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The Cuban government engages in multiple human rights violations such as torture,unexplained deaths, arrests of dissidents without any judicial orders, and more

Tamayo, Political Writer at the Miami Herald, 12Juan O. Tamayo, 6/2/12, The Miami Herald, UN panel blasts Cuba on human rights abuses,

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/02/v-fullstory/2828219/un-panel-blasts-cuba-on-human.html, accessed 7-2-13, KB)

The U.N.s Committee Against Torture hammered Cubaon Friday for a lengthy string of human rights

abusesand repeatedly complained the island had provided few or none of the details about specific allegations of abuses that it had requested.The panel noted

that it was concerned by reports denouncing the use of coercive methods during (police)

interrogations, particularly the denial of sleep, detention under conditions of isolation and exposure tosudden changes in temperatures.On Cubas prisons, it wrote that it continues to be supremely concerned by the reports rece ived about the overcrowding, malnutrition, lack of hygiene and healthy conditions (and) adequate medical attention.There have been

thousands of complaints of short-term detentions of dissidents, it added, singling out Jos Luis Ferrer Garca and Oscar EliasBiscet. And Cuban officials never explained the deaths of dissidents Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Juan Wilfredo Soto Garca.Cuba should establish an independentbody to gather, investigate and report on allegations of government abuses, and should meet its promise to allow a visit by the U.N.s top official on several types of

mistreatments, the committee noted in a 6,000-word report.The reportsummed up the panels conclusions after its May 22 -23 hearings in Switzerland on

Cubas compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading

Treatment or Punishment.Marked unedited, it was issued by the U.N. media office in Geneva.Using the U.N.s typically diplomatic language,the report noted the panel laments, expresses concern, still worries, disagrees, has serious reservations, views with concern, considers it indispensable

and is seriously concerned.But the report Friday amounted to a harsh and detailed indictment of Cubas human

rights record, especially in areas that involve physical punishments or abuses, such as the justice

and prison systems and the harassment of dissidents.Cubas own report on its compliance with the

convention on torture, presented to the panel in May, was more than nine years late and does not fully meet the

guidelines set by the panel, it noted. The 10 -member committee reviews countries records on a rotat ing basis.In a sharply worded section, the report urged

Cuba to investigate, without delay, exhaustively, without bias and in an efficient way, all deaths of prisoners. Cuba told the panel that prison officials were notresponsible for any of the 202 such deaths in 2010-2011, but gave no further information.The report also blasted Cuba for the rapid increase in the use of short-term

arrests of dissidents without any judicial orders, usually to keep opposition activists away from activities. Cuban officials told the panel last month that all detentionsfollow due process.Despite Havanas denials, panel member Fernando Mario told a news conference Friday, it seems that this has been generalized of late.

Human rights activists in Havana reported the number of such arrests doubled from 2010 to 2011.The panel also condemned the restrictions on freedom of

movement, invasive security operations, physical aggressions and other acts of intimidation and harassment presumably committed by the National Revolut ionary

Police or members of the Organs of State Security.

Torture is an intrinsic evil that destroys human dignityuniquely bad

when government endorsed.United States Conference ofCatholic Bishops,12[ 2012, USCCB, TORTURE IS AN INTRINSIC EVIL,http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/torture/upload/torture-is-an-intrinsic-evil-study-guide.pdf,accessed 7/9/13,

MC]

Torture destroys our human dignityin multiple ways. An act ofsuch violence pushesindividualsand members within a society towards two differentforms of dehumanization:

savagery, when feelings of anger or fear overwhelm principles ofethics and human

rights; and barbarism, when perceived needs for security and supremacy

destroy feelings offaith, solidarity andcompassion. In fact, torture compromisesthe human

dignityof both the victim and the perpetrator, estranging the torturer from God, and debasing the integrity of the tortured.What is more, when members of a society allow violent,

dehumanizing practices to occur within their social sphere, that societys collective integrity and social fabric are greatly eroded.When a government not

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/torture/upload/torture-is-an-intrinsic-evil-study-guide.pdfhttp://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/torture/upload/torture-is-an-intrinsic-evil-study-guide.pdfhttp://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/torture/upload/torture-is-an-intrinsic-evil-study-guide.pdfhttp://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/torture/upload/torture-is-an-intrinsic-evil-study-guide.pdfhttp://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/torture/upload/torture-is-an-intrinsic-evil-study-guide.pdf

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only allows, but sponsors, degrading, dehumanizing acts of violence, it sets a

dangerous precedent that undermines the respect for everyones human

dignity and human rights. The Catechism of the Church makes clear that torture is a grave sin which violates the Fifth Commandment. In his 1993Encyclical, Veritas Splendor, Pope John Paul II included physical and mental torture in his l ist of social evils t hat are not only shameful, but intrinsically evil.

Vote Neg: Engagement with human rights abusers makes you complicitwith Evil, no political end is worth this compromise.Gordon & Gordon, senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University, and independent

Scholar, 95(Haim and Rivca, Sartre and Evil: Guidelines for a Struggle, 1995, xvi-xvii, Questia, 7-2-13, JS)

Put differently, this book is also about us, a man and a woman who, often with others, have for years been struggling for freedom, for dialogue, for justice, for human

rights in Israel and in the Middle East, and about what we have learned from Sartre that has helped us

to conduct this daily struggle. Yet it should also be clear: We are not standard do-gooders. When we use the word

"struggle," we mean fighting, attacking, pointing at evildoers, demanding that

they be prosecuted. We mean accepting the profound loneliness that often characterizes such struggles. We mean living with the stupid decisions

and the mistakes that we have often made, and, we hope, learning from them. We mean knowing that we too have done Evil. Like Sartre we do notneed to be identified with a party or an organization or a large group when we

attack an evildoer,although we are, at times, happy when such occurs. For instance, when human rights are

blatantly abused in the Gaza Strip, or when violence against women is ignored by the Israeli police,we are unwilling to

compromise such a destruction of human freedom with the goals of a party or

an organization so that the organization or party can attain its political ends

from this Evil.Learning from Sartre, we condemn the Evil and the oppression and

exploitation as loudly and clearly as possible. And like Sartre, our condemnations often fall on deaf ears. Again and

again we have failed, as this book will often indicate. The Israeli military administration in Gaza, the Israeli press, Israeli politicians, other

intellectuals and academics, and even other human rights organizations have often made usfeel frustrated, impotent, stuck, irrelevant. But we continue. It is in this kind of

struggle, we believe, that one can learn much from Sartre's writings. Hence, in what follows, while weshall discuss in detail and in depth quite a few philosophical themes central to Sartre's writings, we shall always attempt to suggest how these themes can help in the

day-to-day struggle against Evil. To do so, we often add to our discussion of Sartre's insights on Evil an instance from our personal experiences or from events in the

world that these insights have helped to clarify. It is in this kind of struggle, we believe, that one can learn much from Sartre's writings. Hence, in what follows, while

we shall discuss in detail and in depth quite a few philosophical themes central to Sartre's writings, we shall always attempt to

suggest how these themes can help in the day-to-day struggle against Evil. To do so,we often add to our discussion of Sartre's insights on Evil an instance from our personal experiences or from events in the world that these insights have helped to

clarify. We firmly believe that Sartrewould have preferred such a book to a strict scholarly study of his relationship to Evil. He repeatedly

pointedout that he was deeply concerned with the relevance of his writings to day-to-day praxis, to

day-to-day struggles, to the situation in which persons find themselves.He wanted

his writingsto make a concrete difference in the world, not only to be a topic o f analysis and discussion

among scholars and philosophers. We also believe that Sartre would have liked a book that at times reeks o f the blood, sweat, and tears

--and yes, the rage, the passion, the debilitat ing loneliness, and the ongoing fight against impotence -- that

characterize any worthy struggle for freedom today.

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CP

CP Text: The United States Federal Government should offer Cuba todo [the plan] if:

- Cuba agrees to engage in dialogue with the United States FederalGovernment over human rights reform and release Alan Gross

Only the CP solvesthe plan strengthens the elites grip on powerLA Times 07 (Los Angeles Times, 26 Oct 2007, Carrots for Cuba; We've lifted trade and travel embargoes on China and Vietnam. Whyshould Havana be different?, proquest) //KY

In the wake of 9/11, Washington's thinking about Cuba-- when it has thought about the island at all -- hasmainly been tinged with the unjustified hope that its oppressive regime will

reform or collapse followingthe death of Fidel Castro.Politicians of both parties generally assume that lifting thetrade embargo on the hated revolutionary would be a nonstarter, but that U.S. policy would be ripe for reevaluation after his passing. But in a

major speech this week, President Bush attempted to put his stamp on U.S.-Cuba policy through the end of his presidency and beyond with a

defiant embrace of the spectacularly unsuccessful U.S. policies of the past. While eloquently describing Cuba's sins

against human rightsand economic and political freedoms, Bush offered only the fantasy that the Cuban people will revoltagainst their rulers. He declared the transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his brother, Raoul, unacceptable to the United States. And he

ruled out lifting the embargo until Havana grants its people freedom . Until then, Bush said,

trading with Cuba "would merely enrich the elites in power and strengthen their

grip."

Unconditional lifting of the embargo strengthens the regime, causes

terrorism, and turns Latin America influenceSuchlicki 13(Jaime, Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies,University of Miami, What Ifthe U.S. Ended the Cuba Travel Ban and the Embargo? 2/26/13,http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/what-if-the-u-s-ended-the-cuba-travel-ban-and-the-embargo/)//KY

Lifting the travel ban without major concessions from Cuba would send the wrong

message to the enemies of the United States: that a foreign leader can seize U.S.

properties without compensation; allow the use of his territory for the introduction of

nuclear missiles aimed at the United States; espouse terrorism and anti-U.S. causesthroughout the world; and eventually the United States will forget and forgive, and reward him with tourism, investments

and economic aid. Since the Ford/Carter era, U.S. policy toward Latin America has emphasized

democracy, human rights and constitutional government. Under President Reagan the U.S.intervened in Grenada, under President Bush, Sr. the U.S. intervened in Panama and under President Clinton the U.S. landed marines in Haiti, all

to restore democracy to those countries. The U.S. has prevented military coups in the region and supported the will of the people in free elections.

U.S. policy has not been uniformly applied throughout the world, yet it is U.S. policy in the region. Cuba is part of Latin America. While no one

is advocating military intervention, normalization of relations with a military dictatorship in

http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/what-if-the-u-s-ended-the-cuba-travel-ban-and-the-embargo/http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/what-if-the-u-s-ended-the-cuba-travel-ban-and-the-embargo/http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/what-if-the-u-s-ended-the-cuba-travel-ban-and-the-embargo/http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/what-if-the-u-s-ended-the-cuba-travel-ban-and-the-embargo/http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/what-if-the-u-s-ended-the-cuba-travel-ban-and-the-embargo/

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Cuba will send the wrong message to the rest of the continent. Once American tourists beginto visit Cuba, Castro would probably restrict travel by Cuban-Americans. For the Castro regime, Cuban-Americans represent a far more

subversive group because of their ability to speak to friends and relatives on the island, and to influence their views on the Castro regime and onthe United States. Indeed, the return of Cuban exiles in 1979-80 precipitated the mass exodus of Cubans from Mariel in 1980. A large influx of

American tourists into Cuba would have a dislocating effect on the economies of smaller Caribbean islands such as Jamaica, the Dominican

Republic, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and even Florida, highly dependent on tourism for their well-being. Careful planning must take place, lestwe create significant hardships and social problems in these countries. If the embargo is lifted, limited trade with, and investments in Cuba would

develop. Yet there are significant implications.

The Net Benefit is to avoid the DA.

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K

The affirmative reading of the Status Quo fails to take account of our current socio-political occasion, that of the interregnumA time in which US hegemony has already

entered a mode of disappearance, trading off now not with other nation states but rather

something to come - an assemblage of transnational configuration

Hardt and Negri 2009(MICHAEL HARDT is Professor of Literature and Italian at Duke University. ANTONIO NEGRI is anindependent researcher and writer. They are coauthors of Empire (Harvard) and Multitude. THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD

UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts Page 232-233)

The disorder and complexity of the current global situationwith the reappearance of a wide variety of outdated

forms of violence, economic appropriation, political domination, and so forth lead many to look to old models, such as

unilateralist hegemony and multilateralist collaboration,to understand the terms of global order. Even though ghosts of the

past continually spring up in this period of interregnum, however, we insist that the emerging world order has to be read in

terms that are fundamentally new. "The hegemonic baton will likely be passed,"maintains WilliamRobinson, with an eye to this novelty, "from the United States, not to a new hegemonic nation-state or even to a regional bloc, but to

a transnational configuration." Once we focus on the assemblages and authorities being formed in the context of global

governance, we can see thata new imperial formation is emerging that can function only through the

collaboration of a variety of national, supranational, and non-national powers. Our future politics

will have to be cast in relation to this Empire.

Even the most well-intentioned forms of economic engagement under the capitalist

ideology of the plan will inevitably only serve to concretize the security state by way

of extending new means for imperial outreach and encirclement.Akbas 2012(Eren Karaca, MA, A sociological study of corporate social responsibility: a marxist perspective. a thesis submitted to thegraduate school of social sciences of middle east technical university by eren karaca akba in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

of master of science in the department of sociology June 2012, https://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614474/index.pdf)

The corporation, in that context, is where the capital in general becomes concretein the sense that it realizes the circulation of

capital and serves as the concrete body making the capital accumulation possible (Ylmaz, 2010:96).It reserves

the economic and social relations defined by the capitalist system and represents these capitalist

relations of production. The growth of capitali st production has clearly been experienced throughout the world particularly after the Industrial Revolution. The capitalist enterprises, namely the corporations, have gained power since then. Lenin

(2006) reveals how the competition among individual capitals has been monopolistic in character. In the beginning of the 19th century, we see that the number of capitalist enterprises increased

and then, capitalist competition forced them to merge. As Lenin puts it, the enormous growth of industry and the remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprisesare one of the most characteristic features of capitalism (2006:19). This concentration of production also paved the way f or concentration of power in capitalist ent erprises, which at the end created monopolies. The holding system, which is composed of many shareholders as we have

today, serves enormously to increase the power of the monopolists. Yet, according to Lenin, the only benefit of the holding system to the capitalist is not only this. The system also allows them to cheat the public, because the owners of the main corporation are not legallyaccountable for the smaller firms merged into the big one, and through the medium of which they can pull off anything (ibid:56). Therefore, as the companies get bigger, it becomes difficult to follow their business activities. Lenin describes the effects of the concentration of

production so well that he also covers todays situation. He claims that none of the rules of control, the publication of balance-sheets, the drawing up of balance-sheets according to a definite form, the public auditing of accounts, etc., the things about which well-intentioned professors

and officialsthat is, those imbued with the good intention of defending and prettifying capitalismdiscourse to the public, are of any avail; for private property is sacred, and no one can be prohibited from buying, selling,exchanging or hypothecating shares, etc. (ibid:57).

What Lenin saw then is presented as the monstrous corporation today. The relat ionship between global capitalism and corporations seem to be interdependent in the

sense that the global expansion of capitalism demanded for corporations to become even larger and the monopolistic ch aracter of corporations demanded for larger

corporations to reach larger markets for more accumulation. The history of corporations, therefore, is composed ofthis mutual

relationship based on the capitalistic instincts. Especially with neoliberalism, as the corporation became more liberal than ever, the

power of corporations is now considered more or less natural. The idea that the large corporations are running the world

today stems from the political and economic engagement of capitalist ideology in almost

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everywhere around the world. For example, David Harvey informs that the leading companies in the US accounted for about one half of theGNP of the United States during the 1970s, and they spent close to $900 million annually (a huge amount at that ti me) on political matters (2005:43,44).

Besides the direct expenditures on political lobbying, the capitalist ideology has created its own

global political institutions, for which Hardt and Negri use the term supranational regulatory institutions such as

UN, IMF, World Bank, etc. and what legitimizes them now is ... their newly possible function in

the symbology of the imperial order (2000:31).

The affirmative remains trapped within a policy paradigm that problematizes life

itself as a problem to be managed; this epistemological and ontological investment in

capitalist security produces inequality and will inevitably result in serial policy

failure, turning the case.Dillon and Reid 2000Professor of Politics at the University of Lancaster and lecturer in international relations at Kings College in

London, 2000 Michael and Julian, Alternatives vol. 25, issue 1, spring, EbscoHost)

As a precursor to global governance,governmentality, according to Foucault's initial account,poses the questionof order not in terms ofthe origin of the lawand the location of sovereignty, as do traditional accounts of power,but in terms instead ofthe managementof

population. The management of population isfurther refined in terms of specific problematicsto which population management may be reduced.These typically include but are not necessarily exhausted by the following topoi of governmental power:economy, health, welfare, poverty, security, sexuality, demographics, resources, skills,

culture,and so on. Now, where there is an operation of power there is knowledge, and where there is knowledge there is an operation of power. Here discursive formations emerge and, asFoucault noted, in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is t o ward off its powers and

dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality.[ 34] More specifically,where there is a policy problematic

there is expertise, and where there is expertise there, too, a policy problematic will emerge. Such problematics are detailed and elaborated in t erms of discrete forms of knowledge

as well as interlocking policy domains.Policy domains reify the problematization of life in certain ways by turning

these epistemically and politically contestable orderings of life into "problems" that require the

continuous attention of policy science and the continuous resolutions of policymakers. Policy

"actors" develop and compete on the basis of the expertise that grows up around such problems or

clusters of problemsand their client populations.Here, too, we may also discoverwhat might be called "epistemicentrepreneurs."Albeit the market for discourse is prescribed and policed in ways that Foucault indicated,bidding to formulate novel

problematizations they seek to "sell" these, or otherwise have them officially adopted. In principle, there is nolimit to the ways in which the management of population may be problematized. All aspects of human conduct, any encounter with life, is problematizable. Any problematization is capable ofbecoming a policy problem. Governmentality thereby creates a market for policy, for science and for policy science, inwhich problematizations go looking for policy sponsors while policy

sponsors fiercely compete on behalf of their favored problematizations. Reproblematization of problems is constrained by the institutional and

ideological investments surrounding accepted "problems," andby the sheer difficulty of challenging the inescapable ontological

and epistemological assumptions that go into their very formation.There is nothing so fiercely contested as an epistemological or

ontological assumption.And there is nothing so fiercely ridiculed as the suggestion that the real problem with problematizations exists precisely at the level of such assumptions.Such

"paralysis of analysis" is precisely what policymakers seek to avoid since they are compelled

constantly to respond to circumstances over whichthey ordinarily have in fact both more and less control than they proclaim. What they do

not haveis preciselythe control that they want. Yet serial policy failurethe fate and the fuel of all policy--compels them into a continuous search for the new

analysis that will extract them from the aporias in which they constantly find t hemselves enmeshed.[ 35]Serial policy failure is no simple shortcoming

thatscience and policy--andpolicy science--will ultimately overcome. Serial policy failure is rooted in the

ontological and epistemological assumptions that fashion the ways in which global governance

encounters and problematizes life as a process of emergence through fitness landscapes that

constantly adaptive and changing ensembles have continuously to negotiate. As a particular kind of intervention into life,

global governance promotes the very changes and unintended outcomes that it then serially

reproblematizes in terms of policy failure. Thus, global liberal governance is not a linear problem-solving process committed to the resolution of objectivepolicy problems simply by bringing better information and knowledge to bear upon them. A nonlinear economy of power/knowledge, it deliberately installs socially specific and radicallyinequitable distributions of wealth, opportunity, and mortal danger both locally and globally through the very detailed ways in which life is variously (policy) problematized by it.

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The aff promotes market fundamentalism and rabid individualism as the answers to

Americas ills, replacing citizens with an assemblage of entrepreneurial subjects.

This elevates profits over people, resulting in never-ending wars abroad in the quest

for capital, and authoritarianism at home.

Giroux 2006(Henry, Dirty Democracy and State Terrorism: The Politics of the New Authoritarianism in the United States,Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 26:2, pp. 163-177, MUSE)

While it would be ludicrous to suggest that the United States either represents a mirror image of fascist ideology or mimics the systemic

racialized terror of Nazi Germany, it is not unreasonable, as Hannah Arendt urged in The Origins of Totalitarianism, to learn to recognize how

different elements of fascism crystallize in different historical periods into new forms of

authoritarianism. Such antidemocratic elements combine in often unpredictable ways, and I believe they can be found currently in many

of the political practices, values, and policies that characterize U.S. sovereigntyunder the Bush administration.Unchecked power at

the top of the political hierarchy is increasingly matched by an aggressive attack on dissent

throughout the body politic and fuels both a war abroad and a war at home. The economic and militaristicpowers of global capitalspearheaded by U.S. corporations and political interestsappear uncurbed by traditional forms of national and

international sovereignty, the implications of which are captured in David Harveys serviceable phrase accumulation by dispossession.Entirepopulations are now seen as disposable, marking a dangerous moment for the promise of a global democracy.8 The discourse of liberty, equality,

and freedom that emerged with modernity seems to have lost even its residual value as the central project of democracy. State sovereignty is no

longer organized around the struggle for life but an insatiable quest for the accumulation of capital, leading to what Achille Mbembe callsnecropolitics, or the destruction of human bodies.9 War, violence, and death have become the principal elements shaping the biopolitics of the

new authoritarianism that is emerging in the United States and increasingly extending its reach into broader global spheres, from Iraq to a vast

array of military outposts and prisons around the world. As the state of emergency, in Giorgio Agambens aptly chosen words,

becomes the rule rather than the exception, a number of powerful antidemocratic tendencies

threatenthe prospects for both American and global democracy. 10 The first is a market fundamentalism that not only trivializesdemocratic values and public concerns but also enshrines a rabid individualism, an all-embracing quest for profits, and a social Darwinism in

which misfortune is seen as a weaknessthecurrent sum total being the Hobbesian rule of a war of all against all that replaces any vestige of

shared responsibilities or compassion for others. The values of the market and the ruthless workings of finance

capital become the template for organizing the rest of society.Everybody is now a customer or client, and every

relationship is ultimately judged in bottom-line, cost-effective termsas the neoliberal mantra privatize or perishis repeated over and over again. Responsible citizens are replaced by an assemblage of entrepreneurial subjects, each tempered in the virtue of

selfreliance and forced to face the increasingly difficult challenges of the social order alone . Freedom is no longer about securing equality, social

justice, or the public welfare but about unhampered trade in goods, financial capital, and commodities. As the logic of capital trumps democraticsovereignty, low-intensity warfare at home chips away at democratic freedoms, and high-intensity warfare abroad delivers democracy with

bombs, tanks, and chemical warfare.The global cost of these neoliberal commitments is massive human suffering and death, delivered not only

in the form of bombs and the barbaric practices of occupying armies but also in structural adjustment policies in which the drive for land,

resources, profits, and goods are implemented by global financial institutionssuch as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.Global lawlessness and armed violence accompany the imperative of free trade, the virtues of a market without boundaries, and the promise of

a Western-style democracy imposed through military solutions, ushering in the age of rogue sovereignty on a global scale. Under such

conditions, human suffering and hardship reach unprecedented levels of intensity.In a rare moment oftruth, Thomas Friedman, the columnist for the New York Times, precisely argued for the use of U.S. powerincluding military forceto

support this antidemocratic world order. He claimed that the hidden hand of the market will never work without the

hidden fist. . . . And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valleys technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force,Navy and Marine Corps.11 As Mark Rupert points out, In Friedmans twisted world, if people are to realize their deepest aspirationsthe

longing for a better life which comes from their very soulsthey must stare down the barrel of Uncle Sams gun.12 As neoliberals in the Bushadministration implement policies at home to reduce taxation and regulation while spending billions on wars abroad, they slash funds that benefit

the sick, the elderly, the poor, and young people. But public resources are diverted not only from crucial domestic problems ranging from poverty

and unemployment to hunger; they are also diverted from addressing the fate of some 45 million children in the worlds poor countries [who]will die needlessly over the next decade, as reported by the British-based group Oxfam.13 The U.S. commitment to market fundamentalism

elevates profits over human needs and consequently offers few displays of compassion, aid, or relief for millions of poour and abandonedchildren in the world who do not have adequate shelter, who are severely hungry, who have no access to health care or safe water, and who

succumb needlessly to the ravages of AIDS and other diseases.14 For instance, as Jim Lobe points out, U.S. foreign aid in 2003 ranked dead last

among all wealthy nations.In fact, its entire development aid spending in 2003 came to only ten percent of what it spent on the Iraq war that year.U.S. development assistance comes to less than one-fortieth of its annual defense budget.15 Carol Bellamy, the executive director of UNICEF,outlines the consequences of the broken promises to children by advanced capitalist countries such as the United States. She writes, Today more

than one billion children are suffering extreme deprivations from poverty, war, and HIV/AIDS. The specifics are staggering: 640 million children

without adequate shelter, 400 million children without access to safe water, and 270 million children without access to basic health services.

AIDS has orphaned 15 million children. During the 1990s alone, war forced 20 million children to leave their homes.16

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Our alternative is to renounce the affirmative.

We have an ethical obligation to reject this glossing over of structural violenceit

renders the loss of millions of lives incalculable

Zizek and Daly 2004(Slavoj Zizek and Glyn Daly, Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences atUniversity College, Northampton, 2004, Conversations With Zizek, p. 14-16)

For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize thatour ethico-political responsibility is to confront

the constitutive violence of todays global capitalism and its obscene

naturalization/anonymizationofthemillions who are subjugated by it throughout the world.Against the standardized positions of postmodern culture with all its pieties concerning multiculturalist etiquette Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be called radically incorrect in the sense that it breaks with these types of positions and focuses instead on the very organizing

principles of todays social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has been bedevilled by an almost fetishistic economism that has tended towards political morbidity. With the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and

more recently Laclau and Mouffe, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the transcendence of all forms of economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem that now presents itself is almost that of the opposite fetish. That is to say, the

prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a

way of not engaging with economic reality and as a way of implicitly accepting

the latter as a basic horizon of existence.In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian twist, the fear of economism can end up reinforcing a de facto economic necessity in respect ofcontemporary capitalism(i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears). This is not to e ndorse any kind of retrograde return to economism. Zizeks point is rather that in rejecti ng economism we should not lose sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the li ves and

destinies of humanity and our very sense of the possible. In particular we should not overlook Marxs central insight t hatin order to create a universal global system

the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the politico-discursive violence of its

constructionthrough a kind of gentrification of t hat system. What is persistently denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is that the gentrification of

global liberal capitalism is one whose universalism fundamentally

reproduces and depends upon a disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors

of the worlds population.In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to naturalize ca pitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning a nd losing as if they were simply a matter of chance and sound judgement in a neutralmarketplace. Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and degraded life-

chances cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social exclusion remains mystified and nameless (viz, the patronizing reference to the developing world. And Zizeks point is that this mystification is magnified through capitalisms profound

capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation. Instead of Bolshevism, the tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms

of consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek argues for a new universalism whose primary ethical directive is to confront t he fact that our forms of social existence are founded on exclusion on a global scale. While it is perfectly true that universalism can never become Universal (it will

always require a hegemonic-particular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is novel about Zizeks universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or to reduce the status of the abject Other to that of a glitch in an otherwise soundmatrix.

Any determination of the ballot demands a prior question, one situating the task of

the intellectual and role of the critic not only within in our current socio-politicaloccasion, but also the unique space of debate. We ask that you take up an approach

to pedagogy that will alter the coordinates of curriculum in this debate away from

capitalist positions of securitization.

Bowers 2011(C.A. Bowers, University of Oregon. Ecologically and Culturally Informed Educational Reforms in Teacher Educationand Curriculum Studies. Critical Education. Volume 2 Number 14 December 20, 2011 ISSN 1920-4125)

Classroom teachers and university professors do not have the political and economic power to challenge directly the global agenda of the

military/corporate/religious alliances that are aggressively promoting a consumer-dependent lifestyle and winning converts in countries where

political expediency dictates emulating the Western model of development. But teachers and professors can discuss the

political, economic, and technological developments with students in the hope that it will raise

awareness and thus the need for them to become more active in the political processone that

seems now to be heavily tilted to the advantage of corporations in exercising even more control overthe federal and state governments. Given the slippery political slope we are now on, and the increasing perils that awaitclassroom teachers who deviate from the test-driven curriculum and the market liberal and libertarian ideologies promoted by members of local

school boards, it is still possible to introduce reforms that focus on educating students aboutthe local

alternativesto a consumer-dependent lifestylewhich is, to reiterate a key point, the lifestyle that requires exploiting the

earths natural systems and the economic colonization of other cultures. It is also the lifestyle that is dependentupon an industrial culture that is being radically transformed by information technologies. The Internet now enables corporations to ship jobs

overseas to low-wage regions of the world, while computer-driven automation enables corporations to replace workers with machines that can

run twenty-four hours a day, and do not require health insurance and other human costs. In effect, the consumer- dependent lifestyle that was

based upon the assumption of lifetime employment is now only a possibility for the people who are highly educated, and for people who will

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perform the low-paying, low-status work that cannot be automated. The drive to further automate all levels of work, from the conceptual to

the manual, means that everybodys economic future is now insecure and dependent upon corporate policies for maximizing their profits.

Professors have a great many more opportunities to raise questions, to address the cultural roots of

the ecological and cultural crises, and to introduce students to alternative lifestyles that are less

dependent upon consumerismif they chose to do so. But this may also change, as the less expensive online coursesbegin to have the same impact on universities that online news has had on the countrys traditional newspapers.