1Framing policy in terms of economic competitiveness translates the role of the government into a manager of economic growth and makes capital accumulation the only political value that normalizes neoliberal ontology which guarantees inequality and crisis prioritize systemic critique over the hypothetical implementation of the plan Brown, Poli Sci Prof @ Cal Berkeley, 15 (Wendy, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution, pg. 24-27)Remaking the State. President Obama opened his second term in office with apparently renewed concern for those left out of the Amer- ican dream by virtue of class, race, sexuality, gender, disability, or immigration status. His "We the People" inauguration speech in Jan- uary 2013 sounded those concerns loudly; combined with his State of the Union address three weeks later, the president seemed to have rediscovered his Left base or perhaps even his own justice-minded spirit after a centrist, compromising, deal-making first term in office. Perhaps Occupy Wall Street could even claim a minor victory in shift- ing popular discourse on who and what America was for. Certainly, it is true that the two speeches featured Obama's "evo- lution" on gay marriage and renewed determination to extricate the United States from its military quagmires in the Middle East. They expressed concern, too, with those left behind in the neoliberal race to riches while "corporate profits.. .rocketed to all-time highs."12 In these ways, it seemed that the light of "hope and change" on which Obama had glided to power in 2008 had indeed been reignited. Close consideration of the State of the Union address, however, reveals a dif- ferent placing of the accent marks. While Obama called for protecting Medicare; progressive tax reform; increasing government investment in science and technology research, clean energy, home ownership, and education; immigration reform; fighting sex discrimination and domestic violence; and raising the minimum wage, each of these issues was framed in terms of its contribution to economic growth or American competitiveness.13 "A growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobsthat must be the North Star that guides our efforts" the president intoned. "Every day," he added, "we must ask ourselves three questions as a nation." 14 What are these supervenient guides to law and policy for- mation, to collective and individual conduct? "How do we attract more jobs to our shores? How do we equip our people with the skills needed to do those jobs? And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living? "15 Attracting investors and developing an adequately remunerated skilled workforcethese are the goals of the world's oldest democracy led by a justice-minded president in the twenty-first century. Success in these areas would in turn realize the ultimate goal of the nation and the government that stewards it, "broad-based growth" for the economy as a whole. More importantly, every progressive valuefrom decreasing domestic violence to slowing climate changeObama represented as not merely reconcilable with economic growth, but as driving it. Clean energy would keep us competitive"as long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we." 16 Fixing our aging infrastructure would "prove that there is no better place to do business than the United States of America."17 More accessible mort- gages enabling "responsible young families" to buy their first home will "help our economy grow."18 Investing in education would reduce the drags on growth caused by teen pregnancy and violent crime, put "kids on a path to a good job," allow them to "work their way into the middle class," and provide the skills that would make the econ- omy competitive. Schools should be rewarded for partnering with "colleges and employers" and for creating "classes that focus on sci- ence, technology, engineering and maththe skills today's employers are looking for."19 Immigration reform will "harness the talents and ingenuity of striving, hopeful immigrants" and attract "the highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy."20 Economic growth would also result "when our wives, mothers and daughters can live their lives free from discrimi- nation... and . fear of domestic violence," when "we reward an hon- est day's work with honest wages" with minimum wage reform, when we rebuild decimated factory towns, and when we strengthen families through "removing financial deterrents to marriage for low-income couples and doing more to encourage fatherhood."21 Obama's January 2013 State of the Union speech thus recovered a liberal agenda by packaging it as economic stimulus, promising that it would generate competitiveness, prosperity, and continued recovery from the recessions induced by the 2008 finance-capital meltdown. Some might argue that this packaging was aimed at co-opting the opposition, not simply neutralizing, but reversing the charges against tax-and-spend Democrats by formulating social justice, govern- ment investment, and environmental protection as fuel for economic growth. That aim is patently evident. But exclusive focus on it elides the way that economic growth has become both the end and legitima- tion of government, ironically, at the very historical moment that hon-est economists acknowledge that capital accumulation and economic growth have gone separate ways, in part because the rent extractions facilitated by financialization are not growth inducing.22 In a neo- liberal era when the market ostensibly takes care of itself, Obama's speech reveals government as both responsible for fostering economic health and as subsuming all other undertakings (except national secu- rity) to economic health. Striking in its own right, this formulation means that democratic state commitments to equality, liberty, inclu- sion, and constitutionalism are now subordinate to the project of eco- nomic growth, competitive positioning, and capital enhancement. These political commitments can no longer stand on their own legs and, the speech implies, would be jettisoned if found to abate, rather than abet, economic goals. What the Obama speech also makes clear is that the state's table of purposes and priorities has become indistinguishable from that of modern firms, especially as the latter increasingly adopts con- cerns with justice and sustainability. For firms and the state alike, competitive positioning and stock or credit rating are primary, other endsfrom sustainable production practices to worker justiceare pursued insofar as they contribute to this end. As "caring" becomes a market niche, green and fair-trade practices, along with (minis- cule) profit diversion to charity, have become the public face and mar- ket strategy of many firms today. Obama's State of the Union speech adjusts the semantic order of things only slightly, foregrounding jus- tice issues even as they are tethered to competitive positioning. The conduct of government and the conduct of firms are now fundamen- tally identical; both are in the business of justice and sustainability, but never as ends in themselves. Rather, "social responsibility," which must itself be entrepreneuriallzed, is part of what attracts consum- ers and investors.23 In this respect, Obama's speech at once depicts neoliberal statism and is a brilliant marketing ploy borrowed directly from businessincreasing his own credit and enhancing his value by attracting (re)investment from an ecologically or justice-minded sec- tor of the public. These are but two examples of the contemporary neoliberal trans- formations of subjects, states, and their relation that animate this book: What happens to rule by and for the people when neoliberal reason configures both soul and city as contemporary firms, rather than as polities? What happens to the constituent elements of democ- racyits culture, subjects, principles, and institutionswhen neolib- era) rationality saturates political life? Having opened with stories, I hasten to add that this is mainly a work of political theory whose aim is to elucidate the large arc and key mechanisms through which neoliberalism's novel construction of persons and states are evacuating democratic principles, eroding democratic institutions and eviscerating the democratic imaginary of European modernity. It is, in the classic sense of the word, a cri- tiquean effort to comprehend the constitutive elements and dynam- ics of our condition. It does not elaborate alternatives to the order it illuminates and only occasionally identifies possible strategies for resisting the developments it charts. However, the predicaments and powers it illuminates might contribute to the development of such alternatives and strategies, which are themselves vital to any future for democracy. The state-corporate surveillance apparatus sustains itself through a politics of apocalyptic fear the plans legalistic solution misunderstands this ideological problem which accelerates neoliberalism and guarantees cooption. Giroux, Prof of Cultural Studies @ McMaster University, 14 (Henry, TOTALITARIAN PARANOIA IN THE POST-ORWELLIAN SURVEILLANCE STATE, http://philosophersforchange.org/2014/02/18/totalitarian-paranoia-in-the-post-orwellian-surveillance-state/) The surveillance state with its immense data mining capabilities represents a historical rupture from traditional notions of modernity with its emphasis on enlightenment, reason, and the social contract. The older modernity held up the ideals of justice, equality, freedom, and democracy, however flawed. The investment in public goods was seen as central to a social contract that implied that all citizens should have access to those provisions, resources, institutions, and benefits that expanded their sense of agency and social responsibility. The new modernity and its expanding surveillance net subordinates human needs, public goods, and justice to the demands of commerce and the accumulation of capital, at all costs. The contemporary citizen is primarily a consumer and entrepreneur wedded to the belief that the most desirable features of human behavior are rooted in a basic tendency towards competitive, acquisitive and uniquely self-interested behavior which is the central fact of human social life.[23] Modernity is now driven by the imperatives of a savage neoliberal political and economic system that embrace what Charles Derber and June Sekera call a public goods deficit in which budgetary priorities are relentlessly pushed so as to hollow out the welfare state and drastically reduce social provisions as part of a larger neoliberal counter revolution to lower the taxes of the rich and mega-corporations while selling off public good to private interests.[24] Debates about the meaning and purpose of the public and social good have been co-opted by a politics of fear, relegating notions of the civic good, public sphere, and even the very word public to the status of a liability, if not a pathology.[25] Fear has lost its social connotations and no longer references fear of social deprivations such as poverty, homelessness, lack of health care, and other fundamental conditions of agency. Fear is now personalized, reduced to an atomized fear that revolves around crime, safety, apocalypse, and survival. In this instance, as the late Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith once warned, modernity now privileges a disgraceful combination of private opulence and public squalor.'[26] This is not surprising given the basic elements of neoliberal policy, which as Jeremy Gilbert indicates, include the privatization of public assets, contraction and centralization of democratic institutions, deregulation of labor markets, reductions in progressive taxation, restrictions on labor organization, labor market deregulation, active encouragement of competitive and entrepreneurial modes of relation across the public and commercial sectors.[27] Under the regime of neoliberal capitalism, the expansion of government and corporate surveillance measures become synonymous with new forms of governance and an intensification of material and symbolic violence.[28] Rather than wage a war on terrorists, the neoliberal security state wages a war on dissent in the interest of consolidating class power. How else to explain the merging of corporate and state surveillance systems updated with the most sophisticated shared technologies used in the last few years to engage in illicit counterintelligence operations, participate in industrial espionage[29] and disrupt and attack pro-democracy movements such as Occupy and a range of other nonviolent social movements protesting a myraid of state and corporate injustices.[30] This type of illegal spying in the interest of stealing industrial secrets and closing down dissent by peaceful protesters has less to do with national security than it has to do with mimicking the abuses and tactics used by the Stasi in East Germany during the Cold War. How else to explain why many law-abiding citizens and those with dissenting views within the law can be singled out for surveillance and placed on wide-ranging watch lists relating to terrorism?[31] Public outrage seems to disappear, with few exceptions, as the state and its corporate allies do little to protect privacy rights, civil liberties and a culture of critical exchange and dissent. Even worse, they shut down a culture of questioning and engage in forms of domestic terrorism. State violence in this case becomes the preferred antidote to the demanding work of reflection, analysis, dialogue and imagining the points of views of others. The war against dissent waged by secret counterintelligence agencies is a mode of domestic terrorism in which, as David Graeber has argued, violence is often the preferred weapon of the stupid.[32] Modernity in this instance has been updated, wired and militarized. No longer content to play out its historical role of a modernized panopticon, it has become militarized and a multilayered source of insecurity, entertainment and commerce. In addition, this new stage of modernity is driven not only by the need to watch but also the will to punish. Phone calls, emails, social networks and almost every other vestige of electronic communication are now being collected and stored by corporate and government organizations such as the NSA and numerous other intelligence agencies. Snowdens exposure of the massive reach of the surveillance state with its biosensors, scanners, face recognition technologies, miniature drones, high speed computers, massive data mining capabilities and other stealth technologies made visible the stark realities of disappearing privacy and diminishing liberties.[33] But the NSA and the other 16 intelligence agencies are not the only threat to privacy, freedom and democracy. Corporations now have their own intelligence agencies and data mining offices and use these agencies and new surveillance technologies largely to spy on those who question the abuses of corporate power. The emergence of fusion centers exemplifies how power is now a mix of corporate, local, federal and global intelligence agencies, all sharing information that can be used by various agencies to stifle dissent and punish pro-democracy activists. What is clear is that this combination of gathering and sharing information often results in a lethal mix of anti-democratic practices in which surveillance now extends not only to potential terrorists but to all law-abiding citizens. Within this sinister web of secrecy, suspicion, state-sanctioned violence and illegality, the culture of authoritarianism thrives and poses a dangerous threat to democratic freedoms and rights. It also poses a threat to those outside the United States who, in the name of national security, are subject to a grand international campaign with drones and special operations forces that is generating potential terrorists at every step.[34] Behind this veil of concentrated power and secrecy lies not only a threat to privacy rights but the very real threat of violence on both a domestic and global level. As Heidi Boghosian argues, the omniscient state in George Orwells 1984 is represented by a two-way television set installed in each home. In our own modern adaptation, it is symbolized by the location-tracking cell phones we willingly carry in our pockets and the microchip-embedded clothes we wear on our bodies.[35] While such devices can be used for useful applications, they become dangerous in a society in which corporations and government have increased power and access over every aspect of the lives of the American public. Put simply, the ubiquity of such devices threatens a robust democracy.[36] What is particularly dangerous, as Boghosian documents in great detail, is that: as government agencies shift from investigating criminal activity to preempting it, they have forged close relationships with corporations honing surveillance and intelligence-gathering techniques for use against Americans. By claiming that anyone who questions authority or engages in undesired political speech is a potential terrorist threat, this government-corporate partnership makes a mockery of civil liberties. As the assault by an alignment of consumer marketing and militarized policing grows, each single act of individual expression or resistance assumes greater importance.[37] The dynamic of neoliberal modernity, the homogenizing force of the market, a growing culture of repression and an emerging police state have produced more sophisticated methods for surveillance and the mass suppression of the most essential tools for dissent and democracy: the press, political activists, civil rights advocates and conscientious insiders who blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance and government abuse.[38] The neoliberal authoritarian culture of modernity also has created a social order in which surveillance becomes self-generated, aided by a public pedagogy produced and circulated through a machinery of consumption that encourages transforming dreams into data bits. Such bits then move from the sphere of entertainment to the deadly serious and integrated spheres of capital accumulation and policing as they are collected and sold to business and government agencies who track the populace for either commercial purposes or for fear of a possible threat to the social order and its established institutions of power. Absorbed in privatized orbits of consumption, commodification and display, Americans vicariously participate in the toxic pleasures of consumer culture, relentlessly entertained by the spectacle of violence in which, as David Graeber, suggests, the police become the almost obsessive objects of imaginative identification in popular culture watching movies or viewing TV shows that invite them to look at the world from a police point of view.[39] It is worth repeating that Orwells vision of surveillance and the totalitarian state looks tame next to the emergence of a corporate-private-state surveillance system that wants to tap into every conceivable mode of communication, collect endless amounts of metadata to be stored in vast intelligence storage sites around the country and use those data to repress any vestige of dissent.[40] Whistle-blowers are not only punished by the government; their lives are turned upside down in the process by private surveillance agencies and major corporations who increasingly work in tandem. These institutions share information with the government and do their own spying and damage control. For instance, Bank of America assembled 15 to 20 bank officials and retained the law firm of Hunton & Williams to devise various schemes to attack WikiLeaks and Glenn Greenwald, who they thought was about to release damaging information about the bank.[41] Some of the most dreadful consequences of neoliberal modernity and cultures of surveillance include the elimination of those public spheres capable of educating the public to hold power accountable, and the dissolution of all social bonds that entail a sense of responsibility toward others. In this instance, politics has not only become dysfunctional and corrupt in the face of massive inequalities in wealth and power, it also has been emptied of any substantive meaning. Government not only has fallen into the hands of the elite and right-wing extremists, it has embraced a mode of lawlessness evident in forms of foreign and domestic terrorism that undercuts the obligations of citizenship, justice and morality. As surveillance and fear become a constant condition of American society, there is a growing indifference, if not distaste, for politics among large segments of the population. This distaste is purposely manufactured by the ongoing operations of political repression against intellectuals, artists, nonviolent protesters and journalists on the left and right. Increasingly, as such populations engage in dissent and the free flow of ideas, whether online or offline, they are considered dangerous to the state and become subject to the mechanizations of a massive security apparatuses designed to monitor, control and punish dissenting populations. For instance, in England, the new head of MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, mimicking the US governments distrust of journalists, stated that the stories The Guardian published about Snowdens revelations were a gift to terrorists, reinforcing the notion that whistle-blowers and journalists might be considered terrorists.[42] Similar comments about Snowden have been made in the United States by members of Congress who have labeled Snowden a traitor, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat; John McCain, an Arizona Republican; Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican; and House Speaker John Boehner, as well as former Vice President Dick Cheney.[43] Greenwald, one of the first journalists to divulge Snowdens revelations about the NSAs secret unaccountable system of pervasive surveillance[44] has been accused by Rep. Peter King of New York along with others of being a terrorist.[45] More ominously, Snowden told German TV about reports that U.S. government officials want to assassinate him for leaking secret documents about the NSAs collection of telephone records and emails.[46] As the line collapses between authoritarian power and democratic governance, state and corporate repression intensifies and increasingly engulfs the nation in a toxic climate of fear and self-censorship in which free speech itself, if not critical thought, is viewed as too dangerous in which to engage. The NSA, alone, has become what Scott Shane has called an electronic omnivore of staggering capabilities, eavesdropping and hacking its way around the world to strip governments and other targets of their secrets, all the while enforcing the utmost secrecy about its own operations. It spies routinely on friends as well as foes.[47] Intelligence benefits are far outweighed by the illegal use of the Internet, telecommunication companies and stealth malware for data collection and government interventions that erode civil liberties and target individuals and groups that pose no threat whatsoever to national security. New technologies that range from webcams and spycams to biometrics and Internet drilling reinforce not only the fear of being watched, monitored and investigated but also a propensity toward confessing ones intimate thoughts and sharing the most personal of information. What is profoundly disturbing and worth repeating in this case is the new intimacy between digital technologies and cultures of surveillance in which there exists a profound an unseen intimate connection into the most personal and private areas as subjects publish and document their interests, identities, hopes and fears online in massive quantities.[48] Surveillance propped up as the new face of intimacy becomes the order of the day, eradicating free expression and, to some degree, even thinking itself. In the age of the self-absorbed self and its mirror image, the selfie, intimacy becomes its opposite and the exit from privacy becomes symptomatic of a society that gave up on the social and historical memory. One of the most serious conditions that enable the expansion of the corporate-state surveillance apparatus is the erasure of public memory. The renowned anthropologist David Price rightly argues that historical memory is one of the primary weapons to be used against the abuse of power and that is why those who have power create a desert of organized forgetting.'[49] For Price, it is crucial to reclaim Americas battered public memories as a political and pedagogical task as part of the broader struggle to regain lost privacy and civil liberties.[50] Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America has succumbed to a form of historical amnesia fed by a culture of fear, militarization and precarity. Relegated to the dustbin of organized forgetting were the long-standing abuses carried out by Americas intelligence agencies and the publics long-standing distrust of the FBI, government wiretaps and police actions that threatened privacy rights, civil liberties and those freedoms fundamental to a democracy. In the present historical moment, it is almost impossible to imagine that wiretapping was once denounced by the FBI or that legislation was passed in the early part of the 20th century that criminalized and outlawed the federal use of wiretaps.[51] Nor has much been written about the Church and Pike committees, which in the 1970s exposed a wave of illegal surveillance and disruption campaigns carried out by the FBI and local police forces, most of which were aimed at anti-war demonstrators, the leaders of the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers. And while laws implementing judicial oversight for federal wiretaps were put in place, they were systematically dismantled under the Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. As Price points out, while there was a steady increase in federal wiretaps throughout the 1980s and 1990s, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the American public hastily abandoned a century of fairly consistent opposition to govern wiretaps.[52] As the historical memory of such abuses disappeared, repressive legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and growing support for a panoptical surveillance and homeland security state increased to the point of dissolving the line between private and public, on the one hand, and tilting the balance between security and civil liberties largely in favor of a culture of fear and its underside: a managed emphasis on a one-dimensional notion of safety and security. The violence of organized forgetting has another component besides the prevalence of a culture of fear and hyper-nationalism that emerged after 9/11. Since the 1980s, the culture of neoliberalism with its emphasis on the self, privatization and consumerism largely has functioned to disparage any notion of the public good, social responsibility and collective action, if not politics itself. Historical memories of collective struggles against government and corporate abuses have been deposited down the memory hole, leaving largely unquestioned the growing inequalities in wealth and income, along with the increased militarization and financialization of American society. Even the history of authoritarian movements appears to have been forgotten as right-wing extremists in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Maine, Florida and other states attempt to suppress long-established voting rights, use big money to sway elections, destroy public and higher education as a public good, and substitute emotion and hatred for reasoned arguments.[53] Manufactured ignorance spreads through the dominant cultural apparatuses like a wildfire promoting the financialization of everything as a virtue and ethics as a liability. The flight from historical memory has been buttressed by a retreat into a politics of self-help and a culture of self-blame in which all problems are viewed as evidence of personal shortcomings that, if left uncorrected, hold individuals back from attaining stability and security.[54] Within the crippling affective and ideological spaces of neoliberalism, memory recedes, social responsibility erodes, and individual outrage and collective resistance are muted.[55] Under such circumstances, public issues collapse into private troubles and the language of politics is emptied so that it becomes impossible to connect the ravages that bear down on individuals to broader systemic, structural and social considerations.Neoliberalism guarantees extinction and social crisis the judge has an intellectual obligation to evaluate the social relations that underpin the plan prior to evaluating the outcome of the policy vote negative because the system the aff partakes in is fundamentally unethical Molisa, Philosophy PhD, 14 (Pala Basil Mera, Accounting For Apocalypse Re-Thinking Social Accounting Theory And Practice For Our Time Of Social Crises And Ecological Collapse, http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10063/3686/thesis.pdf?sequence=2)Ecologically too, the situation is dire. Of the many measures of ecological well-being topsoil loss, groundwater depletion, chemical contamination, increased toxicity levels in human beings, the number and size of dead zones in the Earths oceans, and the accelerating rate of species extinction and loss of biodiversity the increasing evidence suggests that the developmental trajectory of the dominant economic culture necessarily causes the mass extermination of non-human communities, the systemic destruction and disruption of natural habitats, and could ultimately cause catastrophic destruction of the biosphere. The latest Global Environmental Outlook Report published by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the GEO-5 report, makes for sobering reading. As in earlier reports, the global trends portrayed are of continuing human population growth, expanding economic growth,6 and as a consequence severe forms of ecological degradation (UNEP, 2012; see also, UNEP, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2007). The ecological reality described is of ecological drawdown (deforestation, over-fishing, water extraction, etc.) (UNEP, 2012, pp. 72, 68, 84, 102-106, ); increasing toxicity of the environment through chemical and waste pollution, with severe harm caused to human and non-human communities alike (pp. 173- 179); systematic habitat destruction (pp. 8, 68-84) and climate change (33-60), which have decimated the number of species on Earth, threatening many with outright extinction (pp. 139-158). The most serious ecological threat on a global scale is climate disruption, caused by the emission of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, other industrial activities, and land destruction (UNEP, 2012, p. 32). The GEO-5 report states that [d]espite attempts to develop low-carbon economies in a number of countries, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to increase to levels likely to push global temperatures beyond the internationally agreed limit of 2 C above the pre-industrial average temperature (UNEP, 2012, p. 32). Concentrations of atmospheric methane have more than doubled from preindustrial levels, reaching approximately 1826 ppb in 2012; the scientific consensus is that this increase is very likely due predominantly to agriculture and fossil fuel use (IPCC, 2007). Scientists warn that the Earths ecosystems are nearing catastrophic tipping points that will be marked by mass extinctions and unpredictable changes on a scale unseen since the glaciers retreated twelve thousand years ago (Pappas, 2012). Twenty-two eminent scientists warned recently in the journal, Nature, that humans are likely to have triggered a planetary-scale critical transition with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience, which means that the biological resources we take for granted at present may be subject to rapid and unpredictable transformations within a few human generations (Barnofsky et al., 2012). This means that human beings are in serious trouble, not only in the future, but right now. The pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide concentration was about 280 parts per million (ppm). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates concentrations could reach between 541 and 970 ppm by the year 2100. However, many climate scientists consider that levels should be kept below 350 ppm in order to avoid irreversible catastrophic effects (Hansen et al., 2008). Catastrophic warming of the earth would mean a planet that is too hot for life that is, any life, and all life (Mrasek, 2008). We need to analyze the above information and ask the simple questions: what does it signify and where will it lead? In terms of the social crises of inequalities, the pattern of human development suggests clearly that although capitalism is capable of raising the economic productivity of many countries as well as international trade, it also produces social injustices on a global scale. The trajectory of capitalist economic development that people appear locked into is of perpetual growth that also produces significant human and social suffering. In terms of the ecological situation, the mounting evidence from reports, such as those published by UNEP, suggest that a full-scale ecocide will eventuate and that a global holocaust is in progress which is socially pathological and biocidal in its scope (UNEP, 2012; see also, UNEP, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2007). Assuming the trends do not change, the endpoint of this trajectory of perpetual economic growth, ecological degradation, systemic pollution, mass species extinction and runaway climate change, which human beings appear locked into, will be climate apocalypse and complete biotic collapse. Given the serious and life-threatening implications of these social and ecological crises outlined above, it would be reasonable to expect they should be central to academic concerns, particularly given the responsibilities of academics as intellectuals. As the people whom society subsidizes to carry out intellectual work,7 the primary task of academics is to carry out research that might enable people to deepen their understanding of how the world operates, ideally towards the goal of shaping a world that is more consistent with moral and political principles, and the collective self-interest (Jensen, 2013, p. 43). Given that most peoples stated philosophical and theological systems are rooted in concepts of justice, equality and the inherent dignity of all people (Jensen, 2007, p. 30), intellectuals have a particular responsibility to call attention to those social patterns of inequality which appear to be violations of such principles, and to call attention to the destructive ecological patterns that threaten individual and collective well-being. As a critic and conscience of society, 8 one task of intellectuals is to identify issues that people should all pay attention to, even when indeed, especially when people would rather ignore the issues (Jensen, 2013, p. 5). In view of this, intellectuals today should be focusing attention on the hard-to-face realities of an unjust and unsustainable world. Moreover, intellectuals in a democratic society, as its critic and conscience, should serve as sources of independent and critical information, analyses and varied opinions, in an endeavour to provide a meaningful role in the formation of public policy (Jensen, 2013c). In order to fulfil this obligation as critic and conscience, intellectuals need to be willing to critique not only particular people, organizations, and policies, but also the systems from which they emerge. In other words, intellectuals have to be willing to engage in radical critique. Generally, the term radical tends to suggest images of extremes, danger, violence, and people eager to tear things down (Jensen, 2007, p. 29). Radical, however, has a more classical meaning. It comes from the Latin radix, meaning root. Radical critique in this light means critique or analysis that gets to the root of the problem. Given that the patterns of social inequality and ecocidal destruction outlined above are not the product of a vacuum, but instead are the product of social systems, radical critique simply means forms of social analysis, which are not only concerned about these social and ecological injustices but also trace them to the social systems from which they emerged, which would subject these very systems to searching critiques. Such searching critique is challenging because, generally, the dominant groups which tend to subsidize intellectuals (universities, think tanks, government, corporations) are the key agents of the social systems that produce inequalities and destroy ecosystems (Jensen, 2013, p. 12). The more intellectuals choose not only to identify patterns but also highlight the pathological systems from which they emerge, the greater the tension with whoever pay[s] the bills (ibid.). However, this may arguably be unavoidable today, given that the realities of social inequality and ecological catastrophe show clearly that our social systems are already in crisis, are pathological, and in need of radical change.9 To adopt a radical position, in this light, is not to suggest that we simply need to abolish capitalism, or to imply that if we did so all our problems would be solved. For one thing, such an abstract argument has little operational purchase in terms of specifying how to go about struggling for change. For another thing, as this thesis will discuss, capitalism is not the only social system that we ought to be interrogating as an important systemic driver of social and ecological crises. Moreover, to adopt a radical position does not mean that we have any viable answers or solutions in terms of the alternative institutions, organizations and social systems that we could replace the existing ones with. There is currently no alternative to capitalism that appears to be viable, particularly given the historical loss of credibility that Marxism and socialism has suffered. As history has shown, some of the self-proclaimed socialist and communist regimes have had their own fair share of human rights abuses and environmental disasters, and the global left has thus far not been able to articulate alternatives that have managed to capture the allegiances of the mainstream population. Furthermore, given the depth, complexity, and scale of contemporary social and ecological crises, I am not sure if there are any viable alternatives or, for that matter, any guarantees that we can actually prevent and change the disastrous course of contemporary society. I certainly do not have any solutions. What I would argue, however, is that if we are to have any chance of not only ameliorating but also substantively addressing these social and ecological problems, before we can talk about alternatives or potential solutions, we first need to develop a clear understanding of the problems. And, as argued above, this involves, amongst other things, exploring why and how the existing social systems under which we live are producing the patterns of social inequality and ecological unsustainability that make up our realities today.10 To adopt a radical stance, in this light, is simply to insist that we have an obligation to honestly confront our social and ecological predicament and to ask difficult questions about the role that existing social systems might be playing in producing and exacerbating them. Reject the 1AC their narrow legalistic focus can only conceal and reproduce imperialism a bottom up approach is empirically more successful, but it can only succeed when the politics of fear are discarded, which means the K must come before the plan. Kumar, Professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies @ Rutgers University, 15(Deepa, and Arun Kundnani, who teaches at New York University, Race, surveillance, and empire, International Socialist Review Issue 96, http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire) What brings together these different systems of racial oppressionmass incarceration, mass surveillance, and mass deportationis a security logic that holds the imperial state as necessary to keeping American families (coded white) safe from threats abroad and at home. The ideological work of the last few decades has cultivated not only racial security fears but also an assumption that the security state is necessary to keep us safe. In this sense, security has become the new psychological wage to aid the reallocation of the welfare states social wage toward homeland security and to win support for empire in the age of neoliberalism. Through the notion of security, social and economic anxieties generated by the unraveling of the Keynesian social compact have been channeled toward the Black or Brown street criminal, welfare recipient, or terrorist. In addition, as Susan Faludi has argued, since 9/11, this homeland in need of security has been symbolized, above all, by the white domestic hearth of the prefeminist fifties, once again threatened by mythical frontier enemies, hidden subversives, and racial aggressors. That this idea of the homeland coincides culturally with the denigration of capable women, the magnification of manly men, the heightened call for domesticity, the search for and sanctification of helpless girls points to the ways it is gendered as well as racialized.67 The post-Snowden debate The mechanisms of surveillance outlined in this essay were responses to political struggles of various kindsfrom anticolonial insurgencies to slave rebellions, labor militancy to anti-imperialist agitation. Surveillance practices themselves have also often been the target of organized opposition. In the 1920s and 1970s, the surveillance state was pressured to contract in the face of public disapproval. The antiwar activists who broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971 and stole classified documents managed to expose COINTELPRO, for instance, leading to its shut down. (But those responsible for this FBI program were never brought to justice for their activities and similar techniques continued to be used later against, for example in the 1980s, the American Indian Movement, and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.68) Public concern about state surveillance in the 1970s led to the Church committee report on government spying and the Handschu guidelines that regulated the New York Police Departments spying on political activities. Those concerns began to be swept aside in the 1980s with the War on Drugs and, especially, later with the War on Terror. While significant sections of the public may have consented to the security state, those who have been among its greatest victimsthe radical Left, antiwar activists, racial justice and Black liberation campaigners, and opponents of US foreign policy in Latin America and the Middle Eastunderstand its workings. Today, we are once again in a period of revelation, concern, and debate on national security surveillance. Yet if real change is to be brought about, the racial history of surveillance will need to be fully confrontedor opposition to surveillance will once again be easily defeated by racial security narratives. The significance of the Snowden leaks is that they have laid out the depth of the NSAs mass surveillance with the kind of proof that only an insider can have. The result has been a generalized level of alarm as people have become aware of how intrusive surveillance is in our society, but that alarm remains constrained within a public debate that is highly abstract, legalistic, and centered on the privacy rights of the white middle class.

On the one hand, most civil liberties advocates are focused on the technical details of potential legal reforms and new oversight mechanisms to safeguard privacy. Such initiatives are likely to bring little change because they fail to confront the racist and imperialist core of the surveillance system. On the other hand, most technologists believe the problem of government surveillance can be fixed simply by using better encryption tools. While encryption tools are useful in increasing the resources that a government agency would need to monitor an individual, they do nothing to unravel the larger surveillance apparatus. Meanwhile, executives of US tech corporations express concerns about loss of sales to foreign customers concerned about the privacy of data. In Washington and Silicon Valley, what should be a debate about basic political freedoms is simply a question of corporate profits.69 Another and perhaps deeper problem is the use of images of state surveillance that do not adequately fit the current situationsuch as George Orwells discussion of totalitarian surveillance. Edward Snowden himself remarked that Orwell warned us of the dangers of the type of government surveillance we face today.70 Reference to Orwells 1984 has been widespread in the current debate; indeed, sales of the book were said to have soared following Snowdens revelations.71 The argument that digital surveillance is a new form of Big Brother is, on one level, supported by the evidence. For those in certain targeted groupsMuslims, left-wing campaigners, radical journalistsstate surveillance certainly looks Orwellian. But this level of scrutiny is not faced by the general public. The picture of surveillance today is therefore quite different from the classic images of surveillance that we find in Orwells 1984, which assumes an undifferentiated mass population subject to government control. What we have instead today in the United States is total surveillance, not on everyone, but on very specific groups of people, defined by their race, religion, or political ideology: people that NSA officials refer to as the bad guys. In March 2014, Rick Ledgett, deputy director of the NSA, told an audience: Contrary to some of the stuff thats been printed, we dont sit there and grind out metadata profiles of average people. If youre not connected to one of those valid intelligence targets, you are not of interest to us.72 In the national security world, connected to can be the basis for targeting a whole racial or political community so, even assuming the accuracy of this comment, it points to the ways that national security surveillance can draw entire communities into its web, while reassuring average people (code for the normative white middle class) that they are not to be troubled. In the eyes of the national security state, this average person must also express no political views critical of the status quo. Better oversight of the sprawling national security apparatus and greater use of encryption in digital communication should be welcomed. But by themselves these are likely to do little more than reassure technologists, while racialized populations and political dissenters continue to experience massive surveillance. This is why the most effective challenges to the national security state have come not from legal reformers or technologists but from grassroots campaigning by the racialized groups most affected. In New York, the campaign against the NYPDs surveillance of Muslims has drawn its strength from building alliances with other groups affected by racial profiling: Latinos and Blacks who suffer from hugely disproportionate rates of stop and frisk. In Californias Bay Area, a campaign against a Department of Homeland Security-funded Domain Awareness Center was successful because various constituencies were able to unite on the issue, including homeless people, the poor, Muslims, and Blacks. Similarly, a demographics unit planned by the Los Angeles Police Department, which would have profiled communities on the basis of race and religion, was shut down after a campaign that united various groups defined by race and class. The lesson here is that, while the national security state aims to create fear and to divide people, activists can organize and build alliances across race lines to overcome that fear. To the extent that the national security state has targeted Occupy, the antiwar movement, environmental rights activists, radical journalists and campaigners, and whistleblowers, these groups have gravitated towards opposition to the national security state. But understanding the centrality of race and empire to national security surveillance means finding a basis for unity across different groups who experience similar kinds of policing: Muslim, Latino/a, Asian, Black, and white dissidents and radicals. It is on such a basis that we can see the beginnings of an effective multiracial opposition to the surveillance state and empire.SSRA is unpopular theres a bipartisan coalition opposing passage2013 proves Wachtler 2015, Mark Wachtler, 4/11/2015, HR 1466 Surveillance State Repeal Act of 2015, http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/2015/q2/hr-1466-surveillance-state-repeal-act-2015/Considering the overwhelming outrage by the American people over the governments blanket domestic espionage programs, its surprising that the 2013 Surveillance State Repeal Act didnt garner more support. The Bill accumulated ten co-sponsors, was assigned to four Committees and six Sub-Committees. But not a single vote was ever taken to advance them out of Committee and to the full House. Supporters of the effort to stop the universal surveillance of the American people hope this years effort will be more successful. HR 1466 - Surveillance State Repeal Act of 2015 In 2013, Rep Mark Pocan (D-WI) was one of ten Democrat Congressmen who co-sponsored the Patriot Act repeal Bill. This time, hes the main sponsor and he has a Republican co-sponsor signed on with him. Introduced on March 19, 2015, the new Bill was proposed by five Congressmen and already has an additional Representative whos signed on since then. The sponsors include Rep Pocan, Rep Thomas Massie (R-KY), Rep Alan Grayson (D-FL), Rep James McGovern (D-MA), Rep Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Rep Michael Capuano (D-MA). As detailed by the House website, HR 1466 was immediately referred to a number of House Committees upon its introduction. The summary explains that the Surveillance State Repeal Act of 2015 was, Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committees on Intelligence (Permanent Select), Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, Energy and Commerce, Education and the Workforce, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker. What the Bill would repeal and require HR 1466s official description gives a brief overview of the Bills ramifications. The legislation, Repeals the USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (thereby restoring or reviving provisions amended or repealed by such Acts as if such Acts had not been enacted), except with respect to reports to Congress regarding court orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) and the acquisition of intelligence information concerning an entity not substantially composed of US persons that is engaged in the international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As currently written, the Bill would also prohibit the government from collecting information on an American citizen, without a warrant based on probable cause. If passed, it would also force the Director of the Office of National Intelligence, and its 16 spy agencies to, destroy any information collected under the repealed Acts, or acquired under Executive Order 12333 without a warrant. The law would also protect electronics manufacturers from being forced by the government to include encryption-free back doors to their devices and services allowing spy agencies to monitor their customers. Finally, the Bill attempts to protect future whistleblowers that come forward with evidence that the government isnt abiding by the law. Little chance of passage Illustrating that once you go from Republic to Empire, its nearly impossible to go back, experts are already warning that HR 1466 has almost no chance of passing. Much like previous attempts to reign in the governments massive blanket domestic espionage programs, this latest effort will most likely pit regular Americans from all walks of the political spectrum supporting the Bill against a bipartisan coalition of the most powerful establishment leaders from both Parties opposing it. That uphill fight isnt deterring the Bills main sponsor however. This isnt just tinkering around the edges, Rep Mark Pocan was reported by The Hill explaining during a Capitol Hill briefing after he introduced the legislation, This is a meaningful overhaul of the system, getting rid of essentially all parameters of the Patriot Act. Republican co-sponsor Rep Thomas Massie also commented on the Bill with targeted remarks about the whistleblower portion of the newly proposed HR 1466. Really, what we need are new whistleblower protections so that the next Edward Snowden doesnt have to go to Russia or Hong Kong or whatever the case may be just for disclosing this, he said, We need to repeal all of this junk and just start over. Illustrating the uphill battle the co-sponsors and their supporters have in front of them, The Hill writes, The bill is likely to be a nonstarter for leaders in Congress, who have been worried that even much milder reforms to the nations spying laws would tragically [hurt] handicap the nations ability to fight terrorists. A similar bill was introduced in 2013 but failed to gain any movement in the House.2Text: The United States federal government should propose to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board for review. The board should solicit input from all relevant stakeholders. The board should recommend that the United States federal government .

The board works, doesnt link to politics, and builds momentum for effective curtailment of NSA activities. Setty, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Development & Intellectual Life, Western New England University School of Law, 2015 Sudha, SYMPOSIUM: Surveillance, Secrecy, and the Search for Meaningful Accountability, 51 Stan. J Int'l L. 69One promising move with regard to oversight and transparency has been the establishment and staffing of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). 186 This board, tasked with assessing many aspects of the government's national security apparatus both for efficacy and for potentially unnecessary incursions into civil liberties, has a broad mandate and, compared with many national security decision makers, significant independence from the executive branch. 187 Retrospectively, the PCLOB has, among other things, issued the highly critical report of the NSA Metadata Program in January 2014 that led to further public pressure on the Obama administration to curtail this program; it is promising that the PCLOB's prospective agenda includes further analysis of various surveillance programs. 188 However, the PCLOB's potential influence in protecting civil rights may be limited by its position: The PCLOB is an advisory body that analyzes existing and proposed programs and possibly recommends changes, but it cannot mandate that those changes be implemented. The ability to have a high level of access to information surrounding counterterrorism surveillance programs and to recommend changes in such programs is important and should be lauded, but over-reliance on the PCLOB's non-binding advice to the intelligence community to somehow solve the accountability and transparency gap with regard to these programs would be a mistake. For example, on prospective matters, it is likely that intelligence agencies would consult the PCLOB only if the agency itself considers the issue being faced new or novel, as the NSA metadata program was labeled prior to its inception. In such cases, decision makers within an agency generally ask whether the contemplated program is useful or necessary, technologically feasible, and legal. If all three questions are answered affirmatively, the program can be implemented. Now that the PCLOB is fully operational, it seems likely that if a contemplated program is considered new or novel, an intelligence agency would consult the PCLOB at some stage of this process for its guidance on implementing the program. This nonpartisan external input may improve self-policing within the [*102] intelligence community and help intelligence agencies avoid implementing controversial programs or, even if implemented, set better parameters around new programs. 189 If the PCLOB is able to exert some degree of soft power in influencing national security decision-making, then the judiciary represents hard power that could be used to force the protection of civil liberties where it might not otherwise occur. The FISC should be reformed to include a public advocate lobbying on behalf of privacy concerns, making the process genuinely adversarial and strengthening the FISC against charges that it merely rubber stamps applications from the intelligence community. 190 Article III courts need to follow the lead of Judge Leon in Klayman in conceptualizing privacy as broad and defensible, even in a world where electronics-based communication is dominant and relatively easy for the government to collect. If the judicial defense of privacy were combined with the possibility of liability for violations of that privacy, it is likely that this would incentivize increased self-policing among the members of the intelligence community. The creation of an active PCLOB and a more adversarial process before the FISC will not provide a perfect solution to the dilemmas posed by the government's legitimate need for secrecy and the protection of the public against potential abuse. Yet because these changes are institutional and structural, they are well-placed to improve the dynamic between the intelligence community, oversight mechanisms, and the public.3US counterterrorism is effective now, but threats are increasingPaul Richter 6/20, State Department and foreign policy correspondent for the LA Times, "Terrorist attacks soared in 2014," 6/20/15, www.telegram.com/article/20150620/NEWS/150629898WASHINGTON Terrorist violence exploded around the world last year, driven by a surge in attacks by the Islamic State extremist group in the Middle East and Boko Haram in West Africa, the State Department said in a report Friday. The number of terrorist attacks jumped 35 percent, to 13,500, while the number of fatalities soared 81 percent, to 33,000, the report says. A major factor was an increase in especially deadly attacks, including 20 assaults that killed 100 or more people. The surge in lethality comes as governments have collapsed or come under attack in parts of the Middle East and Africa, including in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Nigeria. The number of people kidnapped or taken hostage tripled, to more than 9,400, largely at the hands of Islamic State and Al Nusra Front in Syria and Boko Haram in Nigeria. Tina Kaidanow, the State Departments counterterrorism coordinator, said much of the terrorist violence was confined to a few troubled nations. But she said the threat of lone wolf attacks is growing in the West, in part because Western governments are making it harder for recruits to travel to join extremist groups abroad. Still, an estimated 16,000 foreign fighters joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in 2014. The extremist groups effective outreach on social media and the Internet is also driving zealots to plot and launch attacks, Kaidanow said. She cited lethal assaults last year by gunmen in Ottawa and Sydney. The statistics came in an annex to the State Departments annual Country Reports on Terrorism, which was released Friday. At a news briefing, Kaidanow argued that the negative trends, while troubling, arent a good measure of how well the Obama administrations counter-terrorism programs have performed. Kaidanow said the administration has helped other nations improve border security, strengthen counterterrorism laws and increase information sharing to sharpen their defenses against terrorist violence. We have been effective in dealing with the capabilities of our partners globally, she said. This is not a battle the United States can undertake alone. She said the threat posed by the core al-Qaida network continued to diminish in 2014 after the deaths and arrests of leaders in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.Surveillance is vital to effective counter-terrorism any lapse creates vulnerabilitiesAFP 6/1, Agence France Presse, "CIA chief: Ending NSA spying would boost terror threat," 6/1/15, www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/world/05/31/15/cia-chief-ending-nsa-spying-would-boost-terror-threatWASHINGTON, United States - CIA chief John Brennan warned Sunday that allowing vital surveillance programs to expire could increase terror threats, as the US Senate convened for a crunch debate on whether to renew the controversial provisions. With key counterterrorism programs set to expire at midnight Sunday, the top intelligence official made a final pitch to senators, arguing that the bulk data collection of telephone records of millions of Americans unconnected to terrorism has not abused civil liberties and only serves to safeguard citizens. "This is something that we can't afford to do right now," Brennan said of allowing the expiration of counterterrorism provisions, which "sunset" at the end of May 31. "Because if you look at the horrific terrorist attacks and violence being perpetrated around the globe, we need to keep our country safe, and our oceans are not keeping us safe the way they did century ago," he said CBS' "Face the Nation" talk show. Brennan added that groups like Islamic State have followed the developments "very carefully" and are "looking for the seams to operate." The House has already passed a reform bill, the USA Freedom Act, that would end the telephone data dragnet by the National Security Agency and require a court order for the NSA to access specific records from the vast data base retained by telecommunications companies. If no action is taken by the Senate Sunday, authorities will be forced to shut down the bulk collection program and two other provisions, which allow roving wiretaps of terror suspects who change their mobile phone numbers and the tracking of lone-wolf suspects. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican 2016 presidential candidate adamantly opposed to reauthorizing the surveillance, is threatening to delay votes on the reform bill or an extension of the original USA Patriot Act. That would force the counterterrorism provisions to lapse until at least Wednesday. Former NSA chief Michael Hayden, who is also a former CIA director, equated such a temporary lapse as "giving up threads" in a broader protective fabric. "It may not make a difference for a while. Then again, it might," he told CNN's State of the Union. "Over the longer term, I'm willing to wager, it will indeed make a difference."Nuclear terror is feasible and likely high motivationMatthew Bunn 15, Professor of Practice at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Nickolas Roth, Research Associate at the Project on Managing the Atom in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, Reducing the risks of nuclear theft and terrorism, from Routledge Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation and Policy ed. Joseph F. Pilat and Nathan E. Busch, 5/15/15, pp. 419-420But we now live in an age that includes a few groups intent on inflicting large-scale destruction to achieve more global objectives. In the 1990s, the japanese terror cult Anni Shinrikyo first sought to buy nuclear weapons in Russia, then to make them themselves, before turning to biological weapons and the nerve gas they ultimatelv used in the Tokyo subways. Starting also in the 19905, al Qaeda repeatedly sought nuclear materials and the expertise needed to make them into a nuclear bomb. Ultimately, al Qaeda put together a focused program reporting directly to Ayman al-Zawahiri (now head of the group), which progressed as far as carrying out crude but sensible conventional explosive tests for the nuclear program in the desert of Afghanistan. The killing of Osama bin Laden and the many other blows against al Qaeda have surely reduced the risk that al Qaeda could put together and carry through a nuclear bomb project. But by how much? The core organization of al Qaeda has proved resilient in the past.There is every reason to believe Al-Zawahiri remains eager to inflict destruction on a nuclear scale. Indeed, despite the large number of al Qaeda leaders who have been killed or captured, nearly all of the key players in al Qaedas nuclear program remain alive and at large - including Abdel Aziz al-Masri, an Egyptian explosives expert who was al Qaedas nuclear CEO." No one knows what capabilities a secret cell of al Qaeda may have managed to retain or build. And regional affiliates and other groups in the broader violent Islamic extremist movement particularly some of the deadly Pakistani terrorist groups may someday develop the capability and intent to follow a similar path. North Caucasus terrorist groups sought radiological weapons and threatened to sabotage nuclear reactors.There is signicant, though less conclusive, evidence that they sought nuclear weapons as well particularly confirmation from senior Russian officials that two teams were caught carrying out reconnaissance at Russian nuclear weapon storage sites, whose very locations are a state secret. More fundamentally, with at least two, and probably three, groups having gone down this path in the past twenty-five years, there is no reason to expect they will be the last. The danger of nuclear terrorism will remain as long as nuclear weapons, the materials needed to make them, and terrorist groups bent on large-scale destruction co-exist.Terrorism causes extinction---hard-line responses are keyNathan Myhrvold '13, Phd in theoretical and mathematical physics from Princeton, and founded Intellectual Ventures after retiring as chief strategist and chief technology officer of Microsoft Corporation , July 2013, "Stratgic Terrorism: A Call to Action," The Lawfare Research Paper Series No.2, http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Strategic-Terrorism-Myhrvold-7-3-2013.pdfSeveral powerful trends have aligned to profoundly change the way that the world works. Technology now allows stateless groups to organize, recruit, and fund themselves in an unprecedented fashion. That, coupled with the extreme difficulty of finding and punishing a stateless group, means that stateless groups are positioned to be lead players on the world stage. They may act on their own, or they may act as proxies for nation-states that wish to duck responsibility. Either way, stateless groups are forces to be reckoned with. At the same time, a different set of technology trends means that small numbers of people can obtain incredibly lethal power. Now, for the first time in human history, a small group can be as lethal as the largest superpower. Such a group could execute an attack that could kill millions of people. It is technically feasible for such a group to kill billions of people, to end modern civilizationperhaps even to drive the human race to extinction. Our defense establishment was shaped over decades to address what was, for a long time, the only strategic threat our nation faced: Soviet or Chinese missiles. More recently, it has started retooling to address tactical terror attacks like those launched on the morning of 9/11, but the reform process is incomplete and inconsistent. A real defense will require rebuilding our military and intelligence capabilities from the ground up. Yet, so far, strategic terrorism has received relatively little attention in defense agencies, and the efforts that have been launched to combat this existential threat seem fragmented. History suggests what will happen. The only thing that shakes America out of complacency is a direct threat from a determined adversary that confronts us with our shortcomings by repeatedly attacking us or hectoring us for decades.4TPA will pass --- House passage provides momentum, but Obama still must convince the SenateVicki Needham 6/18, and Cristina Marcos, both politics reporters @ The Hill, House approves fast-track 218-208, sending bill to Senate, http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/245417-house-approves-fast-track-218-208-sending-bill-to-senateThe House on Thursday took the first step toward resuscitating the White Houses trade agenda by passing legislation granting President Obama fast-track authority. The bill now goes to the Senate, where the White House and GOP leaders are seeking to strike a deal with pro-trade Democrats. The House vote was 218-208, with 28 Democrats voting for it. This is the second time in a week the House has voted to approve the controversial fast-track bill. On Friday, the House voted 219-211 in favor of fast-track, which would make it easier for Obama to complete a sweeping trans-Pacific trade deal. In last weeks vote, the House GOP paired the fast-track bill with a measure known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) that gives aid to workers displaced by trade. Both measures needed to be approved in separate votes for the entire package to move forward. House Democrats have historically favored TAA, but they voted against it on Friday to kill fast-track, which is deeply opposed by unions and other liberal groups. The White House still wants both measures to reach Obamas desk, but is now advancing a different strategy that would see the two bills move separately. The problem lies in the Senate, which previously approved a package that included both bills. If the two move separately, Republicans and the White House will have to convince Senate Democrats to back fast-track on the promise that TAA will move forward at a later time. The president spoke with a group of Senate Democrats on Wednesday at the White House, and talks continued in the Senate on Thursday on a way to give the president trade promotion authority, also known as fast-track. One possible solution would see the Senate vote first to pass a trade preferences bill, this time with the TAA program attached. It would then be sent to the House for a vote before the Senate considers fast-track. This planned move angered members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who asked Senate leaders not to use the trade measure, which would provide preferential access to the U.S. market for African countries, as a bargaining chip to pass trade promotion authority. Democrats opposed to the trade package expressed frustration that GOP leaders were bypassing them. Instead of cooperation, theyve opted to use procedural tricks to pass the TPA, said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.). As promised, all 28 pro-trade House Democrats supported the bill again. Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) said on Wednesday that those who backed the trade agenda are really committed to getting fast-track and TAA done. The tough vote has already been taken, Kind said. Were on record; we supported TPA last week. We also supported TAA last week, too, he said. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) warned that repeating last week's debacle would reflect badly on the international stage. "It gives America credibility," Ryan said of TPA. "And boy, do we need credibility right now."SSRA is unpopular theres a bipartisan coalition opposing passage2013 proves Wachtler 2015, Mark Wachtler, 4/11/2015, HR 1466 Surveillance State Repeal Act of 2015, http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/2015/q2/hr-1466-surveillance-state-repeal-act-2015/Considering the overwhelming outrage by the American people over the governments blanket domestic espionage programs, its surprising that the 2013 Surveillance State Repeal Act didnt garner more support. The Bill accumulated ten co-sponsors, was assigned to four Committees and six Sub-Committees. But not a single vote was ever taken to advance them out of Committee and to the full House. Supporters of the effort to stop the universal surveillance of the American people hope this years effort will be more successful. HR 1466 - Surveillance State Repeal Act of 2015 In 2013, Rep Mark Pocan (D-WI) was one of ten Democrat Congressmen who co-sponsored the Patriot Act repeal Bill. This time, hes the main sponsor and he has a Republican co-sponsor signed on with him. Introduced on March 19, 2015, the new Bill was proposed by five Congressmen and already has an additional Representative whos signed on since then. The sponsors include Rep Pocan, Rep Thomas Massie (R-KY), Rep Alan Grayson (D-FL), Rep James McGovern (D-MA), Rep Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Rep Michael Capuano (D-MA). As detailed by the House website, HR 1466 was immediately referred to a number of House Committees upon its introduction. The summary explains that the Surveillance State Repeal Act of 2015 was, Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committees on Intelligence (Permanent Select), Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, Energy and Commerce, Education and the Workforce, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker. What the Bill would repeal and require HR 1466s official description gives a brief overview of the Bills ramifications. The legislation, Repeals the USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (thereby restoring or reviving provisions amended or repealed by such Acts as if such Acts had not been enacted), except with respect to reports to Congress regarding court orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) and the acquisition of intelligence information concerning an entity not substantially composed of US persons that is engaged in the international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As currently written, the Bill would also prohibit the government from collecting information on an American citizen, without a warrant based on probable cause. If passed, it would also force the Director of the Office of National Intelligence, and its 16 spy agencies to, destroy any information collected under the repealed Acts, or acquired under Executive Order 12333 without a warrant. The law would also protect electronics manufacturers from being forced by the government to include encryption-free back doors to their devices and services allowing spy agencies to monitor their customers. Finally, the Bill attempts to protect future whistleblowers that come forward with evidence that the government isnt abiding by the law. Little chance of passage Illustrating that once you go from Republic to Empire, its nearly impossible to go back, experts are already warning that HR 1466 has almost no chance of passing. Much like previous attempts to reign in the governments massive blanket domestic espionage programs, this latest effort will most likely pit regular Americans from all walks of the political spectrum supporting the Bill against a bipartisan coalition of the most powerful establishment leaders from both Parties opposing it. That uphill fight isnt deterring the Bills main sponsor however. This isnt just tinkering around the edges, Rep Mark Pocan was reported by The Hill explaining during a Capitol Hill briefing after he introduced the legislation, This is a meaningful overhaul of the system, getting rid of essentially all parameters of the Patriot Act. Republican co-sponsor Rep Thomas Massie also commented on the Bill with targeted remarks about the whistleblower portion of the newly proposed HR 1466. Really, what we need are new whistleblower protections so that the next Edward Snowden doesnt have to go to Russia or Hong Kong or whatever the case may be just for disclosing this, he said, We need to repeal all of this junk and just start over. Illustrating the uphill battle the co-sponsors and their supporters have in front of them, The Hill writes, The bill is likely to be a nonstarter for leaders in Congress, who have been worried that even much milder reforms to the nations spying laws would tragically [hurt] handicap the nations ability to fight terrorists. A similar bill was introduced in 2013 but failed to gain any movement in the House.Obamas pc is key to secure TPA --- that shores up the American pivot to Asia Keith B. Richburg 3-23, served as the Washington Post's bureau chief in Manila, Nairobi, Hong Kong, Paris and Beijing, was the paper's foreign editor, 3/23/15, America's world standing hangs on Obama's TPP success, Nikkei Asian Review, http://asia.nikkei.com/print/article/82518But if the Pacific free trade agreement ultimately winds up a victim of Washington's machinations, Obama himself may carry a large share of the blame. The trade deal, formally known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP -- encompassing a dozen Pacific Rim nations and 26% of global trade -- is not yet complete, so there is no formal Congressional vote on the horizon on the accord itself. Rather, Congress is scheduled to vote first, some time in the coming weeks, on giving the president what is known as "trade promotion authority" (TPA), or "fast track" powers, which would let Obama negotiate the terms of the deal and only afterward allow Congress a simple "yes" or "no" vote with no possibility of amendments. Previous U.S. presidents have enjoyed similar fast track authority to hammer out complex trade deals, but the power expired in 2007 and needs to be renewed. Giving Obama fast track authority is considered crucial to concluding the TPP negotiations. Without fast track, any accord Obama negotiates with his foreign partners will be subject to countless killer amendments when it goes before Congress for approval. Subjecting a complex multilateral deal to various amendments may make it more palatable to various U.S. constituencies, but other participating nations will be unlikely to accept any changes. Without fast track, the other nations will not believe Obama has the power to strike the final deal. Meanwhile inside America, the looming vote over fast track has become a proxy for the trade pact itself. Some want to kill the deal before it is concluded, and see fast track as their vehicle. And some of the president's opponents simply want to deny Obama a victory on a crucial part of his agenda, or at least avoid granting him any extra powers. The opposition on the left was expected. Labor unions, environmentalists and their allies from the Democratic Party's left wing also opposed the 1994 North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, which was passed under President Bill Clinton. The unions fear that further trade agreements will drive American jobs offshore as companies seek lower-wage environments, and many critics point to the "hollowing-out" of U.S. manufacturing as a result of NAFTA. In getting NAFTA passed, Clinton had to rely on the votes of business-friendly free trade Republicans, who then controlled Congress, and a small number of centrist Democrats. That same coalition was supposed to work again this time to push through the TPP. The proposed investment and trade treaty was considered to be one of the few areas of cooperation between Obama and the new-look Republican-controlled Congress. But threats to the trade pact's prospects stem from several new dynamics since 1994, as the politics inside both major U.S. parties have shifted. The most significant change is in the makeup of the current Republican-dominated Congress, and how leaders no longer control the rank and file. While the Republican leadership agrees with the aims of TPP and wants to give Obama fast track authority, Tea Party Republicans and some conservative lawmakers have railed at what they see as Obama's expansive -- they say unconstitutional -- use of his executive powers. Executive actions Obama has used executive orders to implement his controversial health care law, issue sweeping environmental protections and shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. He is also negotiating a possible nuclear deal with Iran and could suspend sanctions on the Tehran regime without Congressional approval. Obama has defended his penchant for executive action saying that with current political system in perpetual gridlock, the public demands results, and the president's many powers include "a pen and a phone" -- a pen to issue executive orders, and a phone to reach outside of government to private businesses, universities and nonprofit groups to build support for his policies. But now conservatives and Tea Partiers are saying that granting Obama even more power to negotiate a huge trade pact on his own is precisely the wrong move. Many conservative Republicans are not just opposing fast track -- they are also opposing the Pacific trade deal itself, which they say will help corporations and not ordinary workers. This underscores another key shift in the modern Republican Party, the rise of populist, anti-big-business sentiment in a party that has traditionally been known as friendly to corporate interests. The other altered dynamic is the new energy of the Democratic left, which has found a powerful voice in Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. In a strongly worded opinion article in the Washington Post in February, Warren, who has been frequently mentioned as a possible presidential candidate to challenge Hillary Clinton, asked: "Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world?" Will the coalescing of anti-Obama conservatives and Tea Party populists on the right, and workers, environmentalists and the "Elizabeth Warren wing" of the Democratic Party on the left, be enough to scuttle fast track -- and with it the TPP? And if they did, what would be the impact? First, the prospects; the White House has begun a late, concerted lobbying effort. Most Democrats will oppose fast track, but Obama still needs to build a larger bloc of Democratic "yes" votes to make up for the expected loss of Republicans. The question people are asking in Washington is, will the fast track bill lose more Republicans that it gains Democrats? The numbers look close, and few are making predictions. One of those counting the votes is Bill Reinsch, President of the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington DC, which supports the Pacific accord. He believes 30 to 50 out of 188 House Democrats will be persuaded to vote for fast track. "In the end I think TPA passes because the fundamental argument for it is unassailable," he told me in an email. "If Congress wants a role in trade policy, the way they have one is to pass a bill telling the president what they want him to do, which is TPA." What if it fails? And would the world, and the region, survive without the Pacific trade pact, if it got lost in American political machinations? As a trade issue, the impact would be minimal. The U.S. already has bilateral and multilateral trade agreements with five of the TPP countries -- Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico and Singapore. Some countries, like Japan, may be relieved to see the pact go down -- and have the U.S. Congress to blame -- so as to avoid having to open their markets to American agricultural products. Failure would also benefit China, which could then negotiate a trading system consistent with its more protectionist rules than the open-trading TPP. But beyond the arcane issues involved, a failure of the trade pact, or fast track authority to get it done, will deal a severe blow to America's standing in the world and particularly in Asia, because the TPP was always more about national security than economics. The Pacific Rim trade deal was to be the most visible component of Obama's rebalancing to Asia, and failure to deliver it will call into question America's long-term commitment to the region. "You can't disentangle TPP from the pivot to Asia," said Patrick Chovanec, an economist and asset manager who has worked in Asia and previously with the Republican leadership in the lower house of Congress in the 1990s. "You have to push it through, or else it looks like the U.S. is losing its influence and losing its 'mojo' in the region. ... If you're going to say you'll have a pivot to Asia, you have to put some muscle behind that -- and TPP was the muscle." Also, with the World Trade Organization's Doha talks hopelessly stalled, the TPP was seen as one of the smaller, multilateral trade accords that could showcase the benefits of increased trade liberalization and perhaps jumpstart the WTO negotiations. Obama must share a portion of the blame for this current predicament. Although he has lately called free trade a key part of his agenda, and TPP as a critical component, he never gave the sense of investing much political capital in pushing fast track through a reluctant Congress. Too many other important issues seemed to crowd out space on the president's agenda -- economic stimulus, health care reform, financial services regulation and winding down the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the first term, then gun control, immigration, student loans, minimum wage, infrastructure spending and getting Congress to authorize his war against the Islamic State in the second term. Obama seemed indifferent to trade as a candidate in 2008, and he spoke little of it in his first term. Now he needs to be entirely engaged, and bring all his powers of persuasion and pressure to bear. His legacy -- and America's standing in the world -- are riding on it.

Pivot prevents nuclear war Colby 11 Elbridge Colby, research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, served as policy advisor to the Secretary of Defenses Representative to the New START talks, expert advisor to the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, August 10, 2011, Why the U.S. Needs its Liberal Empire, The Diplomat, online: http://the-diplomat.com/2011/08/10/why-us-needs-its-liberal-empire/2/?print=yesBut the pendulum shouldnt be allowed to swing too far toward an incautious retrenchment. For our problem hasnt been overseas commitments and interventions as such, but the kinds of interventions. The US alliance and partnership structure, what the late William Odom called the United States liberal empire that includes a substantial military presence and a willingness to use it in the defence of US and allied interests, remains a vital component of US security and global stability and prosperity. This system of voluntary and consensual cooperation under US leadership, particularly in the security realm, constitutes a formidable bloc defending the liberal international order. But, in part due to poor decision-making in Washington, this system is under strain, particularly in East Asia, where the security situation has become tenser even as the region continues to become the centre of the global economy. A nuclear North Koreas violent behaviour threatens South Korea and Japan, as well as US forces on the peninsula; Pyongyangs development of a road mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, moreover, brings into sight the day when North Korea could threaten the United States itself with nuclear attack, a prospect that will further imperil stability in the region. More broadly, the rise of China and especially its rapid and opaque military build-up combined with its increasing assertiveness in regional disputes is troubling to the United States and its allies and partners across the region. Particularly relevant to the US military presence in the western Pacific is the development of Beijings anti-access and area denial capabilities, including the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, more capable anti-ship cruise missiles, attack submarines, attack aircraft, smart mines, torpedoes, and other assets. While Beijing remains a constructive contributor on a range of matters, these capabilities will give China the growing power to deny the United States the ability to operate effectively in the western Pacific, and thus the potential to undermine the US-guaranteed security substructure that has defined littoral East Asia since World War II. Even if China says today it wont exploit this growing capability, who can tell what tomorrow or the next day will bring? Naturally, US efforts to build up forces in the western Pacific in response to future Chinese force improvements must be coupled with efforts to engage Beijing as a responsible stakeholder; indeed, a strengthened but appropriately restrained military posture will enable rather than detract from such engagement. In short, the United States must increase its involvement in East Asia rather than decrease it. Simply maintaining the military balance in the western Pacific will, however, involve substantial investments to improve US capabilities. It will also require augmented contributions to the common defence by US allies that have long enjoyed low defence budgets under the US security umbrella. This wont be cheap, for these requirements cant be met simply by incremental additions to the existing posture, but will have to include advances in air, naval, space, cyber, and other expensive high-tech capabilities. Yet such efforts are vital, for East Asia represents the economic future, and its strategic developments will determine which country or countries set the international rules that shape that economic future. Conversely, US interventions in the Middle East and, to a