrational
| 642 | 73 | 554 | 100 | 11 | 89 | 0.11 | 0.89 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,335 |
In our view, however, the deterrence conceptual apparatus is of great use in analyzing nuclear proliferation. By modeling counterproliferation as a deterrence problem, we can examine the strategic interaction between, on one side, the state that is considering the development of nuclear weapons and, on the other, that which is threatening it with negative consequences should it develop them. This interaction – which takes place before nuclearization and, therefore, before the balance of power shifts – conditions both the likelihood of investment and that of preventive war. As the classical deterrence literature has shown, a necessary condition for successful deterrence is the credibility of threats (Schelling, 1966). During the Cold War, the critically high costs of superpower conflict made it hard for U.S. threats to be credible. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the costs of U.S. military intervention have significantly decreased. As a result, U.S. deterrent threats should now be more credible. And yet, these threats have failed to deter North Korea from nuclearizing. Moreover, fear that such threats were ineffective in the Iraqi case led to the 2003 invasion. Why would there be proliferation, as well as preventive war, when threats of military action are credible? The answer is that the credibility of threats is not a sufficient condition for successful deterrence. Deterrence depends on credible threats and credible assurances. To be successful, a deterrent effort must involve not only a credible threat of punishment in case of defection (nuclearization) by the target – it must also include a credible assurance of reward for compliance (non-nuclearization).
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Debs and Monteiro 10, Alexandre Debsy and Nuno Monteiroz Dept. of Political Science, Yale University, November 5, 2010, Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself?¶ Nuclear Proliferation and Preventive War, http://www.yale.edu/leitner/resources/papers/DebsMonteiro2011-01.pdf , PML
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the deterrence conceptual apparatus is of great use in analyzing nuclear proliferation. By modeling counterproliferation as a deterrence problem, we can examine the strategic interaction between, on one side, the state that is considering the development of nuclear weapons and, on the other, that which is threatening it with negative consequences should it develop them U.S. deterrent threats should now be more credible. And yet, these threats have failed to deter North Korea from nuclearizing fear that such threats were ineffective in the Iraqi case led to the 2003 invasion The answer is that the credibility of threats is not a sufficient condition for successful deterrence. Deterrence depends on credible threats and credible assurances. To be successful, a deterrent effort must involve not only a credible threat of punishment in case of defection (nuclearization) by the target – it must also include a credible assurance of reward for compliance (non-nuclearization
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The US fails to prevent prolif, because it uses only threats
| 1,693 | 60 | 975 | 260 | 11 | 150 | 0.042308 | 0.576923 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,336 |
Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of its existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been enormously destructive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to destroying the entire human race. There is a biological reason. Natural selection favors germs of limited lethality; they are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet there is no danger that AIDS will destroy the entire human race. The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would cause the extinction of the human race is probably even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric times, when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited the spread of disease), despite wider human contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease.
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Robert Posner 05, Court of Appeals Judge; Professor, Chicago School of Law,Catastrophe, 2005 http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4150331/Catastrophe-the-dozen-most-significant.html.
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Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of its existence is a source of genuine comfort There have been enormously destructive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to destroying the entire human race Natural selection favors germs of limited lethality; they are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too quickly AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would cause the extinction of the human race is probably even less today than in the past
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No extinction- humans have survived every plague in history
| 1,146 | 60 | 758 | 199 | 9 | 134 | 0.045226 | 0.673367 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,337 |
First, narrowing down extinction events or even catastrophic population declines to single causes is almost always problematic. In most real cases, extinction is multicausational, even if one cause can be identified as being predominantly responsible [5]. Habitat fragmentation and climate change are currently regarded as the leading prime movers behind most instances of extreme endangerment, to which other stressors such as pollution, invasive competitors, and so forth, might be of greater or lesser importance in particular circumstances. Disease, however, is rarely mentioned as a possible contributing factor in such contexts (but see [6]).¶ Another difficulty is lack of knowledge about pathogen diversity and susceptibility in wildlife. In the absence of sufficient means of detection and characterization, it is difficult to assess or to give quantitative expression to the degree to which pathogens might influence population decline or extinction.
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MacPhee and Greenwood 13, Ross D. E. MacPhee ertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, and Alex D. Greenwood Leibniz-Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Department of Wildlife Diseases, January 4 2013, Infectious Disease, Endangerment, and Extinction, http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijeb/2013/571939/
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narrowing down extinction events or even catastrophic population declines to single causes is almost always problematic. extinction is multicausational, even if one cause can be identified as being predominantly responsible Disease, however, is rarely mentioned as a possible contributing factor in such contexts
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Disease is very unlikely to be the primary cause of extinction
| 960 | 62 | 312 | 138 | 11 | 43 | 0.07971 | 0.311594 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,338 |
Although there are several current examples of mammalian species already under threat for various reasons being severely impacted by infectious diseases—including canine distemper in black-footed ferrets and lions [43, 44], Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic diseases in anthropoids [45], and transmissible facial tumour disease in Tasmanian devils [46]—none of these has (yet) resulted in extinction. Possible examples in the mammalian fossil record (cf. [19]), although compelling in some instances, lack adequate corroboration for reasons already discussed. Indeed, to date there is only one study [10] that may be said to meet appropriate retrospective criteria for identifying disease as the primary cause of extinction at the species level in any mammal. This study involved an investigation of the disappearance of two endemic murid species on Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) at the beginning of the 20th century.
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MacPhee and Greenwood 13, Ross D. E. MacPhee ertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, and Alex D. Greenwood Leibniz-Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Department of Wildlife Diseases, January 4 2013, Infectious Disease, Endangerment, and Extinction, http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijeb/2013/571939/
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Although there are several current examples of mammalian species already under threat for various reasons being severely impacted by infectious diseases none of these has (yet) resulted in extinction to date there is only one study [10] that may be said to meet appropriate retrospective criteria for identifying disease as the primary cause of extinction at the species level in any mammal.
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There is only one case of extinction in mammals and that’s without tech
| 915 | 71 | 391 | 134 | 13 | 62 | 0.097015 | 0.462687 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,339 |
Although host-pathogen interactions have been a subject of interest in conservation biology for some time, the possibility that disease might actually drive extinctions in certain contexts has rarely been considered. This is partly due to a general lack of knowledge concerning wildlife pathogens and their microbiology, but it also stems from a lack of well-researched and unequivocal examples of disease-induced loss of naturally occurring populations or species. We anticipate that, with the advent of endeavors such as the Human Microbiome Project [68] and the further development of next-generation sequencing, we will have an increasingly better understanding of microbiological processes in wildlife. Because of their relevance to human health, bat and rodent viromes are being explored with special intensity using high-throughput approaches, with the result that many novel—and potentially significantly pathogenic—viral strains have been identified in recent years [8, 69–72]. As such surveys increase, and sequencing costs decrease, we can expect to see a wealth of new data concerning microbiological diversity in wildlife, as well as new understandings of the natural history of host-pathogen relationships.
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MacPhee and Greenwood 13, Ross D. E. MacPhee ertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, and Alex D. Greenwood Leibniz-Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Department of Wildlife Diseases, January 4 2013, Infectious Disease, Endangerment, and Extinction, http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijeb/2013/571939/
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Although host-pathogen interactions have been a subject of interest in conservation biology for some time, the possibility that disease might actually drive extinctions in certain contexts has rarely been considered. but it also stems from a lack of well-researched and unequivocal examples of disease-induced loss of naturally occurring populations or species. We anticipate that, with the advent of endeavors such as the Human Microbiome Project [68] and the further development of next-generation sequencing, we will have an increasingly better understanding of microbiological processes in wildlife
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No extinction from disease in mammals empirics prove
| 1,220 | 52 | 602 | 174 | 8 | 85 | 0.045977 | 0.488506 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,340 |
Although U.S. diplomats could have acted in a less ostentatious way, the dissidents themselves had very little choice. It is not easy to prepare for a peaceful transition of government in a country with no fax machines or vcrs for sale and no photocopying facilities, and where a three-minute phone call abroad costs the equivalent of the average monthly salary. Satellite dishes are banned, and listening to foreign radio broadcasts is deemed "subversive." Thus it is hardly surprising that when the U.S. Interests Section opened a sort of Internet cafe for Cuban dissidents last year, the attraction proved irresistible. Many flocked to the site, in a former embassy building on the sea front, to surf the Web--a forbidden fruit in a country where Internet access cards were previously sold only to tourists (and are now entirely unavailable). Castro, again not amused, was unable to shut down the Internet cafe without closing the entire U.S. Interests Section. So he locked up its users instead. They now enjoy prison visits from family members every three months, instead of Web access every Thursday. Castro has applied a similar method to undermine the effect of visits by foreign personalities who hoped to use their presence to support local civil society. Private visitors--Czech officials on nondiplomatic passports, a Swedish politician, and an Argentine journalist--have been detained and deported, more or less quietly. Official visitors, however, such as Jimmy Carter; Mexico's last foreign minister, Jorge Castaeda; or the heads of state who came for the 1999 Latin American summit, could not be punished themselves, so Castro went after the Cubans that they had met with instead. For example, on March 8, eight visiting members of the U.S. House of Representatives met in a Havana hotel with five local dissidents, two of them accompanied by their wives. Four of the activists were subsequently locked up on sentences ranging from 18 to 26 years, after waiters from the hotel testified against them at their trials.
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Bond 3 (Theresa Bond, She works for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and is a respected political analyst specializing in closed societies, "The Crackdown in Cuba", Sept./Oct. 2003, pp. 118-130 , http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMA0312H-0-6255&artno=0000174822&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Internet%20Cuba&title=The%20Crackdown%20in%20Cuba&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N)
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Satellite dishes are banned, and listening to foreign radio broadcasts is deemed "subversive." Thus it is hardly surprising that when the U.S. Interests Section opened a sort of Internet cafe for Cuban dissidents last year, the attraction proved irresistible. Many flocked to the site, Castro, again not amused, was unable to shut down the Internet cafe without closing the entire U.S. Interests Section. So he locked up its users instead. They now enjoy prison visits from family members every three months, instead of Web access every Thursday. Castro has applied a similar method to undermine the effect of visits by foreign personalities who hoped to use their presence to support local civil society. Private visitors--Czech officials on nondiplomatic passports, a Swedish politician, and an Argentine journalist--have been detained and deported, more or less quietly. Official visitors, however, such as Jimmy Carter; Mexico's last foreign minister, Jorge Castaeda; or the heads of state who came for the 1999 Latin American summit, could not be punished themselves, so Castro went after the Cubans that they had met with instead
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Cuba will say no - past actions prove
| 2,032 | 37 | 1,135 | 327 | 8 | 177 | 0.024465 | 0.541284 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,341 |
Gonzalez Planas stated that economic conditions in Cuba prevent mass access to the Internet, and therefore the government has elected to make such resources available for social use, through collective centers, e-mail and Web-surfing rooms, schools, universities and computer youth clubs. "This is definitely more effective and more citizens can have access than if, for example, we installed connections in a few homes, which only a small elite could afford and would use up a large part of our bandwidth," said Gonzalez Planas. However, the e-mail and Web-surfing rooms are few and far between, and are mainly located in the tourist hotels. Furthermore, they only accept convertible pesos (local currency equivalent to the U.S. dollar), and they do not always admit Cuban citizens. At present, Cuba's connection to the Web has insufficient bandwidth, or capacity, to satisfy the country's demand, and the only link to the Internet is via satellite.
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Grogg 5 (Patricia Grogg, She is a writer for the Inter Press Service, "Cuba: Government Holds Firm on Restricting Internet, E-Mail:, November 14, 2005, http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMA0312H-0-6255&artno=0000242034&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Internet%20Cuba&title=Cuba%3A%20Government%20Holds%20Firm%20on%20Restricting%20Internet%2C%20E-Mail&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N)
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economic conditions in Cuba prevent mass access to the Internet, and therefore the government has elected to make such resources available for social use, through collective centers, e-mail and Web-surfing rooms, schools, universities and computer youth clubs. Planas. However, the e-mail and Web-surfing rooms are few and far between, and are mainly located in the tourist hotels. Furthermore, they only accept convertible pesos and they do not always admit Cuban citizens. At present, Cuba's connection to the Web has insufficient bandwidth, or capacity, to satisfy the country's demand, and the only link to the Internet is via satellite.
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Even if Cuba says yes economic conditions prevent successful internet use.
| 950 | 74 | 641 | 150 | 11 | 98 | 0.073333 | 0.653333 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,342 |
Witness the recent arrest and execution of political dissidents. Castro's violent crackdown is a clear indication of his concerns with succession and desire to leave a clean slate for the smooth assumption of power by his brother Raul, head of the Cuban armed forces and second secretary of Cuba's Communist Party. Other recent measures have included the replacement of hundreds of Communist Party officials and the rehabilitation of Ramiro Valdes as a new member of the ruling Council of State. A former interior minister, Valdes is a dreaded figure in Cuba, remembered for his human-rights abuses and brutal repressive methods. Castro has also been emphasizing greater ideological rigidity. The "Battle of Ideas," a program to imbue the masses with stronger anti-American feelings; the appointment of an old Marxist leader to run the Communist Party schools; and the clampdown on Internet access are further evidence that Cuba is undergoing a Chinese-type cultural revolution (albeit one slower and less dramatic than in China). In such a scenario, an aging leader insists on purifying and rejuvenating "his" exhausted revolution before departing from the world.
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Suchlicki 4(Jaime Suchlicki, He is the founding Director of the Cuba Transition Project at the University of Miami and Director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. He is also the Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor of History and author of Cuba From Columbus to Castro, "Cuba After Castro", Jan. 2004, http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMA0312H-0-2213&artno=0000182149&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Cuba%20Internet%20&title=Cuba%20After%20Castro&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N) AZ
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Witness the recent arrest and execution of political dissidents. Castro's violent crackdown Other recent measures have included the replacement of hundreds of Communist Party officials and the rehabilitation of Ramiro Valde Valdes is a dreaded figure in Cuba, remembered for his human-rights abuses and brutal repressive methods. Castro has also been emphasizing greater ideological rigidity The "Battle of Ideas," a program to imbue the masses with stronger anti-American feelings and the clampdown on Internet access are further evidence , an aging leader insists on purifying and rejuvenating "his" exhausted revolutio
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Cuba says no past actions prove
| 1,164 | 31 | 621 | 181 | 6 | 90 | 0.033149 | 0.497238 |
Cuban ICT Affirmative and Negative Supplement - Northwestern 2013 6WeekJuniors.html5
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Northwestern (NHSI)
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Affirmatives
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2013
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1,343 |
As the microfinance industry becomes further commercialized and neoliberalized, activists on ¶ both sides of the debate reframe arguments that were used to promote or denigrate free-market ¶ economics. Proponents of commercialized microfinance promote market-oriented approaches ¶ because they increase competition, invite foreign capital, and provide the best infrastructure for ¶ wide-scale development. Detractors of commercialized microfinance say that poverty cannot be ¶ reduced by market-oriented policies, as they believe it was free-market ideology that exacerbated¶ such poverty in the first place.
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Carillo 2k9 [Ian, Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas--http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.44194/The%20commercialization%20of%20microfinance%20in%20mexico.pdf - Sept. 28]
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As the microfinance industry becomes further neoliberalized, activists on ¶ both sides of the debate reframe arguments that were used to promote or denigrate free-market ¶ econom microfinance promote competition, invite foreign capital, and provide the best infrastructure for ¶ wide-scale developmen poverty cannot be ¶ reduced by market-oriented policies, as they believe it was free-market ideology that exacerbated¶ such poverty in the first place.
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We control uniqueness-Micro-finance is becoming more neoliberalized—makes it try or die for the alt
| 608 | 99 | 452 | 82 | 14 | 65 | 0.170732 | 0.792683 |
Neoliberalism Generic - DDI 2013.html5
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Dartmouth DDI
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Kritiks
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2013
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1,344 |
The microfinance industry has completely disproven the misplaced theory that the poor are not ¶ credit-worthy. Microfinance institutions have shown that lending to the poor can not only be ¶ sustainable, it can be profitable. Berger, Otero, and Schor note that write-off rates are lower and ¶ return-on-equity139 are consistently higher for microfinance institutions than formal banks. More ¶ so, repayment rates in microfinance institutions (upwards of 98%) are significantly higher than ¶ those in the traditional banking sector (mid-70%).140¶ In Mexico, the traditional banking industry has consistently marginalized the majority of the ¶ population, and neoliberal reforms have done little to amend the situation. Additionally, in ¶ Mexico and Latin America, most credit is concentrated in a few very large loans, for reasons of profitability and stability.141¶ Figure 1 – An Estimate of the Population with Access to Financial ¶ Loaning small amounts of money to large numbers of people who ¶ lack collateral has traditionally been seen as a business venture with the potential for high losses. ¶ This mentality has had serious ramifications on Mexico’s low-income communities. As Figure 1 ¶ illustrates, Mexico’s financial institutions failed to provide financial services to 75 percent of the ¶ adult population in 2007. When compared to other developing countries in Latin America, ¶ Mexico ranked the lowest; in comparison with industrialized countries, Mexico trailed ¶ significantly.
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Carillo 2k9 [Ian, Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas--http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.44194/The%20commercialization%20of%20microfinance%20in%20mexico.pdf - Sept. 28]
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. Microfinance institutions have shown that lending to the poor can be profitable repayment rates in microfinance institutions are significantly higher than ¶ those in the traditional banking sector the traditional banking industry has consistently marginalized the majority of the ¶ population, and neoliberal reforms have done little to amend the situation in ¶ Mexico and Latin America, most credit is concentrated in a few very large loans, for reasons of profitability and stability ¶ Loaning small amounts of money to large numbers of people who ¶ lack collateral has traditionally been seen as a business venture with the potential for high losses. ¶ This mentality has had serious ramifications on Mexico’s low-income communities
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Micro-finance in Mexico is highly concentrated for profit maximizations—causes backlash towards low income families
| 1,494 | 116 | 737 | 226 | 14 | 114 | 0.061947 | 0.504425 |
Neoliberalism Generic - DDI 2013.html5
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Dartmouth DDI
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Kritiks
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2013
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1,345 |
Supporters of commercialization contend that it is the future of microfinance. Robert Peck ¶ Christen and Deborah Drake say as much in their chapter “Commercialization: The New Reality ¶ of Microfinance.”178¶ Under neoliberal principles, the opening of markets was meant to facilitate greater economic ¶ growth, increase employment, and reduce poverty. Initially, the heavily protectionist policies of ¶ the ISI-era had to be stripped away. Latin American governments began to eliminate tariffs on ¶ foreign imports and reduce state spending, which meant privatizing state-owned industries, ¶ downsizing employee rolls, and cutting spending on social programs. Theoretically, the ¶ elimination of tariffs and regulations should have been conducive to increased foreign ¶ investment. Although there would inevitably be “short term pain” from social turmoil rooted in ¶ spikes of unemployment mixed with reduced access to social services, the “long term gain” ¶ would consist of industry growth and job creation. Korzeniewicz and Smith note that the ¶ combination of job creation and increased productivity would lead to higher wages, which would ¶ directly reduce poverty rates. Strong market growth would then provide the state with revenue to ¶ ACCION echoes the sentiment in their publication Microfinance in the Real ¶ World, which is undoubtedly a poke at traditionalists who believe microfinance should remain ¶ free of profit motives. Many key analysts and policymakers believe that a commercialized ¶ industry will impact the greatest number of people and pull the most people out of poverty. ¶ However, in order to invite the capital needed to expand the industry, investors need to be drawn ¶ into the industry and they need to be compensated for their investments. Therefore, high profits ¶ must be earned. This mentality greatly resembles neoliberal philosophy. support social programs.179¶ In practice, neoliberal policies had a different outcome. Whereas increased market-orientation ¶ should create more formal employment, the informal sector grew significantly. Poverty and ¶ inequality rose substantially, supporting Polyani’s idea that “free markets are inherently ¶ machines for the creation and reproduction of inequality” and that their “upward” flow of wealth ¶ perpetuates “pre-existing class differences.”¶ Theoretically, free-market growth would provide the best way to ¶ create wealth, expand employment opportunities, and reduce poverty. ¶ 180 In discussing how the free-market inherently ¶ exacerbates inequality, Adam Smith stated that “every man’s interest would prompt him to seek ¶ the advantageous, and to shun the disadvantageous employment.”181 Former World Bank ¶ president Joseph Stiglitz echoed: “Left to itself, the market will tend to underprovide human ¶ capital. It is very difficult to borrow against the prospects of future earnings since human capital ¶ cannot be collaterized. These difficulties are especially severe for poor families.”182¶ Similar to neoliberal philosophy, microfinance commercialization dictates that expansion of ¶ microfinance services is best achieved through conditions in which private capitalists feel ¶ confident that their investments will yield strong returns and high profits. Theoretically, what is ¶ best for the holders of capital is also what is best for society’s development. Based on the ¶ reasoning of the proponents of for-profit microfinance, expanding the outreach and scope of ¶ So, while ¶ analysts and policymakers may model economic growth around the free-market with the ¶ intention of increasing productivity and efficiency, there is overwhelming evidence that an ¶ additional consequence of such pursuits in Mexico has been both the expansion of poverty and ¶ the widening of inequality. microfinance can best be achieved through a model that pursues high profits. Such success will ¶ inevitably attract more investors, which will then create more MFIs, leading to higher ¶ competition and lower interest rates for customers.183¶ Successful commercialized MFIs point to their growing client base to show that they have ¶ found an eager market. A near ten-fold increase of customers from 2002 to 2008 signifies that ¶ many customers are willing to try the Compartamos product at least once. In Compartamos’ ¶ methodology, it is understood that social benefits are inherent in their product, therefore the next ¶ step is to introduce that product into as many markets as possible. If the product sells well, then ¶ the customers will be socially improved for having bought it and investors will be handsomely ¶ compensated for risking their capital. Within this understanding, it is a win-win situation.
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Carillo 2k9 [Ian, Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas--http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.44194/The%20commercialization%20of%20microfinance%20in%20mexico.pdf - Sept. 28]
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Supporters of commercialization contend that it is the future of microfinance Under neoliberal principles, the opening of markets was meant to facilitate greater economic ¶ growth, increase employment, and reduce poverty. Latin American governments began to eliminate tariffs on ¶ foreign imports and reduce state spending, which meant privatizing state-owned industries, ¶ downsizing employee rolls, and cutting spending on social programs. Although there would inevitably be “short term pain” from social turmoil rooted in ¶ spikes of unemployment mixed with reduced access to social services, the “long term gain” ¶ would consist of industry growth and job creation Many key analysts and policymakers believe that a commercialized ¶ industry will impact the greatest number of people and pull the most people out of poverty. ¶ However, in order to invite the capital needed to expand the industry, investors need to be drawn ¶ into the industry and they need to be compensated for their investments. Therefore, high profits ¶ must be earned. This mentality greatly resembles neoliberal philosophy In practice, neoliberal policies had a different outcome. Whereas increased market-orientation ¶ should create more formal employment, the informal sector grew significantly. Poverty and ¶ inequality rose substantially, “free markets are inherently ¶ machines for the creation and reproduction of inequality” their “upward” flow of wealth ¶ perpetuates “pre-existing class differences.”¶ Theoretically, free-market growth would provide the best way to ¶ create wealth, expand employment opportunities, and reduce poverty every man’s interest would prompt him to seek ¶ the advantageous, and to shun the disadvantageous employment.” “Left to itself, the market will tend to underprovide human ¶ capital. It is very difficult to borrow against the prospects of future earnings since human capital ¶ cannot be collaterized. These difficulties are especially severe for poor families.” microfinance commercialization dictates that expansion of ¶ microfinance services is best achieved through conditions in which private capitalists feel ¶ confident that their investments will yield strong returns and high profits microfinance can best be achieved through a model that pursues high profits. Such success will ¶ inevitably attract more investors, which will then create more MFIs, leading to higher ¶ competition and lower interest rates for customers
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Micro-finance is rooted in neoliberal ideology-perpetuates profit maximization and usage of human capital
| 4,694 | 105 | 2,448 | 712 | 13 | 361 | 0.018258 | 0.507022 |
Neoliberalism Generic - DDI 2013.html5
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Dartmouth DDI
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Kritiks
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2013
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Undoubtedly, the commercialized microfinance industry in Mexico has been a hotspot for ¶ ¶ investment and growth. According to Microenterprise Americas, of the 20 most profitable MFIs ¶ ¶ in Latin America, Mexican MFIs occupy the top eight positions. Additionally, in terms of ¶ ¶ growth, Mexican firms occupy six of the top ten positions. The study notes that the disparity in ¶ ¶ profitability within Mexico’s for-profit microfinance industry has recently begun shrinking, ¶ ¶ indicating that the emergence of competitors may have led to constricting profit margins and ¶ ¶ increased efficiency.206¶ ¶ The 2007 IPO signified the potential outreach of commercialized microfinance, say defenders ¶ ¶ of Compartamos. Wall Street Journal columnist May Anastasia O’Grady, who sarcastically labels commercialization critics “do-gooders,” posits: “Would not serving them [the poor] have ¶ ¶ been a better moral outcome?”207 The monetary success of the IPO caused investors to begin ¶ ¶ visualizing the impact that large injections of capital could have on the microfinance industry. ¶ ¶ Based on Compartamos’ lucrative IPO, the CGAP estimates that global funding for microfinance ¶ ¶ could rise from the $4 billion raised in 2008 to nearly $30 billion annually. This could have a ¶ ¶ dramatic impact on the global reach of microfinance. In its current state, the microfinance ¶ ¶ industry reached 133 million customers in 2006 and is predicted to reach 177 million in 2015. ¶ ¶ However, proponents of commercialization say that one billion customers could be served by ¶ ¶ 2015 if Compartamos’ IPO is duplicated across the globe. As one Compartamossupporter ¶ ¶ declared, microlending “has lost its innocence. To mourn this loss of innocence would be ¶ ¶ wrong…To attract the money they need, [microlenders] have to play by the rules of the market. ¶ ¶ Those rules often have messy results.”208¶ ¶ “I am shocked by the news about the CompartamosIPO. When socially responsible investors ¶ ¶ and the general public learn what is going on at Compartamos, there will very likely be a ¶ ¶ backlash against microfinance.”
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Carillo 2k9 [Ian, Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas--http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.44194/The%20commercialization%20of%20microfinance%20in%20mexico.pdf - Sept. 28]
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the commercialized microfinance industry in Mexico has been a hotspot for ¶ ¶ investment and growth. in terms of ¶ ¶ growth, Mexican firms occupy six of the top ten positions the disparity in ¶ ¶ profitability within Mexico’s for-profit microfinance industry has recently begun shrinking, ¶ ¶ indicating that the emergence of competitors may have led to constricting profit margins and ¶ ¶ increased efficiency. The monetary success of the IPO caused investors to begin ¶ ¶ visualizing the impact that large injections of capital could have on the microfinance industry. ¶ This could have a ¶ ¶ dramatic impact on the global reach of microfinance. In its current state, the microfinance ¶ ¶ industry reached 133 million customers in 2006 and is predicted to reach 177 million in 2015. ¶ ¶ However, proponents of commercialization say that one billion customers could be served by ¶ ¶ 2015 if When socially responsible investors ¶ ¶ and the general public learn what is going on at Compartamos, there will very likely be a ¶ ¶ backlash against microfinance
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Specifically, Mexico proves-micro-finance re affirms competitiveness and profit motive
| 2,110 | 87 | 1,055 | 343 | 9 | 178 | 0.026239 | 0.51895 |
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Estas tierras de la nación, las sembré un buey manco¶ These lands of the nation, I sowed them with a crippled ox¶ Se me reventó el barzón y sigue la yunta andando¶ Now the yoke strap’s broke and the team just goes on walking¶ El Barzón, a song which was made popular following the Mexican Revolution, tells the story ¶ of a poor campesino who needs to acquire tools in order to farm his small plot of land. Without ¶ any other recourse, he asks to borrow from the hacendado, the owner of the estate on which the ¶ campesino is employed. As the song goes on, the lyrics tell a story of an indebted peasant who ¶ does not earn enough to pay back what he owes. Although the ox yoke fell into disrepair, the ¶ peasant’s debt was still due. The song continues: “20 pesos for the rent of the oxen, five pesos ¶ for some maguey, six pesos for I don’t know what.”210¶ This is the type of informal lending that is so often vilified by both sides of the microfinance ¶ debate. However, as the microfinance industry became more commercialized, those who ¶ supported a more traditionalist approach came to view for-profit MFIs as neither practicing ¶ microcredit nor being a positive alternative to informal moneylenders. Undoubtedly, the ¶ operational practices of Financiera Independencia, Compartamos, and Banco Azteca, some of ¶ the for-profit MFIs that will be discussed in this section, violate Yunus’ original idea of how ¶ microfinance could be used to help the poor: "When you discuss microcredit, don't bring ¶ Compartamosinto it…Microcredit was created to fight the money lender, not to become the ¶ money lender."211¶
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Carillo 2k9 [Ian, Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas--http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.44194/The%20commercialization%20of%20microfinance%20in%20mexico.pdf - Sept. 28]
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Estas tierras de la nación, las sembré un buey manco¶ Se me reventó el barzón y sigue la yunta andando¶ El Barzón, a song tells the story ¶ of a poor campesino who needs to acquire tools in order to farm his small plot of land. Without ¶ any other recourse, he asks to borrow from the the owner of the estate on which the ¶ campesino is employed the lyrics tell a story of an indebted peasant who ¶ does not earn enough to pay back what he owes. Although the ox yoke fell into disrepair, the ¶ peasant’s debt was still due. 20 pesos for the rent of the oxen, five pesos ¶ for some maguey, six pesos for I don’t know what. This is the type of informal lending that is so often vilified by both sides of the microfinance ¶ debate as the microfinance industry became more commercialized, those who ¶ supported a more traditionalist approach came to view for-profit MFIs as neither practicing ¶ microcredit nor being a positive alternative to informal moneylenders , the ¶ operational practices of Financiera Independencia, Compartamos, and Banco Azteca, some of ¶ the for-profit MFIs that will be discussed in this section, violate Yunus’ original idea of how ¶ microfinance could be used to help the poor
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Micro-finance indebts the poor and reverses the very benefit it was created for –reducing poverty
| 1,617 | 97 | 1,202 | 283 | 15 | 218 | 0.053004 | 0.770318 |
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Access to new markets and foreign resources is not enough. To fulfill the corporate agenda of increasing profits, a corporation must seek out favorable regulatory conditions that reduce costs and increase productive capacity. Regulations restrict profitability. Thus, the corporate call for liberalization is accompanied by a demand for deregulation in all sectors of commerce nationally and globally. Removing these restrictions allows corporations to have greater access to and use of resources and labor, and to move freely across borders. Whilst countries such as many in South America and Asia offer just such conditions, corporations actively engage in the influencing and changing of domestic and international law that can potentially create these favorable conditions universally. In order to achieve this, corporations have, over the past 150 years, secured their political influence in local, national and international governance structures and regulatory bodies. Regulations and regulatory agencies exist to monitor corporate activities, protect human rights and safeguard the environment. In recent years corporate lobbying has seen governments cut budgets for regulatory agencies and regulatory laws have been repealed, allowing corporations free reign to operate with fewer public safeguards. Overall, regulatory bodies have shifted their focus from protecting the consumer to protecting the industry, as the neoliberal model is progressively assimilated at all levels of government and economic policy in developed countries. Enron lobbied very effectively to deregulate the electricity market, then to deregulate the trading of energy futures, then to prevent the disclosure of futures contracts, then to repeal the regulated-auction requirement. This enabled it to trade without revealing any trade or financial details to regulators or the public. It proceeded to make record profits through illicit activities which soon lead to its collapse. The economic collapse in Argentine in 2001 is also widely attributed to extensive deregulation, enforced by the IMF and World Bank’s neoliberal development policies, which destroyed industry and caused mass unemployment. Regulating corporate activity protects the public. Removing these regulations protects corporate profits. This battle for legal protection is rigged in favour of corporations, even though they represent a fraction of the global population. Corporations are able to have their own way on these matters as they have almost limitless financial resources to rally to their cause and close relationships with the political elite. Global deregulation has created the transnational corporation, as business operations are increasingly moved abroad in the search of cheaper labour, tax incentives and less red tape. In effect, unemployment rises in the affluent countries that lose jobs, while corporations outsource these same jobs to sweatshops in developing countries where wages are relatively insignificant, employment standards are often irrelevant and there are very low environmental standards. Thus corporations increase their profits. In order to win back these corporations and create more jobs, the US and other countries also lower their standards and cut regulation. Thus the logical conclusion of liberalization and deregulation is a race to the bottom, where the lowest possible standards are sought after and legislated for globally, with little regard for individual workers, employment conditions, the community or the environment.
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Makwana 6 (Rajesh Makwana is the Director of Share The World’s Resources (www.stwr.org), an NGO campaigning for global economic and social justice, November 23, 2006. Neoliberalism and Economic Globalization, STRW, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-and-economic-globalization.html. SHO)
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. Regulations restrict profitability Thus, the corporate call for liberalization is accompanied by a demand for deregulation in all sectors of commerce nationally and globally Enron lobbied very effectively to deregulate the electricity market, then to deregulate the trading of energy futures, then to prevent the disclosure of futures contracts, then to repeal the regulated-auction requirement. This enabled it to trade without revealing any trade or financial details to regulators or the public The economic collapse in Argentine in 2001 is also widely attributed to extensive deregulation, enforced by the IMF and World Bank’s neoliberal development policies, which destroyed industry and caused mass unemployment. Removing these regulations protects corporate profits. This battle for legal protection is rigged in favour of corporations, even though they represent a fraction of the global population. Corporations are able to have their own way on these matters as they have almost limitless financial resources to rally to their cause and close relationships with the political elite. . In effect, unemployment rises in the affluent countries that lose jobs, while corporations outsource these same jobs to sweatshops in developing countries where wages are relatively insignificant, employment standards are often irrelevant and there are very low environmental standards. logical conclusion of liberalization and deregulation is a race to the bottom, where the lowest possible standards are sought after and legislated for globally, with little regard for individual workers, employment conditions, the community or the environment.
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Deregulation exposes global South industries to corporate governance – that causes a drive to corporate rent-seeking and legal manipulation that makes economic collapse inevitable
| 3,527 | 179 | 1,644 | 507 | 24 | 238 | 0.047337 | 0.469428 |
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International development institutions, such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the InterAmerican Development Bank, have long been aware that poor citizens have been marginalized ¶ from traditional institutions. In turn, they have attempted to provide needed infrastructure, such ¶ as roads, bridges, industrial parks, and power plants. Additionally, they have implemented ¶ education and job training programs for the poor in an attempt to break the cycle of generational ¶ poverty. Yet, these efforts have largely fallen short of their goals. The fact that these massive ¶ programs have largely fallen short of their stated goals has generated much criticism.¶ John Perkins, a prominent critic of international development programs, has claimed that they ¶ were unsuccessful because they were never meant to be successful. According to Perkins, ¶ international financial institutions only start major development projects because it enables the ¶ governments of industrialized countries to award hefty contracts to preferred construction ¶ companies and contractors. In turn the overwhelming debt that the developing country incurs ¶ allows the lending nations to impose conditions on the debtor nation. International development ¶ projects and the loans accompanying them are allegedly meant to enrich the elites of the ¶ countries involved, with any actual poverty alleviation as a bonus.14
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Carillo 2k9 [Ian, Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas--http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.44194/The%20commercialization%20of%20microfinance%20in%20mexico.pdf - Sept. 28]
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the World Bank, the IMF, and the InterAmerican Development Bank, have long been aware that poor citizens have been marginalized ¶ from traditional institutions. hey have attempted to provide needed infrastructure, such ¶ as roads, bridges, industrial parks, and power plants. they have implemented ¶ education and job training programs for the poor in an attempt to break the cycle of generational ¶ poverty. Yet, these efforts have largely fallen short of their goals they ¶ were unsuccessful because they were never meant to be successful international financial institutions only start major development projects because it enables the ¶ governments of industrialized countries to award hefty contracts to preferred construction ¶ companies and contractor . In turn the overwhelming debt that the developing country incurs ¶ allows the lending nations to impose conditions on the debtor nation. International development ¶ projects and the loans accompanying them are allegedly meant to enrich the elites of the ¶ countries involved, with any actual poverty alleviation as a bonus.
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International organizations tangle marginalized nations in their web of conditions-hampering effectiveness
| 1,391 | 106 | 1,084 | 208 | 11 | 166 | 0.052885 | 0.798077 |
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The Doha Round was torpedoed by the United States’ refusal to eliminate agricultural subsidies – a sine qua non for any true development round, given that 70% of those in the developing world depend on agriculture directly or indirectly. The US position was truly breathtaking, given that the WTO had already judged that America’s cotton subsidies – paid to fewer than 25,000 rich farmers – were illegal. America’s response was to bribe Brazil, which had brought the complaint, not to pursue the matter further, leaving in the lurch millions of poor cotton farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and India, who suffer from depressed prices because of America’s largesse to its wealthy farmers.¶ Given this recent history, it now seems clear that the negotiations to create a free-trade area between the US and Europe, and another between the US and much of the Pacific (except for China), are not about establishing a true free-trade system. Instead, the goal is a managed trade regime – managed, that is, to serve the special interests that have long dominated trade policy in the West.¶ There are a few basic principles that those entering the discussions will, one hopes, take to heart. First, any trade agreement has to be symmetrical. If, as part of the “Trans-Pacific Partnership” (TPP), the US demands that Japan eliminate its rice subsidies, the US should, in turn, offer to eliminate its production (and water) subsidies, not just on rice (which is relatively unimportant in the US) but on other agricultural commodities as well.¶ Second, no trade agreement should put commercial interests ahead of broader national interests, especially when non-trade-related issues like financial regulation and intellectual property are at stake. America’s trade agreement with Chile, for example, impedes Chile’s use of capital controls – even though the International Monetary Fund now recognizes that capital controls can be an important instrument of macro-prudential policy.¶ Other trade agreements have insisted on financial liberalization and deregulation as well, even though the 2008 crisis should have taught us that the absence of good regulation can jeopardize economic prosperity. America’s pharmaceutical industry, which wields considerable clout with the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), has succeeded in foisting on other countries an unbalanced intellectual-property regime, which, designed to fight generic drugs, puts profit ahead of saving lives. Even the US Supreme Court has now said that the US Patent Office went too far in granting patents on genes.¶ Finally, there must be a commitment to transparency. But those engaging in these trade negotiations should be forewarned: the US is committed to a lack of transparency. The USTR’s office has been reluctant to reveal its negotiating position even to members of the US Congress; on the basis of what has been leaked, one can understand why. The USTR’s office is backtracking on principles – for example, access to generic medicines – that Congress had inserted into earlier trade agreements, like that with Peru.¶ In the case of the TPP, there is a further concern. Asia has developed an efficient supply chain, with goods flowing easily from one country to another in the process of producing finished goods. But the TPP could interfere with that if China remains outside of it.¶ With formal tariffs already so low, negotiators will focus largely on non-tariff barriers – such as regulatory barriers. But the USTR’s office, representing corporate interests, will almost surely push for the lowest common standard, leveling downward rather than upward. For example, many countries have tax and regulatory provisions that discourage large automobiles – not because they are trying to discriminate against US goods, but because they worry about pollution and energy efficiency.¶ The more general point, alluded to earlier, is that trade agreements typically put commercial interests ahead of other values – the right to a healthy life and protection of the environment, to name just two. France, for example, wants a “cultural exception” in trade agreements that would allow it to continue to support its films – from which the whole world benefits. This and other broader values should be non-negotiable.¶ Indeed, the irony is that the social benefits of such subsidies are enormous, while the costs are negligible. Does anyone really believe that a French art film represents a serious threat to a Hollywood summer blockbuster? Yet Hollywood’s greed knows no limit, and America’s trade negotiators take no prisoners. And that’s precisely why such items should be taken off the table before negotiations begin. Otherwise, arms will be twisted, and there is a real risk that an agreement will sacrifice basic values to commercial interests.¶ If negotiators created a genuine free-trade regime that put the public interest first, with the views of ordinary citizens given at least as much weight as those of corporate lobbyists, I might be optimistic that what would emerge would strengthen the economy and improve social well-being. The reality, however, is that we have a managed trade regime that puts corporate interests first, and a process of negotiations that is undemocratic and non-transparent.¶ The likelihood that what emerges from the coming talks will serve ordinary Americans’ interests is low; the outlook for ordinary citizens in other countries is even bleaker.
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Joseph Stiglitz, 6/4/13, (“The Free Trade Charade” –Project Syndicate- Joseph E. Stiglitz - Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank – July 4th, 2013, http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributor/joseph-e--stiglitz)
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it now seems clear that the negotiations to create a free-trade area between the US and Europe are not about establishing a true free-trade system. Instead, the goal is a managed trade regime to serve the special interests that have long dominated trade policy in the West.¶ no trade agreement should put commercial interests ahead of national interests, especially when non-trade-related issues like financial regulation and intellectual property are at stake. America’s trade agreement with Chile, for example, impedes Chile’s use of capital controls – even though the International Monetary Fund now recognizes that capital controls can be an important instrument of macro-prudential policy.¶ the US Trade Representative (USTR), has succeeded in foisting on other countries an unbalanced intellectual-property regime puts profit ahead of saving lives. there must be a commitment to transparency. But the US is committed to a lack of transparency With formal tariffs already so low, negotiators will focus largely on non-tariff barriers – such as regulatory barriers. But the USTR’s office, representing corporate interests, will almost surely push for the lowest common standard, leveling downward rather than upward. trade agreements typically put commercial interests ahead of other values – the right to a healthy life and protection of the environment, to name just two. If negotiators created a genuine free-trade regime that put the public interest first, might be optimistic that what would emerge would strengthen the economy and improve social well-being. The reality, however, is that we have a managed trade regime that puts corporate interests first, and a process of negotiations that is undemocratic and non-transparent.¶ The likelihood that what emerges from the coming talks will serve ordinary Americans’ interests is low; the outlook for ordinary citizens in other countries is even bleaker.
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American Trade policies such as TTIP are neoliberal, creating and justifying inequality and environmental degradation.
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Trade expansion is associated with higher growth, but distributional effects are mixed. As an example, assessment of the impact of NAFTA on Mexico finds differential effects dependent on the characteristics and context of different groups. With respect to farmers, there were generally positive influences on Mexican agricultural performance, but with little if any benefits to poorer farmers—especially in the South and amongst indigenous groups.6 This was because the latter group lacked the land, capital, extension services or marketing infrastructure to benefit, problems exacerbated by conditions of land and social conflict, and social exclusion. Public action to deal with these issues is necessary for more equitable gains from trade opening—in addition to the general need for expansion of quality education noted above. A related issue is that of asymmetric trade opening. The continued protection of labor intensive sectors—especially agriculture and labor intensive manufacturing—in the United States, Europe and Japan can sharply reduce the potential economic benefits from increased trade, whether in multilateral or bilateral trade deals. When bargaining power is also asymmetric there are particular risks that potential benefits of opening up to poor producers and countries will be restricted.
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Walton 4 ( Michael is Lecturer in International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi. He wasV.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bangalore for 2008 and 2009, 2004, Neoliberalism in Latin America: Good, Bad or Incomplete?, The World Bank, http://lasa-2.univ.pitt.edu/larr/prot/fulltext/vol39no3/walton.pdf. SHO)
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distributional effects are mixed. As an example, assessment of the impact of NAFTA on Mexico finds differential effects dependent on the characteristics and context of different groups With respect to farmers, there were generally positive influences on Mexican agricultural performance, but with little if any benefits to poorer farmers This was because the latter group lacked the land, capital, extension services or marketing infrastructure to benefit, problems exacerbated by conditions of land and social conflict, and social exclusion A related issue is that of asymmetric trade opening When bargaining power is also asymmetric there are particular risks that potential benefits of opening up to poor producers and countries will be restricted
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TAFTA reproduces inequality – it occurs within the same matrix of power relations that produced NAFTA, and only replicates its failure on a global scale
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The year 2004 marked a peculiar convergence in Mexican politics, the tenth anniversary of both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Zapatista insurrection. After a decade of permanent structural reforms, NAFTA was declared a resounding success across the continent, even exceeding its economic goals in Mexico by ushering in an electoral democracy. Meanwhile, the Zapatistas appear to have suffered an ultimate defeat, a result of a politics of exhaustion deployed with equal alacrity by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and its democratically elected successor, the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). Together, these two events—ten years of NAFTA and the Zapatista revolution—present us with two distinct Mexicos, united by one historical process, neoliberalism. The implementation of NAFTA, on the one hand, tells the story of a technocratic elite's vision of Mexico's entry into "democratic capitalism;" an entry pockmarked by displacement and pain, but which, purportedly, redeems the nation in the end through increases in economic indicators. The Zapatistas, on the other hand, tell the story of the displaced, of those subalterns whose present is sacrificed to the nation's future. These two interpretations of Mexico's embrace of neoliberalism provide the context for my psychoanalytic reading of Alfonso Cuarón's Y tu mamá también, a seemingly insignificant little film about two teenage boys, Tenoch and Julio, whose homoerotic love for each other is mediated by a beautiful Spanish woman and mother-figure, Luisa.1 More accurately stated, the homoerotically charged Oedipal complex that provides the plot device, propelling this "on the road" film through narrative time and the Mexican countryside, functions as an allegory, presenting the viewer with a cinematic interpretation of the changing nature of Mexican sovereignty, subaltern positionality, and colonial fantasy in the context of a neoliberalism historically represented by NAFTA. With its panoramic shots of a bucolic Mexican landscape, and its comedic and beguilingly innocent triangulated "love story," this film would be easy to [End Page 751] dismiss as either multicultural "cinema lite" or as adolescent in its themes, particularly when compared to the gritty and violent rendition of Mexican life presented to us in its cross-over predecessor Amores Perros (2000). It is possible to read this film as yet another clichéd, misogynistic representation of the homoerotic sexuality of young boys, as a stereotypical Oedipal complex resolved positively in the end, against a backdrop of an exotic and primitive Mexico. However, the narrative trajectory of the triangulated love story is intercut with interstitial scenes that interrupt the filmic text. Each of these interstitial scenes begins with a few seconds of complete silence followed by a voice-over that conveys to the viewer some tangential information about one of the three characters. Equally as often, the voice-over conveys information about something happening outside the car on the road, to random people or to the actual landscape. These scenes, which might otherwise be read as pastoral asides, are a key to understanding the film as anything but innocent or apolitical. They brush up against the "main action" of the film, steadfastly decentering the plot while nevertheless insisting on interdependence between the peripheral and the consequential story lines. Thus, a psychoanalytic reading of the Oedipal complex as it unfolds among the three protagonists allows for an allegorical understanding of their triangulated desire. Their Oedipal desire enacts the final crisis in revolutionary nationalism brought about by the onslaught of NAFTA and neoliberalism. In fact, one can read these interstitial scenes as an irruption of the subaltern onto the scene of masculine nationalism, as an expression of another knowledge of neoliberalism, one existing on the porous borders of the bourgeois elite's experience of Mexican sovereignty during the era of what I call NAFTA's "fiction of development." Thus, the film itself provides an allegory for the history of how U.S. border-making has shaped Mexican sovereignty. The very experience of Mexican sovereignty is arguably bookended by the defining, delimiting consequences of two treaties promulgated with the United States concerning its borders. The first is, of course, the notorious 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo; NAFTA is the second. Mexico acquired its independence from Spain in 1821 and had written its first constitution by 1824. This constitution, while based on the U.S. Constitution, extended considerably beyond its liberal vision by recognizing whites, afromestizos, mestizos, and all pacified Indians as equal citizens of Mexico, with equal rights to land, voting, public office, and education. In 1829, President Vicente Guerrero abolished slavery throughout the republic.2 This recognition of all blacks as full citizens was a principal factor in the 1836 Texas War of Independence, since by 1829 slave-owning Anglos [End Page 752] made up the majority of the state's population and resented the central Mexican government's interference in their affairs of "property."3 In 1846, less than three decades after Mexico's formal independence, the United States launched an early version of "preemptive war," invading Mexico on the pretext of protecting its slave-holding constituents in the newly annexed state of Texas. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, then, was the legal resolution to an imperialist war waged against Mexico by the United States in the interest of slave-holding states and of expanding national territory.4 It permanently reconfigured the geographical boundaries of Mexico, dispossessing it of fully half of its territory, half its natural resources, and a considerable portion of its indigenous and mestizo population.5 This first treaty between the United States and Mexico not only affected territorial boundaries, but also made evident the tenuous and conditional nature of Mexican sovereignty in the shadow of the United States. NAFTA was promulgated in 1994, almost 150 years after the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, by the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In contrast, this treaty was the result of long-term, peaceful negotiations among the three nations, and it did not change the existing territorial borders between the signatories. Nevertheless, NAFTA radically altered the legal structure of the border between Mexico and the United States, the social geography of the borderland, and, as I argue in this essay, the character of Mexican sovereignty. NAFTA is a trinational legal regime of trade and capital investment, one that "opened up" the borders among the three nations by changing the formal legal controls on the entry and exit of goods and capital, although notably not of people. It did so primarily by requiring the dismantling of the prior import and export tariff structures for each country, as well as the structures of domestic subsidies. Thus, under the new legal regime introduced by NAFTA, any and all tariffs and subsidies explicitly used to protect domestic products and markets from the foreign competition of the other two signatories were removed or scheduled for removal. While NAFTA facilitated the unencumbered movement of goods and capital across the North American continent, it pointedly did not address the third leg of this capitalist triumvirate: labor. NAFTA is strangely mute on the subject of the movement of laborers across national borders. And significantly, ten years after NAFTA, the United States and Mexico have yet to broker a single agreement on temporary workers, although the U.S. economy, from California to New York, is visibly addicted to the importation of cheap, undocumented labor from the south. This is not an oversight on the part of the negotiators of NAFTA, but is the result of the paradoxical relationship that [End Page 753] exists among capitalism, liberalism, and the nation-state form (a relationship I will return to in my concluding remarks). Throughout the last decade, even as NAFTA's legal border regime has ushered in the unprecedented movement of goods and capital across the U.S.–Mexico border, the United States has militarized its border as never before to insure that immigrants—drawn to it by this very treaty—are denied easy entry into its territory.
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Saldana-Portillo 05 (Maria Josefina; “In the Shadow of NAFTA: Y tu mamá también Revisits the National Allegory of Mexican Sovereignty”; American Quarterly; The American Studies Association; 2005) IIN
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2004 marked the tenth anniversary of both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Zapatista insurrection NAFTA was declared a resounding success across the continent, even exceeding its economic goals in Mexico by ushering in an electoral democracy the Zapatistas appear to have suffered an ultimate defeat, a result of a politics of exhaustion deployed with equal alacrity by the (PRI these two events present us with two distinct Mexicos, united by one historical process, neoliberalism. NAFTA tells the story of a technocratic elite's vision of Mexico's entry into "democratic capitalism;" an entry pockmarked by displacement and pain, but which, purportedly, redeems the nation in the end through increases in economic indicators Zapatistas, tell the story of the displaced, of those subalterns whose present is sacrificed to the nation's future U.S. border-making has shaped Mexican sovereignty by the defining, delimiting consequences of two treaties promulgated with the United States concerning its borders. 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo; NAFTA Mexico acquired its independence from Spain in 1821 and had written its first constitution by 1824. This constitution extended considerably beyond its liberal vision by recognizing whites, afromestizos, mestizos, and all pacified Indians as equal citizens of Mexico, with equal rights to land, voting, public office, and education. the United States launched an early version of "preemptive war," invading Mexico on the pretext of protecting its slave-holding constituents in the newly annexed state of Texas. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, then, was the legal resolution to an imperialist war waged against Mexico by the United States in the interest of slave-holding states and of expanding national territory.4 It permanently reconfigured the geographical boundaries of Mexico, dispossessing it of fully half of its territory, half its natural resources, and a considerable portion of its indigenous and mestizo population NAFTA was the result of long-term, peaceful negotiations among the three nations, and it did not change the existing territorial borders between the signatories. NAFTA radically altered the legal structure of the border between Mexico and the United States, the social geography of the borderland, and, as I argue in this essay, the character of Mexican sovereignty. NAFTA is a trinational legal regime of trade and capital investment, one that "opened up" the borders among the three nations by changing the formal legal controls on the entry and exit of goods and capital, although notably not of people by requiring the dismantling of the prior import and export tariff structures for each country, as well as the structures of domestic subsidies. any and all tariffs and subsidies explicitly used to protect domestic products and markets from the foreign competition of the other two signatories were removed or scheduled for removal. NAFTA is strangely mute on the subject of the movement of laborers across national borders. the U.S. economy, from California to New York, is visibly addicted to the importation of cheap, undocumented labor from the south Throughout the last decade, even as NAFTA's legal border regime has ushered in the unprecedented movement of goods and capital across the U.S.–Mexico border, the United States has militarized its border as never before to insure that immigrants—drawn to it by this very treaty—are denied easy entry into its territory.
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NAFTA resurfaces the neoliberal imperialism of the US in Mexico – displaces indigenous populations economically and geopolitically
| 8,400 | 130 | 3,479 | 1,275 | 17 | 531 | 0.013333 | 0.416471 |
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As I suggested earlier, NAFTA may not be blamed directly for the loss of jobs in non-maquiladora industry geared toward domestic production. However, [End Page 755] FDI in this export-oriented area has failed to produce the backward linkages that could have spurred growth in this sector, and is instead responsible for a significant portion of the trade deficit in imports. Thus, there is always a flip side to NAFTA-style development. In addition to the blossoming trade deficit, over the course of the last ten years, 1.3 million jobs have been lost in agriculture. While not all of this job loss is singularly attributable to NAFTA (and indeed, NAFTA-stimulated exports in agriculture have created jobs), economists nevertheless attribute a portion of this loss to NAFTA. Mexican peasants who traditionally farmed basic grains simply cannot compete against the cheaper imports in foodstuffs that have flooded the national market.12 The phasing out of price supports on basic grains, such as beans, corn, and rice, was legally required by NAFTA. In addition, the United States insisted on the removal of constitutional protections against the selling and renting of communal land-holdings.13 These changes have combined to displace a significant number of the agricultural population.14 In the end then, there has been a net loss of 300,000 jobs when all the calculus around NAFTA is done. These figures for job loss (which many would argue are a relatively insignificant price to pay for job increases in the industrial sector), however, do not factor in the exploding growth in Mexico's job-age population. An estimated 1 million new workers are entering the job force each year, and will continue to enter at this rate until the year 2020. Most are entering the informal sector as NAFTA-style development failed to absorb this demographic boom in work-age Mexicans. NAFTA was originally marketed to the skeptical (and xenophobic) United States precisely as a way of protecting a territorial border repeatedly figured as "under siege" by undocumented Mexican workers. Pushing NAFTA as a way of assuaging U.S. citizen's anxiety over this border "problem," Salinas de Gotarí famously declared that Mexico should export products, not people. There were, of course, those scholarly voices that cautioned that the economic restructuring induced by NAFTA-style development would cause an "immigration hump," as economic restructuring inevitably does produce job displacements and short-term increases in migration.15 Proponents of NAFTA nevertheless won the day in 1994. In 2004, it appeared the naysayers were correct: By most measures, illegal immigration to the United States continued to increase after NAFTA came into effect. Apprehensions along the U.S. southwestern border also continued to increase, from about 700,000 in 1994 to more than 1,300,000 at their peak in 2001. The population of unauthorized Mexican immigrants grew as well: The Immigration and Naturalization [End Page 756] service . . . estimated the number of Mexicans present in the United States without authorization rose from 2 million in 1990 to 4.8 million in 2000, increasing from 59.3 percent to 68.7 percent of the estimated total unauthorized population in the United States.16 It is also noteworthy that while the percentage of rural immigrants within this general immigrant population has declined significantly (to less than 25 percent of total immigrants), a much greater percentage of those emigrating from rural areas is proceeding to the United States instead of to other rural or urban areas within Mexico: "Thirty percent of migrants from rural Mexico were in the United States in 2002, versus 19 percent in 1994. From 1980 to 1994, migration from the surveyed rural communities to the United States increased by 95 percent. By 2002, migration to the United States was 452 percent higher than in 1980."17 While it would certainly be incorrect to attribute this increase in migration singularly, or even principally, to NAFTA, it would appear that a good number of those displaced in agriculture, or for whom agriculture is no longer viable, have begun the long trek northward. I begin with this raw data because it tells what I have referred to earlier as a "fiction of development." Or rather, as I hope my own narrative suggests, it tells at least two fictions of development. Reading the data from the hegemonic perspective of neoliberalism allows us to diagnose NAFTA as a success in terms of its limited goals, for all sorts of economic indicators are up in Mexico: FDI, GDP, job production in industry, volume of trade. Thus, free trade enthusiasts across the Americas point to such statistics as evidence of NAFTA's resounding success, which they interpret as not only bestowing economic well-being, but also ushering in Mexico's transition to an electoral democracy. However, these figures also expose a fiction at the heart of NAFTA's legal regime with regard to territorial boundaries. They expose the liberal paradox suggested above. NAFTA was promulgated under the operative fiction that territorial borders could be porous to goods and capital but closed to those laborers whose impoverishment is often the result of NAFTA-style development. From the counterhegemonic perspective of migration studies, these economic indicators tell a different story, one of displacement and diaspora. According to INS figures, almost three million new immigrants from Mexico have traveled to the United States, many of these from the rural and indigenous areas.18 They have faced deserts and militarized border patrols, coyotes and Mexican police, not to find jobs in the Southwest among established generations of Mexican immigrants, as in previous decades, but rather to settle new urban areas—as delivery boys and maids in English-speaking New York City—or to enter debt peonage—as isolated agricultural laborers in Durham, North Carolina, in Stamford, Connecticut, and on Long Island. [End Page 757] Indeed, the population of Mexican immigrants in the five boroughs of New York City quadrupled in the 1990s, according to the U.S. census. Mexicans are now the fifth largest immigrant group in New York, with 122,550 people living in the city. (Demographers expect the figure is closer to 200,000.) In 1990, Mexicans ranked seventeenth, with a population of only 32,689.19 These undocumented immigrants live in a metaphoric borderland in New York City. They exist on the very borders of legality, as human rights and labor law controverts immigration law. Thus, undocumented immigrants have the right to obtain drivers' licenses in New York City, but dare not answer juror qualification questionnaires, which are generated from the county DMV rolls and require proof of legal visa status for disqualification. At the same time, undocumented workers have the right to file grievances for exploitative labor conditions (as they frequently do), but do not actually possess the basic right to work legally in the United States. Undocumented college students, many of whom have been in New York City since early childhood, are allowed to attend City and State University of New York systems (CUNY and SUNY) without proof of citizenship, but must constantly battle opportunistic state legislatures wanting to fund higher education by charging these students out-of-state tuition. From the perspective of these immigrants who live their everyday lives on the border between legality and invisibility, between ascertaining the agencies designated to help undocumented immigrants and avoiding the immigration officers who seek to deport them, the economic indicators of NAFTA's successful stimulus of the economy tell a very different fiction. For how must the conditions of their rancherías, ejidos, tierras comunales, and colonias have changed over the course of ten years for them to have decided to leave their homes, their languages, their indigenous cultures, their families, their nation—to leave every form of social relation that marks one's identity—to begin again in this legal limbo? And how does the Mexican imaginary—the citizenry's sense of their own national identity—change in the midst of this migration and the structural changes ushered in by NAFTA's particular legal regime? Where can we locate the shifting positionality of the rural subaltern in the changing landscape of Mexican nationalism? How, in other words, has neoliberalism, whose legal fulcrum is the NAFTA treaty, changed the historical substance of Mexican sovereignty for its citizenry? Because economic indicators are so malleable, I would suggest that the fictions these statistics can tell, however significant, cannot answer these questions. They can set the stage, provide the context, for such a tale of transformation, but they cannot give us the texture of the change. These economic [End Page 758] indicators and statistics on migration cannot capture the transformation in the lives of millions of Mexican subalterns. Nor can such statistics register the ephemeral changes in the national political imaginary, in the quotidian experience of international social relations. For NAFTA, I suggest, as the fulcrum of neoliberalism, has wrought the biggest change to the conception of Mexican national sovereignty since the Mexican revolution of 1910. Indeed, in some ways it is the tangible result of seventy long years of legal counterinsurgency waged by U.S. and Mexican elites against the socialist principles enshrined in the Mexican constitution of 1917. To detect these changes in the everyday lives of subalterns and in the political imaginary of a nation, one must turn to either the ethnographic, literary, or filmic text, which, while it cannot deliver "the truth of the matter," can nevertheless register these richer cultural and political transformations. Y tu mamá también, as one such narrative, offers another interpretation of what has transpired in the era of neoliberal Mexico. Economic indicators capture what "is," whereas Y tu mamá también captures what is lost, and, in Thomas Pynchon's words, "what remained yet had somehow, before this, stayed away."20
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Saldana-Portillo 05 (Maria Josefina; “In the Shadow of NAFTA: Y tu mamá también Revisits the National Allegory of Mexican Sovereignty”; American Quarterly; The American Studies Association; 2005) IIN
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NAFTA has failed to produce the backward linkages that could have spurred growth in this sector, and is instead responsible for a significant portion of the trade deficit in imports over the course of the last ten years, 1.3 million jobs have been lost in agriculture Mexican peasants who traditionally farmed basic grains simply cannot compete against the cheaper imports in foodstuffs that have flooded the national market.12 The phasing out of price supports on basic grains, such as beans, corn, and rice, was legally required by NAFTA. the United States insisted on the removal of constitutional protections against the selling and renting of communal land-holdings.13 These changes have combined to displace a significant number of the agricultural population.1 there has been a net loss of 300,000 jobs when all the calculus around NAFTA is done. These figures for job loss (which many would argue are a relatively insignificant price to pay for job increases in the industrial sector), however, do not factor in the exploding growth in Mexico's job-age population 1 million new workers are entering the job force each year, and will continue to enter at this rate until the year 2020 NAFTA was originally marketed to the skeptical (and xenophobic) United States precisely as a way of protecting a territorial border repeatedly figured as "under siege" by undocumented Mexican workers By most measures, illegal immigration to the United States continued to increase after NAFTA came into effect. Apprehensions along the U.S. southwestern border also continued to increase, from about 700,000 in 1994 to more than 1,300,000 at their peak in 2001 the number of Mexicans present in the United States without authorization rose from 2 million in 1990 to 4.8 million in 2000, increasing from 59.3 percent to 68.7 percent of the estimated total unauthorized population in the United States NAFTA as a success in terms of its limited goals, for all sorts of economic indicators are up in Mexico: FDI, GDP, job production in industry, volume of trade. Thus, free trade enthusiasts across the Americas point to such statistics as evidence of NAFTA's resounding success, which they interpret as not only bestowing economic well-being, but also ushering in Mexico's transition to an electoral democracy these figures also expose a fiction at the heart of NAFTA's legal regime with regard to territorial boundaries NAFTA was promulgated under the operative fiction that territorial borders could be porous to goods and capital but closed to those laborers whose impoverishment is often the result of NAFTA-style development economic indicators tell a story of displacement and diaspora three million new immigrants from Mexico have traveled to the United States, hey have faced deserts and militarized border patrols, coyotes and Mexican police, not to find jobs in the Southwest among established generations of Mexican immigrants, as in previous decades, but rather to settle new urban areas—as delivery boys and maids in English-speaking New York City—or to enter debt peonage—as isolated agricultural laborers in Durham, North Carolina, in Stamford, Connecticut, and on Long Island. These undocumented immigrants live in a metaphoric borderland in New York City. They exist on the very borders of legality, as human rights and labor law controverts immigration law undocumented workers have the right to file grievances for exploitative labor conditions (as they frequently do), but do not actually possess the basic right to work legally in the United States From the perspective of these immigrants who live their everyday lives on the border between legality and invisibility, between ascertaining the agencies designated to help undocumented immigrants and avoiding the immigration officers who seek to deport them, the economic indicators of NAFTA's successful stimulus of the economy tell a very different fiction NAFTA, I suggest, as the fulcrum of neoliberalism, has wrought the biggest change to the conception of Mexican national sovereignty since the Mexican revolution of 1910. Indeed, in some ways it is the tangible result of seventy long years of legal counterinsurgency waged by U.S. and Mexican elites against the socialist principles enshrined in the Mexican constitution of 1917
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NAFTA’s neoliberal policies ultimately fail in addressing local economics mass illegal immigration of Mexicans to the US. Migration strips away national identity and agency
| 10,150 | 172 | 4,296 | 1,575 | 24 | 672 | 0.015238 | 0.426667 |
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Dartmouth DDI
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2013
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1,354 |
Prominent advocates of payments for ecosystem services (PES) contend that markets in biodiversity, carbon storage, and hydrological services can produce both conservation and sustainable development. In Mexico’s national PES programs, however, conceived as models of market-based management, efficiency criteria have clashed with antipoverty goals and an enduring developmental-state legacy. Like other projects for commodi- fication of nature, Mexico’s PES is a hybrid of market-like mechanisms, state regulations, and subsidies. It has been further reshaped by social movements mobilized in opposition to neoliberal restructuring. These activists see ecosystem services as coproduced by nature and campesino communities. Rejecting the position of World Bank economists, they insist that the values of ecosystems derive less from the market prices of their services than from their contributions to peasant livelihoods, biodiversity, and social benefits that cannot be quantified or sold. These divergent conceptualizations reflect contrasting understandings of the roles of agriculture and of the state in sustainable development. The Mexican case exposes contradictions within neoliberal environmental discourse based on binary categories of nature and society. It suggests that conservation policies in the global South, if imposed from the North and framed by neoliberal logic, are likely to clash with state agendas and local development goals.
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Kathleen McAfee and Elizabeth N. Shapiro, 10 ('Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State', Annals of the Association of American Geographers,, First published on: 07 June 2010 (iFirst), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045601003794833
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conceived as models of market-based management, efficiency criteria have clashed with antipoverty goals and an enduring developmental-state legacy. . It has been further reshaped by social movements mobilized in opposition to neoliberal restructuring. Rejecting the position of World Bank economists, they insist that the values of ecosystems derive less from the market prices of their services than from their contributions to peasant livelihoods, biodiversity, and social benefits that cannot be quantified or sold. The Mexican case exposes contradictions within neoliberal environmental discourse based on binary categories of nature and society. It suggests that conservation policies in the global South, if imposed from the North and framed by neoliberal logic, are likely to clash with state agendas and local development goals.
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US conservation programs reproduce neoliberal ideology and integrate peasants into the market – the plans incompatible with local development and indigenous movements
| 1,450 | 166 | 836 | 200 | 22 | 120 | 0.11 | 0.6 |
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1,355 |
The bank crisis in the early 1980s prompted Mexico to adopt free-market policies that valued austerity and the movement of capital to ensure economic confidence and stability. However, rapid economic liberalization without safeguards and elastic institutions led the economy towards increased exposure to risk.¶ Inception of the North American Free-Tree Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 amounted to deregulation, increasing capital volatility, and mobility. Currency speculators traded and bought various national currencies across the globe, forming a portfolio of investments that sought the highest level of return, regardless of the long-term effects that it might produce in a country. As a result, deregulation and speculative foreign capital flowed to Mexico due to high rates of return on government securities and industrial investments. The change in trade policy allowed for 65 percent of U.S. goods to become duty-free immediately or within the next five years. However, the massive inflow of capital caused Mexico to increase a trade deficit of 7 percent of GDP along with Mexico’s external debt of 60 percent of GDP.¶ The political climate during this crisis complicated the rosy image of NAFTA. The year 1994 was an election year. The assassination of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Luis Dolando Colosio and the Zapatista uprising both morphed optimism into instability, leading towards a decline of foreign funds due to fear of insolvency. Investors wanted to believe that the peso would appreciate, and in turn, increase the value of their various investments. However, prospects of fear, political instability and overbearing belief in NAFTA left them to realize that their investments in reality were worth of little value. The election of Ernesto Zedillo of the PRI party in 1994 opened the way to loosening monetary policy and tesobonos (short-term dollar debt).¶ The Bank of Mexico had purchased high amounts of tesobonos; the outstanding cost of tesobonos was twice the central bank’s reserves, resulting in capital flight and external debt. The government was unable to support the peso in the foreign exchange market and allowed the peso to float in 1995. The peso went into free fall, losing half of its estimated value. As a result, the market would not recover for another four years.¶ Without carefully managed control and maintenance of the national currency, a country is threatened with losing its political and economic sovereignty. Widespread depreciation of the national currency led to loan losses, resulting in an extensive wave of Mexican banks failures. The IMF applied structural adjustment programs on the Mexican economy to give confidence to foreign investors and governments that Mexico will be able to repay its outstanding loans. As often is the case, the IMF policies privileged wealthy patrons and foreign governments as opposed to the needs of the people and the health of the economy. The bank bailout cost the taxpayers 20 percent of GDP. However, in a twist of fate and monumental irony, Mexico experienced a shift in its balance of trade with the U.S. from a deficit of $20 billion in 1994 to a surplus of $7 billion in 1995, the year following the peso crisis.¶ NAFTA was a mixed blessing. Under the treaty, U.S. banks could open branch offices and U.S. citizens could invest in banking and insurance within Mexico. In addition, growing trade with the U.S., the start of more exportation and manufacturing at the northern states of the country. However, absent on the agenda was any mention of labor; NAFTA neither specified any provisions of labor nor addressed immigration from Mexico to the U.S., a negligence that would create a massive exodus of Mexican labor to the U.S. In sum, trade liberalization resulted in unemployment for workers in low-productivity occupations. During Mexico’s 2006 elections, Felipe Calderon from the National Action Party (PAN) claimed victory. Mexico was undergoing massive migration from rural areas to cities, giving birth to the expanding informal economy. Economic growth from free access to capital and greater freedom allowed Mexico to experience a boom in production, which benefitted the new emerging middle class.¶ As Mexico began to revitalize its economic production to curb the problem of unemployment, the 2008 financial crisis occurred. In 2008 to 2009, 80 percent of all Mexican exports traveled to the U.S., but customers were not buying them. Rapid privatization from the 1980s to 1990s reduced the burden of spending placed on government. The wave of neoliberalism favored large corporations, inhibiting competition as well as the necessary supervision of labor standards. Mexico weathered down the 2008 crisis and is now experiencing economic growth once more. Calderon provided financial stability, expansion of health services and access to consumer credit to the wider population. However, pervasive poverty continues. Strong institutions, smart government intervention, and an end to political corruption are three requisites for Mexico to leave the shadow of its past and promote an agenda of economic growth, which means abandoning the neoliberal dogma. Some have argued that NAFTA did very little for economic development at local chains of production because of unskilled labor population, imported assembly parts, and global suppliers. The 2008 recession caused a 6.1 percent contraction of the economy. Further criticisms against NAFTA include mixed economic growth, lower real wages, and the lack of change for poorest segments of the population. Inequality and poverty have both increased as a result since NAFTA. The real irony of this entire experience is that real wages have declined steadily while trade has increased dramatically.¶ Investments are desperately required to transform Mexico into a truly modern nation. Education and infrastructure are two areas that eventually need investment. One-fifth of Mexico’s workers are in the agricultural sector and 75 percent of poverty is from rural areas. Unless Mexico turns away from neoliberalism in the form of deregulation, low government intervention and favoring large businesses, inequality will continue to balloon, meaning that poverty will not decline, but increase in the following years if it is not addressed fully.
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Luis L. Lozada, 3/20/13, (“Mexico 1992-2012: The Advent of Neoliberalism and the Reshaping of the Political Order – The Generation - Luis L. Lozada – contributing writer – March 20th, 2013, http://the-generation.net/mexico-1992-2012-the-advent-of-neoliberalism-and-the-reshaping-of-the-political-order/)
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the early 1980s prompted Mexico to adopt free-market policies and the movement of capital to ensure economic confidence and stability However, rapid economic liberalization without safeguards and elastic institutions led the economy towards increased exposure to risk. the North American Free-Tree Agreement amounted to deregulation, increasing capital volatility, and mobility the massive inflow of capital caused Mexico to increase a trade deficit of 7 percent of GDP along with Mexico’s external debt of 60 percent of GDP.¶ Investors wanted to believe that the peso would appreciate However prospects of fear, political instability and overbearing belief in NAFTA left them to realize that their investments in reality were worth of little value. Without carefully managed control and maintenance of the national currency, a country is threatened with losing its political and economic sovereignty. The IMF applied structural adjustment programs on the Mexican economy to give confidence to foreign investors and governments that Mexico will be able to repay its outstanding loans. As often is the case, the IMF policies privileged wealthy patrons and foreign governments as opposed to the needs of the people and the health of the economy. absent on the agenda was any mention of labor; NAFTA neither specified any provisions of labor nor addressed immigration from Mexico a negligence that would create a massive exodus of Mexican labor to the U.S. In sum, trade liberalization resulted in unemployment for workers in low-productivity occupations. Mexico was undergoing massive migration from rural areas to cities, giving birth to the expanding informal economy. Economic growth from free access to capital and greater freedom allowed Mexico to experience a boom in production, which benefitted the new emerging middle class.¶ As Mexico began to revitalize its economic production to curb the problem of unemployment, the 2008 financial crisis occurred. The wave of neoliberalism favored large corporations, inhibiting competition as well as the necessary supervision of labor standards. Mexico weathered down the 2008 crisis and is now experiencing economic growth once more Strong institutions, smart government intervention, and an end to political corruption are three requisites for Mexico to leave the shadow of its past and promote an agenda of economic growth, which means abandoning the neoliberal dogma. . Further criticisms against NAFTA include mixed economic growth, lower real wages, and the lack of change for poorest segments of the population. Inequality and poverty have both increased as a result since NAFTA. Unless Mexico turns away from neoliberalism in the form of deregulation, low government intervention and favoring large businesses, inequality will continue to balloon, meaning that poverty will not decline, but increase in the following years if it is not addressed fully.
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Neoliberal development is the root cause of Mexican poverty and instability – only the alt solves the impact
| 6,311 | 108 | 2,908 | 977 | 18 | 439 | 0.018424 | 0.449335 |
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Dartmouth DDI
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2013
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1,356 |
As Nick Dearden, Director of the Jubilee Campaign for debt cancellation just wrote for the New Statesman, this week marks the “anniversary of an event of great resonance”. For this week it is exactly 30 years ago that Mexico temporarily suspended its debt payments to foreign creditors, thereby marking the beginning of what would eventually escalate into the first international debt crisis of the neoliberal era. Things would never be the same again.¶ What ensued was not only a tragic collapse of living standards throughout the developing world and a lost decade for Mexicans and millions of poor people in the Global South – most notably in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa — but also a historic shift in power relations between debtors and creditors in the emerging global political economy. Indeed, 1982 marked the global ascendance of Wall Street. As the famous geographer David Harvey put it:¶ What the Mexico case demonstrated was one key difference between liberalism and neo-liberalism: under the former lenders take the losses that arise from bad investment decisions while under the latter the borrowers are forced by state and international powers to take on board the cost of debt repayment no matter what the consequences for the livelihood and well-being of the local population.¶ In the lead-up to the 1980s debt crisis, Wall Street banks had lent lavishly to developing country governments. The oil crisis of the 1970s had led to huge capital surpluses in oil-producing countries, which subsequently reinvested those surpluses through US banks. As a wall of liquidity flooded international capital markets, interest rates fell precipitously. Countries like Mexico went on a borrowing spree. And the banks were only all too happy about the arrangement. After all, as Citicorp CEO Walter Wriston put it, “countries don’t go bust.”¶ All the while, the US government stood by passively as American banks lent billions of dollars, mostly to Latin American governments. When the US was finally faced with an economic crisis of its own, induced partly by the oil crisis of the 1970s but more importantly by the long-term decline in the rate of profit of its own industrial sector, the Chairman of the Fed, Paul Volcker, decided to dramatically raise interest rates to put an end to stagflation and break the economic consensus (the so-called Keynesian compound of embedded liberalism) that had reigned supreme since WWII.¶ This, in turn, immediately pushed developing countries into fiscal trouble. Because most of the loans these countries had taken on were denominated in dollars, the hike in US interest rates — which became known as the Volcker Shock — immediately raised interest payments for these governments. Mexico was only the first country that found itself incapable of servicing its debt. In the years to come, many dozens more would follow in its wake.¶ But the US government, desperate to avoid losses for Wall Street, rapidly mobilized the IMF and World Bank to disburse large bailouts for developing country governments around the world. Starting with the $4 billion bailout of Mexico, the IMF and World Bank rapidly saw their international leverage increase. Unsurprisingly, they were immediately accused of fending for the large banks — not for the poor countries they purported to “bail out”.¶ After all, one of the first things the “troika” of the US Treasury, Fed and IMF made sure to do, was to impose dramatic conditions on its loans to developing countries. Not only were Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, Egypt and dozens of other countries forced to immediately impose draconian austerity measures; they were also expected to don what Thomas Friedman would later call the “Golden Straitjacket” of neoliberal free-market ideology.
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Roos (Journalist at ROARG Magazine) 12 (Jerome, “Since the Mexican Debt Crisis, 30 Years of Neoliberalism”, http://roarmag.org/2012/08/mexican-greek-debt-crisis-neoliberalism/,) C.A.
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this week marks exactly 30 years ago that Mexico would eventually escalate into the first international debt crisis of the neoliberal era a tragic collapse of living standards throughout Mexicans and millions of poor people in the Global South 1982 marked the global ascendance of Wall Street. As geographer David Harvey put it: What the Mexico case demonstrated was neo-liberalism borrowers are forced by state and international powers to take on board the cost of debt repayment no matter what the consequences for the livelihood and well-being of the local population. . Countries like Mexico went on a borrowing spree. And the banks were only all too happy about the arrangement. But the US government, desperate to avoid losses for Wall Street, rapidly mobilized the IMF and World Bank . Starting with the $4 billion bailout of Mexico, the IMF and World Bank rapidly saw their international leverage increase. one of the first things the Fed and IMF made sure to do, was to impose dramatic conditions on its loans to developing countries. Not only were Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, Egypt and dozens of other countries forced to immediately impose draconian austerity measures; they were also expected to don neoliberal free-market ideology
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Impact Error Replication Neoliberalism creates vicious cycles of debt and poverty.
| 3,778 | 83 | 1,250 | 607 | 11 | 202 | 0.018122 | 0.332784 |
Neoliberalism Generic - DDI 2013.html5
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Dartmouth DDI
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2013
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In the documentary ?Zapatista! There is a scene in which the ski-masked Subcomandante Marcos tells the camera that the rebels rose up against the¶ Mexican government in 1994 only to discover that the Mexican government didn't exist; instead, they found themselves fighting against the structures of global capital.1 Social movements do not literally resist neoliberalism; they resist a specific landlord's hired guns trying to drive them off the land they need for subsistence or a specific agency that privatizes their water supply and triples the rates. In Mexico they resist a golf course in Tepoztlan, an airport in San Salvador Ateneo, a Costeo in Cuernavaca? All local and concrete manifestations of a global logic that disempowers people who lack capital and ignores their right to establish their own priorities. A growing number of movements in Latin America are engaging in innovative organizing against the injustices of the neoliberal paradigm (Gills, 2000), departing from the revolutionary focus on seizing state power (Foran, 2003). Privatization, fiscal austerity, and economic liberalization have resulted in the contraction and redeployment of the state, shifting the locus of political struggles away from direct contestation for state power and opening new spaces to contestation (by¶ new movements and old) over whether they will be controlled from above or below. The Mexican state acts increasingly as a broker for global capital as it attempts to re-regulate the conditions for accumulation on a global scale. Neoliberalism involves not simply a headlong retreat of the state but rather a renegotiation of state-society relations. The attempted recomposition of capitalist hegemony¶ included targeted social compensation programs such as the National Solidarity Program? PRONASOL. These somewhat contradictory efforts to create a reformulated clientelism for the neoliberal era (Hellman, 1994)? One more selective and flexible than the old corporatist structures had allowed? Did not entirely succeed in shielding the dominant-party form of the Mexican authoritarian state¶ from political change. The shift from state-orchestrated to market mechanisms of distribution overlapped with new forms of social-movement-based struggles, ranging from the debtors' movement El Barzan to independent unions and¶ neighborhood associations (Williams, 2001; Otero, 2004). As the turn to the market left state authorities in control of fewer resources for co-optation, increase social sectors formulated their demands not in terms of clieningly independent telistic expectations but in terms of citizenship rights (Fox, 1997). This discourse¶ of rights is characteristic of the newly constituted social subjects confronting¶ neoliberalism throughout Latin America by simultaneously claiming indigenous and other collective rights that markets deny and the citizenship rights that the¶ neoliberal state pretends to offer equally to all (Eckstein and Wickham-Crowley, 2003). The Zapatistas organize in newly contested spaces paradoxically created by neoliberal globalization itself (Stahler-Sholk, 2001), joining independent peasant and liberation theology organizing that predated the neoliberal era (Harvey, 1998). The forces of globalization that affect class relations are experienced (and¶ resisted) through a variety of locally relevant identities, including ethnicity and gender (Nash, 2001; Yashar, 2005). In Chiapas, elaborate structures of¶ labor control were constructed in the centuries after colonization them onto co-opted "traditional" religious/civic hierarchies in indigenous¶ communities. Changes in the global political economy of post-1982 (oil/debt¶ shock) Mexico were experienced locally as community power struggles that went to the core of what it meant to be part of the indigenous community¶ (Collier, 1994; Rus, 1995). The state regularly mediated private capitalist development initiatives (e.g., logging operations in the Lacandon Jungle in the second half of the twentieth century) by reinventing indigenous identities and¶ lines of authority in ways that facilitated the particular strategy of capital accumulation (De Vos, 2002). Resistance to neoliberalism, then, has taken the¶ form of a movement for autonomy, with the protagonists struggling for the right to define themselves culturally, socially, and politically
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Stahler-Sholk (Professor Department of Political Science Eastern Michigan University) 07 (Richard, “Resisting Neoliberal Homogenization: The Zapatista Autonomy Movement”, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 34, No. 2) C.A.
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Subcomandante Marcos tells the camera that the rebels rose up against the Mexican government in 1994 only to discover that the Mexican government didn't exist; instead, they found themselves fighting against the structures of global capital. All local and concrete manifestations of a global logic that disempowers people who lack capital and ignores their right to establish their own priorities. A growing number of movements in Latin America are engaging in innovative organizing against the injustices of the neoliberal paradigm departing from the revolutionary focus on seizing state power have resulted in the contraction and redeployment of the state, shifting the locus of political struggles away from direct contestation for state power and opening new spaces to contestation over whether they will be controlled from above or below. This discourse of rights is characteristic of the newly constituted social subjects confronting neoliberalism throughout Latin America by simultaneously claiming indigenous and other collective rights that markets deny and the citizenship rights that the neoliberal state pretends to offer equally to all The Zapatistas organize in newly contested spaces paradoxically created by neoliberal globalization itself joining independent peasant and liberation theology organizing that predated the neoliberal era Resistance to neoliberalism, then, has taken the form of a movement for autonomy, with the protagonists struggling for the right to define themselves culturally, socially, and politically
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Alternative We must engage in autonomous peasant movements, which fight to take control from below and project their autonomy upon the neoliberal state and corporations.
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Social movements by definition operate outside conventional politics, and "new" social movements are distinguished by their emphasis on autonomy, participatory process, and solidarity around perceived collective identities. The neoliberal project implies atomization and loss of control to global market¶ forces, posing dilemmas for movements seeking to reassert community identity and grassroots empowerment. On one hand, the "fetishism of autonomy"¶ (Hellman, 1992)? Eschewing affiliation or engagement with any political structure for fear that it might absorb the newly asserted identity? Can be a¶ dead end. On the other hand, negotiating a share of power with existing political institutions runs the risk of replicating dominant hierarchies (serving¶ global capital) and distancing the "autonomous" representatives from their social bases. Movements in Mexico and elsewhere experiment and debate¶ over how best to conceive of autonomy (Diaz-Polanco and Sanchez, 2002). Zapatismo as a social movement consists of various layers, including the¶ political-military structure (insurgents and militia) of the Ej?rcito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army? EZLN) that went¶ public in 1994, the "networks" of national and international supporters, and the "support-base" indigenous communities in the "conflict zones" (eastern jungle, border, northern zone, and central highlands) of Chiapas. I will focus¶ on the support-base communities to consider the sustainability of the movement, highlighting three dilemmas: (1) the limits of territorially based autonomy, (2) autonomy and curtailment of resource allocations, and (3) the¶ neoliberal "multiculturalism¶ trap." One model of autonomy, drawing on the experience of the Nicaraguan¶ Atlantic region, proposed a regionally based self-governance that would amount to a kind of territorial decentralization negotiated with the state. This¶ model was actually under construction in parts of the jungle region prior to¶ the 1994 Zapatista uprising, particularly in areas of predominantly Tojolabal settlement, in the form of Regiones Autonomas Pluri?tnicas (Pluriethnic¶ Autonomous Regions? RAP). This approach in effect created a new, fourth¶ level of government (alongside the federal, state, and municipal institutions)¶ and constructed a new "pluriethnic" indigenous identity among the various¶ indigenous groups that had formed part of the migrant stream settling the Lacandon Jungle agricultural frontier of eastern Chiapas since the 1950s. The RAP project of autonomy-as-decentralization was accelerated by its promoters in the space created by the Zapatista rebellion, advancing faster among its leadership than the creation of consensus within its diverse base. It therefore suffered from tendencies toward cacicazgo or "boss" politics as well as from the competing, more local identities of the ejidos reflecting the political economy of rural Mexico (Mattiace, 2003: 95-111). Critics of the RAP, including some academic advisers to the Zapatistas, argued that such territorial jurisdiction, acquired at the cost of being subsumed within the existing state structures, was only pseudo-autonomy (Esteva, 2003: 252-253). The Zapatistas themselves, who preferred a model of autonomy that built from the community level upward, remained open to a kind of pluralism of autonomies?" A world in which many worlds can fit” -- that did not force a choice between autonomy models.
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Stahler-Sholk (Professor Department of Political Science Eastern Michigan University) 07 (Richard, “Resisting Neoliberal Homogenization: The Zapatista Autonomy Movement”, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 34, No. 2) C.A.
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Social movements by definition operate outside conventional politics, and "new" social movements are distinguished by their emphasis on autonomy, participatory process, and solidarity around perceived collective identities. The neoliberal project implies atomization and loss of control to global market forces, posing dilemmas for movements seeking to reassert community identity and grassroots empowerment. negotiating a share of power with existing political institutions runs the risk of replicating dominant hierarchies Movements in Mexico and elsewhere experiment and debate over how best to conceive of autonomy Zapatismo as a social movement consists of various layers, including the political-military structure One model of autonomy, drawing on the experience of the Nicaraguan Atlantic region, proposed a regionally based self-governance that would amount to a kind of territorial decentralization negotiated with the state This approach in effect created a new, fourth level of government (alongside the federal, state, and municipal institutions) and constructed a new "pluriethnic" indigenous identity ). The Zapatistas themselves, who preferred a model of autonomy that built from the community level upward, remained open to a kind of pluralism of autonomies?" A world in which many worlds can fit” -- that did not force a choice between autonomy models.
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Alt Solves Our Alternative is a self-reflexive approach to the autonomous struggle. We open a space for various layers and tactics of interrogation, in which we can create a base of simultaneous revolutionary acts. We are the movement of movements.
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Neo-liberalism is a term used to identify the policies established in the Washington Consensus and the International Monetary Fund during the seventies, eighties and nineties, designed to allow third world countries to develop economically. Neo-liberal theories are based on the assumption that the free-er the market, the more economic development. For countries in Latin America, this meant eliminating or significantly reducing trade tariffs, labor and environmental laws as well as the elimination of legal protection for traditional subsistence economies.¶ Mexico and NAFTA¶ Mexico's common land policy has its origins in the Mexican revolution, especially in the work of Emiliano Zapata. Essentially, peasants, mostly Indians, could acquire common land from the government on which they could practice subsistence agriculture and continue their own way of life. Unfortunately, this has always been a struggle; more frequently than not the Mexican government provided the most agriculturally unfriendly lands so that Indian peoples remained mostly poor and in a struggle to survive, even on their common land. The neo-liberal foundations of NAFTA called for the Mexican government to eliminate entirely their common land policies, pushing the Mexican Indians who depended on such lands to the very brink of survival.¶ The Zapatistas and Neo-liberal Capitalism¶ The Zapatista movement fundamentally opposes neo-liberal capitalist theory, particularly that individuals pursuing their own interests in complete freedom is beneficial to society. Instead, the Zapatista are a movement for autonomy, that is, self-sufficiency. The concept of autonomy as fundamental to an economy is incompatible with the accumulation of wealth that is part of capitalist culture: accumulation of wealth depends on the ability of capitalists to appropriate labor; if the laborers own their own work then little possibility for accumulation of wealth exists. The Zapatista conflict then becomes a cultural conflict.¶ The Clash of Cultures Beyond Mexico¶ The conceptual conflict in Chiapas is not confined to the Maya, Mexico or indigenous peoples. Everywhere where people are exploited they at some point resist that exploitation. Exploitation is in itself a necessity of a capitalist economy, and the neo-liberal economic policies of many third world governments represent an extremely colonial articulation of that exploitation. In the end, the fundamental problem in Chiapas is the conflict between autonomy and exploitation: the accumulation of wealth from others or self-ownership.
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Skinner (Journalist at Politics & Society) 13 (Leslie, “Neoliberalism and the Zapatista Rebellion, http://suite101.com/article/neo-liberalism-and-the-zapatista-rebellion-a299570, Last updated: March 25th, 2013) C.A.
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Mexico's common land policy has its origins in the Mexican revolution, especially in the work of Emiliano Zapata. Essentially, peasants, mostly Indians, could acquire common land from the government The neo-liberal foundations of NAFTA called for the Mexican government to eliminate entirely their common land policies The Zapatista movement fundamentally opposes neo-liberal capitalist theory, particularly that individuals pursuing their own interests in complete freedom is beneficial to society. Instead, the Zapatista are a movement for autonomy, that is, self-sufficiency. The Zapatista conflict then becomes a cultural conflict The conceptual conflict in Chiapas is not confined to the Maya, Mexico or indigenous peoples. Everywhere where people are exploited they at some point resist that exploitation. Exploitation is in itself a necessity of a capitalist economy, and the neo-liberal economic policies of many third world governments represent an extremely colonial articulation of that exploitation. In the end, the fundamental problem in Chiapas is the conflict between autonomy and exploitation: the accumulation of wealth from others or self-ownership.
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Impact & Alternative Indigenous folk are being dispossessed and left to callously die of hunger and poverty. The Alt represents the Zapatistas in the face of NAFTA. The only ethical action in this debate is to radically oppose the exploitation of the indigenous people of Mexico. This is the best starting point for a Global revolt against Neoliberalism.
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Governor Madrazo in the State of Tabasco in 1994 faced demands from a popular movement made up of peasants and indigenous people who have were damaged by the petroleum industry. This and other events created an environment in Mexico for the formation of new indigenous movement organizations and new alliances between indigenous movements. Resistance movements against globalized corporate agriculture and biotechnology have emerged. From the authoritarian corporatist structure of the developmentalist years in Mexico, emerged peasant and indigenous social movements. The neoliberal reform in Mexico has served as crucible for the emergence of new actors such as the Zapatistas. Peasants and Indigenous peoples mobilized against the privatization of their lands and resources. In January of 1994, the Zapatista uprising of Mayan indigenous communities in Chiapas received solidarity from indigenous and peasant movement organizations, networks, alliances, and coalitions. Zapatismo manages timing placing the communities first, distancing the movement from national events. The 1994's New Year's Day marked the beginning of NAFTA and the arrival of a new guerrilla movement identified with Emiliano Zapata, the agrarian hero, symbol of national liberation and of the resistance to displacement of Mexican indigenous peoples from land holdings. In 1994, diverse local civic movements that included human rights movements, cooperatives, and ethnic rights emerged throughout the region in conflict in Chiapas, ejected most of the ruling party mayors of municipalities and installed instead pluralistic town councils. The Zapatista guerrilla movement that emerged in Chiapas in 1994 has triggered social movements in Mexico and abroad, to emphasize the increasing levels of poverty under the neoliberal economic policy and. demanding a more equitable income distribution. As a resistance movement, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas have been successful using the slogan ¡Basta ya! (Enough!) and presenting their 11-word program to the Mexican government: “Trabajo, Tierra, Techo, Pan, Salud, Educación, Democracis, Libertad, Paz, Independencia, y Justica” (work, land, shelter, bread, health, education, democracy, liberty, peace, independence, and justice) (Rosaldo, 2000: 20). Chiapas revolt remains an indigenous » revolt because it's the EZLN revolt supported with the rest of social movements in Mexico. The Zapatista movement represents grassroots organizations, which can broaden and deepen without external alliances. The Zapatista movement is larger than the EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional), involving numerous indigenous, peasants and civil organization. As a social movement, the EZLN is distinguishable from other popular movements in Mexico having actively mobilized not only the indigenous groups but also other large groups of economic, social and political actors. Zapata has inspired movements in Mexico in their struggle to sustain and improve ways of livelihood. The Zapatista movement seems to fit the definition of a new social movement because it concerns with ethnic identity underscores its total autonomy from organizations and political parties call for cultural liberation and survival as indigenous people and peasants of Chiapas, collective consumption and demand public services. The Zapatista movement seeks indigenous autonomy within the framework of the Mexican nation. The Zapatista movement is a way that is easy to embrace: The Mayan peoples want voice, when movement between the villages is almost impossible at times. The Zapatistas call their reform movement "the revolution before the revolution." The threat of a pan-Mayan movement is conjured embracing both Southern Mexico and much of Central American. Mexican social movements with the overt appearances of gestures of revolt have raised the choice of Zapata as the revolutionary forebear of the movement that also served the cause of revolution as theater. The essence of grassroots organizing movements grow outward and from the bottom up. The Zapatista movement does want to transform power relations through the creation of democratic spaces for consultation and collective decisions and does not want to take over state power. The process of the consultation implies movement. The movement grew directly from the alienation from the means of production.
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Hernández 10 (José G. Vargas is MBA, Ph.D., Research Professor, Member of the National System of Researchers Department of Marketing and International Business University Center for Economic and Administrative Sciences Universidad de Guadalajara, July 10, Historical Social and Indigenous Ecology Approach to Social Movements in Mexico and Latin America, Asian Culture and History, http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ach/article/view/6602. SHO)
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Madrazo aced demands from a popular movement made up of peasants and indigenous people who have were damaged by the petroleum industry. This created an environment in Mexico for the formation of new indigenous movement organizations and new alliances between indigenous movements. Resistance movements against globalized corporate agriculture and biotechnology have emerged. From the authoritarian corporatist structure in Mexico, emerged peasant and indigenous social movements neoliberal reform in Mexico served as crucible for the emergence of new actors such as the Zapatistas. Peasants and Indigenous peoples mobilized against the privatization of their lands and resources Zapatista received solidarity from indigenous and peasant movement organizations, networks, alliances, and coalitions. The 1994's New Year's Day marked the beginning of NAFTA and the arrival of a new guerrilla movement identified with Emiliano Zapata agrarian hero Zapatista guerrilla movement that emerged in Chiapas in 1994 has triggered social movements in Mexico and abroad, to emphasize the increasing levels of poverty under the neoliberal economic policy and. demanding a more equitable income distribution. As a resistance movement, the Zapatista uprising have been successful Zapatista movement represents grassroots organizations, which can broaden and deepen without external alliances. The movement is larger than the EZLN involving numerous indigenous, peasants and civil organization . Zapata has inspired movements in Mexico in their struggle to sustain and improve ways of livelihood The movement seems to fit the definition of a new social movement because it concerns with ethnic identity underscores its total autonomy from organizations and political parties call for cultural liberation and survival as indigenous people and peasants of Chiapas, collective consumption and demand public services The Zapatista movement seeks indigenous autonomy within the framework of the Mexican nation The Zapatistas call their reform movement "the revolution before the revolution Zapatista movement does want to transform power relations and does not want to take over state power. The process of the consultation implies movement. The movement grew directly from the alienation from the means of production.
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The Zapatistas are a key suturing point for Mexican movements against neoliberalism – linking organizations through the Zapatistas produces an effective public sphere that operates in parallel to the state and redresses social inequality
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Labor Unions Reorganize These developments had a powerful impact on the entire labor movement, not only on the state-controlled “official” unions of the CT, but also on the independent labor unions. Most of the leadership of the CT and the CTM proved unwilling, unable, and above all uninterested in defending the workers. their only interest was preserving the union as an institution of economic enrichment and political power for themselves. Change would have to begin somewhere else. Francisco Hernández Juárez, a militant leader of wildcat strikes in the 1970s who had become head of the Mexican Telephone Workers (STRM), led the break with the dinosaurs of the CT. While he had begun as a radical, in the 1980s Hernández Juárez became the darling of President Carlos Salinas, helping him to privatize Telmex and sell it to Salinas’s friend Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico. As head of the newly recognized Federation of Unions of Goods and Services (FESEBES)—which included telephone workers, flight attendants, pilots, streetcar workers and others—Hernández Juárez was promoted by Salinas as a modern trade union leader. But when Ernesto Zedillo became president, Hernández Juárez suddenly fell from grace, and without political support, his union was very vulnerable. Hernández Juárez, who had never gotten along with the leaders of the CT and the CTM, began to look for allies both among the “official” and independent unions. The movement began first in the spring of 1996, when twenty-one unions, including ten from within the CT, held a series of presentations which they referred to as the Forum: Unions Face the Nation, promoting a debate about a variety of issues of importance to labor. These unions became known as the Foro group, and eventually the discussion led to a more serious debate about the role of the unions in Mexico. In November 1997, the Telephone Workers Union, the National Union of Social Security Workers (SNTSS), and six other unions pulled out of the CT and joined independent unions such as the Union of Workers of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (STUNAM) and the Authentic Labor Front (FAT) to create a new labor federation, the National Union of Workers (UNT).8 The New Independent Labor Movement The new UNT put forward a program of democratic reform in unions and the workplace. The UNT called upon the PRI and later Vicente Fox and the PAN to carry forward and complete the “democratic transition” in Mexico, and urged the government to enter into negotiations with the labor and social movements to negotiate “a new social pact.” The UNT has expressed its willingness to work with employers and the government to increase productivity within the framework of a social pact that gives workers real labor union freedom, that is, the right to organize unions of their own choosing.9 The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), another usually independent-minded union, was invited to join the UNT, but declined to leave the PRI-dominated CT.10 Nevertheless, in August 1998 the SME, while still remaining part of the CT, drew together some forty other unions, peasant organizations, and urban poor peoples movements in an independent labor coalition (not a formal federation) called the Mexican Union Front (FSM). The FSM defines itself as an attempt to create “an alternative unified, democratic, working class, anticapitalist unionism.”11But like the UNT it was primarily motivated to fight against the agenda of neoliberal economic reform, particularly the privatization of the Mexican Light and Power Company, a state-owned firm which employs all of the SME’s members. The fact that the UNT puts forward a clearly reformist program and the FSM puts forward a nominally anticapitalist program does not really explain much about their political behavior. As already noted, the UNT has leaders who remain members of the PRI, but the FSM continued in the PRI-dominated CT after the UNT had left, and to this day has not left (despite several announcements that it was doing so). When the UNT organized the FSCISP, the SME and the FSM, which it leads, at first declined to join except as observers. Now both the UNT and the FSM work to build the FSCISP. In truth, the UNT and the FSM both represent independent labor formations each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Despite their differences, both have joined together, at least for the moment, in a common fight against privatization, labor law reform, Fox, and neoliberalism. Most recently, in December of last year, the million-member Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE), headed by Elba Esther Gordillo, led a breakaway of twenty-one of thirty unions from the FSTSE and formed the Democratic Federation of Unions of Public Servants (FEDESSP). Gordillo, a long time leader of the PRI, is a Machiavellian political operator close to Vicente Fox. The new FEDESSP represents a conservative modernizing labor politics more or less in line with the PRI technocrats or even the PAN. Today in Mexico then, the government control over the labor movement has been greatly weakened, and we have a broader spectrum of labor organizations from the FSM and UNT on the left to the CT and the new FEDESSP on the right. Vicente Fox and the Neoliberal Agenda President Vicente Fox, the former Coca-Cola executive, shoe manufacturer, and rancher won the election in 2000 with widespread support from many sectors of Mexican society. His victory held out the hope that with the end of the PRI’s one-party-state, government control over the labor movement would end. As a candidate, Fox had signed a document put forward by the independent labor movement, in which he promised to uphold workers’ rights, including the right of workers to choose their own unions. However, once elected, Fox appointed Carlos Abascal Carranza, a former head of the Mexican Employers Association, to be Secretary of Labor, and Fox and Abascal quickly established a friendly relationship with Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine, head of the CTM and the CT. Just as in the past under the PRI, Fox’s new PAN government protected the labor officials, and, by and large, they supported the president’s conservative political and economic agenda.
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Dan La Botz 5, He was a co-founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and has written extensively on worker rights in the United States andMexico. He is a member of the socialist organization Solidarity, which describes itself as "a democratic, revolutionary socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization,"[1] which comes out of the Trotskyist tradition. La Botz ran in 2010 for a seat in the United States Senate for the Socialist Party., "Mexico’s Labor Movement in Transition", http://monthlyreview.org/2005/06/01/mexicos-labor-movement-in-transition
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Labor Union had a powerful impact on the entire labor movement, not only on the state-controlled “official” unions of the CT, but also on the independent labor unions. the CT and the CTM proved unwilling, unable, and above all uninterested in defending the workers. their only interest was preserving the union as an institution of economic enrichment and political power for themselves . As head of the newly recognized Federation of Unions of Goods and Services (FESEBES)—which included telephone workers, flight attendants, pilots, streetcar workers and others—Hernández Juárez was promoted by Salinas as a modern trade union leader The movement began , when twenty-one unions, including ten from within the CT, held a series of presentations which they referred to as the Forum: Unions Face the Nation, promoting a debate about a variety of issues of importance to labor. These unions became known as the Foro group , the National Union of Workers (UNT). The New Independent Labor Movement The new UNT put forward a program of democratic reform in unions and the workplace democratic transition” in Mexico, and urged the government to enter into negotiations with the labor and social movements to negotiate “a new social pact. social pact that gives workers real labor union freedom, that is, the right to organize unions of their own choosing. , drew together some forty other unions, peasant organizations, and urban poor peoples movements in an independent labor coalition (not a formal federation) called the Mexican Union Front alternative unified, democratic, working class, anticapitalist unionism to fight against the agenda of neoliberal economic reform, particularly the privatization of the Mexican Light and Power Company . The fact that the UNT puts forward a clearly reformist program and the FSM puts forward a nominally anticapitalist program does not really explain much about their political behavior leaders who remain members of the PRI, but the FSM which it leads, at first declined to join except as observers FSM both represent independent labor formations each with its own strengths and weaknesses Despite their differences, both have joined together, at least for the moment, in a common fight against privatization twenty-one of thirty union modernizing labor politics more or less the labor movement has been greatly weakened, and we have a broader spectrum of labor organizations the Neoliberal Agenda President Vicente Fox with widespread support from many sectors of Mexican society the independent labor movement, in which he promised to uphold workers’ rights, including the right of workers to choose their own unions. H government protected the labor officials
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Labor unions attempt to reject neoliberalism in Mexico-gaining political support
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Economic participation¶ Unlike neo-developmentalist regimes, a major focus for the Chavez government in the economic sphere was the social economy. Initiatives in this regard included the promotion of cooperatives and the nationalisation and reactivation of closed factories under workers’ cogestión (co-management).¶ The boom in cooperatives was fuelled by government programs and funding. By 2007, some 183,000 cooperatives were registered, although serious studies put the figure of active cooperatives at around 30,000, which, when compared to less than 1000 before Chavez came to power, is still impressive. By 2010, the number stood at more than 73,000. While the government and trade unions had an overly ambitious plan of taking over and reopening 800 abandoned factories under cogestion, by the end of 2006 there were around 40 recovered factories.¶ More generally, the popular classes benefited from increases in the minimum, real and social wage, as well as falling unemployment. Yet, advances in these areas did not lead to an overall change in Venezuela’s rapidly growing economy. The small scale of the social economy meant that the biggest beneficiary of the dramatic rise in consumption was the private sector, which took advantage of this situation by reactivating installed capacity (in a context where many companies had almost ground to halt in late 2002) or by importing goods. This meant that production capacity remained low and concentrated in a few hands, with 571 companies accounting for 80% of domestic production in 2007. Imports more than doubled between 2003 and 2006. Venezuela’s economy seemed to be becoming more capitalist, and more dependent on private capital (whose share of GDP increased relative to the public sector) and on oil sales to external markets.¶ With the global economic crisis in 2008, government revenue fell along with international oil prices. By the first quarter of 2009, the country’s economy had gone into recession, with GDP shrinking by 3.3%. Meanwhile, inflation began regularly exceeding 20% each year, and food shortages became a real problem.¶ To confront this complex situation of high inflation, low growth and shortages, the government unleashed two waves of nationalisations. While the first wave in 2007 targeted basic services such as electricity and telecommunications, a second wave in 2008-2009 sought to give the state greater control over strategic productive industries. In almost all cases, these moves were not a response to workers’ struggles within these industries, but rather the growing demands of the poor for basic services, housing and food.¶ By 2012, the government had nationalised 1168 companies. The state now had either majority control or was the biggest player across all strategic sectors of the economy, with the threat of expropriation looming for those that refused to cooperate.¶ Workers’ participation was encouraged in a number of these newly nationalised companies, notably in heavy industry and the electricity sector.¶ The government also built hundreds of “socialist factories” with the state providing necessary professionals and workers being selected by local communal councils. The aim is for the workers and communities to gradually assume complete management of these factories.¶ To overcome some of the deficiencies of cooperatives, which tended to reproduce the logic of capital, the government began promoting community-owned enterprises, in particular encouraging communal councils to create Enterprises of Social Community Property (EPSC). As they are collective property of the communities, it is the communities themselves that decide on the organisational structure of enterprises, who is employed in the enterprise and the eventual use of any profits. There are several thousand EPSC in existence.¶ In an initiative aimed at increasing collaboration between some of the newly nationalised and socialist factories, EPSCs and communal councils, Chavez launched the Grand Housing Mission in 2010 to try and tackle the housing problem. More than 350,000 houses were built over 2011 and 2012. Around 50% of the housing projects being built by the communal councils themselves.¶ As with the advances in participation in the social and political arena, the same challenges emerged in the economic sphere: corruption, bureacratism and clientalism. A number of nationalisations helped expose the existence of what is popularly referred to in Venezuela as the “Bolibourgeoisie”, or Bolivarian bourgeoisie, who amass immense fortunes in the name of the revolution. During the banking crisis of late 2009, a number of the bankers jailed had been closely aligned with the government.¶ Another target of popular discontent was la derecha endógen (the endogenous right wing). Encrusted in the state bureaucracy, these sectors sought to moderate the process in order to defend their economic interests. In Guayana, opposition to workers’ control in heavy industries took the public form of the local Chavista governor, state-appointed managers and bureaucratic trade union leaders, all of whom have an economic interest in halting the process of expanding workers’ participation.¶ At the same time, strong economist tendencies persist within the working class. And many of the experiments in cooperatives and EPSC have demonstrated a tendency to stimulate short-term rent circulation at the expense of production.¶ Current challenges and possible paths forward¶ So where does all this leave us in terms of current problems in Venezuela and ways forward. Well, this depends on your perspective.¶ For the private sector the problem is largely one of too much state intervention. A corrupted state bureaucracy has fuelled inflation by flooding the economy with oil money and distorted the market through arbitrary and inefficient decisions over who gets access to dollars. Rather than prop up failing enterprises in the social economy, the state should let them compete against the private sector in the market. The solution is to cut off oil funding to social programs and the social economy, and remove currency and price controls.¶ For statist sectors, the problem is the parasitic and corrupt rent-seeking behaviour of Venezuela’s economic elites, which also finds its reflection among Venezuela’s poor. Rentier capitalism has created not only a weak bourgeoisie, but also a weak working class. In its place, the state must take the lead, through a combination of state-orientated development projects and social spending. The main policy suggestion is the “deferral” of popular participation to a latter date, once state-led development has created the conditions for a strong working class (and national bourgeoisie).¶ There is a third vision, which takes as it starting point the reality that the current problems have less to do with government economic policy and more to do with the nature of Venezuela’s economy, an economy that continues to be oil-dependent and capitalistic, even if an important level of economic sovereignty has been reasserted and the seeds for a radical transformation have been planted. This vision is premised on the idea that overcoming the current problems requires deepening the Chavista model.¶ For example, figures show that inflation (which is well below that experienced in the 1980s and 1990s) was at its lowest in the 2005-2006 period, precisely when social spending was fuelling rising consumption and rapid economy growth. Moreover, shortages have always peaked around key political events, such as the recent presidential elections. This not only contradicts the idea that inflation in Venezuela is primarily driving by excess demand, or by the circulation of oil money in the economy, rather it is evidence that inflation is to a large extent a supply-side phenomenon. Focusing on the demand-side conceals the role played by Venezuela’s economic elites, who rather than produce to meet peoples’ needs prefer to rely on imports, actively hoard basic goods or trade on the black market to avoid price controls. This, together with speculation in black-market dollars, has pushed up the sale price for imported goods, leading to a shift of oil wealth out of the pockets of workers and into the bank accounts of the capitalists.¶ The state bureaucracy has often facilitated this. For example: the newly appointed head of the Central Bank of Venezuela revealed in May 2013 that of the dollars handed over by the state to the private sector, $15-20 billion ended up either in the black market or leaving the country.¶ I would therefore suggest that the problem is not “too much” control over oil rent. This seems obvious when we consider how much wealth seeps out through corruption and bureaucratism. Rather, corruption and bureaucratism are the problems; overcoming them requires deepening popular participation and control.¶ This means tightening control over the flow of oil wealth. This will require specific measures to beat back the current economic war being waged by the economic elites, as well as deepening the war on corruption within the state itself. But for these measures to be successful, they will need to be continuously guided by Chavismo’s radical vision of development, which, unlike neo-developmentalism, sees this not simply as a question of economic growth, public investment and social spending, but principally one of developing peoples’ capacities through greater participation in the political, economic and social sphere.
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Fuentes 13 (Federico; “Venezuela’s 21st Century Socialism: Neo-Developmentalism or Radical Alternative?”; July 16th 2013; http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/9860) IIN
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major focus for the Chavez government in the economic sphere was the social economy. Initiatives in this regard included the promotion of cooperatives and the nationalisation and reactivation of closed factories under co-management By 2007, some 183,000 cooperatives were registered By 2010, the number stood at more than 73,000 by the end of 2006 there were around 40 recovered factories.¶ the popular classes benefited from increases in the minimum, real and social wage, as well as falling unemployment. Yet, advances in these areas did not lead to an overall change in Venezuela’s rapidly growing economy. The small scale of the social economy meant that the biggest beneficiary of the dramatic rise in consumption was the private sector, which took advantage of this situation by reactivating installed capacity (in a context where many companies had almost ground to halt in late 2002) or by importing goods production capacity remained low and concentrated in a few hands, with 571 companies accounting for 80% of domestic production in 2007. Imports more than doubled between 2003 and 2006. Venezuela’s economy seemed to be becoming more capitalist, and more dependent on private capital (whose share of GDP increased relative to the public sector) and on oil sales to external markets With the global economic crisis in 2008, government revenue fell along with international oil prices the country’s economy had gone into recession, with GDP shrinking by 3.3%. Meanwhile, inflation began regularly exceeding 20% each year, and food shortages became a real problem , the government unleashed two waves of nationalisations the first targeted basic services such as electricity and telecommunications, a second sought to give the state greater control over strategic productive industries , these moves were not a response to workers’ struggles within these industries, but rather the growing demands of the poor for basic services, housing and food. By 2012, the government had nationalised 1168 companies. The state now had either majority control or was the biggest player across all strategic sectors of the economy, with the threat of expropriation looming for those that refused to cooperate.¶ Workers’ participation was encouraged in a number of these newly nationalised companies The government also built hundreds of “socialist factories” with the state providing necessary professionals and workers being selected by local communal councils. The aim is for the workers and communities to gradually assume complete management of these factories.¶ the government began promoting community-owned enterprises, in particular encouraging communal councils to create Enterprises of Social Community Property (EPSC). Chavez launched the Grand Housing Mission in 2010 to try and tackle the housing problem. More than 350,000 houses were built over 2011 and 2012. As with the advances in participation in the social and political arena, the same challenges emerged in the economic sphere: corruption, bureacratism and clientalism. A number of nationalisations helped expose the existence of what is referred to as the “Bolibourgeoisie” who amass immense fortunes in the name of the revolution. During the banking crisis of late 2009, a number of the bankers jailed had been closely aligned with the government At the same time, strong economist tendencies persist within the working class. And many of the experiments in cooperatives and EPSC have demonstrated a tendency to stimulate short-term rent circulation at the expense of production.¶ So where does all this leave us in terms of current problems in Venezuela and ways forward. Well, this depends on your perspective.¶ For the private sector the problem is largely one of too much state intervention For statist sectors, the problem is the parasitic and corrupt rent-seeking behaviour of Venezuela’s economic elites, which also finds its reflection among Venezuela’s poor. There is a third vision, which takes as it starting point the reality that the current problems have less to do with government economic policy and more to do with the nature of Venezuela’s economy, an economy that continues to be oil-dependent and capitalistic, even if an important level of economic sovereignty has been reasserted and the seeds for a radical transformation have been planted. This vision is premised on the idea that overcoming the current problems requires deepening the Chavista model.¶ figures show that inflation was at its lowest in the 2005-2006 period, precisely when social spending was fuelling rising consumption and rapid economy growth shortages have always peaked around key political events, such as the recent presidential elections. This contradicts the idea that inflation in Venezuela is primarily driving by excess demand, or by the circulation of oil money in the economy inflation is to a large extent a supply-side phenomenon. Focusing on the demand-side conceals the role played by Venezuela’s economic elites, who rather than produce to meet peoples’ needs prefer to rely on imports, actively hoard basic goods or trade on the black market to avoid price controls. This, pushed up the sale price for imported goods, leading to a shift of oil wealth out of the pockets of workers and into the bank accounts of the capitalists The state bureaucracy has often facilitated this the problem is not “too much” control over oil rent. This seems obvious when we consider how much wealth seeps out through corruption and bureaucratism. Rather, corruption and bureaucratism are the problems; overcoming them requires deepening popular participation and control.¶ This means tightening control over the flow of oil wealth. This will require specific measures to beat back the current economic war being waged by the economic elites, as well as deepening the war on corruption within the state itself. measures will need to be continuously guided by Chavismo’s radical vision of development, which , sees this not simply as a question of economic growth, public investment and social spending, but principally one of developing peoples’ capacities through greater participation in the political, economic and social sphere
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The Venezuelan model is good – bureaucracy, corruption, and crime are because chavismo has not been implemented completely – only the alt creates the momentum to smash bureaucratic rent-seeking
| 9,494 | 193 | 6,191 | 1,460 | 29 | 960 | 0.019863 | 0.657534 |
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The independent Venezuelan human rights organisation, PROVEA in their annual evaluation of human rights for 2004-2005, hails the advances towards social justice and equality during Chávez’s years in power. These improvements have been particularly felt, they note, amongst the poorest sections of society, with an important increase in income for socio-economic stratum E, the group, as ¶ we have seen which provides the bedrock of popular support for the Chávez ¶ government. PROVEA sees these tendencies as a democratizing force, increasing equality and social justice.62¶ In the following year’s report (2005-2006) they recommend, however, ¶ improvements in five key areas in order to ensure lasting structural changes in favour of all, but particularly the traditionally excluded.63 These are: ¶ 1. Integrating Missions into the existing institutionality and putting them under more rigorous cost and evaluation controls. 2. Creating a real division of powers between institutions, reducing the protagonism of the presidency, and reversing the tendency towards the militarization of Venezuelan society. 3. Fostering an appropriate climate to handle conflict and reach consensus through the creation of more space for dialogue. 4. Providing a National Plan for Human Rights with ample popular participation. 5. Ensuring the participation of the population in public affairs, guaranteeing citizenship and the autonomy of social organizations. ¶ 27‘Who governs in the next six years’ PROVEA concludes, ‘have the challenge to construct a democracy with social justice, solid and efficient ¶ institutions, less poor people, with citizens more conscious of their rights, and ¶ with a significant decline in human rights abuses and impunity, as well as ¶ creating adequate conditions for the exercising and enjoyment of all human rights ¶ without discrimination’.64¶ While the Chávez government has advanced notably towards a number of these goals since coming to power in 1999, and whilst discursively in particular it has clearly voiced its wish to aim towards many of them, in practice it still has quite some way to go. The most recent 2006-2007 PROVEA survey notes that Venezuela is in a state of transition between the old puntofijo republic and a new form of state aiming towards a ‘socialism of the XXI century’. Within Venezuelan society there is a battle, within and without the government, between those whose actions are characterised by authoritarianism and those aiming towards a full participative democracy.65 It remains to be seen if in the remaining five years ¶ of Chávez’s second full mandate whether he will aim towards the latter with the ¶ necessary vigour to ensure popular participation for all, especially those ¶ traditionally excluded on the basis of class and race, and thus truly reverse the ¶ historical patterns which helped create the space for him to emerge as a leader ¶ in the first place.
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Dr. Cannon 8 (Barry, Centre for International Studies School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, “Class/race polarisation in Venezuela and the electoral success of Hugo Chávez: a break with the past or the song remains the same?”, http://doras.dcu.ie/2146/1/2008-9.pdf)
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The independent Venezuelan human rights organisation, PROVEA in their annual evaluation of human rights for 04 05, hails the advances towards social justice and equality during Chávez’s years in power. These improvements have been felt amongst the poorest sections of society, with an important increase in income for socio-economic stratum E PROVEA sees these tendencies as a democratizing force, increasing equality and social justice In the report 05 06 they recommend improvements in five key areas in order to ensure lasting structural changes in favour of all, but particularly the traditionally excluded 1. Integrating Missions into the existing institutionality and putting them under more rigorous cost and evaluation controls. 2. Creating a real division of powers between institutions, reducing the protagonism of the presidency, and reversing the tendency towards the militarization of Venezuelan society. 3. Fostering an appropriate climate to handle conflict and reach consensus through the creation of more space for dialogue. 4. Providing a National Plan for Human Rights with ample popular participation. 5. Ensuring the participation of the population in public affairs, guaranteeing citizenship and the autonomy of social organizations. While the Chávez government has advanced notably towards a number of these goals since coming to power in 1999, and whilst discursively in particular it has clearly voiced its wish to aim towards many of them, in practice it still has quite some way to go. The 06 07 PROVEA survey notes that Venezuela is in a state of transition between the old puntofijo republic and a new form of state aiming towards a ‘socialism of the XXI century’. Within Venezuelan society there is a battle, within and without the government, between those whose actions are characterised by authoritarianism and those aiming towards a full participative democracy
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Venezuela respects HR – independent PROVEA analysis proves – further abuses will be solved by effective implementation of chavismo
| 2,922 | 130 | 1,895 | 456 | 19 | 290 | 0.041667 | 0.635965 |
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The opening quote exemplifies four critical characteristics of hip-hop culture, they are: (1) its transcendental cultural space, “nation”; (2) its inherent contradictions, “paradox perpetrators”; (3) its representation of the marginalized, “black youth”; and (4) its resistance to mainstream, “industry” representations of the culture. Each of these characteristics is a derivative of the neoliberal hegemonic function. Free-market capitalism has “commodified”2 and “co-opted”3 hip-hop culture (although not completely as we shall see later) and this creates fragmentation of thought and contradiction in action. However, in dialectical reaction there are organic countermovements that are resistant and “antithetical” to the hegemonies that oppress them.4 The process of globalization has stretched and deepened hip-hop’s predominance, allowing its cultural influence to transcend the boundaries of race, class, gender, religion, and region. In doing so, voice is often given to the voiceless. Therefore, hip-hop culture could serve as a conduit for electric and eclectic resistance from below, a key factor in challenging globalization from above.¶ To fully explore all the nuances of hip-hop as resistance, this paper will first discuss three theories of resistance: countermovements, counterhegemony, and infrapolitics.5 Countermovements explain why and what people resist (with some how, as well) and counterhegemony and infrapolitics explain how people resist. These three theories account for the ideal type outputs of the resistance matrix, whose inputs are: undeclared or declared, singular or collective, unorganized or organized, and reformist or revolutionary. The various outputs of the resistance matrix are resisting neoliberal ideological domination because it produces a system of norms, values, meanings, and identities that promote non-egalitarian economic, political, and social interests. Hip-hop culture, because of its historic and organic antithetical nature, indirect critiques of neoliberal globalization, supranational coherence, diverse body of agents, and deep and wide range of engaged resistance strategies, is a critical contributor to resistance from below to top-heavy neoliberal globalization.¶ By photographing hip-hop culture through the theoretical lenses of the Polanyi-Gramsci-Scott triad and contrasting their negatives to the ideological pictures of neoliberal globalization, hip-hop’s counterhegemonic image is brought to the forefront. Hip-hop culture performs an instrumental role in challenging the hegemony of neoliberal ideology, and thus globalization, through a variety of forms of resistance that carve dissident cultural enclaves. These hidden enclaves of resistance are a viable forum for the formulation, elaboration, and dissemination of a counterhegemonic consciousness and culture, which is a prerequisite for any solidified and sustained form of resistance (countermovements, wars of position, and wars of movement).
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Hibbard (A senior at the University of Puget Sound majoring in international political economy) 2003(Noah, “”Popilar Public Resistance”, http://upress.kent.edu/nieman/popular_public_resistance.htm,) CA
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Free-market capitalism has “commodified”2 and “co-opted”3 hip-hop culture and this creates fragmentation of thought and contradiction in action. However, in dialectical reaction there are organic countermovements that are resistant and “antithetical” to the hegemonies that oppress them 4 The process of globalization has stretched and deepened hip-hop’s predominance, allowing its cultural influence to transcend the boundaries of race, class, gender, religion, and region. In doing so, voice is often given to the voiceless Therefore, hip-hop culture could serve as a conduit for electric and eclectic resistance from below, a key factor in challenging globalization from above Countermovements explain why and what people resist (with some how, as well) and counterhegemony and infrapolitics explain how people resist . The various outputs of the resistance matrix are resisting neoliberal ideological domination because it produces a system of norms, values, meanings, and identities that promote non-egalitarian economic, political, and social interests. Hip-hop culture, because of its historic and organic antithetical nature, indirect critiques of neoliberal globalization, supranational coherence, diverse body of agents, and deep and wide range of engaged resistance strategies, is a critical contributor to resistance from below to top-heavy neoliberal globalization . Hip-hop culture performs an instrumental role in challenging the hegemony of neoliberal ideology, and thus globalization, through a variety of forms of resistance that carve dissident cultural enclaves , which is a prerequisite for any solidified and sustained form of resistance (countermovements, wars of position, and wars of movement
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Alt We must engage in an organic Hip Hop countermovement, which creates multiple diverse forms of resistance from below to neoliberal globalization.
| 2,974 | 149 | 1,717 | 403 | 22 | 240 | 0.054591 | 0.595533 |
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Since Chavez took office over 11 years ago, numerous policies have been experimented with to tackle the violence. More general policies meant to battle poverty, specifically the social missions, which provide healthcare, education, jobs and rehabilitation centers (to list a few) to Venezuelan citizens, have had positive results.¶ Since the initiation of the programs, poverty has dropped in half and youth have new alternatives to a life on the street. However, with easy access to weapons, gun crime remains common and impunity often leads to repeat offenders. Tackling that issue, however, has been difficult in part because the corruption of the Metropolitan Police of Caracas (PM).¶ The PM has a long history of involvement in the murder, torture and oppression of youth and much of this violence has continued under Chavez. According to statistics from the government, not only in Caracas but also around Venezuela, police are responsible for some 15-20% of criminal activity.¶ As a method to tackle the problem, Chavez’s administration created the National Bolivarian Police (PNB). The idea for the PNB was developed from a National Police Reform Commission in 2006 in which the government and police forces participated in numerous community-based assemblies to determine the structure of police reform. According to the government, the new police force will adapt preventative and humane practices while working directly with communities and being held accountable to community councils. In January of this year, the first officers were deployed in Catia, the largest barrio on Caracas’s west side, which since then has seen an over 50% reduction in murders.¶ ¶ Community Response¶ ¶ One of the most successful initiatives of the government in battling violence has been through the support of community organizations and councils that directly respond to the needs of their neighborhood. In areas such as La Vega, which used to hold the title as being one of the most dangerous barrios, culture programs have been the primary response in taking youth off the streets. On any given evening sport, music and art programs aimed at young males, those most likely to get involved in gangs, can be seen in almost every neighborhood. ¶ The government does not only promote many of the culture-based groups in La Vega but also supports them with resources, while in some cases the Ministry of Culture will hire local teachers. As Tirso Maldonado, who coordinates a nightly political hip-hop school in La Vega told me, “In the 90’s, in one weekend we would wake up to 30 dead in our community. Now when one person dies people are in shock and community members march out of their houses enraged.” In La Vega, it is quite common to see people partying in the streets on the weekends and propping their doors open during the daytime. In the 1990’s, I’ve been told, that was unheard of.¶ Additionally, in 23 de Enero, an area with a population of over 500,000, residents were successful in actually removing the police from their barrio completely. Since then the community created their own police force and have taken over former areas home to drug-sellers, turning them into parks and meeting spaces. According to accounts from those living in the barrio, there has been an over 90% reduction in murders. ¶ La Vega and 23 de Enero are not unique cases. From my own experience of not only conducting numerous interviews but also living in over a half-dozen of Caracas’s most “dangerous” barrios, there is a widely held belief that things are drastically improving despite the media reports.¶ Problem Areas¶ Violence still remains an issue, though one that is not unique to Caracas but which also affects numerous cities around Latin America. The Venezuelan government’s failure to produce reliable statistics that are available to the public has been an obstacle in understanding the size of the problem. Not only would statistics aid the government in better attacking problem areas, it would also restore the public’s confidence in the handling of the matter.¶ Other obstacles facing the government are the concentration of violence in areas that are difficult to patrol. Petare, the largest barrio, and quite isolated on Caracas’s east side, has had scattered outcomes. The region is home to a large Colombian immigrant population and also one of the poorest and most densely populated barrios in the city. Furthermore, since regional elections in 2008, Petare has been under the control of the opposition, making it difficult for the national government to implement new security policies.¶ In western Venezuela, new threats of violence continue along the 1,375-mile border of Venezuela and Colombia, which has been a challenge for Venezuelan authorities to control. Drug traffickers and paramilitaries have been found operating along border cities and even as far east as Caracas. To add to the chaos, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands displaced by civil-conflict in Colombia migrate into Venezuela annually, many landing in the already overcrowded Caracas streets.¶ Reducing the murder rate in Caracas and elsewhere will continue to be a challenge to the current government in the coming years. However, with the creation of the national police force and the increased involvement of grassroots and community organizations, there is strong optimism that the problem will only improve. Unfortunately, the wealthy elite has shown that it is in their interest for Venezuela to remain violent - making it increasingly apparent that it is not Chavez’s policies that stand in the way of a safer Venezuela but the manufacturing of fear promoted by the opposition’s own media.
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Cassel (Independent Journalist, EPATU Activist) 10(Lainie, Venezuela’s Opposition: Manufacturing Fears in Exchange for Votes”, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2670-venezuelas-opposition-manufacturing-fear-in-exchange-for-votes-) CA
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Since Chavez took office over 11 years ago, numerous policies have been experimented with to tackle the violence. More general policies meant to battle poverty Since the initiation of the programs, poverty has dropped in half and youth have new alternatives to a life on the street Tackling that issue, however, has been difficult in part because the corruption of the Metropolitan Police of Caracas not only in Caracas but also around Venezuela, police are responsible for some 15-20% of criminal activity. As a method to tackle the problem, Chavez’s administration created the National Bolivarian Police In January of this year, the first officers were deployed in Catia, the largest barrio on Caracas’s west side, which since then has seen an over 50% reduction in murders. One of the most successful initiatives of the government in battling violence has been through the support of community organizations The government does not only promote many of the culture-based groups in La Vega but also supports them with resources, while in some cases the Ministry of Culture will hire local teachers. As Tirso Maldonado, who coordinates a nightly political hip-hop school in La Vega told me, “In the 90’s, in one weekend we would wake up to 30 dead in our community. Now when one person dies people are in shock and community members march out of their houses enraged Additionally, in 23 de Enero, an area with a population of over 500,000, residents were successful in actually removing the police from their barrio completely. Since then the community created their own police force and have taken over former areas home to drug-sellers, turning them into parks and meeting spaces. From my own experience of not only conducting numerous interviews but also living in over a half-dozen of Caracas’s most “dangerous” barrios, there is a widely held belief that things are drastically improving despite the media reports. Unfortunately, the wealthy elite has shown that it is in their interest for Venezuela to remain violent - making it increasingly apparent that it is not Chavez’s policies that stand in the way of a safer Venezuela but the manufacturing of fear promoted by the opposition’s own media.
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(I advise picking ONE of the below cards & then using the other in the 2NC)
| 5,686 | 75 | 2,206 | 916 | 16 | 362 | 0.017467 | 0.395197 |
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It is 7:00 on a Wednesday evening in Caracas’s southern barrio known as La Vega. In a small classroom lined with worn-out wooden desks, youth of all ages sit and listen to a local DJ talk about the historical roots of hip-hop culture. After the discussion is over, the youth quickly disperse and hip-hop beats begin blasting as dancers practice their footwork and emcees prepare to show off their latest rhymes. ¶ Caracas may be further then a stone’s throw from hip-hop’s birthplace in the Bronx but in communities like La Vega, known for its large African descendent population and oral traditions, hip-hop’s emergence there seemed only natural. Allowing for youth to express themselves, while connecting them to their ancestral roots, hip-hop has become a way-of life for many. ¶ Thanks to a program called EPATU (the Spanish acronym for Popular School for the Arts and Urban Traditions), Venezuelans as young as 2 and as old as 76 are experiencing a growing hip-hop culture first hand. So far over 30 hip-hop schools have opened in 15 states around the country, mobilizing a new generation of youth through music. ¶ However, for EPATU organizers starting a hip-hop movement in a country largely consumed by salsa and reggaeton music has not come without a backlash from community members. Karine Esparragoza, a 19-year old emcee who attends classes at EPATU in La Vega, admits that her family members are not comfortable with the hip-hop culture. “They associate hip-hop with drugs and violence”, she told me in an interview, “but I’m here because I strongly believe that is what we are fighting against.¶ Overcoming the negative stereotypes of hip-hop is one of the biggest challenges facing organizers and one in which the participants are trying to change. They do so by targeting those most likely to get involved with violence – young males and children living on the streets. Hip-hop’s counterculture appeal draws the youth in while also giving them an alternate way of expressing themselves.¶ In La Vega, EPATU has had numerous successes, attracting anywhere between 20 to 50 kids on any given evening. Their school is located in a park at the bottom of a road that leads up to what were in the past some of Caracas’s most notoriously dangerous streets. “The point” as the park has been named, is the original headquarters of hip-hop in Caracas and has survived the ups and downs of a decades long movement. ¶ As La Vega-based rapper “El-Ega” claims, “hip-hop in Venezuela, like around the world, was born as a cry against the oppression we faced in our communities and as a call for protest”. In the 90’s, hip-hop music had clashed tremendously with the ruling government, a trend that changed when President Hugo Chavez, himself a hip-hop fan, took office in 1999. ¶ While hip-hop was less mobilized in Chavez’s initial years in office, it saw a rebirth with the rise of a nation-wide collective called Hip-Hop Revolucion (HHR). HHR, which since 2005 has held an annual International Hip-Hop summit, was born out of radical movements in the barrios of Caracas. The collective is home to a number of well-respected artists and has grown to include members from around North and South America. ¶ It was from HHR, that EPATU was born. A project that had been on the backburner for years and a dream of many of those hopeful to pass hip-hop music on to future generations, EPATU was officially launched on the 18th of January in 2010. Before its inception, organizers from around the country worked tirelessly through workshops and conferences in preparation. ¶ Each individual school operates according to the needs of the communities in which it resides but all are expected to incorporate political formation into their coursework. Generally, one day a week is devoted to discussions and workshops that cover topics anywhere from racism to consumerism and cultural imperialism. Other nights are saved for the four elements of hip-hop (breakdancing, emceeing, graffiti and DJing). ¶ Before the official commencement of EPATU, HHR put out a statement that reads ¶ “We realize that the struggle of our movement begins within ourselves; we must try to destroy our individualities and understand that alone no progress is possible. Our culture is collective from its roots, for this reason we look beyond the four elements of our movement, we view our cultural creation as an act of freedom that can neither be bought nor sold, traded nor negotiated; it is simply for living and building.” (Read more) ¶ In a country undergoing radical political change known to many inside Venezuela as the “Bolivarian Process”, EPATU organizers hope to keep the movement autonomous of state as well as private institutions. As the national lead organizer, Julia Mendez notes, however “We are a 100% revolutionary organization and we fully support the [Bolivarian] Process.”¶ President Hugo Chavez has given support back and has gone so far as to invite numerous hip-hop artists from HHR onto his well-known Sunday television program, Aló Presidente. As La Vega coordinator, Tirso Maldanado argues, however, “our allegiance is not with the government nor with the President but rather with our community.” ¶ EPATU recently formed a relationship with the Ministry of the Communes but many of the promised resources have yet to arrive at the schools. As a result, national coordinators promote local projects to help sustain each individual EPATU school. Encouraging schools to do their own fundraising or begin their own businesses, organizers want to see EPATU last long-term, independent of who is in office. ¶ The movement of course is not without its own contradictions. While the main coordinator of EPATU is a female, the schools are overwhelmingly dominated by males. In a country known for its extreme machismo, however, the movement has arguably made strides in allowing women to express their own frustrations with the current status quo. ¶ And while coordinators try to promote politically conscious music, youth often have a difficult time differentiating between corporate rap from abroad and music coming from their own communities. Images of flashy cars and scarcely dressed women give false illusions to youth about what the music represents and makes the work of the coordinators that much more difficult. ¶ Yet, despite the obstacles EPATU continues to grow. Finishing off its first year, it has been successful enough that hip-hop artists from abroad have used it as a model for their own communities back home. Most importantly, though, it has set a standard for so-called conscious hip-hop artists to live up to their own lyrics by putting their work as community members and educators ahead of their individual careers. While in the United States, artists have gone so far as to claim the death of hip-hop, in the barrios of Venezuela its legacy lives on.
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Cassel (Independent Journalist, EPATU Activist) 11 (Lainie, “Hip hop Lives in Venezuela”, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2953-hip-hop-lives-on-in-venezuela,) CA
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It is 7:00 on a Wednesday evening in Caracas’s southern barrio known as La Vega. youth of all ages sit and listen to a local DJ talk about the historical roots of hip-hop culture. After the discussion is over, the youth quickly disperse and hip-hop beats begin blasting Caracas may be further then a stone’s throw from hip-hop’s birthplace in the Bronx but in communities like La Vega, known for its large African descendent population and oral traditions, hip-hop’s emergence there seemed only natural. , hip-hop has become a way-of life for many. Thanks to a program called EPATU Venezuelans as young as 2 and as old as 76 are experiencing a growing hip-hop culture first hand. So far over 30 hip-hop schools have opened in 15 states around the country Hip-hop’s counterculture appeal draws the youth in while also giving them an alternate way of expressing themselves hip-hop in Venezuela, like around the world, was born as a cry against the oppression we faced in our communities and as a call for protest”. In the 90’s, hip-hop music had clashed tremendously with the ruling government, a trend that changed when President Hugo Chavez, himself a hip-hop fan, took office in 1999 While hip-hop was less mobilized in Chavez’s initial years in office, it saw a rebirth with the rise of a nation-wide collective called Hip-Hop Revolucion Generally, one day a week is devoted to discussions and workshops that cover topics anywhere from racism to consumerism and cultural imperialism. Other nights are saved for the four elements of hip-hop We realize that the struggle of our movement begins within ourselves; we must try to destroy our individualities and understand that alone no progress is possible. Our culture is collective from its roots, for this reason we look beyond the four elements of our movement, we view our cultural creation as an act of freedom “We are a 100% revolutionary organization and we fully support the [Bolivarian] Process.” President Hugo Chavez has given support back and has gone so far as to invite numerous hip-hop artists from HHR onto his well-known Sunday television program, Aló Presidente “our allegiance is not with the government nor with the President but rather with our community In a country known for its extreme machismo, however, the movement has arguably made strides in allowing women to express their own frustrations with the current status quo. despite the obstacles EPATU continues to grow. Finishing off its first year, it has been successful enough that hip-hop artists from abroad have used it as a model for their own communities back home
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Alt Solves Specifically in context of Venezuela, Hip Hop has served as the rallying point for strong grassroots movements, which has allowed the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela to strengthen and be self-reflexive.
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Many hip-hop agents cite 1974 as the year it all began. Despite being a relatively new culture, hip-hop has found homes all around the globe.77 Often, it resides in urban ghettos or other marginalized communities. This can be seen in the case of French hip-hop (France is the second largest consumer and producer of hip-hop). In France, “hip-hop has emerged as the voice of France’s impoverished African and Arab minorities, expressing the rage and alienation of life in housing projects in an era of welfare retrenchment and rising anti-immigrant sentiment.”78 French artists confront and challenge many of the same things as U.S. artists (such as racism, police repression, lack of structural power, and poverty). However, it is interesting to note that the French hip-hop community seems to have more international awareness than their American counterparts. This can be explained by the fact that these actors occupy a different space, but the same time; the formation of the European Union makes international issues more predominant in their lives. Thus, their organic scholarship has a slightly different emphasis. IAM (Imperial Asiatic Men), a prominent and often overtly political French hip-hop group, in their songs directly correlate the prosperity of the North to the disparity and dependency of the South, which they see as a legacy of colonial socio-politico-economic relationships.79 Once again, globalism’s third, fourth, and fifth claims are explicitly challenged and claims one and two are being implicitly contested. Thus, hip-hop’s resistance potential can be found both nationally and internationally. There are a variety of sites where these cultural expressions manifest form.¶ At an individual level there is infrapolitical resistance that takes place in marginalized communities and at concerts, clubs, and bars. National venues for wars of position and networking include commercial audio and audiovisual recordings, television, radio, summits, competitions, seminars, and nongovernmental organizations. Internationally there is the Internet. There, of course, is dynamic overlap among all three of these levels. The globalization of Western culture and economy is spreading the influence of hip-hop at a tremendous rate, thereby disseminating, at the very least, organic human agency, the potential catalysis for the mass promotion of self-reflexive thought. In doing so, globalism is sowing the ideological seeds of its own restructuring.
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Hibbard (A senior at the University of Puget Sound majoring in international political economy) 2003 (Noah, “”Popilar Public Resistance”, http://upress.kent.edu/nieman/popular_public_resistance.htm,) CA
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Many hip-hop agents cite 1974 as the year it all began. Despite being a relatively new culture, hip-hop has found homes all around the globe Often, it resides in urban ghettos or other marginalized communities. This can be seen in the case of French hip-hop ). In France, “hip-hop has emerged as the voice of France’s impoverished African and Arab minorities, expressing the rage and alienation of life in housing projects in an era of welfare retrenchment and rising anti-immigrant sentiment. This can be explained by the fact that these actors occupy a different space, but the same time; the formation of the European Union makes international issues more predominant in their Once again, globalism’s third, fourth, and fifth claims are explicitly challenged and claims one and two are being implicitly contested. Thus, hip-hop’s resistance potential can be found both nationally and internationally At an individual level there is infrapolitical resistance that takes place in marginalized communities and at concerts, clubs, and bars. National venues for wars of position and networking include commercial audio and audiovisual recordings, television, radio, summits, competitions, seminars, and nongovernmental organizations. Internationally there is the Internet. There, of course, is dynamic overlap among all three of these levels.
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Alt Solvency Hip Hop allows an international expression of rebellion and oppression, creating space for international infra-political action.
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Hip-hop culture is composed of four main elements: disc jockeying, break-dancing, graffiti writing, and emceeing. In a strict sense, the agents of hip-hop are those who participate in one or more of these elements. However, the hip-hop community is also comprised of fans. In the United States “whites purchase roughly 60% of hip-hop records” and many of these consumers live in middle-class suburbia.80 Hip-hop culture transcends the boundaries of race, class, gender, religion, and region. Thereby, the base of hip-hop agents is very diverse. There are organic intellectuals of varying degrees in the hip-hop community, who are at the very least exposing people to the subtle forms of resistance and wars of position discussed in the fourth section of this essay. The significance of this can be seen when Gramsci writes,¶ ¶ Critical understanding of the self takes place therefore through a struggle of political “hegemonies” and of opposing directions, first in the ethical and then in the political proper, in order to arrive at the working out at a higher level of one’s conception of reality. Consciousness of being part of a hegemonic force (that is to say political consciousness) is the first stage towards progressive self-consciousness in which theory and practice will finally be one. Thus the unity of theory and practice is not just a matter of mechanical fact, but part of a historical process, whose elementary and primitive phase is to be found in the sense of being “different” and “apart,” in an instinctive feeling of independence, and which progresses to the level of real possession of a single and coherent conception of the world.81¶ ¶ Whether or not the agents of hip-hop intend to be role models, their influence is very prominent in youth culture.82 More significantly, they are prominent antithetical role models who encourage the understanding of organic theory and the philosophy of praxis. Implicit in this is the promotion of progressive self-consciousness, which, as Gramsci acknowledged, is the critical first step toward countering the forces of hegemony. Exhibiting a clear conception of hegemony, Chuck D., front man for Public Enemy, writes,¶ ¶ Hollywood’s dishonesty, distortions, myths, and misconceptions about black people as nothing but watermelon stealin’, chicken eatin’, knee knockin’, eye poppin’, lazy, crazy, dancin’, submissive, “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks,” ever since D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), all the way up to the 1950s—which is a forty-year period of straight up lies, propaganda, derogatory images, and bullshit—have been spread across not only the United States, but the entire world. That has had a major effect, not only on how society looks at us, but how we look at ourselves. A lot of Blacks in Hollywood right now are controlled by certain foolish stereotypes that they feel they must perpetuate in order to be accepted and keep steady work.83¶ ¶ He later notes that “without a knowledge of the past, not just the slave past, people around the world will continue to hold a warped and negative view of Black people in any country.”84 Such conscious arousing organic messages are also disseminated when Chuck emcees (he has been one of hip-hop’s more predominant agents since the 1980s).¶ Although dominated by males, women have also found critical voice though hip-hip and have been able to coherently convey a variety of radical feminist critiques to their audience. Furthermore, as Cheryl L. Keyes insightfully points out,¶ ¶ Female rappers have attained a sense of distinction through revising and reclaiming Black women’s history and perceived destiny. They use their performances as platforms to refute, deconstruct, and reconstruct alternative visions of their identity. With this platform, rap music becomes a vehicle by which Black female rappers seek empowerment, make choices, and create spaces for themselves and other sistas.85¶ ¶ Some contemporary examples would include Mystic, Bahamadia, and Jean Grae.¶ Thus, hip-hop’s resistance acts on all levels—individual, national, and international. Once the abduction (a flash of moral insight or consciousness, a realization bringing previously out of phase realities in to coherence) of critical self-understanding occurs, a variety of strategies of resistance can be engaged in by the agents of hip-hop.
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Hibbard (A senior at the University of Puget Sound majoring in international political economy) 2003 (Noah, “”Popilar Public Resistance”, http://upress.kent.edu/nieman/popular_public_resistance.htm,) CA
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Hip-hop culture transcends the boundaries of race, class, gender, religion, and region. Thereby, the base of hip-hop agents is very diverse There are organic intellectuals of varying degrees in the hip-hop community, who are at the very least exposing people to the subtle forms of resistance and wars of position political consciousness is the first stage towards progressive self-consciousness in which theory and practice will finally be one Exhibiting a clear conception of hegemony, Chuck D., front man for Public Enemy, writes, Hollywood’s dishonesty, distortions, myths, and misconceptions about black people as nothing but watermelon stealin’, chicken eatin’, knee knockin’, eye poppin’, lazy, crazy, dancin’, submissive, “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks,” ever since D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), all the way up to the 1950s—which is a forty-year period of straight up lies, propaganda, derogatory images, and bullshit He later notes that “without a knowledge of the past, not just the slave past, people around the world will continue to hold a warped and negative view of Black people in any country.” Female rappers have attained a sense of distinction through revising and reclaiming Black women’s history and perceived destiny. They use their performances as platforms to refute, deconstruct, and reconstruct alternative visions of their identity. With this platform, rap music becomes a vehicle by which Black female rappers seek empowerment, make choices, and create spaces for themselves and other sistas Some contemporary examples would include Mystic, Bahamadia, and Jean Grae. Thus, hip-hop’s resistance acts on all levels—individual, national, and international. a realization ) of critical self-understanding occurs, a variety of strategies of resistance can be engaged in by the agents of hip-hop.
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Alt Solves Hip Hop transcends boundaries, and breaks down stereotypes of people all around the world. Additionally, using Hip Hop as a form of resistance allows for a critical realization of self, and new political consciousness. Especially in the context of Feminism, Hip Hop allows Black women to feel a sense of empowerment and access their agency.
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The above essay has shown that hip-hop can be resistance to globalism, its most significant contributions being its ability to promote progressive self-consciousness and carve dissident cultural enclaves, both of which are prerequisites for solidified forms of resistance that have the power to enact egalitarian structural change. The intrusion of antithetical agents into mainstream representations of hip-hop is increasing (some increasingly prominent artists would include Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Jurassic 5, Swollen Members, Blackalicious, Dead Prez, Ras Kass, Mystic, Eminen, Xzibit, the Roots, and Dilated Peoples) and there is constant growth in submerged independent networks, which would include the likes of Living Legends, Likwit Crew, Boot Camp Click, O.B.S., Anticon, 1200 Hobos, Rhyme Sayers Entertainment, Wanna Battle, Definitive Jux, Fat Beats, Project Blowed, and People’s Army. These trends indicate that hip-hop culture will continue to be predominant and that its nature is increasingly antithetical and autonomous. Given time, hip-hop culture in conjunction with other social forces could cultivate a fully formed program of praxis to counter neoliberal hegemony.¶ Having elaborated the resistance capacity, activity, and potentiality of hip-hop, what type of program of change is likely to come from it? Bakari Kitwana identifies the hip-hop generation’s political agenda as consisting of the issues of education, employment and workers’ rights, reparations, economic infrastructure for urban communities, poverty and disease, and anti-youth policy.101 These domestic issues are fairly obvious and could be easily abstracted by the reader. However, since globalism is global, what might be hip-hop’s international agenda? The issues of education, employment and workers’ rights, economic infrastructure, poverty, and disease are essentially the same domestically as they are globally, but they would have to be altered from below to fit each individual economic, political, and social situation. Hip-hop, as the most local and global culture, can facilitate these numerous adaptations. The issue of reparations fluidly extends to debt restructuring or cancellation and the issue of anti-youth policy can be extended to incorporate counterdependent sustainable development policies. We hope hip-hop culture will live up to its full potential and critically contribute to the hegemonic quest of a new more bottom-up ideology and approach to human development. So the next time you encounter a negative interpretation of hip-hop culture, remember the words of Boots from the Coup, “they ain’t scared of rap music, they scared of us.”102¶ The main title of this paper, “Popular Public Resistance,” was consciously conceived. Popular public resisters have two unique characteristics: (1) they command the respect of a powerful section of society; and (2) they are highly visible figures. The former characteristic allows the agent to effectively communicate counterhegemonic ideas to a receptive audience. The latter characteristic not only lends credence but also gives the agents more leeway in their available strategies because they are a harder target to, in the language of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterintelligence Program, “neutralize.” Hip-hop represents this force from below. Academia can act similarly from above. The work of people like Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West personify scholarship’s popular public resistance. There are instances where the two come together. Cornel West’s spoken word contribution to the No More Prisons album; Chuck D.’s use of his hip-hop predominance to do more scholarly activities like organizing movements, writing books, and lecturing; Project Blowed, an open-mic workshop in Los Angeles, was facilitated for some time by a local professor; Mumia Abu-Jamal is a respected organic scholar in the hip-hop community; and Mos Def and Talib Kweli have bought a progressive bookstore in their community, Brooklyn, New York, saving it from closure. These actions from above and below attacking globalism are building a climate of resistance, which is ideal for the organic cultivation of counterhegemonic entities. In closing, in the words of emcee MURS, “What is it called when the earth goes round? What is it called when consciousness is found? Revolution.”103
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Hibbard (A senior at the University of Puget Sound majoring in international political economy) 2003 (Noah, “”Popilar Public Resistance”, http://upress.kent.edu/nieman/popular_public_resistance.htm,) CA
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hip-hop can be resistance to globalism, its most significant contributions being its ability to promote progressive self-consciousness and carve dissident cultural enclaves, both of which are prerequisites for solidified forms of resistance that have the power to enact egalitarian structural change The intrusion of antithetical agents into mainstream representations of hip-hop increasing include Talib Kweli, Mos Def , Dead Prez the Roots, ) and there is constant growth in submerged independent networks Bakari Kitwana identifies the hip-hop generation’s political agenda as consisting of the issues of education, employment and workers’ rights, reparations, economic infrastructure for urban communities, poverty and disease, and anti-youth policy Hip-hop, as the most local and global culture, can facilitate these numerous adaptations. The issue of reparations fluidly extends to debt restructuring or cancellation and the issue of anti-youth policy can be extended to incorporate counterdependent sustainable development policies because they are a harder target to, in the language of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterintelligence Program, “neutralize.” Hip-hop represents this force from below . In closing, in the words of emcee MURS, “What is it called when the earth goes round? What is it called when consciousness is found? Revolution
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Alt Solvency Hip Hop is the most fluid form of global local resistance which makes it hard for the feds to infiltrate. Consciousness is everywhere, and it will continue to grow. Such is the nature of our counter-hegemony.
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There's so much going on in the world that sometimes it's difficult to settle down enough to write something. Props to folks hitting the streets in Greece this week and workers occupying the Republic Windows & Door factory in Chicago. We've been paying a lot of attention to the economic crisis for some time now and recognize that in a lot of ways, hip-hop has been recording the (under)development of the American and global economy since its birth and, what's more, is helpful for understanding this monster called neoliberalism.¶ Since the 1970s, neoliberal ideology has carried forth a brutal program of devastation in our cities, removing jobs and slashing government spending on education, housing, health care, and infrastructure, meanwhile increasing the militarization and policing of those communities of color left to fend for themselves in urban areas. This program represented an attempt by capital to regain higher levels of profitability while simultaneously demobilizing the social movements that had secured important gains for the American working class in previous decades. ¶ Jeff Chang has gone some lengths to help explain this process, particularly how it affected hip-hop's birthplace in the South Bronx. The following is quoted from his important book, Can't Stop, Won't Stop [1]:¶ "In 1953, the future of the Bronx could be seen along the seven-mile man-made trench cutting through it. Once an unbroken continuum of cohesive, diverse communities, the trench was now the clearing for the Cross-Bronx Expressway, a modernist catastrophe of massive proportions.¶ As the gray concrete slab plowed from the east into the South Bronx toward Manhattan, it left behind a wake of environmental violence. ‘(W)here once apartment buildings or private homes had stood were now hills of rubble, decorated with ripped-open bags of rotting garbage that had been flung atop them,’ the historian Robert Caro wrote. ‘Over the rumble of the bulldozers came the staccato, machine-gun-like banging of jackhammers and, occasionally, the dull concussion of an exploding dynamite charge.’ These were the sounds of progress.¶ Forward in the Expressway’s path, the Irish and Jewish families that had once occupied well-appointed, if not plush, lower-middle-class apartments had been given months to relocate, with a paltry $200-per-room as compensation. In the meantime, as they struggled to find new quarters in a city with few vacancies, they huddled in heatless, condemned buildings. The man responsible for all of this was named Moses. Robert Moses, the most powerful modern urban builder of all time, led the white exodus out of the Bronx.¶ It began with a master plan designed in 1929 by the New York Regional Plan Association. The business interests behind the master plan wanted to transform Manhattan into a center of wealth, connected directly to the suburbs through an encircling network of highways carved through the heart of neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. Buoyed by a post-World War II surge of government investment, Moses rose to unparalleled power. He saw his immortality fixed in the roads; they were monuments to a brutal kind of efficiency. The Cross-Bronx Expressway would allow people to traverse the Bronx from the suburbs of New Jersey through upper Manhattan to the suburbs of Queens in fifteen minutes. ¶ In engineering terms, it was the most difficult road ever built. Caro wrote, ‘The path of the great road lay across 113 streets, avenues, and boulevards; sewers and water and utility mains numbering in the hundreds; one subway and three railroads; five elevated rapid transit lines, and seven other expressways or parkways, some of which were being built by Moses simultaneously.’ More important, 60,000 Bronx residents were caught in the crosshairs of the Expressway. Moses would bulldoze right over them. ‘There are more people in the way—that’s all’, he would say, as if lives were just another mathematical problem to be solved. ‘There’s very little real hardship in the thing.’¶ In Manhattan’s ghettos, using ‘urban renewal’ rights of clearance to condemn entire neighborhoods, he scared off thriving businesses and uprooted poor African-American, Puerto Rican, and Jewish families. Many had no choice but to come to the places like east Brooklyn and the South Bronx, where public housing was booming but jobs had already fled. Moses’s point, one of his associates said, was that ‘if you cannot do something that is really substantial, it is not worth doing.’¶ In his grand ambitions, high modernism met maximum density. Vast housing complexes were designed on the idyllic-sounding ‘tower-in-a-park’ model, a concept that had been advanced by the modernist architect Le Corbusier as part of his vision of a ‘Radiant City.’ Bronx River Houses and Millbrook Houses opened with 1,200 units each, Bronxdale Houses with over 1,500 units and Patterson Houses with over 1,700 units
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DHP (Hip Hop Activist Group) 08 (Democracy and Hip Hop Project, “Give Them An Apocalypse: Reading on Hip Hop and Neoliberalism”, http://democracyandhiphop.blogspot.com/2008/12/them-apocalypse-reading-on-hip-hop-and.html) CA
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hip-hop has been recording the (under)development of the American and global economy since its birth and, what's more, is helpful for understanding this monster called neoliberalism Since the 1970s, neoliberal ideology has carried forth a brutal program of devastation in our cities, removing jobs and slashing government spending on education, housing, health care, and infrastructure, meanwhile increasing the militarization and policing of those communities of color left to fend for themselves in urban areas. Jeff Chang has gone some lengths to help explain this process, particularly how it affected hip-hop's birthplace in the South Bronx "In 1953, the future of the Bronx could be seen along the seven-mile man-made trench cutting through it. Once an unbroken continuum of cohesive, diverse communities, the trench was now the clearing for the Cross-Bronx Expressway, a modernist catastrophe of massive proportions. ‘(W)here once apartment buildings or private homes had stood were now hills of rubble, decorated with ripped-open bags of rotting garbage that had been flung atop them,’ the historian Robert Caro wrote Robert Moses, the most powerful modern urban builder of all time, led the white exodus out of the Bronx Moses would bulldoze right over them. ‘There are more people in the way—that’s all’, he would say, as if lives were just another mathematical problem to be solved. ‘There’s very little real hardship in the thing.’ In Manhattan’s ghettos, using ‘urban renewal’ rights of clearance to condemn entire neighborhoods, he scared off thriving businesses and uprooted poor African-American, Puerto Rican, and Jewish families
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Since its birth, Hip Hop has been the counter-culture to neoliberalism, starting with the resistance to Robert Moses who destroyed entire communities in the Bronx.
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The forms of oppression affecting the hip-hop community are varied, but the essential problem is the lack of structural power (economic, political, and social). This can be seen in the interrelation of the problems associated with liberalization, hypercompetition, urbanization (in some cases sub- or de-), migration, social inequality, and poverty. Kelley illustrates hip-hop’s connection to the deleterious side effects of neoliberal globalization when she writes,¶ ¶ We cannot ignore the ties of West Coast gangsta rap to the streets of L.A.’s black working-class communities where it originated. The generation who came of age in the 1980s during the Reagan-Bush era were products of devastating structural changes in the urban economy that date back at least to the late 1960s. While the city as a whole experienced unprecedented growth, the communities of Watts and Compton faced increased economic displacement, factory closures, and an unprecedented deepening of poverty. The uneven development of L.A.’s postindustrial economy meant an expansion of high-tech industries like Aerospace and Lockheed, and the disappearance of rubber- and steel-manufacturing firms, many of which were located in or near Compton and Watts. Deindustrialization, in other words, led to a spatial restructuring of the Los Angeles economy as high-tech firms were established in less populated regions like the Silicon Valley and Orange County. Developers and city planners helped the process along by infusing massive capital into suburbanization while simultaneously cutting back expenditures for parks, recreation, and affordable housing in inner-city communities.73¶ ¶ On the East Coast a similar case can be seen in Manhattan’s lower east side.74 Stories of uneven top-down development are echoed throughout urban America as well as the world (the stage changed, but the actors and play remained the same). If the three controversial and new economic theories of endogenous growth, new economic geography, and strategic trade theory, which “emphasize the importance of oligopolistic competition, economies of scale, and technological innovation, and . . . incorporate historical processes, institutions, and special relations,” presented by Robert Gilpin are accurate descriptors of the international economic order and if America is willing to play the appropriate (as defined by Gilpin, a state-centric realist) hegemonic role, it is highly probable that such asymmetrical trends will be persistent.75 This illustrates how globalization has intensified and may continue to intensify old problems. The actors still want just access to structural power, which they feel should promote equity before growth. As such, they adopt strategies that are both “inward” (asserting local control) and “outward” (attacking external control).76 The applications of these general strategies take form in a diverse spectrum of sites.
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Hibbard (A senior at the University of Puget Sound majoring in international political economy) 2003 (Noah, “”Popilar Public Resistance”, http://upress.kent.edu/nieman/popular_public_resistance.htm,) CA
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The forms of oppression affecting the hip-hop community are varied, but the essential problem is the lack of structural power (economic, political, and social). This can be seen in the interrelation of the problems associated with liberalization, hypercompetition, urbanization Kelley illustrates hip-hop’s connection to the deleterious side effects of neoliberal globalization when she writes, We cannot ignore the ties of West Coast gangsta rap to the streets of L.A.’s black working-class communities where it originated. , the communities of Watts and Compton faced increased economic displacement, factory closures, and an unprecedented deepening of poverty On the East Coast a similar case can be seen in Manhattan’s lower east side.74 Stories of uneven top-down development are echoed throughout urban America as well as the world This illustrates how globalization has intensified and may continue to intensify old problems. The actors still want just access to structural power, which they feel should promote equity before growth
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Alt Solvency Subsections of Hip Hop such as Gangsta Rap were creating in response to the displacement of black communities via globalization.
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One of Mittelman’s conclusions is that “resistance movements shape and are constitutive of cultural processes.”60 Assuming this is valid, the question then becomes, what culture or subculture has the predominance to combat globalism? Hip-hop as the most local and global subculture in the world has sufficient breadth and depth to be counterhegemonic. It is the most local in that it is adapted by a variety of cultures. It not only incorporates the sounds of a given culture (in the form of samples), but also it assimilates the culture itself. As Rakaa Iriscience from Dilated Peoples puts it, “I’ve seen many lands and tasted the best crop, I’ve witnessed many cultures expressed through hip-hop.”61 Hip-hop is the most global subculture in that various representations of the culture have manifested themselves on every corner of the earth.62¶ The history of hip-hop can be traced back to Africa. In African society, history was an oral tradition. Griots were people who would tell poetic stories over indigenous rhythms.63 Los Angeles hip-hop group Freestyle Fellowship titled their sophomore album Inner City Griots, showing a conscious connection between their art form and that of their predecessors.64 Taking this consciousness to the next level, M1 from Dead Prez, in an interview, states, “Griot is more like entertainment. I want to introduce a new term. It’s called bjali. A bjali was more than a griot was. A bjali not only spread down the culture of the tradition of the people, but a bjali was a person that would do it in order to incite the rebel or the warrior out of a particular group of people. It wasn’t just to tell the story to make the children laugh, he was there really looking for the people who would take these stories and pass them as revolutionary stories to incite young people to take on that responsibility.”65¶ Slaves in America continued this tradition in the form of spirituals, which were a form of resistance.66 Blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, and funk can all be linked to hip-hop as well.67 Thus, similar forms of culture and resistance have a meaningful and rich historical context. This compounded by the contemporary context described in the previous paragraph increases the effectiveness of hip-hop culture’s counterhegemonic project.¶ Most observers see hip-hop as a reactionary force because it glorifies materialism, violence, misogyny, and drug use; and it is true that these are aspects of the culture. However, hegemony is always at work and many fail to see what is behind these commodified and co-opted images and stereotypes. Part of the hegemonic process is assimilating parts of the subordinate group for the purpose of spontaneous consent. Simultaneously, the subordinate group adapts parts of the dominant group, thus their history and identity is “fragmented and episodic.”68 It should be noted that levels of both commodification and co-option vary from case to case. This would explain the appearance of agents in hip-hop culture that (seemingly) personify popular conceptions as well as antithetical agents. Our attention here is on the former of these two agents.¶ Much of hip-hop’s discourse directly correlates the conditions of dominant being with the conditions of subordinate being. A well-known and early example—a classic, if you will—of such text would be Grandmaster Flash’s song “The Message” (1982); a more contemporary example would be Nas’s track “Life’s a Bitch” (1994), which features AZ. These messages and their countless counterparts portray grim portraits of “reality” that depict “the confrontation of a world without illusions with the wretched illusions of the ‘heart,’ it is the confrontation of the real world with the melodramatic world, the dramatic access to the consciousness that destroys the myths of the melodrama.”69 What he is saying is that oppressed people are products of dominant culture and they adapt the worst aspects of the dominant culture. In doing so hip-hop artists are implicitly blaming the hip-hop community’s current condition on American society, which is controlled by a specific group of people, the “industry,” who have self-serving interests. America has with little doubt committed many human rights violations in “the violent process of state consolidation” and expansion including, but certainly not limited to, the use of brute coercive power and the oppression of women.70 These are things that the hegemonic project downplays or distorts to maintain a feeling of acquiescence, although they are, in varying degrees, perceived. Knowing, consciously or unconsciously, that these things are part of the dominant culture makes the subalterns adopt it into their lifestyles. This strange combination of acceptance and rejection can be read as resistance because the actors are exposing flaws in the hegemonic order by dramatically acting them out and then saying it is not our fault we are this way, it is your fault because you created and perpetuated asymmetrical power structures that nurture such states of being. Thus, they are explicitly challenging claims three through five and are implicitly contesting claims one and two. This is a common, although varying, feature of both co-opted and non-co-opted agents of hip-hop. In addition to this subtle resistance, there are other wars of position being waged in, a highly commodified and co-opted representation of the hip-hop culture, gangsta rap.¶ As Robin D. G. Kelley notes, “In some ways, the descriptive narratives [gangsta rap], under the guise of ‘objective street journalism,’ are no less polemical (hence political) than nineteenth century slave narratives in defense of abolition.”71 After making a case for how the subtle resistance discussed in the previous paragraph manifests itself in gangsta rap, she illustrates a more tangible example of lyrical resistance. She writes, “Oppression of this kind of marking [appearance-based profiling], which in effect is a battle for the right to free expression and unfettered mobility in public spaces, has been a central subtheme in gangsta rap’s discursive wars of position against police repression.”72 This discussion vividly illustrates that there is more to hip-hop than meets the eyes. Thus, an essential characteristic of hip-hop culture is that even when it is commodified and co-opted it is never absolute, an inherent characteristic of hegemony itself.¶ In a dialectical reaction to commercial rap there is a countermovement of submerged independent networks. The participants of these networks embody and move beyond the struggle of gangsta rap. However, at this juncture, it is sufficient to note that they exist, for the main purpose of this section was to show the layered nature of hip-hop as resistance. The reasons for hip-hop’s resistance are rooted in the idea of the free market and its material consequences.
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Hibbard (A senior at the University of Puget Sound majoring in international political economy) 2003 (Noah, “”Popilar Public Resistance”, http://upress.kent.edu/nieman/popular_public_resistance.htm,) CA
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Hip-hop as the most local and global subculture in the world has sufficient breadth and depth to be counterhegemonic. It is the most local in that it is adapted by a variety of cultures. It not only incorporates the sounds of a given culture but also it assimilates the culture itself I’ve seen many lands and tasted the best crop, I’ve witnessed many cultures expressed through hip-hop.”61 Hip-hop is the most global subculture in that various representations of the culture have manifested themselves on every corner of the earth.62 The history of hip-hop can be traced back to Africa Griots were people who would tell poetic stories over indigenous rhythms M1 from Dead Prez, in an interview, states, “Griot is more like entertainment. I want to introduce a new term. It’s called bjali A bjali not only spread down the culture of the tradition of the people, but a bjali was a person that would do it in order to incite the rebel or the warrior out of a particular group of people. Slaves in America continued this tradition in the form of spirituals, which were a form of resistance.66 Blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, and funk can all be linked to hip-hop as well Most observers see hip-hop as a reactionary force because it glorifies materialism, violence, misogyny, and drug use; and it is true that these are aspects of the culture. However, hegemony is always at work and many fail to see what is behind these commodified and co-opted images and stereotypes What he is saying is that oppressed people are products of dominant culture and they adapt the worst aspects of the dominant culture. In doing so hip-hop artists are implicitly blaming the hip-hop community’s current condition on American society, which is controlled by a specific group of people, the “industry,” Oppression of this kind of marking [appearance-based profiling], which in effect is a battle for the right to free expression and unfettered mobility in public spaces, has been a central subtheme in gangsta rap’s discursive wars of position against police repression.”72 This discussion vividly illustrates that there is more to hip-hop than meets the eyes
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Hip Hop represents the best global/local approach that can incite resistance all around the world. Put all your commodification cards away. We are talking about organic community Hip Hop, not the industry.
| 6,866 | 206 | 2,144 | 1,083 | 32 | 360 | 0.029548 | 0.33241 |
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Investigators of conflict, crises, and war reached a consensus years ago that monocausal explanations are theoretically and empirically deficient. Kenneth Waltz’ (1957) classic typology of war explanations convincingly demonstrated various problems arising from diagnoses that locate war causation exclusively at the individual, state attribute, or systemic levels. He also illustrated how prescriptions based on faulty diagnoses offer no solution to the problem. Even Rousseau’s powerful exploration of the consequences of anarchy, updated by Waltz (1979), remains full of insights, but it only specifies why wars recur (there is nothing to prevent them) and offers few clues that help to predict when, where, and over what issues. Blainey (1973), in another telling attack on monocausal theories, continues where Waltz left off. He offers, on the basis of rich historical illustrations, both logical and anecdotal rebuttals of facile explanations of war that dot academic and philosophical thought on the subject. But rebuttals of the obvious are not sufficient. We presently have myriads of theories of war, emphasizing all sorts of factors that can help explain its etiology. As Carroll and Fink (1975) note, there are if anything too many theories, and even too many typologies of theories. Quoting Timascheff approvingly, they point out that anything might lead to war, but nothing will certainly lead to war.
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Holsti 91
Kalevi Jaakko, Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, On The Study Of War,” Peace And War: Armed Conflicts And International Order, 1648-1989, Published by Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521399297, p. 3
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Investigators of war reached a consensus years ago that monocausal explanations are theoretically and empirically deficient prescriptions offer no solution to the problem rebuttals of the obvious are not sufficient. We presently have myriads of theories of war, emphasizing all sorts of factors that can help explain its etiology there are if anything too many theories, and even too many typologies of theories anything might lead to war, but nothing will certainly lead to war
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No root cause of war – monocausal explanations are reductive and fail
| 1,415 | 69 | 478 | 214 | 12 | 75 | 0.056075 | 0.350467 |
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In recent communiques, Marcos has described Mexico's government as a "zombie state" controlled by the elite, a statement which likely resonates among some sectors of the population in a country plagued by pervasive inequality and corruption. Previous attempts to unify Mexico's social movements, from independent trade unionists, to feminists, students, punks and other indigenous people, have been met with mixed results. The "Other Campaign", the last major outreach drive launched by the Zapatistas in 2006, was largely unsuccessful in building a national movement.
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Arsenault 13 (Chris- as a reporter with Inter Press Service news agency. He has also reported for CBC radio, the Halifax Chronicle Herald and dozens of magazines. His work focuses on North and South America, geopolitics, energy markets and social movements. Educated in Canada, he holds a BA in history and economics from Dalhousie University and an MA in history from the University of British Columbia, where he was awarded the 2008/09 Phil Lind Fellowship. In 2012, he held the Wolfson Press Fellowship at Cambridge University, February 15. 2013. Zapatista break silence to Slam Mexico Elite, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/01/201313014344451496.html
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Marcos has described Mexico's government as a "zombie state" controlled by the elite, a statement which likely resonates among some sectors of the population in a country plagued by pervasive inequality and corruption Previous attempts to unify Mexico's social movements, from independent trade unionists, to feminists, students, punks and other indigenous people, have been met with mixed results Other Campaign last major outreach drive launched by the Zapatistas in 2006, was largely unsuccessful in building a national movement.
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Alt fails – can’t unify movements or create effective reform
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Because space does not permit an analysis of neoliberalism, globalization, or any of the central tenets upon which the EZLN bases their struggle, I will focus this section of critiques on those who fundamentally agree with Zapatista goals, yet disagree with their strategy. Most academics and theorists who are familiar with the situation applaud the development of autonomous communities and watch in awe as the movement adeptly uses transnational networks despite economic marginalization. The major point of contention, however, is the Zapatista’s policy of non engagement with the state. Chandler (2004) argues that this policy is flawed for several reasons. Not only does non-engagement fail to promote accountability, it also decreases left-leaning influences on politics by removing more progressive debate from the national dialogue. This could serve the counter-productive end of leaving politics to an even smaller group of elites. Robinson (2006) also disagrees with EZLN strategy on this basis, as he views national political involvement as the only viable channel for challenging the global capitalist system. The Zapatistas, however, ignore talk of state power and political organizations favoring a model based on a transformation of civil society. Robinson (2006) argues that the key question is not about state power, but is now: How can “popular forces and classes… utilize state power to alter social relations (and) production relations?” (p. 61). Those who desire radical change, in Robinson’s view, must use the current system of global relations to re-conceptualize and create an alternative
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Greebon 8 ( Deborah A is the Executive Director at OneVillage Partners and Board of Directors at Center for Community Alternatives, November 2008, Civil Society’s Challenge to the State: A Case Study of the Zapatistas and their Global Significance, http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/uploadedFiles/moynihan/dst/Greebon.pdf?n=4980)
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major point of contention, however, is the Zapatista’s policy of non engagement with the state. Chandler argues that this policy is flawed for several reasons. Not only does non-engagement fail to promote accountability, it also decreases left-leaning influences on politics by removing more progressive debate from the national dialogue. This could serve the counter-productive end of leaving politics to an even smaller group of elites. Robinson also disagrees with EZLN strategy on this basis, as he views national political involvement as the only viable channel for challenging the global capitalist system. The Zapatistas, ignore talk of state power and political organizations favoring a model based on a transformation of civil society. Those who desire radical change, in Robinson’s view, must use the current system of global relations to re-conceptualize and create an alternative
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The alt fails – it cedes the political – only state engagement through the perm can produce successful reform
| 1,614 | 109 | 891 | 243 | 19 | 133 | 0.078189 | 0.547325 |
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In 2000, the PRI was swept aside not only at the national level in Mexico, but also at the gubernatorial level in Chiapas. The relationship between the Zapatistas and electoral change has always been ambiguous, since the militants have generally distrusted electoral politics. But peasants who had supported the guerillas in the past opted to vote for change in 2000, and did play a role in the state's democratic transition. Today, Chiapas is a highly competitive, multi-party state. In 2007 local elections, for example, 8 parties competed. By any normal standards, this constitutes seismic political change. Yet the peasants of Chiapas today face bleak economic conditions. State GDP has largely been stagnant since the 1990s, and the poor states of Mexico's South have, as a result, fallen further behind the rest of the country. The solution for most young, male peasants, is increasingly migration to the United States. Chiapas has moved from the bottom third to the top third of states receiving international remittances during this period. So why haven't all of these political changes made more of a difference to the lives of ordinary peasants? The conference participants suggested a few reasons. First, even the most ardent supporters of the Zapatistas admitted that the militants, who have largely given up violent struggle, have not replaced it with a realistic alternative tool of social change. Zapatistas today continue to experiment with the creation of “autonomous” zones of power in Chiapas, where they have set up parallel institutions of governance. Panelists disagreed about the efficacy of these institutions in political and juridical terms, but not in economic terms: the Zapatistas have not created a viable model of economic autonomy for poor peasants. At the same time, the turn inward, and away from the state, has rendered the Zapatistas less effective at reforming the Mexican state. While some panelists saw the Zapatista experiments as noble efforts to create alternative political structures that are more democratic than those of the wider society, others argued that the Zapatistas had missed an opportunity to build a broad movement to reform the state. But of course, the failure of development in Chiapas goes far beyond the Zapatistas. The land reforms of the mid-1990s have not brought economic self-sufficiency, because the redistributed land is of low quality, and has been sub-divided into plots that are simply too small to yield enough for survival. All of this has happened at a time when the Mexican state has offered little in the way of subsidies to small farmers, and has also failed to offer an alternative development path that would move Chiapas up the value chain. Electoral changes are also, to a certain degree, more apparent than real. A common theme to emerge from the panels was that, in spite of changes in political institutions, such as democratic elections, or decentralization, political practice at the state level in Mexico continues to be dominated by patron-client relationships and high discretion on the part of politicians. Thus, even though the PRI has been humbled, and new resources have been made available to Chiapas, and even though indigenous peasants have entered politics, dysfunctional institutions and corruption persist. The result is a failure to ameliorate basic inequalities. These findings are consistent across states as different as Oaxaca, Mexico and Chiapas. The failures of the Zapatistas, the government, and other less radical opposition groups has resulted in an increasingly significant flow of migrants out of the state. Sadly, these flows, which are in part caused by the absence of a serious political project to redistribute resources and spur development, probably also contribute over time to the absence of such a project
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Lakin 9 ( Jason is a Senior Program Officer and Research Fellow at International Budget Partnership, April 23, 2009. Fifteen Years After the Zapatistas, Harvard International Review, http://hir.harvard.edu/blog/jason-lakin/fifteen-years-after-the-zapatistas)
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relationship between the Zapatistas and electoral change has always been ambiguous, But peasants who had supported the guerillas in the past opted to vote for change in 2000, and did play a role in the state's democratic transition. State GDP has largely been stagnant since the 1990s, and the poor states of Mexico's South have, as a result, fallen further behind the rest of the country. The solution for most young, male peasants, is increasingly migration to the United States why haven't all of these political changes made more of a difference to the lives of ordinary peasants . First, even the most ardent supporters of the Zapatistas admitted that the militants, who have largely given up violent struggle, have not replaced it with a realistic alternative tool of social change Zapatistas today continue to experiment with the creation of “autonomous” zones of power in Chiapas in economic terms: the Zapatistas have not created a viable model of economic autonomy for poor peasants. At the same time, the turn inward, and away from the state, has rendered the Zapatistas less effective at reforming the Mexican state others argued Zapatistas had missed an opportunity to build a broad movement to reform the state land reforms of the mid-1990s have not brought economic self-sufficiency, because the redistributed land is of low quality, common theme to emerge from the panels was that, in spite of changes in political institutions, such as democratic elections, or decentralization, political practice at the state level in Mexico continues to be dominated by patron-client relationships and high discretion on the part of politicians The result is a failure to ameliorate basic inequalities. These findings are consistent across states as different as Oaxaca, Mexico and Chiapas The failures of the Zapatistas, resulted in an increasingly significant flow of migrants out of the state Sadly, these flows, which are in part caused by the absence of a serious political project to redistribute resources and spur development, probably also contribute over time to the absence of such a project
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The Zapatistas fail – no economic program or model for reform – only state engagement solves inequality and neoliberalism
| 3,827 | 121 | 2,105 | 607 | 19 | 338 | 0.031301 | 0.556837 |
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Mexico’s labor movement is still dominated by federations and national unions which comply with the dictates of the Mexican government, particularly those unions in the Congress of Labor and the Confederation of Mexico workers. At the same time, the Mexican government continues to work to prevent the organization of independent labor unions which do not follow the dictates of the state. The government has even gone so far as to attempt to prevent Mexican migrant agricultural workers who are working in Canada from organizing unions. [7] The Mexican government’s labor authorities continue to permit ghost unions unknown to the workers to negotiate so-called “protection contracts” which protect employers from legitimate unions and from their employees demands for better wages, benefits and conditions. [8] As Mexican attorneys who defend workers’ rights have noted, these ghost unions and protection contracts form part of an enormous web of corrupt dealings between government officials, lawyers, and gangster union officials. [9] The government’s historic practices of denying workers their rights through government control of union recognition, the labor courts, and political subservience of the unions to the parties was augmented during the Calderón administration by more direct attacks on unions and contracts. The War On Labor While Calderón’s war on the drug lords has been an abysmal failure, his war on the labor movement has been largely successful. While unions have fought back, their power has been weakened. In one industry after another, the Calderón government has supported corporations and opposed or neglected labor union and worker interests. At the same time, the breakup of the official labor unions, which began in the 1990s, has accelerated under the PAN presidents, breaking up into rival factions at times allied various employer and government interests but with some of them becoming independent. While the independent National Union of Workers, the militant teachers National Coordinating Committee, and the Authentic Labor Front continue to survive, the state of the independent labor movement in Mexico is more tenuous as we enter 2012 than it was in 2006. Labor unions, human rights organizations, and labor attorneys groups have filed charges with the International Labor Organization over these practices during the Calderón administration.
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(Dan La Botz 12, He was a co-founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and has written extensively on worker rights in the United States andMexico. He is a member of the socialist organization Solidarity, which describes itself as "a democratic, revolutionary socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization,"[1] which comes out of the Trotskyist tradition. La Botz ran in 2010 for a seat in the United States Senate for the Socialist Party., 24 January 2012, "Mexican Labor Year in Review: 2011", http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2452)CL
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Mexico’s labor movement is still dominated by federations and national unions which comply with the dictates of the Mexican government, particularly those unions in the Congress of Labor and the Confederation of Mexico workers Mexican government continues to work to prevent the organization of independent labor unions which do not follow the dictates of the state. government has even gone so far as to attempt to prevent Mexican migrant agricultural workers who are working in Canada from organizing union Mexican government’s labor authorities continue to permit ghost unions unknown to the workers to negotiate so-called “protection contracts” which protect employers from legitimate unions and from their employees demands for better wages, benefits and conditions ghost unions and protection contracts form part of an enormous web of corrupt dealings between government officials, lawyers, and gangster union officials government’s historic practices of denying workers their rights through government control of union recognition, the labor courts, and political subservience of the unions to the parties was augmented during the Calderón administration by more direct attacks on unions and contracts war on the drug lords has been an abysmal failure, war on the labor movement has been largely successful nions have fought back, their power has been weakened Calderón has supported corporations and opposed or neglected labor union and worker interests labor movement in Mexico is more tenuous as we enter 2012 than it was in 2006. Labor unions, human rights organizations, and labor attorneys groups have filed charges with the International Labor Organization over these practices
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All of Mexico's labor movements have failed - movements are controlled by the government
| 2,385 | 88 | 1,691 | 361 | 14 | 253 | 0.038781 | 0.700831 |
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The consequences of privatization and industrial reorganization on union density were dramatic. During the period from 1984 to 2000, Mexico’s labor union density (the percentage of workers in labor unions) declined in the formal sector from 30 to 20 percent.6 Union density, however, does not afford a good measure of real union power in Mexico since so many unions are controlled by the government or by the employers. That is, many of the so-called unions were not real labor unions. Mexico’s Department of Labor, labor boards, and its courts have cooperated with the government, employers, and “official” labor unions to prevent the creation of independent unions, stop democratic movements, prevent strikes, and in general maintain labor peace. Many unions in Mexico were “ghost unions” created by management with “protection contracts” that defend the employers against real worker organizations. Some authorities believe that 80 percent of all labor union agreements may be “protection contracts.”7 The decline of real union power during the period under consideration was therefore even more dramatic than the figures on labor union density would indicate.
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(Dan La Botz, He was a co-founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and has written extensively on worker rights in the United States andMexico. He is a member of the socialist organization Solidarity, which describes itself as "a democratic, revolutionary socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization,"[1] which comes out of the Trotskyist tradition. La Botz ran in 2010 for a seat in the United States Senate for the Socialist Party., 2005, "Mexico’s Labor Movement in Transition", http://monthlyreview.org/2005/06/01/mexicos-labor-movement-in-transition)CL
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Union density, however, does not afford a good measure of real union power in Mexico since so many unions are controlled by the government or by the employers unions were not real labor unions. Mexico’s Department of Labor, labor boards, and its courts have cooperated with the government, employers, and “official” labor unions to prevent the creation of independent unions Many unions in Mexico were “ghost unions” created by management with “protection contracts” that defend the employers against real worker organizations that 80 percent of all labor union agreements may be “protection contracts
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Labor movements are controlled by the government
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What Bolivarian rhetoric does not explain is ALBA’s extremely close relationship with Venezuelan oil exports. Michael Magan of Foreign Policy magazine purports, “ALBA is nothing more than PetroCaribe.” Chávez uses ALBA as a vehicle for selling Venezuelan oil at below market prices to PetroCaribe and Petrosur member states in exchange for goods and services that tackle poverty reduction issues. ALBA is primarily financed by Chávez’s subsidized oil exports, with this relationship being too close to be coincidental. Chávez has engineered ALBA so that he can ultimately sell more oil. In terms of Venezuela’s relationship with the U.S., it is clear that no matter how much their ideologies differ, the two nations are mutually dependent in a trade bond. Even though Venezuela episodically has threatened to cut off its oil exports to the U.S., these threats will never become a reality; Venezuela would never stop selling oil to the U.S. because these purchases add up to approximately 60% of Venezuela’s total oil exports. Venezuela is one of the top four petroleum suppliers to the U.S. Furthermore, the U.S. is too reliant on foreign oil and the Venezuelan economy would take a serious hit if the countries stopped trading with each other. Thus, Chávez’s commercial interests and its economic facts of life will continue to prevail over the rhetoric that each side uses to reach the pueblo in Venezuela.
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DeFeo 10, (Christina, COHA research associate, “How Much of a Turn To the Left in the Latin American Governance and Economic Policy, http://www.coha.org/alba-how-much-of-a-turn-to-the-left-in-latin-american-governance-and-economic-policy/)
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What Bolivarian rhetoric does not explain is ALBA’s extremely close relationship with Venezuelan oil exports. Michael Magan of Foreign Policy magazine purports, “ALBA is nothing more than PetroCaribe.” Chávez uses ALBA as a vehicle for selling Venezuelan oil at below market prices to PetroCaribe and Petrosur member states in exchange for goods and services that tackle poverty reduction issues. ALBA is primarily financed by Chávez’s subsidized oil exports, with this relationship being too close to be coincidental. Chávez has engineered ALBA so that he can ultimately sell more oil. Even though Venezuela episodically has threatened to cut off its oil exports to the U.S., these threats will never become a reality; Venezuela would never stop selling oil to the U.S. because these purchases add up to approximately 60% of Venezuela’s total oil exports. Thus, Chávez’s commercial interests and its economic facts of life will continue to prevail over the rhetoric that each side uses to reach the pueblo in Venezuela.
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ALBA only reproduces neolib – it’s a tool to boost Venezuelan oil sales
| 1,408 | 71 | 1,020 | 227 | 13 | 160 | 0.057269 | 0.704846 |
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Critics argue that ALBA’s future does not appear to be sustainable. For example, Venezuela has the highest inflation rate in Latin America and has accumulated $20 billion in debt to China alone. Because of its close link to the Venezuelan economy, the very success of ALBA is dependent on continued Venezuelan oil sales at stable prices. If oil revenues fall, the Chávez Administration is sure to be jeopardized. Ultimately, ALBA’s funding is based on a non-renewable resource that will only become more costly and difficult to extract. While Chávez’s Bolivarian rhetoric is appealing to those who are tired of policies that exclude the poor, his economic policy may have to become a bit more flexible, if Venezuela hopes to simultaneously recover from high inflation rates, pay off its external debt, and develop a sound, logical policy.
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DeFeo 10, (Christina, COHA research associate, “How Much of a Turn To the Left in the Latin American Governance and Economic Policy, http://www.coha.org/alba-how-much-of-a-turn-to-the-left-in-latin-american-governance-and-economic-policy/)
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Critics argue that ALBA’s future does not appear to be sustainable. For example, Venezuela has the highest inflation rate in Latin America and has accumulated $20 billion in debt to China alone. Because of its close link to the Venezuelan economy, the very success of ALBA is dependent on continued Venezuelan oil sales at stable prices Ultimately, ALBA’s funding is based on a non-renewable resource that will only become more costly and difficult to extract
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ALBA’s not sustainable – cost structure problems
| 838 | 48 | 459 | 136 | 7 | 75 | 0.051471 | 0.551471 |
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When Hugo Chávez won the Presidency in 1997, he opened the floodgates of a growing desire for social change that had been boiling in Venezuela since the late-1980s. Unlike other Latin American countries, Venezuela did not have a strong tradition of social movements (for a variety of reasons), so many grabbed on to the image, words and vision of Chávez as a guiding light for the direction of the country. In the years since, movements have emerged, community-based organisations have formed, and those who were previously marginalised from political and economic power (especially barrio residents) have developed a powerful voice and inserted themselves in national, and even continental, struggles. It cannot be ignored that many of these new forms of agency were catalysed, if not begun, by the Chávez government, resulting in movement identities that are often entangled with the figure of Chávez. However, it would be erroneous to assume that these new agents of social struggle are wholly subsumed by the leadership of Chávez. On the contrary, the controversial president has more accurately served as a ‘space-holder’ for the multiplicity of competing interests on Venezuela’s lefts. He has created space at the level of national discourse and policy-making for the details of a Twenty-First Century Socialism to be debated and challenged and he has become a touchstone for those on the left who might otherwise fall to infighting.
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Martinez 2/11 [Jennifer, PHd in Venezuelan studies--http://adamdavidmorton.com/2013/02/and-then-there-were-many-the-bolivarian-revolution-without-chavez/ --2/11/13]
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Chávez opened the floodgates of a growing desire for social change that had been boiling in Venezuela Venezuela did not have a strong tradition of social movements movements have emerged, community-based organisations have formed, and those who were previously marginalised from political and economic power have developed a powerful voice and inserted themselves in national struggles. It cannot be ignored that many of these new forms of agency were catalysed, if not begun, by the Chávez government the controversial president has more accurately served as a ‘space-holder’ for the multiplicity of competing interests on Venezuela’s lefts He created space at the level of national discourse and policy-making to be debated and challenged and he has become a touchstone for those on the left who might otherwise fall to infighting
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Chavez was key to the revolution – Venezuela model and ALBA are doomed to fail
| 1,440 | 78 | 832 | 229 | 15 | 129 | 0.065502 | 0.563319 |
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Despite these dramatic changes, there remain a number of mostly troubling continuities between the system of power groups, interests, and interest groups in Venezuela's Bolivarian democracy and that of the two-party system. These continuities underscore the enduring challenges of interest-group mediation in Venezuela and likely elsewhere in the region. As such, they should also temper any temptation we may have to either lionize or demonize the Chávez regime.¶ First, like the Punto Fijo system, the current system is one of selective inclusion and exclusion, a system similarly ‘structured around networks of privileged access and loyalty’ (Buxton, 2011: p. xx). In other words, both systems are biased, albeit towards different segments of society. Whereas bias may be inevitable in any interest-group system, the particular forms that bias takes varies in these two cases. Taking note of the ways that bias differs, nonetheless, can point us towards the tenor and content that critical voices within a given system are likely to take. They also indicate the likely forms that subsequent interest-group systems are likely to take. As we have seen above, some of the main contours of the current interest-group system represent a direct inversion of the prior system. We also saw in the previous system how such biases can catalyze discontent in a context of economic austerity and social polarization. The current system shows how the selective exclusion of those previously favored power groups and interest groups fueled a powerful opposition that rattled political stability. Thus, regardless of the degree to which either of these two group systems measure up to the ideal of consolidated liberal democracy, they both reveal the liabilities of bias.¶ Second, the politicization of interest groups that undermined the representativeness of interest groups in the earlier two-party system continues in the current Venezuelan system of interest mediation. This politicization has taken place despite the less prominent place of political parties in Venezuela's Bolivarian democracy. Government financing and involvement in a host of the programs described above create the expectation, if not direct pressure, on recipient groups to incorporate into their financed activities political promotions or to filter out negative representations of the government (Fernandes, 2010; Schiller, 2011). Access to government financing can also tempt local leaders to subvert the aims of their organization, and thus the interests it allegedly represents, in favor of government goals and/or their own personal benefit (Fernandes, 2010; Pilar García-Guadilla, 2011). It is important to recognize that protagonists of such state-supported efforts to promote participatory democracy often actively work to retain their autonomy from their government benefactors (Fernandes, 2010; Smilde, 2011). And yet, government financing today, much like the party-led penetration of interest groups in Venezuela's earlier system, creates conditions ripe for cooptation and clientelistic control of local community leaders.¶ A third similarity deserves to be mentioned because it exposes the inability of either system to hold the government accountable. This similarity is the corruption endemic to both systems (Gates, 2010b). The quality of corruption today bears a resemblance to the corruption typical early in the Punto Fijo democracy. As in the first few decades of the two-party democracy (Capriles, 1991: pp. 38–39; Capriles, 1993: p. 210), corruption today seems to take root among state officials who allocate funds for social programs (Gates, 2010b), that is, in the many state-sponsored efforts to promote participatory democracy (Ellner, 2008: p. 184). In these contexts, state officials can too easily abuse their discretion over state funds to favor particular groups or friends and family or to siphon off resources for their own personal benefit. The latter seems to have been a particular problem with the current government's worker-cooperative initiatives (Collier, 2006; Ellner, 2007), the majority of which have failed to prosper (Ellner, 2008: p. 130).3¶ Finally, just as the former system fostered a domestic business community dependent on the state, the current system has fostered its own state-dependent business allies. This so-called Boliburguesia includes not just the ‘new businesses’ mentioned above but also traditional businesses in state-dependent sectors of the economy such as banking and construction. These businesses constitute an important power group today as they have in the past.
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Gates 12 (Gates, L. C. (2012), Interest groups in Venezuela: lessons from the failure of a ‘Model Democracy’ and the rise of a Bolivarian democracy. Journal of Public Affairs, Wiley) IIN
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Despite these dramatic changes, there remain a number of mostly troubling continuities in Venezuela's Bolivarian democracy and that of the two-party system continuities underscore the enduring challenges of interest-group mediation in Venezuela and likely elsewhere in the region the current system is one of selective inclusion and exclusion, a system similarly ‘structured around networks of privileged access and loyalty’ both systems are biased, albeit towards different segments of society The current system shows how the selective exclusion of those previously favored power groups and interest groups fueled a powerful opposition that rattled political stability. Thus, regardless of the degree to which either of these two group systems measure up to the ideal of consolidated liberal democracy, they both reveal the liabilities of bias.¶ politicization of interest groups that undermined the representativeness of interest groups in the earlier two-party system continues . Government financing and involvement in a host of the programs described above create the expectation, if not direct pressure, on recipient groups to incorporate into their financed activities political promotions or to filter out negative representations of the government Access to government financing can also tempt local leaders to subvert the aims of their organization, and thus the interests it allegedly represents, in favor of government goals and/or their own personal benefit protagonists of such state-supported efforts to promote participatory democracy often actively work to retain their autonomy from their government benefactors government financing today, much like the party-led penetration of interest groups in Venezuela's earlier system, creates conditions ripe for cooptation and clientelistic control of local community leaders third similarity exposes the inability of either system to hold the government accountable. This similarity is the corruption endemic to both systems corruption today seems to take root among state officials who allocate funds for social programs that is, in the many state-sponsored efforts to promote participatory democracy state officials can too easily abuse their discretion over state funds to favor particular groups or friends and family or to siphon off resources for their own personal benefit. The latter seems to have been a particular problem with the current government's worker-cooperative initiatives ), the majority of which have failed to prosper the current system has fostered its own state-dependent business allies. This so-called Boliburguesia includes not just the ‘new businesses’ mentioned above but also traditional businesses in state-dependent sectors of the economy such as banking and construction. These businesses constitute an important power group today as they have in the past.
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Chavismo is an inversion but just a continuity of the old model
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This paper begins a process of considering new ways in which trade could be integrated into a¶ vision for food sovereignty. Food analyst and commentator Raj Patel says food sovereignty is¶ over-defined, with so many ideas of what the concept means it is difficult to know which is true¶ (Patel 2009). In much the same vein, the movement’s position on trade is not yet clearly laid¶ out. In fact, the movement’s position on trade is ambiguous to a point of generating some¶ contradictions.¶ The lack of a clear position on trade lends to misunderstandings about the movement’s vision¶ for change, which may close political doors and result in fractures within the movement. We¶ thus argue that as the movement evolves and takes on an increasingly important (and more¶ broadly based) political role, rethinking where and with whom to engage[ment]also takes on some¶ urgency. We propose that engagement with trade offers not just new ways to realize food¶ sovereignty as it has been defined, but also ways to round out and further develop the concept¶ of food sovereignty itself. Dialogue with small-scale producers whose crops are sold in export¶ markets will be an important part of this, to understand their interests and their motivations,¶ and to use this understanding to broaden the scope of food sovereignty. Whether producing for¶ Fairtrade markets, traditional, or non-traditional agricultural commodity chains, evidence¶ suggests that these producers are motivated to continue their engagement in export markets.¶ While it is true the rules governing international trade today were negotiated without smallscale¶ producers being represented, we propose that this exclusion is not necessarily a given. As¶ a result, we suggest that the movement might reconsider its dismissal of the WTO. The¶ literature on social movements and political change argues that contentious issues require¶ contentious politics, which are essential for opening doors where opportunities for engagement¶ are absent. Yet the literature simultaneously argues that movements should be open to¶ opportunities for structural changes when they are presented (Gaventa and McGee, 2010;¶ Tarrow, 2011). Our argument is that there appear to be cracks in the door in the WTO today, as¶ different from the context 20 years ago, and that this could present important opportunities to¶ transform not only the rules of trade themselves, but how they are democratically shaped, with¶ some potential for the principles of food sovereignty to be integrated. We further argue that¶ the nature of globalization, with investment as an ever-more powerful determining force, and¶ its effects on food systems around the world make some kind of engagement with the rules¶ that shape globalization necessary, not optional.¶ We remain cautious in making these arguments. We do not intend to ‘advise’ the movement.¶ Rather, our hope is to contribute perspective, grounded in theory and analysis, that may be of¶ use to the movement as it continues to act against the dominant structures of agricultural¶ production and trade that have been harmful to small scale producers around the world, and as¶ it continues to forge its strategy to this end.
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Burnett and Murphy 13 (Kim and Sophia, Yale University, “Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue, 2013)
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trade could be integrated into a vision for food sovereignty. The lack of a clear position on trade lends to misunderstandings about the movement’s vision for change, which may close political doors and result in fractures within the movement. We thus argue that as the movement evolves and takes on an increasingly important (and more broadly based) political role, rethinking engage[ment]also takes on some urgency. We propose that engagement with trade offers not just new ways to realize food sovereignty as it has been defined, but also ways to round out and further develop the concept of food sovereignty itself producing for traditional agricultural commodity chains, evidence suggests that these producers are motivated to continue their engagement in export markets While it is true the rules governing international trade today were negotiated without smallscale producers being represented, we propose that this exclusion is not necessarily a given. that the movement might reconsider its dismissal of the WTO. the nature of globalization, with investment as an ever-more powerful determining force, and its effects on food systems around the world make engagement necessary, not optional.
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The food sovereignty movement’s opposition to globalization is flawed—an embrace of globalization is necessary to ensure food sovereignty
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¶ The global food crisis is a clear signal that old belief systems¶ no longer apply. Innovative ideas are necessary to¶ make agriculture simultaneously more inclusive, sustainable¶ and productive. Hybrid models of problem-oriented¶ collaboration involving competent and committed actors¶ in civil society, farmer organizations, government, academia¶ and business are increasingly crucial in tackling the¶ global challenges of agriculture. They create demand driven¶ agricultural innovation systems that respond to¶ the needs of small-scale farmers to produce more with¶ less through homegrown innovation. The Food Sovereignty¶ movement could play a crucial role in this endeavour¶ because the agro-ecological practices it advocates¶ must be part of a comprehensive approach to sustainable¶ intensification. Unfortunately, the [food sovereignty] movement still¶ prefers political confrontation to cooperation on the¶ ground, and its baseline assumptions of agriculture are¶ defensive, not progressive. This article shows why these¶ baseline assumptions are misleading even if they sound¶ intuitively right. Sub-Saharan Africa has become a net¶ importer of food because ideology has always mattered¶ more in agricultural policy than the knowledge gained¶ from farmers’ experience in the field and from agricultural research. The Food Sovereignty movement is right¶ about the mistakes of neoliberal economic ideology, but¶ it is silent about the fact that most famines actually occurred¶ under socialist and communist regimes that pursued¶ the goal of food self-sufficiency. The concept of¶ Food Sovereignty still contains too much old left-wing¶ ideology and too little creative thinking on how to make¶ better use of today’s global knowledge economy to ¶ promote sustainable development. The movement could¶ either become an obstacle to future food security, if it¶ sticks to its ideology-based and confrontational rhetoric,¶ or part of the solution, if it decides to extend collaboration¶ beyond like-minded groups and engage in joint pragmatic¶ action.
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Aerni 11 (Philipp, University of Bern and the World Trade Institute, “Food sovereignty and its discontents,” November 23rd, 2011)
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. Unfortunately, the [food sovereignty] movement still prefers political confrontation to cooperation on the ground, and its baseline assumptions of agriculture are defensive, not progressive. This article shows why these baseline assumptions are misleading even if they sound intuitively right. Sub-Saharan Africa has become a net importer of food because ideology has always mattered more in agricultural policy than the knowledge gained from farmers’ experience in the field and from agricultural research The Food Sovereignty movement is silent about the fact that most famines actually occurred under socialist and communist regimes that pursued the goal of food self-sufficiency. The concept of Food Sovereignty still contains too much old left-wing ideology and too little creative thinking The movement could become an obstacle to future food security, if it sticks to its ideology-based and confrontational rhetoric,
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The baseline assumptions of the food sovereignty movement are flawed—most famines occurred under nations that pursued the goal of food sovereignty
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2.2 Hunger and Malnutrition are a Distribution not a Production¶ Problem¶ One significant change since the Cold War has¶ been the severe cuts in public sector research and development¶ (R&D) on the national and international level even¶ though they would have been perfectly legitimate subsidies¶ under the AoA and the WTO Agreement on Subsidies¶ and Countervailing Measures (SCM) [24]. This lack of priority¶ for public sector R&D was justified by the assumption¶ that the Green Revolution had already accomplished its¶ goal. It made most food abundant and caused global food¶ prices to decline to a level that many thought would ruin¶ farm livelihoods and be harmful to the environment. Yet,¶ this view largely ignored the fact that the Green Revolution¶ was far from having achieved the goal of global food security.¶ Even though the percentage of the population that¶ was undernourished decreased from 24% in 1970 to just¶ 14% in 1990, the total number remained stubbornly¶ around 800 million people [25]. The decline in public sector¶ R&D spending and the support for extensive agriculture¶ in Europe since the 1990s helps explain why annual¶ agricultural productivity growth in Europe declined from an¶ average of 4% between 19601990 to an average of just¶ 0.6% between 20002010. As a result, the EU has become¶ the largest importer of food and feed in the world. It¶ imported the equivalent of 35 million hectares of arable¶ land in 20072008 which is roughly the size of Germany.¶ That is an increase of almost 40% (amounting 10 million¶ hectares) since 1990. The European media would never¶ call this land-grabbing but it is difficult to find another¶ name for it [26].¶ In response to a decline in the percentage of the global¶ population that was undernourished, politicians lost interest¶ in investing in agriculture in the 1990s. Their widespread¶ belief that improvements in science and technology¶ led to global overproduction of food at the expense¶ of the poor and the environment in developing countries¶ turned out to be misguided. No one anticipated in the¶ 1990s, that the economic rise of India and China, the¶ two most populous countries in the world, would lead to¶ such a global boost in demand for food, fibre and fuels.¶ Therefore the popular argument that the food security¶ problem is not a production problem but a distribution¶ problem may have once made sense, but today it has¶ become nonsense. Why? First of all, the distribution¶ problem argument ignores the fact that most of the hungry¶ and malnourished people live in remote areas that¶ are difficult to reach because of a lack of reliable infrastructure.¶ So it would be very difficult to feed people in¶ such regions over a long period of time. Moreover, a system¶ for distribution of free food would probably not be¶ welcomed by the farmers in the affected regions because¶ they need to sell their food. They cannot compete¶ with free food. The argument that we should just use the¶ overproduction in food-surplus countries and distribute it¶ in food-scarce developing countries is therefore dangerous¶ and might make these regions even more dependent¶ on food imports in the long term. Many European countries¶ have demonstrated and still demonstrate the negative¶ effects of artificially cheap food imports when they¶ apply export subsidies to get rid of agricultural overproduction¶ on the world market. This food dumping has the¶ same effect on local food prices in developing countries¶ as food aid shipments over a long period; it leads many¶ farmers to abandon their business entirely [27]. Their¶ own governments further worsened the situation by designing¶ food policies that tended to tax productive farmers,¶ subsidize consumer prices and crowd out private¶ sector investment in agriculture. This partially explains¶ why most countries in sub-Saharan Africa have turned¶ from net food exporting into food importing countries¶ [27]. In other words, it undermined their food sovereignty.¶ Yet, the movement explicitly reject food dumping,¶ the argument that food security has nothing to do with¶ agricultural productivity and incentives still implies that it¶ can be addressed through proper local distribution systems¶ that are not linked to markets but to the respect of¶ the human right to food. That is how the following state-¶ ¶ ¶ interpreted:¶ ¶ realized in a system where food sovereignty is guaranteed.¶ Food sovereignty is the right of each nation¶ to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce¶ its basic foods respecting cultural and productive¶ diversity. We have the right to produce our own food¶ in our own territory. Food sovereignty is a precondi-¶ ¶ ATDF JOURNAL Volume 8, Issue 1/2 2011¶ Page 27¶ agribusiness. Socialist and communist regimes and¶ the famines they have caused do not appear on his¶ radar screen.¶ This blindness to the failures of left-wing policies in¶ coping with food security also applies to the advocates¶ of Food Sovereignty. Not a single document in the¶ Food Sovereignty literature actually refers to these¶ tragedies caused by communist and socialist regimes,¶ ¶ The storyline that is repeated over and over again is¶ that the United States imposed a food regime on the¶ rest of the world after World War II through the establishment¶ of the neoliberal Bretton Woods Institutions.¶ ¶ should be in charge of the production and distribution¶ of food, then this has definitely nothing to do with Cold¶ War agricultural policies, where the state was primarily¶ in charge of agriculture. Even the Green Revolution¶ had nothing to do with the private sector but was in¶ every sense a public sector initiative [5, 20]. One might¶ call the economists of the Bretton Wood institutions¶ ¶ posed on indebted Third World governments during the¶ implementation of structural adjustment programmes.¶ They regarded the state as the problem and not as¶ part of the solution and the standard recipe to development¶ and growth was to slim down the state budget¶ even if the cuts impaired the state of domestic agriculture,¶ public health and education. IMF experts who¶ were trained in comparative static neoclassical economics¶ also ill-advised developing country governments¶ in focusing almost exclusively on exports of labour-¶ intensive commodities with predictable decreasing¶ marginal revenues instead supporting the private¶ sector in the development of new goods and services¶ with increasing returns. They were also unable to recognize¶ the role of universities as engines of social and¶ economic change [29]. Finally, in the field of exportoriented¶ agriculture, they ignored the fact that smallscale¶ farmers in remote areas face much higher risks¶ in export-oriented agriculture than farmers in more¶ favourable areas [30]. But this kind of neoliberalism¶ was typical of the 1980s and reflected flawed textbook¶ economics. Today it is rather passé because many¶ countries are starting to adopt new industrial policies¶ that can hardly be compared with laissez-faire Thatch-¶ ¶ makers in emerging economies recognize that the public¶ good of food security can only be secured by a state¶ that generates sufficient tax revenues to invest in agricultural¶ development and improved access to nutritious¶ food. For them the human right to food may be¶ fulfilled by an affluent state that has the means and¶ infrastructure to protect its most vulnerable citizens¶ through a social security and public health system to¶ ensure sufficient access to nutritious food. But this is¶ impossible for other states that do not have the necessary¶ means; they can nevertheless improve access to¶ food by investing in domestic agriculture. Calling for¶ the global right to food is easy if it is voiced from the¶ safe haven of an affluent country. But it will not change¶ the situation in poor countries.¶ The definition implicitly assumes that local food production¶ and consumption can ensure food security and therefore¶ the human right to food. It completely ignores that¶ developing countries, in particular, go through a process¶ of rapid urbanization. So the share of non-farm activities¶ is constantly increasing, which means that a smaller¶ share of the population needs to produce more food with¶ ¶ is focused on self-sufficiency supposed to feed this rapidly¶ growing urban population? Do they think that the human¶ right to food applies only to those who produce
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Aerni 11 (Philipp, University of Bern and the World Trade Institute, “Food sovereignty and its discontents,” November 23rd, 2011)
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Hunger and Malnutrition are a Distribution not a Production Problem Therefore the popular argument that the food security problem is not a production problem but a distribution problem , but today it has become nonsense First of all, the distribution problem argument ignores the fact that most of the hungry and malnourished people live in remote areas that are difficult to reach because of a lack of reliable infrastructure. . Moreover, a system for distribution of free food would probably not be welcomed by the farmers in the affected regions because they need to sell their food The argument that we should just use the overproduction in food-surplus countries and distribute it in food-scarce developing countries is therefore dangerous and might make these regions even more dependent on food imports in the long term Many European countries have demonstrated and still demonstrate the negative effects of artificially cheap food imports when they apply export subsidies to get rid of agricultural overproduction on the world market. Their own governments further worsened the situation by designing food policies that tended to tax productive farmers, subsidize consumer prices and crowd out private sector investment in agriculture. This partially explains why most countries in sub-Saharan Africa have turned from net food exporting into food importing countries In other words, it undermined their food sovereignty.
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The food sovereignty movement misunderstands the causes of hunger which means it can never solve—they ruined Africa—empirics prove
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We have come a long way from the struggles that launched the civil rights movement over fifty years ago. During that historical period, brave men and women marched, integrated white only lunch counters, defied orders to sit in the back of the bus, challenged police brutality and put their bodies in the face of danger for civil and economic rights. Many of them were beaten, attacked by police dogs, and jailed. They fought for a higher cause, and in some cases gave their lives in the face of insufferable injustices. They embodied the ethical grammar of hope, one that demanded courage, struggle, and the creation of social movements. One display of such collective courage took place after Emmett Till, a young 14-year-old, African-American boy, was mutilated and tortured by white racists in Mississippi in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. The widely distributed image of his tortured and disfigured body made visible a vile racism that could no longer remain unchallenged. Thousands viewed the horrible image of this young boy’s mutilated body and rose up in anger and determination to take part in a social movement that challenged the toxic racism that had become normalized in the United States.¶ It is hard to view, even contemplate contemporary America in that historical march towards justice and democracy. We live in a historical moment when money corrupts everything from how we view social provisions and schools to what passes as entertainment and popular culture. We live at a time when politics serves the bankers, hedge fund managers, the corporate elite and free market fundamentalists. The legacies of the past now become fodder for advertisements, revolutionary slogans are trivialized, and the pictures of modern day heroes and freedom fighters are used to sell T-Shirts. Even memory and the practice of moral witnessing are commodified, if not corrupted.¶ One particularly egregious example comes from the rapper Lil Wayne who in a remix version of the song “Karate Chop” by rapper Future mocked Emmett Till with the lyric: “beat the pussy up like Emmett Till.” While a critical response was swift from members of the hip hop community and community leaders, it mostly focused on Lil Wayne’s racist remarks. What many critics failed to do was to look at the underlying conditions that make such racist, sexist blabber and historical amnesia possible. They also largely failed to raise crucial questions about how and why such ethically and politically demeaning music, videos, and lyrics are allowed to flood the culture with so little resistance. Moreover, little was said about why such poisonous lyrics, representations, and representations are measured more for their shock value rather than for the ways in which such material denigrates history, individuals and social movements. Lil Wayne’s racist and sexist comment exceeds bad taste. And then, of course, there is L. L. Cool J “Accidental Racist” song (“If you forget my gold chains, I’ll forgive the iron chains”). There is nothing accidental going on here. What is clear is that both comments are symptomatic of a deeper order of racist ideology and commodification that is pushed to the margins of discourse in the neoliberal age of color blindness. Such racism and sexism point to a society in which economics is divorced from ethics, profit is the ultimate measure of success, and disposable populations are now fair game for ridicule, harassment, and insulting behavior. Lil Wayne is just one example of the moral dead zone that too many artists, individuals, institutions, intellectuals, and politicians occupy in a land of massive inequality of wealth and power. Lil Wayne’s allusion to Emmitt Till in his lyrics represents more than stupidity. It represents how normalized the culture of cruelty has become and how it wraps itself in a popular culture that is increasingly racist, misogynistic, and historically illiterate. This is neoliberalism’s revenge on young people in that it elevates profits over justice and the practice of moral witnessing and in doing so creates artists and other young people who mimic a racist and authoritarian politics and are completely clueless about it. Celebrity culture is the underside of the new illiteracy in America, the soft edge of fascism with its unbridled celebration of wealth, narcissism, and glamor. My comments on Emmitt Till in the beginning of my book, “Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability” point to a different use of memory, one that engages in moral witnessing and tries to prevent justice from dying in each of us, in the public sphere, and in our relations with others. It is worth repeating as a counter narrative to Lil Wayne’s complicity with the modes of lyrical fascism that now circulate in the media like a poisonous toxin.¶ What was left of Emmet Till arrived home in Chicago in September 1955. Determined to make visible the horribly mangled face and twisted body of the child as an expression of racial hatred and killing, Mamie Till, the boy’s mother, insisted that the coffin, interred at the A.A. Ranier Funeral Parlor in the South Side of Chicago, be left open for four long days. While mainstream news organizations ignored the horrifying image, Jet magazine published an unedited photo of Till’s face taken while he lay in his coffin. Shaila Dawn points out that “[m]utilated is the word most often used to describe the face of Emmett Till after his body was hauled out of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. Inhuman is more like it: melted, bloated, missing an eye, swollen so large that its patch of wiry hair looks like that of a balding old man, not a handsome, brazen 14-year-old boy.” The Jet photos not only made visible the violent effects of the racial state; they also fuelled massive public anger, especially among blacks, and helped to launch the Civil Rights Movement.[1]¶ We live at a time when heroes of the civil rights generation such Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Angela Davis are now replaced by business tycoons such as Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, and Henry Paulson. The older pioneers sacrificed in order to alleviate the suffering of others, while the new “celebrity heroes” of the media drawn from corporate culture live off the suffering of others. Celebrity culture is a cesspool of greed, over paid financial looters, and spineless media pundits who reproduce the market-driven and politically paralysing sexist and racist grammars of suffering, state violence, and disposability. Maybe Lil Wayne should read about the history of the civil rights movement before he fashions lyrics that sound as if they were written by the racists that killed this young man. Maybe the American public should go further and ask what kind of country creates people like Lil Wayne and what can be done to create a formative culture that would stop this kind of racism and sexism in its tracks, rather than reward it.
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Giroux (Currently the Director of the McMaster Center for Research in the Public Interest) 13 (Henry A., “Lil Wayne’s Lyrical Fascism”, http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/lil_waynes_lyrical_fascism_20130413/) CA
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We have come a long way from the struggles that launched the civil rights movement over fifty years ago. They embodied the ethical grammar of hope, one that demanded courage, struggle, and the creation of social movements. One display of such collective courage took place after Emmett Till, a young 14-year-old, African-American boy, was mutilated and tortured by white racists in Mississippi in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman Thousands viewed the horrible image of this young boy’s mutilated body and rose up in anger and determination to take part in a social movement that challenged the toxic racism that had become normalized in the United States.¶ The legacies of the past now become fodder for advertisements, revolutionary slogans are trivialized, and the pictures of modern day heroes and freedom fighters are used to sell T-Shirts Even memory and the practice of moral witnessing are commodified, if not corrupted. One particularly egregious example comes from the rapper Lil Wayne who in a remix version of the song “Karate Chop” by rapper Future mocked Emmett Till with the lyric: “beat the pussy up like Emmett Till.” What many critics failed to do was to look at the underlying conditions that make such racist, sexist blabber and historical amnesia possible. . Lil Wayne’s racist and sexist comment exceeds bad taste. And then, of course, there is L. L. Cool J “Accidental Racist” song (“If you forget my gold chains, I’ll forgive the iron chains”). There is nothing accidental going on here. What is clear is that both comments are symptomatic of a deeper order of racist ideology and commodification that is pushed to the margins of discourse in the neoliberal age of color blindness. Such racism and sexism point to a society in which economics is divorced from ethics, profit is the ultimate measure of success, and disposable populations are now fair game for ridicule Lil Wayne is just one example of the moral dead zone that too many artists, individuals, institutions, intellectuals, and politicians occupy in a land of massive inequality of wealth and power. Lil Wayne’s allusion to Emmitt Till in his lyrics represents more than stupidity This is neoliberalism’s revenge on young people in that it elevates profits over justice and the practice of moral witnessing and in doing so creates artists and other young people who mimic a racist and authoritarian politics and are completely clueless about it. . Maybe the American public should go further and ask what kind of country creates people like Lil Wayne and what can be done to create a formative culture that would stop this kind of racism and sexism in its tracks, rather than reward it.
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Turn Hip Hop now accepts the blatant disrespect of the Civil Rights Movement and the rights of women. This signals the acceptance of the Neoliberal order of America.
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The January/February 2012 Boston Review featured a provocative set of essays on the future of black politics. The essays echo yet provide much more heft than a somewhat similar forum the Boston Review held in 1992. They address a number of key issues, from the growing divide between the black poor and middle classes, the seeming unwillingness of government to tackle the issue of income inequality and of racial inequality, the lack of a critical black progressive infrastructure to tackle these issues. Below I unpack one of these ideas—the growing neoliberalization of black politics.¶ Hip-hop is in many ways a response to the neoliberal turn in cities, to manufacturing and safety-net disinvestment on the one hand, and to punitive and financial capital investment on the other hand. Just as we can loosely categorize old negro spirituals as work songs replete with call and response techniques that enhance and buffer field labor, we can loosely categorize rap as post-industrial work songs. West’s track above works on a few different levels. One of the reasons I appreciate both Kanye and JayZ’s work is because they really drive home hip-hop’s anthemic elements. By remixing Shirley Bassey’s Diamonds Are Forever (the themesong for the 1971 James Bond film of the same name) the record deftly blends hard beats and basslines with the soft ethereal elements of Bassey’s voice and the ornate instrumentation of the original. It also binds a trenchant black Atlantic critique of the diamond industry, with a fierce love of Roc-A-Fella (Kanye West and Jay-Z’s first record label—symbolized by diamonds). But Jay-Z’s cameo at about the 2:25 mark strikes me. Comparing his ability to sell cocaine to his ability to sell records, Jay-Z notes “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business man, let me handle my business, damn.” Neoliberalism—the dismantling of the state, privileging of markets over all other institutions, and relentless catering to corporate interests—has reshaped the economic and political terrain, sharpened class cleavages, and pitted disadvantaged groups against each other, presenting new challenges for any emergent black movement. ¶ Neoliberalism doesn’t quite represent the dismantling of the state. Indeed the state’s punitive power has grown, not diminished. Neoliberalism requires a powerful state to rollback the social safety net and to rollout neoliberal policies. Furthermore it requires a state with broad ranging surveillance and punitive powers to separate those unable to work within the neoliberal framework from those able to do so. The now 15 year old welfare reform bill signed by Bill Clinton replaced lifelong welfare benefits with temporary ones that required an intensely invasive bureaucracy. Case workers under the new bill were tasked to track not only whether the single mothers were looking for jobs and how they looked for them, but in some cases they were tasked with drug testing recipients and forcing them to identify the biological fathers of their children. And one need only travel the streets of Time Square to note a signal growth in both the police presence and in the arms police use to carry out their jobs. Finally we can track the increasing incarceration of American citizens, and African American citizens in particular. Jay-Z quotes above signals his willing acceptance of the neoliberal turn, a turn that forces people to take more and more responsibility for their own care and personal development under the guise of entrepreneurialism. The focus on the hustle and the hustler within rap, the focus on the grind, are all fundamental components of the neoliberal turn, as these themes push people to become more and more “productive” with their time even as they are rewarded less and less (and being punished them more and more). Rap magnates like JayZ see themselves as new jack entrepreneurs using their productivity and their entrepreneurial capital to develop black business and black communities.
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Spence (Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at John Hopkins) 12 (Hip Hop and the Neoliberal Turn, http://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com/2012/03/lester-spence-johns-hopkins-university.html) CA
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Below I unpack the growing neoliberalization of black politics. . Just as we can loosely categorize old negro spirituals as work songs replete with call and response techniques that enhance and buffer field labor, we can loosely categorize rap as post-industrial work songs. West’s track above works on a few different levels But Jay-Z’s cameo at about the 2:25 mark strikes me. Comparing his ability to sell cocaine to his ability to sell records, Jay-Z notes “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business man, let me handle my business, damn.” Neoliberalism has reshaped the economic and political terrain, sharpened class cleavages, and pitted disadvantaged groups against each other, presenting new challenges for any emergent black movement. Jay-Z quotes above signals his willing acceptance of the neoliberal turn, a turn that forces people to take more and more responsibility for their own care and personal development under the guise of entrepreneurialism. The focus on the hustle and the hustler within rap, the focus on the grind, are all fundamental components of the neoliberal turn, as these themes push people to become more and more “productive” with their time even as they are rewarded less and less
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Turn Hip Hop has become commodified and now accepts the Neoliberal ideology it once fought against.
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Powell’s “socio-economic” explanation for the sexism in hip-hop is a way to silence feminist critiques of the culture. It is to make an understanding of the misogynistic objectification of black women in hip-hop so elusive that we can’t grasp it long enough to wring the neck of its power over us. His argument completely ignores the fact that women, too, are raised in this environment of poverty and violence, but have yet to produce the same negative and hateful representation of black men that male rappers are capable of making against women. ¶ Powell’s understanding also lends itself to elitist assumption that somehow poverty breeds sexism, or at least should excuse it. Yet we all know that wealthy white boys can create the same hateful and violent music as poor black boys. As long as the boys can agree that their common enemy is female and that their power resides in their penis, women must not hesitate to name the war they have declared on us. ¶ Hip-hop owes its success to the ideology of woman-hating. It creates, perpetuates, and reaps the rewards of objectification. Sexism and homophobia saturate hip-hop culture and any deviation from these forms of bigotry is made marginal to its most dominant and lucrative expressions. Few artists dare to embody equality and respect between the sexes through their music. Those who do have to fight to be heard above the dominant chorus of misogyny. ¶ The most well known artists who represent an underground and conscious force in hip-hop—like Common, The Roots, Talib Kweli, and others—remain inconsistent, apologetic, and even eager to join the mainstream player’s club. Even though fans like me support them because of their moments of decency toward women, they often want to remain on the fence by either playing down their consciousness or by offering props to misogynistic rappers. Most so called conscious artists appear to care more about their own acceptance by mainstream artists than wanting to make positive changes in the culture. ¶ The Roots, for example, have backed Jay-Z on both his Unplugged release and Fade to Black tours. They’ve publicly declared their admiration for him and have signed on to his new “indie” hip-hop imprint Def Jam Left to produce their next album. Yet Jay-Z is one of the most notoriously sexist and materialistic rappers of his generation. ¶ Hip-hop artists like Talib Kweli and Common market themselves as conscious alternatives, yet they remain passive in the face of unrelenting woman-hating bravado from mainstream artists. They are willing to lament in abstract terms the state of hip-hop, but refuse to name names—unless it’s to reassure their mainstream brethren that they have nothing but love for their music. ¶ Talib Kweli has been praised for his song “Black Girl Pain,” but clearly he’s clueless to how painful it is for a black girl to hear his boy Jay-Z rap, “I pimp hard on a trick, look Fuck if your leg broke bitch, hop up on your good foot.” ¶ The misogyny in hip-hop is also given a pass because some of its participants are women. But female hip-hop artists remain marginalized within the industry and culture—except when they are trotted out to defend hip-hop against feminist criticism. But the truth is, all kinds of patriarchal institutions, organizations, and movements have women in their ranks in search of power and meaning. The token presence of individual women changes nothing if women as a group are still scapegoated and degraded. ¶ Unlike men, women in hip-hop don’t speak in a collective voice in defense of themselves. The pressure on women to be hyper-feminine and hyper-sexual for the pleasure of men, and the constant threat of being called a bitch, a ho—or worse, a dyke—as a result of being strong, honest, and self-possessed, are real within hip-hop culture and the black community at large. Unless women agree to compromise their truth, self-respect, and unity with other women and instead play dutiful daughter to the phallus that represents hip-hop culture, they will be either targeted, slandered, or ignored altogether. As a result, female rappers are often just as male-identified, violent, materialistic, and ignorant as their male peers. ¶ Hip-hop artist Eve, who describes herself as “a pit bull in a skirt,” makes an appearance in the Sporty Thieves video for “Pigeons,” one of the most hateful misogynistic anthems in hip-hop. Her appearance displays her unity not with the women branded “pigeons,” but with the men who label them. This is a heartbreaking example of how hip-hop encourages men to act collectively in the interest of male privilege while dividing women into opposing camps of good and bad or worthy and unworthy of respect. ¶ Lip-service protest against sexism in hip-hop culture is a sly form of public relations to ensure that nobody’s money, power, or respect is ever really threatened. Real respect and equality might interfere with hip-hop’s commercial appeal. We are asked to dialogue about and ultimately celebrate our “progress”—always predicated on a few rappers and moguls getting rich. Angry young black women are expected to be satisfied with a mere mention that some hip-hop music is sexist and that this sexism of a few rappers is actually, as Powell calls it, “the ghetto blues, urban folk art, a cry out for help.” My questions then are: “Whose blues? Whose art? Why won’t anybody help the women who are raped in endless rotation by the gaze of the hip-hop camera?” ¶ They expect us to deal with hip-hop’s pervasive woman-hating simply by alluding to it, essentially excusing and even celebrating its misogyny, its arrogance, its ignorance. What this angry black woman wants to hear from the apologists is that black women are black people too. That any attack on the women in our community is an attack on us all and that we will no longer be duped by genocidal tendencies in black-face. I want to hear these apologists declare that any black man who makes music perpetuating the hatred of women will be named, shunned, and destroyed, financially and socially, like the traitor of our community he is. That until hip-hop does right by black women, everything hip-hop ever does will fail.
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McLune (a librarian, activist, and writer) 06 (Jennifer, “Hip-Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women”, http://www.zcommunications.org/hip-hop-and-rsquo-s-betrayal-of-black-women-by-jennifer-mclune) CA
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Hip-hop owes its success to the ideology of woman-hating. It creates, perpetuates, and reaps the rewards of objectification. Sexism and homophobia saturate hip-hop culture and any deviation from these forms of bigotry is made marginal to its most dominant and lucrative expressions. Few artists dare to embody equality and respect between the sexes through their music. The most well known artists who represent an underground and conscious force in hip-hop—like Common, The Roots, Talib Kweli, and others—remain inconsistent, apologetic, and even eager to join the mainstream player’s club . Most so called conscious artists appear to care more about their own acceptance by mainstream artists than wanting to make positive changes in the culture. The Roots, for example, have backed Jay-Z on both his Unplugged release and Fade to Black tours Yet Jay-Z is one of the most notoriously sexist and materialistic rappers of his generation. Hip-hop artists like Talib Kweli and Common market themselves as conscious alternatives, yet they remain passive in the face of unrelenting woman-hating bravado from mainstream artists Talib Kweli has been praised for his song “Black Girl Pain,” but clearly he’s clueless to how painful it is for a black girl to hear his boy Jay-Z rap, “I pimp hard on a trick, look Fuck if your leg broke bitch, hop up on your good foot.” female hip-hop artists remain marginalized within the industry and culture except when they are trotted out to defend hip-hop against feminist criticism. The token presence of individual women changes nothing if women as a group are still scapegoated and degraded they will be either targeted, slandered, or ignored altogether. As a result, female rappers are often just as male-identified, violent, materialistic, and ignorant as their male peers This is a heartbreaking example of how hip-hop encourages men to act collectively in the interest of male privilege while dividing women into opposing camps of good and bad or worthy and unworthy of respect. Lip-service protest against sexism in hip-hop culture is a sly form of public relations to ensure that nobody’s money, power, or respect is ever really threatened What this angry black woman wants to hear from the apologists is that black women are black people too. That any attack on the women in our community is an attack on us all and that we will no longer be duped by genocidal tendencies in black-face. That until hip-hop does right by black women, everything hip-hop ever does will fail.
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Hip Hop culture is corner-stoned by woman-hating, objectification and homophobia.
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While we believe that Maduro and Cabello are likely to continue governing in an informal power sharing agreement for the remainder of the year, it is unclear at this point if this arrangement is sustainable in the longer term, particularly as hardship protests appear likely to continue and put pressure on the relationship. Protests could weaken Maduro’s authority and upset the balance of power between the two men. Currently there is no firm evidence to suggest that Maduro could be ousted from power before the December elections and we think such a scenario is unlikely on current indications. Rather, Cabello and Maduro seem likely to cooperate to maintain their positions and privileges under the current system, with both leaders forced to support each other despite their differences. However, Maduro’s prospects after the elections seem much less certain, making the next six months a critical window for him to start delivering on economic policy and bringing improved security to the country. Constrained by a power sharing agreement and having inherited a highly dysfunctional economy and political system, Maduro’s ability to deliver is very limited. It seems unlikely that even with a dramatic reform program he will be able to deliver results quickly. In the meantime, opposition protests seem almost certain to continue over the following months. These are most likely to intensify in October and November ahead of the December municipal elections, which are likely to be a test of Maduro’s leadership. With the opposition calling for a mass turnout at the polls, the next local election is most likely to result in renewed unrest in the country’s main cities, especially if socio-economic hardship continues. Regardless of outcome, the municipal elections will not unseat Maduro, but potentially sweeping gains by the opposition could seriously erode his standing in Chavismo and open the door to an internal challenge by Cabello. Although the longer-term direction of Chavismo is difficult to forecast with any reliability, on current indications the current government appears to lack the cohesion or popular support to navigate a range of different economic and political challenges during Maduro’s six-year mandate, so we expect a restive end to the year.
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Renuncio’13 - Senior Associate, Intelligence & Analysis, London (Irenea, Risk Advisory, “Venezuela: strategic risk outlook for 2013,” 6/19/2013, http://news.riskadvisory.net/index.php/2013/06/venezuela-strategic-risk-outlook-for-2013/) //CT
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Maduro and Cabello are likely to continue governing for the remainder of the year, it is unclear at this point if this arrangement is sustainable in the longer term the next six months a critical window for him to start delivering on economic policy and bringing improved security to the country. Constrained by a power sharing agreement and a highly dysfunctional economy and political system, Maduro’s ability to deliver is limited. It seems unlikely that even with a dramatic reform program he will be able to deliver results quickly. opposition protests are most likely to intensify in October and November December municipal elections are a test of Maduro’s leadership municipal elections will not unseat Maduro, but sweeping gains by the opposition could erode his standing in Chavismo and open the door to an internal challenge by Cabello current government appears to lack the cohesion or popular support to navigate a range of different economic and political challenges during Maduro’s six-year mandate, so we expect a restive end to the year
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Next six months are key – municipal elections will determine Maduro’s ability to fulfill his 6-year mandate
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BOGOTA, Colombia - American fugitive Edward Snowden's diminishing possibilities of remaining free to continue releasing information about secret U.S. surveillance programs increasingly appear to hinge on Venezuela, which awaited word Monday on whether the former National Security Agency contractor would accept its offer of asylum and fly to the oil-rich country. Bolivia and Nicaragua also say they could give refuge to Snowden, who is on the run from American officials and is thought to be marooned in the vast transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport. And the president of communist Cuba, Ral Castro, on Sunday expressed support for Latin American allies that might take in the 30-year-old computer expert, opening the possibility that Snowden could fly through Havana as a first leg on his flight to asy-lum. Among those offering sanctuary to Snowden, anti-imperialist Venezuela stands out: a country with an intense an-tipathy toward the United States and just enough muscle to make his escape from American law enforcement a possibil-ity. It also appears that Russian officials, eager to end the diplomatic fallout of having Snowden in Moscow, see their close ally, Venezuela, as offering the clearest solution. "The situation with Snowden is creating additional tension in relations with Washington that are complex as they are," Alexei Pushkov, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, told the newspaper Kommersant on Monday. Pushkov, whose comments dependably reflect the Kremlin's position on foreign affairs, said the Snowden saga needed to be settled before President Obama arrives in September to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. "And judging by the way things are unfolding," Pushkov told the newspaper, "this is how it's going to be." Over the weekend, Pushkov had also said that giving asylum to Snowden in Venezuela could not damage President Nicols Maduro, because his government's relations with Washington are already in tatters. "It can't get worse," Pushkov said in a Twitter message. Newly elected and facing staggering economic problems at home despite the country's oil wealth, Maduro appears to have made a high-pitched, openly hostile position against the Obama administration a cornerstone of his govern-ment's foreign policy. He took his most provocative stand Friday in announcing that Venezuela would take in Snowden. On Monday, Maduro said that a letter from Snowden requesting asylum had been received and that the young American would simply have to decide when to fly to Caracas. Maduro has accused the United States of fomenting protests against his government after his disputed April 14 election victory, which gave him the presidency his predecessor, Hugo Chvez, had held for 14 turbulent years until his death from cancer. The Snowden saga - a young American revealing secrets the U.S. government wants to contain - provided the per-fect opportunity for Maduro to take on the Obama administration, said Eduardo Semtei, a former Venezuelan govern-ment official. "To figure internationally, to show that he is a player among big powers, he offered asylum to Snowden," said Sem-tei, who had been close to Chvez's brother, Adn, a leading ideologue in the late president's radical movement. "This grabs headlines, and it shows that he's a strong president, one with character, and that he's capable of challenging the United States." Maduro and Venezuela came late to the Snowden saga, as tiny Ecuador, an ally also committed to opposing Ameri-can initiatives, heaped praise on Snowden and expressed a willingness to help him after he had flown from Hong Kong to Moscow on June 23 to avoid American justice. WhenEcuador backed away from its initial enthusiasm over Snowden, Venezuela stepped in last week as Maduro arrived in Moscow for an energy summit. The 50-year-old Maduro, who found his political calling as a socialist activist with close ties to Cuba, took a sharp-ly anti-imperialist stand in embracing Snowden. He said the United States had "created an evil system, half Orwellian, that intends to control the communications of the world," and characterized Snowden as an antiwar activist and hero who had unmasked the dastardly plans of America's ruling elite. Political analysts say the opportunity to take sides against Washington was simply irresistible for a government that has for years characterized itself as a moral force speaking out for the weak against "the empire," as the United States is known in Caracas. And the fact that the secrets Snowden divulged were embarrassing to the Obama administration only gave more fuel to Venezuela, former Venezuelan diplomats and political analysts in Caracas said. "Edward Snowden became the symbol for the anti-imperialist rhetoric, for progressivism, for international radical-ism," said Carlos Romero, an analyst and author who closely tracks Venezuela's international diplomacy. Venezuela helped channel the fury of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Suriname after Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane was apparently refused entry into the airspace of as many as four European countries last Tuesday because of the belief that Snowden was hiding aboard. And on Monday, Venezuela's state media apparatus seemed to take more offense than the Brazilian government over revelations that the NSA had collected data on countless tele-phone and e-mail conversations in Brazil. But former diplomats familiar with Venezuela say that there are other aspects to consider in deciphering Maduro's support for Snowden. Ignacio Arcaya, a diplomat who served the Chvez government in the United States in the early part of his presiden-cy, said Maduro has had the challenge of trying to ease the concerns of radicalized sectors in his movement that have been worried about a resumption of relations with Washington now that Chvez is gone. Indeed, until recently, Maduro was spearheading an effort at rapprochement, as shown by a meeting in Guatemala on June 5 between Secretary of State John F. Kerry and his Venezuelan counterpart, Elas Jaua. "What Maduro is doing is aimed at quieting the radical sectors of his party who think he is negotiating with the United States and think that he's talking to private industry," Arcaya said. Maduro also has to consider his own unstable political position after the April 14 election, which is being contested by his challenger, Henrique Capriles, who says the vote was stolen from him. At the same time, Maduro faces millions of Venezuelans tired of the country's sky-high inflation, rampant homicide rate and serious shortages of everything from chicken to toilet paper. Myles R.R. Frechette, a retired American diplomat who served in Venezuela and other Latin American countries, said Maduro is using a tried-and-true strategy: loudly oppose the United States to distract from domestic problems. "It plays very well," said Frechette. "It's the card to play. It's what you've always got in your drawer. You open your drawer and play to your most radical elements."
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WA Post, ‘13 (Juan Forero, “Venezuela's Maduro culls power with Snowden asylum offer,” 7/9/13, L-N)//CT
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giving asylum to Snowden in Venezuela could not damage Maduro, because his government's relations with Washington are already in tatters "It can't get worse Maduro made a high-pitched, openly hostile position against the Obama administration a cornerstone of his govern-ment's foreign policy. Venezuela would take in Snowden To figure internationally, to show that he is a player among big powers, he offered asylum to Snowden This grabs headlines, and it shows that he's a strong president, one with character, and that he's capable of challenging the United States." Maduro, who found his political calling as a socialist activist with close ties to Cuba, took a sharp-ly anti-imperialist stand in embracing Snowden. He said the United States had "created an evil system, half Orwellian, that intends to control the communications of the world," and characterized Snowden as an antiwar activist and hero who had unmasked the dastardly plans of America's ruling elite Political analysts say the opportunity to take sides against Washington was simply irresistible for a government that has for years characterized itself as a moral force speaking out for the weak against "the empire," as the United States is known in Caracas. Venezuela helped channel the fury of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Suriname Maduro has the challenge to ease the concerns of radicalized sectors in his movement that have been worried about a resumption of relations with Washington now that Chvez is gone Maduro is quieting the radical sectors of his party who think he is negotiating with the U S and think that he's talking to private industry Maduro has to consider his own unstable political position after the election, Maduro faces inflation, rampant homicide rate and serious shortages Maduro is using a strategy: loudly oppose the United States to distract from domestic problems It plays very well It's what you've always got in your drawer. You open your drawer and play to your most radical elements."
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US – Venezuelan relations at all time low– Maduro using anti-American rhetoric to quiet radical factions in Venezuela. Maduro opening to United States and private industry will fracture his political and regional support.
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Operating under a weaker popular mandate, and in a politically charged and polarized climate, raises the specter of widespread disturbances in Venezuela. Capriles announced on April 25 that his movement plans to boycott an official audit of the election results due to concerns relating to voter registration irregularities. He has also called for a new presidential vote. Capriles and his supporters seem determined to step up pressure on the fledgling Maduro presidency. Countries that depend on Venezuelan largesse to support their economies through the receipt of subsidized oil and preferential trade access to the Venezuelan market, including Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, among others, stand to lose a great deal should Maduro choose to shift Venezuelan foreign policy, however slightly, from the Bolivarian Revolutionary ideals enshrined during Chavez’s rule. Having to contend with their own economic troubles, the loss of subsidized oil or other benefits provided by Venezuela, for example, can destabilize fragile polities, impoverishing millions in the process. This raises the potential of social, political, and economic instability throughout the region.
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Fair Observer, ’13 –a team of researchers, analysts, facilitators and problem-solvers that speak more than a dozen languages, and have lived, worked, or studied in nearly 50 countries. (Helios Global, “Change in Venezuela Yields Political and Economic Uncertainty”, Fair Observer, 6/4/13, http://www.fairobserver.com/article/change-venezuela-yields-political-and-economic-uncertainty)//MC
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Operating under a weaker popular mandate raises the specter of widespread disturbances in Venezuela. Countries that depend on Venezuelan to support their economies through the receipt of subsidized oil and preferential trade access to the Venezuelan market, including Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, stand to lose a great deal should Maduro choose to shift Venezuelan foreign policy, however slightly, from the ideals enshrined during Chavez’s rule. loss of subsidized oil provided by Venezuela can destabilize fragile polities, impoverishing millions in the process. This raises the potential of social, political, and economic instability throughout the region.
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Turns the case - Loss of political popularity causes Venezuelan instability - this spills over to regional destabilization
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CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela announced late Friday that it was stopping the latest round of off-again-on-again efforts to improve relations with the United States in reaction to comments by the Obama administration’s nominee for United Nations ambassador. The nominee, Samantha Power, speaking before a Senate committee on Wednesday, said that part of her role as ambassador would be to challenge a “crackdown on civil society” in several countries, including Venezuela. President Nicolás Maduro had already lashed out on Thursday at Ms. Power for her remarks, and late on Friday the Foreign Ministry said that it was terminating efforts to improve relations with the United States. ¶ Those efforts had inched forward just last month after Secretary of State John Kerry publicly shook hands with the Venezuelan foreign minister, Elías Jaua, during an international meeting in Guatemala — one of the highest level meetings between officials of the two countries in years. ¶ Venezuela “will never accept interference of any kind in its internal affairs,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that it “considered terminated the process begun in the conversations in Guatemala that had as their goal the regularization of our diplomatic relations.”
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Neuman 7/20 –Journalist for NYT (William, New York Times , “Venezuela stops Efforts to improve U.S relations”, 6/20/13 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/world/americas/venezuela-stops-efforts-to-improve-us-relations.html?_r=0) //JWC
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Venezuela announced it was stopping efforts to improve relations with the U S in reaction to Power, said her role as ambassador would be to challenge a “crackdown on civil society” in Venezuela Those efforts had inched forward after Kerry meeting in Guatemala Venezuela terminated regularization of diplomatic relations
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Maduro won’t normalize relations in the squo – multiple reasons:
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U.S. relations with Venezuela have been a lot thornier. ¶ While Nicolas Maduro , appears to be more pragmatic than his predecessor, he has loudly voiced his own anti-American rhetoric since taking office — even alleging that the U.S. had a hand in Chavez' death from cancer. Maduro expelled two U.S. Air Force attaches from Caracas, accusing them of trying to foment instability. The Obama administration responded by expelling two Venezuelan diplomats from Washington.
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AP 7/17 (Deb Riechmann, “Snowden affair chills US-Latin American ties”, Associated Press: US Politics & Government Online, NewsBank, Monday, July 15th 2013) EC
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relations with Venezuela have been a lot thornier Nicolas Maduro , appears to be more pragmatic than his predecessor he has loudly voiced his own anti-American rhetoric since taking office Maduro expelled two U.S. Air Force attaches from Caracas, accusing them of trying to foment instability
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b) Consistently vocal anti-American rhetoric proves
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But even if the US manages to get hold of him, the former CIA technical worker has managed to strain hitherto solid trans-atlantic relations and even deal a blow to America's ties with Latin America. Following report in the German paper Der Spiegel -based on leaked classified documents by Snowden -which alleged that America's National Security Agency (NSA) had been spying on its European allies, Brazil's O Globo published a similar report regarding the NSA's spying on South American countries. ¶ The states, which have often been referred to America's "backyard" were incensed by these revelations. After this news made headlines, the Mercosur bloc of nations - Venezuela , Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay -were quick to condemn the alleged spying by the US and defend their right to offer Snowden asylum. And now, Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman has given a list of nearly a 100 names of politicians and officials, who are allegedly being spied on, to prosecutors. According to Timerman, a high-ranking official at last week's meeting of the Mercosur group had given him the list. While the foreign minister did not accuse the US of subjecting Argentine citizens to illegal surveillance, there are reports that a similar list has been handed to an official of another Latin American country as well. ¶ It's clear that the allegations of spying by the US are being taken very seriously by Latin American nations. And this news has made these countries even more adamant on providing asylum to Snowden. Venezuela , Bolivia and Nicaragua have all offered the 30-year-old whistleblower asylum in their territory. Snowden, who is without travel documents, is expected to seek temporary asylum in Russia before moving to Latin America. ¶ The Snowden affair has adversely impacted US ties with Latin America, but it seems they will only deteriorate in the future. With Snowden freely roaming in Venezuela , divulging more about the US intelligence in the global media, the scandal is definitely going to do some irreparable damage to America's relations with its supposed backyard.
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BBC, 7/18/13 (“Snowden case adversely affecting US-Latin American ties”, BBC Monitoring International Reports, Khaleej Times website, Internal Bank News, Thursday, July 18, 2013) EC
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the former CIA technical worker has managed to strain hitherto solid trans-atlantic relations and even deal a blow to America's ties with Latin America The states, which have often been referred to America's "backyard" were incensed by these revelations. the Mercosur bloc of nations - Venezuela , Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay -were quick to condemn the alleged spying by the US and defend their right to offer Snowden asylum. there are reports that a similar list has been handed to an official of another Latin American country as well. It's clear that the allegations of spying by the US are being taken very seriously by Latin American nations. And this news has made these countries even more adamant on providing asylum to Snowden. Venezuela , Bolivia and Nicaragua have all offered the 30-year-old whistleblower asylum in their territory. The Snowden affair has adversely impacted US ties with Latin America, but it seems they will only deteriorate in the future. the scandal is definitely going to do some irreparable damage to America's relations with its supposed backyard.
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c) Spying Scandal and Snowden proves - predictive
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After being elected president with 50.6% of the vote in April, now 55.9% of Venezuelans support Nicolas Maduro, according to a survey from pollster International Consulting Services (ICS). The increase in support for the president is attributed to direct communication with the electorate, such as Maduro's “street government” initiative, according to ICS director, Lorenzo Martinez. “This result is evidence somewhat that the Maduro government... has had a positive impact on the perception of the people... the political, social and economic landscape is improving,” Martinez told state news agency AVN, following the publication of the results yesterday. However, when asked how they viewed Maduro's management skills, a slightly higher figure- 56.2% of participants described the president's performance as “excellent” “fair” or “good”. The 1,600 Venezuelans surveyed by the ICS between 15 to 26 June also expressed a favourable view of the economy and security, according to Martinez. 53.4% of participants stated that they feel the economy is improving, while 21.2% stated it has worsened. 24.8% said that the economy hasn't changed since Maduro took office, while 0.6% didn't know, or didn't answer. Two weeks before the 14 April elections, an ICS poll estimated that Maduro could command 56.9% of the vote, while his closest rival Capriles had 41.1%. Maduro won the election with just 50.6%, while Capriles received 49.1% of the vote. Policies with meat on the bone? As well as citing the “street government”, Martinez told AVN the results indicate that government initiatives to counter speculation and crack down on public sector corruption, along with efforts to enforce price controls have contributed to a positive outlook. According to Martinez, people can “see solutions to their specific problems”. Last month, the head of the Institute for the Defence of People in Access to Goods and Services (Indepabis) Eduardo Saman announced a crackdown on price speculation and retailers that fail to adhere to price controls. Since then, Saman has also announced that Indepabis has launched a nationwide initiative to put the price of meat “back on track”. The minister for trade, Alejandro Fleming has announced he held a series of meetings with a number of major retailers, along with the National Association of Supermarkets to encourage greater cooperation between the private sector and Indepabis. On the same day that the ICS results were released, an Indepabis spokesperson announced that 20 butchers in Lara state had been penalised for not complying with price controls. “We have audited, we found these irregularities and these establishments have been punished,” the Indepabis regional coordinator for Lara, Valentina Querales stated yesterday afternoon. Since the initiative was launched, the head of Indepabis in Carabobo state Luis Vilchez has stated that 32 audits have been carried out in his state, resulting in penalties being applied to seven businesses. Another government initiative that Martinez said received some positive feedback from participants was the 'Safe Homeland' anti-crime program.
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Mallet-Outtrim’13 (Author, studying Journalism and International Relations at the University of South Australia, majoring in national security and sustainability (Ryan, 4/10/13, “Poll Reveals Majority of Venezuelans View Maduro Positively; Carter Center Recommends Electoral Reform, http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9806) //JM
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55.9% of Venezuelans support Nicolas Maduro, according to a survey from ICS increase in support is attributed to direct communication with the electorate the political, social and economic landscape is improving,
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Maduro narrowly popular now – public likes political, social and economic outlook
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At a conference earlier this month, top U.S. military officers identified what they thought would be the top threats to the U.S. as it draws down from protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.¶ Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, was unequivocal about a largely unreported danger:¶ "Narco-terrorism just on our south border: [it is] yet to be seen just how that is going to play out in our own nation, but it is an issue and it is something that our nation is going to have to deal with."¶ "Colombia is doing particularly well, but there is an insurgency growing," Amos continued. "They have been fighting it, probably the greatest success story in this part of the world."¶ The commandant's remarks came a week before the April 14 election where Venezuelans chose a successor to the wildly popular and charismatic Hugo Chavez, who died March 5. Amos indicated the outcome of this election would define much of future relations between the U.S. and Venezuela, located on a continent that has rarely appeared on America's foreign policy radar in the last decade.¶ Experts, analysts and pundits could not have predicted the election outcome: The establishment's Nicolas Maduro beat reformer Henrique Capriles by a margin of roughly 1 percent. Chavez's hand-picked successor inherited the presidency, but he would not enjoy a broad public mandate to get a teetering Venezuela back on track.¶ The situation in the South American nation remains dire amid skyrocketing inflation, largely due to Chavez's efforts to nationalize private industry and increase social benefits.¶ Maduro's immediate attention after claiming victory was drawn to remedying widespread blackouts and food shortages.¶ One expert on the region says the new leader may need to tap into a shadow world of transnational crime to maintain the stability his countrymen expect.¶ "Venezuela is a really nice bar, and anybody can go in there and pick up anybody else," says Doug Farah, an expert on narco-terrorism and Latin American crime.¶ He compares the country to the kind of establishment where nefarious actors can find solutions to a problem. Anti-American groups can find freelance cyber terrorists, for example, or potential drug runners can make connections with the FARC, the Colombian guerilla organization, he says.¶ "Sometimes it creates a long-term relationship, and sometimes it creates a one-night stand," says Farah, a former Washington Post investigative reporter who is now a senior fellow at the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center.¶ Under Chavez, Venezuela also created strong ties with Cuba, which for decades has navigated treacherous financial waters and desperate economic straits, all while dodging U.S. influence. But the help Venezuela receives is not limited to its own hemisphere.¶ Farah produced a research paper for the U.S. Army War College in August 2012 about the "growing alliance" between state-sponsored Iranian agents and other anti-American groups in Latin America, including the governments of Venezuela and Cuba.¶ This alliance with Iran uses established drug trade routes from countries in South and Central America to penetrate North American borders, all under a banner of mutual malevolence toward the U.S.¶ The results of this access are largely secret, though security experts who spoke with U.S. News believe the attempted assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood was carried out by Iranian intelligence operatives.¶ "Each of the Bolivarian states has lifted visa requirements for Iranian citizens, thereby erasing any public record of the Iranian citizens that come and go to these countries," wrote Farah of countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama.¶ He also cited Venezuelan Foreign Minister David Velasquez who said, while speaking at a press conference in Tehran in 2010, "We are confident that Iran can give a crushing response to the threats and sanctions imposed by the West and imperialism."¶ These relationships are controlled by a group of military elites within Venezuela, Farah tells U.S. News. He wonders whether the 50.8 percent of the vote Maduro won in the April 14 election gives him enough support to keep the country – and its shadow commerce – stable enough to continue its usual business.¶ "[Maduro] has been and will continue to be forced to take all the unpopular macroeconomic steps and corrections that are painful, but Chavez never took," Farah says. "There is going to be, I would guess, a great temptation to turn to [the elites] for money."¶ "Most criminalized elements of the Boliavarian structure will gain more power because he needs them," he says, adding "it won't be as chummy a relationship" as they enjoyed with the ever-charismatic Chavez.¶ U.S. officials might try to engage the new Venezuelan president first in the hopes of improving the strained ties between the two countries.¶ But Maduro has never been close with the senior military class in his home country, and will likely adopt a more confrontational approach to the United States to prove his credentials to these Bolivarian elites.¶ "Maybe if he were operating in different circumstances, he could be a pragmatist," Farah says. "I don't think he can be a pragmatist right now."
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Shinkman ‘13 (Paul, National Security reporter at US News & World Report, 4/24/13, “Iranian-Sponsored Narco-Terrorism in Venezuela: How Will Maduro Respond?”, US News and World Report, http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/24/iranian-sponsored-narco-terrorism-in-venezuela-how-will-maduro-respond)//JL
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U.S. identified the top threats to the U.S. Amos was unequivocal about :¶ "Narco-terrorism it is an issue Venezuela chose a successor to Chavez the outcome would define relations between the U.S. and Venezuela on a continent that has rarely appeared on America's foreign policy radar in the last decade. The situation remains dire One expert says the new leader may tap into a world of crime to maintain the stability his countrymen expect Anti-American groups can find drug runners Under Chavez, Venezuela also created strong ties with Cuba which has navigated desperate straits, all while dodging U.S. influence. a research paper for U.S. Army War College about the "growing alliance" between Iranian agents and other anti-American groups in Latin America, including Venezuela This alliance established drug trade routes to penetrate North America all under a banner of mutual malevolence toward the U.S. Bolivarian states lifted visa requirements for Iranian citizens erasing any public record of the Iranian citizens wrote Farah of Venezuela Velasquez said that Iran can crush threats imposed by the West and imperialism These relationships are controlled by military elites within Venezuela Farah wonders whether the vote Maduro won gives him enough support to keep the country stable U.S. might try to engage the new Venezuelan president first in the hopes of improving the strained ties between the two countries But Maduro will adopt a more confrontational approach to the U S to prove his credentials to these Bolivarian elites. . "I don't think he can be a pragmatist right now."
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Maduro must remain anti-American to maintain political support from Bolivarian elites
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Former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich tells Newsmax that Venezuela’s offer of asylum for NSA leaker Edward Snowden is an attempt by President Nicolas Maduro to flex his “false manhood” and be more like his predecessor — the late dictator Hugo Chavez.? “Venezuela has nothing to gain. Maduro has a lot to gain,” Reich said in an exclusive interview on Friday. “Maduro gains that macho bravado that he has lacked so far. He’s really been a laughing stock in Venezuela because of things like his statement that Chavez came to him as a little bird and spoke to him. People have been making fun of that for months. He’s just not taken seriously. What better show of false manhood than to stand up to the great American empire — stand up to the Americans. This is what he’s doing.”
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Scicchitano 7/6 (Paul Scicchitano, writer at Sustainable Success Alert, 7/6/13, "Ambassador Reich: Maduro Shows 'False Manhood,' Wants to be Chavez," News Max, http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/reich-maduro-venezuela-snowden/2013/07/06/id/513588)//SL
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that Venezuela’s offer of asylum for NSA leaker Edward Snowden is an attempt by President Nicolas Maduro to flex his “false manhood” and be more like his predecessor Hugo Chavez. Venezuela has nothing to gain. Maduro has a lot to gain “Maduro gains that macho bravado that he has lacked so far. He’s really been a laughing stock in Venezuela He’s just not taken seriously. What better show of false manhood than to stand up to the great American empire — stand up to the Americans.
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Maduro must flex anti-American rhetoric to maintain power - Snowden proves.
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While the ultimate impact of the Venezuelan presidential election remains to be seen, what's for sure is that relations between the United States and the administration of President-elect Nicolás Maduro will continue to be as tense as under the late Hugo Chávez, experts said.¶ After voting on Sunday in a Caracas slum, Maduro said that while he would like to reestablish relations with the U.S. “in terms of equality and respect,” Washington will always try to undermine his rule.¶ These words followed a steady rhetoric on the campaign trail of Maduro accusing the U.S. of conspiring against him and causing disruptions in Venezuela to unseat his rule, including working with opposition labor unions and causing electric power blackouts. ¶ Experts argue that given Maduro’s anti-American sentiments leading up to the election, as well as the controversy surrounding his victory and the polarization in Venezuela, there is little hope for a change in relations between the countries.¶ “It’s hard to see [Maduro] backing off his rhetoric in the aftermath of the election,” Eric Hershberg, the director of American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, told Fox News Latino. “Americans will insist on a level of respect that he is not going to give them.”¶ The death of Hugo Chávez put Maduro and the rest of the Venezuelan left in a difficult position. Chávez’s charisma held the movement together and his social spending allowed him to skirt the dicey issues of rising inflation, high crime and a fledgling economy.¶ While the current election results are still being debated, how Maduro faces the country’s mounting problems – both politically and socially – are what will decide is he and Chavismo survive his six-year term.¶ In 2009, Chávez led a successful push for a constitutional referendum that abolished term limits for the offices of President, state governors, mayors and congress members. The previous provision established a three-term limit for deputies and a two-term limit for the other offices, but with the 2009 referendum, Chávez – or any other leader – could ostensibly stay in power indefinitely. ¶ Maduro does not have the charm or power to hold the Chavista movement together nor make Venezuelans forget about the problems plaguing their nation. If Sunday’s vote is any indication, Venezuela is torn between Chávez’s legacy and a dismal future, with the official results giving Maduro 51 percent of the vote to challenger Henrique Capriles’ 49 percent – although opposition sources showed Capriles winning by more than 300,000 votes.¶ “Chávez could overcome the detractors because he was viewed as a national hero, Maduro doesn’t have that,” said Larry Birns with the Council for Hemispheric Affairs.¶ To maintain his credibility within the Chavista movement and fend off opponents from within his own party, Maduro needs to maintain his opposition to the U.S. and continue to paint Americans as imperialist intruders, experts said.¶ “He’s got to worry about the opponents that will pose a threat to his rule,” Birns said. “These are difficult times for Maduro and no one knows how the scenario will play out.”¶ For its part, the United States is not in better shape when it comes to its relations with Venezuela – or other Latin American nations. Diplomatic disputes with Venezuela and touchy relations with neighboring Bolivia and Ecuador have led to a schism between the United States and the countries in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.¶ Hershberg said that the Obama administration's refusal to accept the official results of Venezuela's election will not only anger Maduro, but could be viewed as hypocritical in the light of the scandal surrounding the uncounted votes during the 2000 U.S. presidential election that saw George W. Bush defeat Al Gore.¶ The U.S. has a long history of political involvement – both overtly and covertly – in elections throughout Latin America.¶ “For the Americans to say this only 12 years after Bush. V. Gore is remarkable,” he said. "Latin America looked at the U.S. and said that the U.S. will never again be able to tell us how to conduct our elections.”¶ “This makes them look absurd,” he added, about the State Department’s refusal to recognize the election of Maduro.¶ The State Department said it was "difficult to understand" why the commission certified ruling party candidate Nicolás Maduro as the winner in the absence of a recount, which challenger Henrique Capriles is demanding.¶ It also condemned the post-election violence that has killed at least seven people and injured 61.¶ In a televised broadcast Tuesday, Justice Minister Nestor Reverol accused Capriles of numerous crimes, including insurrection and civil disobedience.¶ Maduro blamed Capriles personally.¶ "You are responsible for the dead we are mourning," he said, calling Capriles "the defeated candidate."¶ Government officials have been alleging since Monday that Capriles is plotting a coup, and President-elect Maduro announced that he was prohibiting an opposition march scheduled for Wednesday in the capital.¶ On Tuesday Capriles' supporters protested in cities including Merida and Maracay.
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O’Reilly ‘13(Andrew, bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Pittsburgh and a joint master’s degree in journalism and Latin American studies from New York University, former editor-in-chief and Founder of Fox News Latina, 4/17/13, “US-Venezuelan Relations Remain Tense Under Maduro, Experts Claim, Fox News Latina, http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2013/04/17/us-venezuelan-relations-remain-tense-under-maduro-experts-claim/)//JL
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relations between the United States and Maduro will continue to be as tense as under the late Hugo Chávez, experts said Maduro said Washington will always try to undermine his rule words followed a steady rhetoric on the campaign trail of Maduro accusing the U.S. of causing disruptions in Venezuela to unseat his rule, given Maduro’s anti-American sentiments leading up to the election, as well as the controversy surrounding his victory there is little hope for a change in relations between the countries.¶ “It’s hard to see [Maduro] backing off his rhetoric in the aftermath of the election Americans insist on a level of respect that he is not going to give them The death of Hugo Chávez put Maduro in a difficult position how Maduro faces problems are what will decide is he and Chavismo survive his six-year term. To maintain his credibility within the Chavista movement and fend off opponents from within his own party, Maduro needs to maintain his opposition to the U.S. and continue to paint Americans as imperialist intruders, experts said , the United States is not in better shape when it comes to its relations with Venezuela Government officials have been alleging since Monday that Capriles is plotting a coup, and President-elect Maduro announced that he was prohibiting an opposition march scheduled for Wednesday in the capital.¶ On Tuesday Capriles' supporters protested in cities including Merida and Maracay.
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Engagement with Washington will ruin Maduro – continuing Chavista solves credibility.
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“Maduro has so far shifted in his position toward the U.S. between a moderate approach and a more hard-line one,” Shifter told IPS.? The new president’s waffling may be a reflection of his tenuous grip on power. By many accounts, Maduro lacks the political prowess and rabble-rousing charm of Chavez, who enjoyed military backing as well as fervent support from the lower classes.? In addition to a strong anti-Chavista opposition that openly challenges the legitimacy of his narrowly won election, Maduro has had to deal with a split within Chavez’s own former political base.? Shifter pointed out that among the military, which was once a source of significant strength for Chavez, more support is given to Diosdado Cabello, currently head of Venezuela’s parliament and whose supporters believe he was the rightful heir to the presidency.? Maduro’s legitimacy stems largely from his perceived ideological fidelity, the reason for his selection by Chavez to lead in the first place. Shifter said this leads him to “emulate” his predecessor and makes rapprochement with the United States less probable.
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Metzker ‘13 (Jared Metzker, studies American Foreign Policy at the Johns Hopkins, "Analysts Say Oil Could Help Mend U.S.-Venezuela Relations" 6-17-2013, IPS News, http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/analysts-say-oil-could-help-mend-u-s-venezuela-relations/)//SL
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Maduro has shifted in his position toward the U.S. between a moderate approach and a more hard-line one The new president’s waffling may be a reflection of his tenuous grip on power. In addition to a strong anti-Chavista opposition that openly challenges the legitimacy of his narrowly won election, Maduro has had to deal with a split within Chavez’s own former political base. more support is given to Diosdado Cabello, currently head of Venezuela’s parliament and whose supporters believe he was the rightful heir to the presidency. Maduro’s legitimacy stems largely from his perceived ideological fidelit this leads him to “emulate” his predecessor and makes rapprochement with the United States less probable.
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Plan destroys Maduro's power in Venezuela -- he must emulate Chavez
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