Tournament: Ugh | Round: 1 | Opponent: No | Judge: Why
Independent GY
Puget Sound GY
Interdependent GY

sorry, system complications

Tournament: a | Round: 1 | Opponent: b | Judge: c
Aff: steph.coolcat@gmail.com
Neg: lindazgong@gmail.com

Tournament: Ugh | Round: 1 | Opponent: No | Judge: Why
Topicality
Inherency
Solvency (0 of aff)
Anthro
Climate Apoc
Neolib
Politics
Chow
Bauman Turn
Zizek Turn
Schlag
Chow
Shunning

Tournament: Alta | Round: 2 | Opponent: Whitney Young DS | Judge: Mark
Anthropocentrism is the use of the living world for strictly human purposes and is passed on through discourse. The affirmative creates a dichotomy where we are forced to act in order to become heros and save the world from extinction but it is this very action that implicates a divide between U.S. and nature
Turner, Summer 09  (Rita Turner UMBC: An Honors University in Maryland “The Discursive Construction of Anthropocentrism”. Environmental Ethics; Summer2009, Vol. 31 Issue 2, p183-201, 19p. 2009 EBSCO    http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3andhid=106andsid=6c27a5b4-37cc-45d1-92e8-1efc915f420540sessionmgr110andbdata=JmxvZ2lucGFnZT1sb2dpbi5hc3Amc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl#db=aphandAN=42988162#db=aphandAN=42988162)

Our businesses, … discouse if we are to produce the sort of ecological consciousness that will be essential for creating a sustainable future.

Their understanding of Western intellectualism and specifically Giroux idea of critical pedagogy reinforces humanism which makes violence inevitable
Bell and Russell 2k (Anne and Constance, Canadian journal of education, http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE25-3/CJE25-3-bell.pdf)

Take, for example, Freire’s (1990) statements about the differences¶ between “Man” and animals. To set up his discussion of praxis and the¶ importance of “naming” the world, he outlines what he assumes to be¶ shared, commonsensical beliefs about humans and other animals… which everything has intelligence, personality, and¶ voice. Polyphonous echoes are reduced to homophony, a term Kane (1994)¶ uses to denote “the reduced sound of human language when it is used¶ under the assumption that speech is something belonging only to human¶ beings” (p. 192). We forget too what Abram (1996) describes as the gestural,¶ somatic dimension of language, its sensory and physical resonance that we¶ share with all expressive bodies (p. 80).

Language focus is anthropocentric
Bell and Russell 2k (anne and constance, Canadian journal of education, http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE25-3/CJE25-3-bell.pdf)JFS
Although … blind spots within critical pedagogy generally and within poststructuralist approaches to critical pedagogy in particular. We hope to illuminate places where these streams of thought and practice move in directions compatible with our own aspirations as educators.

Anthropocentrism makes the destruction of the human and non-human inevitable.
Ahkin 10 (Mélanie works at Monash University, “Human Centrism, Animist Materialism, and the Critique of Rationalism in Val. Plumwood’s Critical Ecological Feminism,” Emergent Australasian Philosophers, 2010, Issue 3, http://www.eap.philosophy-australia.com/issue_3/EAP3_AHKIN_Human_Centrism.pdf)  
 Such …. if it is to overcome illusions of human  disembeddedness and self-enclosure and have a genuine and lasting effect.

Our alternative is to endorse the global suicide of humanity. The only possible way to atone for centuries of human chauvinism is to engage in utopian anti-human equality. Global suicide as a thought experiment is the most ethical response to anthropocentricism.
Kochi and Ordan 08 (Dec. 2008, Tarik Kochi, PhD, Lecturer in Law and International Security, University of Sussex, Noam Ordan, linguist and translator, conducts research in Translation Studies at Bar Ilan University, research focus on human cultural history, “An argument for the global suicide of humanity,” Borderlands, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol7no3_2008/kochiordan_argument.pdf, azp)

How might such a standpoint of dialectical, utopian anti-humanism reconfigure a notion of action which does not simply repeat in another way the modern … global suicide abhorrent or ridiculous, this question remains valid and relevant and will not go away, no matter how hard we try to forget, suppress or repress it.

Tournament: Lexington | Round: 5 | Opponent: NFA HS | Judge: Quamir Johnson
Turn – the ethical obligation of the 1AC creates rule-based morality, whitewashing moral decisions to a question of yes or no – the impact is the elimination of all moral choice
Bauman 95 (Zygmunt, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, "Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality," 6/12/95, slim_)
It was only the modern project of remaking the world to the measure of human needs and capacities, and according to a rationally conceived design,...To the moral self, modernity offered freedom complete with patented ways of escaping it. 

The second impact is the death cult – massive killing is only possible when we are absolved of ethical responsibility – atrocities are justified when we sever ourselves from emotional attachment
Bauman 95 (Zygmunt Bauman, Prof. Sociology @ U of Leeds, "Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, p. 148-9)
Whether in the form officially stigmatized as violence or disguised as 'promotion of law and order' (or, indeed, as the 'civilizing process'), coercion is always, at least ... criterion of moral performance.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 2 | Opponent: Whitney Young DS | Judge: Mark
Reject the 1AC’s call for the ballot ---

It is a moment of interest convergence between the Affirmative and the judge – This rhetorical alliance with alterity is a technology of political demand that repeats the strategic attitude of the system it seeks to overturn – The guilty solidarity of the 1AC masks the privilege that prevents the AFF project from directly changing the lives of the people they invoke to warrant a ballot.
Chow – Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities @ Brown - 1993
(Rey, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, p. 16-17) 

Why are "tactics" useful at this moment? …from turning into a solidly fenced-off field, in the military no less than in the academic sense?

It is a form of self-subalternization, where the judge is encouraged to found solidarity with the Affirmative Other by valorizing suffering portrayed in the 1AC – However, their rhetorical strategy amounts to nothing more than a sham renunciation authorized by the same structures of power that produce alterity in the first place, turning the case at a higher level of analysis.
Chow – Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities @ Brown - 1993
(Rey, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, p. 10-11) 

The Orientalist has a special sibling whom I will… strategy becomes in the main a rhetorical renunciation of the material power that enables her rhetoric.

The subaltern is subsequently reduced to a fungible object, a passive object for the consumption of the debate community – the affirmative absorbs the power of alterity only to toss its carcass back into the dust
Chow 93 (Rey, Andrew W. Mellon, Professor of the Humanities at Brown University, Writing Diaspora: Contemporary Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, Indiana University Press, pg. 12-13.)

In the “….raised.”

Tournament: Lexington | Round: 4 | Opponent: Lakeland BD | Judge: Pavitra Chari
Imaginaries of climatic apocalypticism are profoundly depoliticizing—appeals to a singular human fate objectify nature and ensure nothing changes.
Swyngedouw ‘13
Erik, Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester in its School of Environment and Development, “Apocalypse Now! Fear and Doomsday Pleasures,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2013 Vol. 24, No. 1, 918

A flood of literature on the relationship between apocalyptic imaginaries, popular culture, a ...in Rancie`re’s (1998) words, so that nothing really has to change.

The impact is unending structural violence and apocalyptic environmental destruction along the periphery
Swyngedouw ‘13
Erik, Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester in its School of Environment and Development, “Apocalypse Now! Fear and Doomsday Pleasures,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2013 Vol. 24, No. 1, 918

What we are witnessing is a strange reversal whereby the specter of economic and/or ecological ... is indeed a combined and uneven one, both in time and across space (see Calder Williams 2011).

Our alternative is to vote negative to unconditionally reject climate catastrophism.

The alternative actualizes radical politics within specific environments—that’s crucial to the creation of new social relations that solve the aff.
Swyngedouw ‘13
Erik, Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester in its School of Environment and Development, “Apocalypse Now! Fear and Doomsday Pleasures,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2013 Vol. 24, No. 1, 918

Against this cynical stand, the third, and for me proper, leftist response to the apocalyptic ... a generic egalitarian, free, and common re-ordering of the human/non-human imbroglios be forged.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: New Trier DL | Judge: Adam Grellinger
Cooperation on spills has already been passed.
Guzzo 1/29 – Paul Guzzo, 1/29/14, The Tampa Tribune, “New oil spill pact between U.S., Cuba has Tampa roots”, http://tbo.com/news/politics/new-oil-spill-pact-between-us-cuba-has-tampa-roots-20140129/

TAMPA — In a deal initiated in Tampa, the U.S. is putting concerns over the environment ... “He is good at being a connector between Cuba and the progressives in this country.”

Status quo discussions between US and Cuban scientists solve --- specific to environmental discussions
Haven 4/11/13 (Paul, Associated Press Havana reporter, “Under the radar, Cuba and U.S. often work together,” The Associated Press Nation and World, http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_22997924/under-radar-cuba-and-u-s-often-work)

HAVANA — Cuba and the United States might be longtime enemies with a bucket overflowing ... and that the Cubans happily accept FBI and Coast Guard baseball caps as gifts.

Science Diplomacy High - state department projects
Pellerin, 9
Cheryl,  February 14, 2009, “Foreign Policy's "Smart Power" Gives Science Diplomacy a New Role,” NewsBlaze, http://newsblaze.com/story/20090214180016tsop.nb/topstory.html

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for a change in the State Department's ... and private companies.

Tournament: Lexington | Round: 5 | Opponent: NFA HS | Judge: Quamir Johnson
Against the affirmative’s paralyzing discursive politics, it is more important than ever to emphasize Marx’s insight that transformations in consciousness can never lead to social change – only struggling to transform the real material conditions that structure social relations can bring about social change
Marx, 1845
(Karl, The German Ideology, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm)
This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, ... It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.

Unfortunately, Marx’s insight has been all but discarded by the new left, with its emphasis on being postmodern, postcolonial, poststructural, postMarxist, or post-anything.  This post-al politics of the contemporary left focuses on discourse and language at the expense of analyzing real material conditions.  

This post-al logic is complicit with capitalism, especially insofar as it obscures the operation of political economy and the material reality of capitalism
Zavarzadeh, 94 – department of English at Syracuse
(Mas’ud, “The Stupidity that Consumption is Just as Productive as Production”, The Alternative
Orange, V 4, Fall/Winter, http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
The task of this text1 is to lay bare the structure of assumptions and its relation to the workings of the regime of capital and wage-labor  ...If I ask what is wrong with Stalinism, again (in terms of the logic of his/her text) I will not get a political or philosophical argument but a tropological description.5

The alternative is to reject their assertion that discourse and performance can change material social realities.

We must return to Marx, recognizing that the only hope for human survival is a politics which engages in struggles to change material social relations rather than discursive attempts to change assumptions—any attempt to work within the system of capitalism is doomed to failure – turns the aff
Harman, 97 Editor of the Socialst Worker 1997
(Chris, Economics of the madhouse, Pg 99-100)
 ‘A reprise in the early 21st century of the conditions in the early part of this century. ....The alternative can only come from fighting against the system and the disastrous effect its logic has on the lives of the mass of people.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: New Trier DL | Judge: Adam Grellinger
Turn—their framing of the disease does violence

A. Necessitates exclusionary practices to purify the self
Heather Schell, Phd Candidate at Stanford University, 1997, Configurations 5.1
Although I like the implications of Haraway's and Martin's analyses, an examination of i... anything that we cannot kill is ipso facto a competitor. 

B. Makes extermination inevitable
Heather Schell, Phd Candidate at Stanford University, 1997, Configurations 5.1
Being immobile pathogens, viruses need a host to bring them inside. The hosts implicated in the virus texts I examine are invariably outsiders themselves, usually socially disruptive elements. Llewellyn Legters, who helped organize the "hypothetical global epidemic emergency" ...isolation endangers the rest of us.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: New Trier DL | Judge: Adam Grellinger
Text: The Department of State should submit Plan for a National Environmental Policy Act Environmental Impact Statement. The United States federal government should implement the least environmentally-damaging alternative identified in the Environmental Impact Statement.

The counterplan solves – the process of evaluating environmentally friendly alternatives prior to action leads to a compromise that solves the aff and avoids environmental harm
Dreher 5 - Deputy Executive Director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute. He served as Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Robert, “The Political Assault on the National Environmental Policy Act,” http://www.law.georgetown.edu/gelpi/research_archive/nepa/NEPAUnderSiegeFinal.pdf
Yet another criticism of the NEPA review process is that it impedes the development .... “We were able to get timber out in an environmentally responsible way, and we succeeded in avoiding appeals that plague controversial timber sales.” 56

Lack of EIS turns the case – the plan ignores impacts minorities and low income groups – only strengthening and implementing NEPA solve
Johnson 97 (Professor of Law at Mercer 97 (Stephen is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, “NEPA and SEPA's in the Quest for Environmental Justice,” Digital Commons @ LMU, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2027andcontext=llr)
Environmental injustice is one of the most pervasive and welldocumented environmental...also make legislative and administrative changes to strengthen NEPA based on progressive SEPAs.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 6 | Opponent: Green Valley DS | Judge: Lindsay Van Luvanee
Unilateralism is what sustains primacy – other states bandwagon with the US for fear of other rising powers.  Moving towards multilateralism makes it unsustainable
Seldena, 13 – assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida (Zachary, “Balancing Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony” Security Studies Volume 22, Issue 2, 2013, Taylor and Francis)

Understanding which of these choices—soft balancing against the hegemon or alignment with the hegemon—is … in support of its national interests.
The plan is surrender – it emboldens global regimes and collapses US influence
Brooks ‘9 Senior fellow for National Security Affairs in the Davis Institute at The Heritage Foundation. (Peter – Heritage foundation “Keep the Embargo, O“ April 16, 2009 http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2009/04/keep-the-embargo-o)//EB

In another outreach to roguish regimes, …. evil only begets more of it. Haven't we learned that yet? Until we see progress in loosing the Cuban people from the yoke of the communist regime, we should hold firm onto the leverage the embargo provides.
US primacy prevents global conflict – diminishing power creates a vacuum that causes transition wars in multiple places
Brooks et al 13 Stephen G. Brooks is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is also a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University.William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. “Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment”, Winter 2013, Vol. 37, No. 3, Pages 7-51,http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107, GDI File

A core premise of deep engagement is that it prevents the emergence of a far more dangerous global security environment. For one thing, as noted above, the United … powers to contain (and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war).

Tournament: Lexington | Round: 4 | Opponent: Lakeland BD | Judge: Pavitra Chari
Text: The United States Federal Government should increase renewable energy grid integration with the United Mexican States without the use of nanotechnology

CP solves, all of their solvency evidence is predicated off status quo renewable energy--does not require nanotech

Nanotech is extremely dangerous – arms race, hackers, surveillance, irreversible pollution
Vandermolen 2006 – Intelligence Officer with US Special Operations Command Thomas, graduate from Naval War College, “Molecular Nanotechnology and
National Security,” Air and Space Power Journal, September 1, 2006, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj06/fal06/vandermolen.html#vandermolen, Accessed August 5, 2013
¶ Direct Threats¶ The most obvious threats posed by MNT are those based directly on the application of the technology itself, as a source for both better weaponry as well .... either from the nanolitter itself or from toxic elements attached to those nanoparticles.26

Tournament: Alta | Round: 6 | Opponent: Green Valley DS | Judge: Lindsay Van Luvanee
U.S. engagement with Mexico is conditional upon neoliberal reforms, which prioritize the U.S., leads to Mexican economic crash
Greenberg 12, et al, Ph.D in Anthropology at University of Michigan, 2012
(James B., Thomas Weaver (Ph.D. in Anthropology at University of California at Berkeley), Anne Browning-Aiken (Ph.D. in Anthropology at University of Arizona), William L. Alexander (Professor of Anthropology at University of Arizona), “The Neoliberal Transformation of Mexico,” Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico, University Press of Colorado, pp 3-4)SG
President Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988) began his administration facing a depression greater than any in the post-revolutionary period. The external debt had risen from a manageable 30 percent of the GDP in 1981 to 63 percent in 1983, with interest on the national debt absorbing half of the country’s export income (Bosworth, Lawrence, and Lustig 1992:7). Eighty cents of every dollar earned from the oil industry was owed to foreign banks. The debt had climbed to over $100 million when Mexico declared a debt moratorium in 1982….. Because ultimately so much rests on “getting prices right,” these packages often include policies to hold the line on wages or even to force them down (at least in terms of their true foreign exchange equivalents) in an effort to make exports more competitive (Greenberg 1997).

Corporate hegemony is not fit for export. As pure market ideology expands, nothing is sacred - social relations, the life of species, and the natural world are reduced to their monetary value on the global marketplace. Corporate power and state violence align, creating zones of social abandonment where suffering and death are the norm.
The ruling elite deploy scare-tactics to ossify resistance and protect their privilege.
Giroux, 12 (Henry A. Giroux, Professor in the English and Cultural Studies department of McMaster University, “The Occupy Movement and the Politics of Educated Hope”, TruthOut, 5/18/12, rm)

American society has lost its claim on democracy… in the streets, and in other spaces now colonized by capital and its machinery of enforcement.(7)

The agonistic practice of radical democracy our critique engages in is a necessary challenge to corporate hegemony –we must open public space outside of market power for contestation and solidarity.
Springer, 2011 (Simon Springer, Department of Geography, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, “Public Space as Emancipation: Meditations on Anarchism, Radical Democracy, Neoliberalism and Violence,” Antipode Vol. 43 No. 2 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 525–562, rm)

When a society lacks a dynamic public space that allows for agonistic confrontation among diverse political identities… Such is the promise of public space.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 2 | Opponent: Crenshaw HJ | Judge: Brian Bordley
US intervention in healthcare causes the people of Latin America to suffer at the feet of the beneficiaries of these neoliberal policies
Homedes and Ugalde ,School of Public Health, University of Texas–Houston;  Department of Sociology, University of Texas–Austin, 2005 (Núria and Antonio, “Why neoliberal health reforms have failed in Latin America,” El Sevierhttp://www.proexcel.fiocruz.br/inalteraveis/Sistemas20de20Saude/PORQUE20A20POLITICA20NEOLIBERAL20FALHOR20NA20A20LAT..pdf     )JS
The question that needs to be asked is why, in view of the mounting evidence that neoliberal reforms do not accomplish the intended goals, the WB continues to ... WB is accustomed to provide and (2) do not generate pro?ts for corporations.

Tournament: Gonzaga | Round: 2 | Opponent: Mount Vernon HK | Judge: Ivanovik
Only neoliberalist development solves war and conflict
Tures 3 – Professor of Economics @ LaGrange
(John, “ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND CONFLICT REDUCTION: EVIDENCE FROM THE 1970S, 1980S, AND 1990S,” CATO Journal, 22.3)BB
The last three decades have witnessed … between economic freedom and conflict reduction during the past three decades.

Development good – alleviates poverty and inequality
Worstall 12 (Tim, Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, "So What is this Neoliberal Globalisation Free Trade Thing About Anyway?", 3/1/12, www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/01/so-what-is-this-neoliberal-globalisation-free-trade-thing-about-anyway/ slim_)
It’s easy enough to find people with opinions, strong opinions, on what this neoliberal ….n would be that if we want to continue the process of making the poor rich we should expand economic freedom and trade more with them.

Democracy, foreign aid, and development are key to sustainability
Bitar 11 (Sergio, Director of the Inter-American Dialogue, "Latin America and the United States: Looking Towards 2020," September 2011, www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/LAtheUS2020.pdf slim_)
Which policies and international agreements … its citizens.

We control uniqueness – poverty and environment improving now
Lomborg 11  Bjorn Lomborg, directs the Copenhagen Consensus Center and is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, Newsweek, June 12, 2011, "A Roadmap for the Planet", http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/06/12/bjorn-lomborg-explains-how-to-save-the-planet.html#
Climate alarmists … air pollution is by far the most menacing for humans, water quality has similarly been getting better. Forests, too, are regrowing in rich countries, though still being lost in poor places where slash-and-burn is preferable to starvation.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: Palo Verde SS | Judge: Gus Eyzaguirr
Cooperation over Venezuelan oil is a tactic to collude elite interest in Latin America and the US – causes wealth concentration and solidifies US military dominance
Petras 11 (James, Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, "U.S. Venezuelan Relations: Imperialism and Revolution," http://lahaine.org/petras/b2-img/petras_usven.pdf)
Within this imperial matrix, … tells us a great deal about the future of US-Latin American relations and equally so of the prospects for US empire at a time of financial crises and rising militarism.

Tournament: Gonzaga | Round: 5 | Opponent: St Vincent LH | Judge: Malone
Text: We affirm the entirety of the 1ac except for the plan text.

There is no internal link between the plan text and the solvency.
Schlag 90 (Pierre Schlag, professor of law@ univ. Colorado, stanford law review, november, page lexis)

In fact, normative legal thought is so much in a hurry that it will tell you what to do even t... in a position to put any of its wonderful normative advice into effect.

The assumption of 1AC solvency papers over the rough edges of the world with warm and fuzzy normative legal talk, emotionally disconnecting them from the implications of the speech act
Delgado 91 (richard delgado , colorado law professor, 139 pa. L. Rev. 933, april)

But what is the cash value of all this priest-talk in the law reviews, in the classrooms of at least the ...examples of this are found in cases where the Supreme Court has been faced with subsistence claims.

They are more interested in playing hermeneutic games than engaging in politics, the preoccupation with pretending to be policymakers traps them in a spectator position and bars them from recognizing the bureaucratic violence of legal praxis.
Schlag 90 (Pierre Schlag, professor of law@ univ. Colorado, stanford law review, november, page lexis)

All of this can seem very funny. That's because it is very funny. It is also deadly serious. It is deadly serious, ... manipulated constructions of bureaucratic practices -- academic and otherwise.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: Palo Verde SS | Judge: Gus Eyzaguirr
Congress is holding off on sanctions now but political capital is key – sanctions cause Iranian prolif
Paul Richter November 13, 2013, 6:45 p.m. Senators still mulling over additional Iran sanctions http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-kerry-iran-20131114,0,1995719.story#axzz2kh5iJKd5
WASHINGTON — … Democratic leadership as well as the banking committee heard the administration's arguments.

Plan’s unpopular for a laundry list of reasons, and it’s a flip flop for Obama
Sullivan 13, Congressional Research Service specialist in Latin American affairs, 13
(Mark P., 1/10/13, Congressional Research Service, “Venezuela: Issues for Congress,” http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40938.pdf, Accessed 7/9/13)
U.S. Policy … efforts.

Iran prolif causes escalation of middle east war
Gerald M. Steinberg (Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, is Director of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar-Ilan University) April 2005 “Deterrence … nuclear weapons and itself a target for massive retaliation. As a result, while deterrence theory provides a basis for hope for survival in this dangerous environment, in practice, in the Iranian case, this relationship will be highly dangerous and unstable.
Extinction
James Russell 2009 (James, Senior Lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs – Naval Postgraduate School, “Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prosepects for Nuclear War and Escalation in the Middle East,” ifri.org/downloads/PP26_Russell_2009.pdf)
Strategic …. to prevent such an outcome, which would be an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the region, with substantial risk for the entire world.

Tournament: Lexington | Round: 1 | Opponent: Baltimore City College BI | Judge: Bennett Clifford
The 1AC is a frantic attempt to assert agency in the face of symbolic authority, but the real result is interpassivity—we frantically act such that nothing ever changes
Zizek 97 (Slavoj, Prof @ please tell me you know these quals by now, The Plague of Fantasies, p. 113-6)Kinkaid *We don’t endorse gendered language.
At the level of...is precisely the fundamental fantasy which sustains his disavowed passivity.

their understanding of modernity presumes a divide between the race of humanism, including White, Asian, South Asian, and Arab, vs. the Black
Wilderson 10 (Frank Wilderson, “Red, White and Black”)
I am not suggesting that across the globe Humanism developed in the same way regardless...forging a symbiosis between the political ontology of Humanity and the social death of Blacks.

Tournament: Lexington | Round: 5 | Opponent: NFA HS | Judge: Quamir Johnson
We affirm the entirety of the 1ac except for the plan text.

The counterplan solves better – it doesn’t start at the place of the state or include the pretended fiated action we will get links to.

We are theoretically legitimate – they get the entirety of the plan to generate offense versus the cp, this is a necessary test against critical affirmatives.

There is no internal link between the plan text and the solvency
Schlag 90 (Pierre Schlag, professor of law@ univ. Colorado, stanford law review, november, page lexis)

In fact, normative legal thought is so much in a hurry that it will tell you what to ... position to put any of its wonderful normative advice into effect.

The assumption that they have solved paper over the rough edges of the world with warm and fuzzy normative legal talk, emotionally disconnecting them from the implications of the speech act.
Delgado 91 (richard delgado , colorado law professor, 139 pa. L. Rev. 933, april)
But what is the cash value of all this priest-talk in the law reviews, in the classrooms ...has been faced with subsistence claims.

They are more interested in playing hermeneutic games than engaging in politics, the preoccupation with pretending to be policymakers traps them in a spectator position and bars them from recognizing the bureaucratic violence of legal praxis.
Schlag 90 (Pierre Schlag, professor of law@ univ. Colorado, stanford law review, november, page lexis)
All of this can seem very funny. That's because it is very funny. It is also deadly serious. ...are largely the manipulated constructions of bureaucratic practices -- academic and otherwise.

Tournament: Gonzaga | Round: 2 | Opponent: Mount Vernon HK | Judge: Ivanovik
Venezuela is a massive human rights violator
Sullivan 13 – Specialist in Latin American Affairs at Congressional Research Service (Mark, 1/10/2013, “Venezuela: Issues for Congress,” Congress of the United States of America, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40938.pdf, Accessed 9/12/13)
Human Rights Concerns Human rights organizations and U.S. officials have expressed concerns for several years about the deterioration of democratic institutions and threats to freedom of speech and press in Venezuela under the Chávez government. According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2012, “the weakening of Venezuela’s democratic system of checks and balances under President Hugo Chávez has contributed to a precarious human rights situation.” It maintained that “without judicial checks on its actions, the government has systematically undermined the right to free expression, workers’ freedom of association, and the ability of human rights groups to protect rights.”87 …. and threats against domestic nongovernmental organizations. The significant problem of prison violence was highlighted once again on August 19, 2012, when a clash between gangs at a prison in Miranda state reportedly resulted in at least 25 deaths.

Reject engagement with human rights abusers — moral duty to shun
Beversluis 89 – Philosophy, Economics and Humanities Professor Eric, Ph.D. in philosophy from Northwestern and economics from OSU, April 1989. “On Shunning Undesirable Regimes: Ethics and Economic Sanctions.” Public Affairs Quarterly, April, vol. 3, no. 2, http://www.ericsinfotech.com/ShunningUndesirableRegimes.pdf
But how can a case for shunning be made on this view of morality? Whose interests (rights) does shunning protect? … of “purifying the community” after it has been made “unclean,” as ancient communities might have put it.

Any compromise sanctions evil — reject every instance regardless of consequences
Gordon and Gordon 95 — Haim Gordon, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Rivca Gordon, general director of the Foundation for Democratic Education in Israel and chairperson of the Gaza Team for Human Rights, 1995 (“Introduction,” Sartre and Evil: Guidelines for a Struggle, Published by Greenwood Press, ISBN 031327861X, p. xvi-xviii)
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… attitudes interfere with such an intuitive response? We sought significant answers to these questions in Sartre's literature and drama.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 6 | Opponent: Green Valley DS | Judge: Lindsay Van Luvanee
Small asteroids solve warming
Lovelock ‘9, Consultant of NASA, former president of the Marine Biological Association, and  Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford (James, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy it While You Can, pg 62)
It is not mere speculation to challenge the idea that noth¬ing can happen in the next thirty years that will change the course of climate change. In a way the Earth has done the experiment for us, for … in Lord Rees's book Our Final Century—all of these and others unknown may affect the climate and make dis¬tant prediction formidably difficult.

TURN –  plan causes ozone depletion and overregulation, turns the case
Foust ‘9, Editor of the Space Review (Jeff, June 15, “Space and (or versus) the Environment”, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1395/1)
While the current rate of ozone loss is …. Combined with a lack of scientifically reliable environmental effects data, the risk of idiosyncratic and overly restrictive regulation is high.”

Extinction
David Crockett Williams, Jr., author of Tetron Natural Unified Field Theory, Chemist, Personal and Financial Agent.     February 7, 1996        THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION
http://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/video96.html
Today all life on earth is threatened by many problems associated with the materialistic and shortsighted human activities out of harmony with nature that have led to an oxygen crisis from massive deforestation and fossil fuel combustion which has created global warming … independently by many different religious prophecies since many hundreds of years ago. How can this be understood and resolved?

Tournament: Alta | Round: 2 | Opponent: Whitney Young DS | Judge: Mark
Speaking for others is wrong—their privileged social location makes any claim to political empowerment suspect—it’s an act of commodification and colonial domination, which turns the case
Alcoff 92 (Linda Martín, Department of Philosophy at Syracuse University. “The Problem of Speaking For Others” Cultural Critique Winter 1991-92, pp. 5-32.)
Feminist discourse is not the only site in which the problem of speaking for others has been acknowledged and addressed. In anthropology there is similar discussion about whether it is possible to speak for others either adequately or justifiably. Trinh T…. of speaking for others can be found by simply restricting the practice to speaking for groups of which one is a member.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 2 | Opponent: Whitney Young DS | Judge: Mark
Meinzerin, Kuhn, Klausmann, 97 (Marion Meinzerin, professor of history at Cambridge University, Gabriel Kuhn, Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Innsbruck, Ulrike Klausman, freelance journalist, “Woman Pirates and the politics of the Jolly Roger”, Pg 18-22, azp) 

Medusa is the Gorgon’s head threatening to emerge from the sea. ….He is a sea serpent, appearing in the legends of sea travellers as the worst of all sea monsters, crushing ships and swallowing seafarers.

Contemporary radical Western criticism is the product of a desire to preserve the singularity of the Western intellectual as Subject.  The subaltern becomes the epistemological backdrop against which the dramas of bourgeois subjectivity are played out.  They start from the point of enlightened knowledge about the unenlightened Other, presumptuously assuming that if the subaltern were here, speaking, they would be on-board with the movement.  Even if the subaltern could speak, the performance of the affirmative would already have torn out their vocal cords.

Spivak 88 (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Indian literary theorist, philosopher and University Professor at Columbia University, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 1988 “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” Online, azp)

SOME OF THE most radical criticism coming out of the West …. On the other side of the international division of labor from socialized capital, inside and outside the circuit of the epistemic violence of imperialist law and education supplementing an earlier economic text, can the subaltern speak? . . . 

Is it not disconcerting that the aff merely stands alongside those who they purport to save?  What can their profusion of theory and information possibly do to alleviate the material suffering of the subaltern?  The answer is nothing.  Their kritik is nothing revolutionary, their politics are not singular or unique, they represent the continual strategy of Western academia—tokenism and lip service to mask the betrayal at the heart of their politics.

Raskin 99 (Marcus Raskin, Professor of Public Policy at George Washington University, 1999, Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, Fall)

As I have noted, world social categories and knowledge systems have changed so that they now see the colonized as human beings. … This failure, this sense of futility where knowledge is an instrument of domination for the few, demands recognition. 

The subaltern becomes the stage upon which they project their own superiority and power throughout the debate community—the subaltern is reduced to nothing more than an object of knowledge, the vocabulary of their protest is stolen—the subaltern is denied the opportunity to speak.    

Chow 93 (Rey, Andrew W. Mellon, Professor of the Humanities at Brown University, Writing Diaspora: Contemporary Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, Indiana University Press, pg. 12-13.)

In the “cultural studies” of the American academy in the 1990s. …. the first time of their economic chances, the second time of their language, which is no longer distinguishable from those who have had our consciousnesses “raised.”

This act of surveillance contributes to the violent disempowerment of the subaltern – their attempt to render the Other intelligible is just a way to fill in the blindspots in our military map of alterity – the result is that we can only ever see the people they debate about as targets for US bombs.

Chow 06 (Rey Chow, Humanities and Modern Culture and Media Studies at Brown University, 2006 The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work, 40-1)

Often under the modest apparently innocuous …, since its inception, haunted by “the absence of a definable object”—and by “the problem of the vanishing object.”

A vote for the alternative is an endorsement of our specific intellectual criticism that makes possible challenging the neutrality of the affirmative’s power relationships that form the root cause of their harms

Edkins 06 (Jenny Edkins, International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 2006 “The Local, the Global and the Troubling,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy Vol. 9, No. 4, 499–511)

Rather than starting …. cause and effect, but through a slow re-building, brick by brick.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 6 | Opponent: Heritage Hall CC | Judge: Jaymee Go
The United States Supreme Court should rule that compliance orders from federal enforcement agencies regarding _plan_ are unconstitutional.

This solves and competes – it doesn’t ‘reduce’ a legal restriction – it just makes it unenforceable
William Treanor (associate professor of law at Fordham University) and Gene Sperling (Deputy assistant to the president for economic policy University of Minnesota) 1993 “Prospective overruling and the revival of Unconstitutional statutes” JSTOR

Unlike the Supreme Court, several state courts have explicitly addressed the revival issue. ... convincing rationale for nonrevival.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: Palo Verde SS | Judge: Gus Eyzaguirr
Interp – Engagement towards a government must be conditional, the plan isn’t
Haass and O’Sullivan, 2k - *Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution AND a Fellow with the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution (Richard and Meghan, “Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive Policies” Survival _{vol. 42, no. 2, Summer 2000, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/articles/2000/6/summer20haass/2000survival.pdf}

Many ….y facilitate cooperation.

Tournament: Gonzaga | Round: 5 | Opponent: St Vincent LH | Judge: Malone
Substantial means great in amount
Words and Phrases, 2 (Words and Phrases Permanent Edition, “Substantial,” Volume 40A, p. 448-486 October 2002, Thomson West)

N.D.Ala. 1957. The word “substantial” means considerable in amount, value, or the like, large, as a substantial gain. – Levenson v. U.S., 157, F.Supp. 224.

Increase means to become larger or greater in quantity
Encarta Online Dictionary. 2006.  ("Increase." http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861620741.)

in•crease  in kr?ss
transitive and intransitive verb  (past and past participle in•creased, present participle in•creas•ing, 3rd person present singular in•creas•es)Definition: make or become larger or greater: to become, or make something become, larger in number, quantity, or degree
noun  (plural in•creas•es)

Economic engagement means using exclusively economic contacts like loans and grants
Resnik, 1 – Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University (Evan, Journal of International Affairs, “Defining Engagement” v54, n2, political science complete)
A REFINED DEFINITION OF ENGAGEMENT¶ In order to establish a more effective framework for dealing with unsavory regimes, ... positive sanctions.

B. Violation – removing Cuba from the terror list is only removing a small barrier to engagement, and it’s not even economic– they don’t fiat increased US engagement with Cuba

C. That’s a voter for fairness and education
a. Unlimits – there are millions of tiny affs they could run that involve repealing outdated laws – makes it impossible for the neg to prepare
b. Ground – all of the negative’s ground is dependent on the aff increasing engagement – additionally, economic engagement is key to K and DA links based off of the economy
c. Precision – it’s key to effective policy analysis
Resnik, 1 – Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University (Evan, Journal of International Affairs, “Defining Engagement” v54, n2, political science complete)

In matters of national security, ... 21st century.
d. Effects T is an independent voter – neg can never garner stable links

Tournament: Lexington | Round: 4 | Opponent: Lakeland BD | Judge: Pavitra Chari
Interpretation- Engagment is positive
Resnik, 1 – Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University (Evan, Journal of International Affairs, “Defining Engagement” v54, n2, political science complete)

A second problem associated with various scholarly treatments of engagement is the tendency...depends to a significant degree on positive incentives to achieve its objectives."(n16)

Violation- the aff uses negative incentives

Standards

Predictable Limits- positive incentives is the broadest interpretation of the topic possible- if they do not meet this then they could be anything- makes it impossible to be neg- no in depth clash and disencentivizes research

Ground- Regulations affs moot all neg links- last years college topic proves- links and cps are based off of the engagement portion of the resolution

Tournament: Gonzaga | Round: 5 | Opponent: St Vincent LH | Judge: Malone
A. Interpretation – Removing sanctions is a form of appeasement
Stern 6 (Martin, University of Maryland Graduate, Debunking detente, 11/27/06, http://www.diamondbackonline.com/article_56223e79-7009-56a3-8afe-5d08bfff6e08.html)
Appeasement is defined as "granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace." Giving Iran international legitimacy and removing sanctions would have maintained peace with a potential enemy without changing the undemocratic practices of the enemy. If this isn't appeasement, I don't know how better to define the word.
Engagement and appeasement are distinct
Resnick 1 (Evan, Assistant Professor and coordinator of the United States Programme at RSIS, “Defining Engagement,” Journal of International Affairs, 0022197X, Spring2001, Vol. 54, Issue 2, http://web.ebscohost.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/ehost/detail?sid=1b56e6b4-ade2-4052-9114-7d107fdbd01940sessionmgr12andvid=2andhid=24andbdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ3d3d#db=mthandAN=4437301)
Thus, a rigid conceptual distinction can be drawn between engagement and appeasement. ... target state.
B. Violation – they remove restrictions – that’s appeasement
C. Voting issue

1. Limits – infinite amount of restrictions the aff can remove – explodes neg research burden
   2. Ground – Lose spending links based off of increases in funding

Tournament: Alta | Round: 6 | Opponent: Green Valley DS | Judge: Lindsay Van Luvanee
Interpretation - Engagement is the attempt to influence the political behavior of a state by increasing contacts with that state – economic engagement means using exclusively economic contacts like trade, loans and grants
Resnik, 1 – Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University (Evan, Journal of International Affairs, “Defining Engagement” v54, n2, political science complete)

A REFINED DEFINITION OF ENGAGEMENT
In … in multiple issue-areas, allows for the existence of multiple objectives in any given instance of engagement and, as will be shown below, permits the elucidation of multiple types of positive sanctions.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 6 | Opponent: Heritage Hall CC | Judge: Jaymee Go
Interp – Cuba is the Republic of Cuba
CIA World Factbook, 13 (updated on 6/5/13, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html)

Country name:
conventional long form: Republic of Cuba
conventional short form: Cuba
local long form: Republica de Cuba
local short form: Cuba

Violation – the aff gives license to AMERICAN COMPANIES, not Cuba. They don't mandate action.

That’s a voting issue –

1. Limits – by removing the location of the plan outside of Cuba, Mexico, or Venezuela, they explode the limits so that plans can take place literally anywhere in the world. Kills predictably and fairness.
   2. Ground – the location of Cuba is key to disad links and counterplan ground about the physical place of Cuba.

Tournament: Gonzaga | Round: 2 | Opponent: Mount Vernon HK | Judge: Ivanovik
Interp –the aff must increase economic engagement with one of the topic countries: Cuba, Mexico, or Venezuela
 Venezuela is a republic in South America or the Gulf of Maracaibo
Dictionary.com, 13 (based on Random House Dictionary, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/venezuela?s=t)

Ven•e•zue•la  ven-uh-zwey-luh, -zwee-; Spanish be-ne-swe-lah  Show IPA
noun
1.a republic in N South America. 352,143 sq. mi. (912,050 sq. km). Capital:  Caracas.
2.Also called Gulf of Maracaibo. a gulf of the Caribbean Sea between NW Venezuela and N Columbia Colombia, connecting to with Lake Maracaibo. 75 miles (120 km) long and up to 150 miles (240 km) wide.

Violation – they’re nationalizing the US’ energy sector which does not involve Venezuela

VI –
Limits – they make it possible for their plan to be about any country, it is not specific to Venezuela
Ground – the tie to Venezuela is key to offense about the country itself

Tournament: Gonzaga | Round: 3 | Opponent: Boise VK | Judge: Goldberg
THA has already passed.
Maritime Executive 12/23 – “U.S. - Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement Enacted”, 12/23/13, http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/US~-~-Mexico-Transboundary-Hydrocarbons-Agreement-Enacted-2013-12-23/

Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell applauded the enactment of the U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement that establishes a framework for U.S. offshore oil a...development activities are conducted safely.”

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: Palo Verde SS | Judge: Gus Eyzaguirr
Maduro says no
Shinkman, 13 -~-- national security reporter at U.S. News and World Report (4/24/2013, Paul D., “Iranian-Sponsored Narco-Terrorism in Venezuela: How Will Maduro Respond? New Venezuelan president at a crossroads for major threat to U.S.,” http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/24/iranian-sponsored-narco-terrorism-in-venezuela-how-will-maduro-respond, JMP)
*Doug Farah is senior fellow at International Assessment and Strategy Center and an expert on narco-terrorism and Latin American crime

U.S. officials might try to engage … different circumstances, he could be a pragmatist," Farah says. "I don't think he can be a pragmatist right now."

Tournament: Lexington | Round: 5 | Opponent: NFA HS | Judge: Quamir Johnson
The 1AC is a frantic attempt to assert agency in the face of symbolic authority, but the real result is interpassivity—we frantically act such that nothing ever changes
Zizek 97 (Slavoj, Prof @ please tell me you know these quals by now, The Plague of Fantasies, p. 113-6)Kinkaid *We don’t endorse gendered language.
At the level of elementary psychological observation, one can answer this by recalling the deep satisfaction a subject (a parent, for example) can derive from the awareness ...the fundamental fantasy which sustains his disavowed passivity.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: New Trier DL | Judge: Adam Grellinger
Turn – alienates other countries - perceived as politicized science
Dickson, 9
David,  Director, SciDev.Net,  June 2, 2009, “ Science diplomacy: the case for caution,” http://scidevnet.wordpress.com/category/new-frontiers-in-science-diplomacy-2009/

 Finally, when it comes to promoting the use of science in developing countries, a terminology ...particularly in the developing world – were also clearly exposed.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: Palo Verde SS | Judge: Gus Eyzaguirr
We must dismiss threats to survival if they are very unlikely—the alternative is that we do nothing about any existential risk
Posner 4 (Richard, US Court of Appeals judge and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Catastrophe: Risk and Response  19)
The reason for the hedge in “essentially” is … about any of them.

Extremely low probabilities should count as zero—even if there’s some risk, policy decisions can’t be justified by vanishingly small probabilities
Rescher 3 (Nicholas, Prof of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, Sensible Decisions: Issues of Rational Decision in Personal Choice and Public Policy, p. 49-50)
On this issue …, remote-possibility events having such a minute possibility can happen in some sense of the term, but this “can” functions somewhat figuratively—it is no longer seen as something that presents a realistic prospect.

The “any risk” logic would make all decisionmaking impossible—evaluate probability over magnitude
Meskill 9  (David, professor at Colorado School of Mines and PhD from Harvard, “The "One Percent Doctrine" and Environmental Faith,” Dec 9, http://davidmeskill.blogspot.com/2009/12/one-percent-doctrine-and-environmental.html)
Tom Friedman's piece today in the Times on the environment (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09friedman.html?_r=1) is one of the flimsiest pieces by a major columnist that I can remember ever reading. He applies Cheney's "one percent doctrine" (….9. Many religious movements - for example the early Jesus movement - have exhibited precisely this combination of traits: the looming apocalypse, with the time (just barely) to take action.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: Palo Verde SS | Judge: Gus Eyzaguirr
Refusing to acknowledge the impacts of our representations is in itself a form of violence.
Kappeler 95 (Susanne Kappeler, Associate Prof @ Al-Akhawayn University, The Will to Violence: The Politics of Personal Behavior, 1995, pg. 69-71)

The choice of formulation is political; it is an expression of one’s political attitude. Not only does it reveal how the subject con¬stitutes itself — whom it chooses to address and to constitute as the ‘we’ of its discourse, and whom and what it chooses to make an object of speech. … it betrays an intention conforming to the meaning and function of that discourse: to legitimate and maintain power and the distribution of power in society.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: Palo Verde SS | Judge: Gus Eyzaguirr
b. Chavista credibility
Meacham, 13 -~-- director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (4/16/2013, Carl, “Venezuela Post-Election: Can Maduro Govern?” http://csis.org/publication/venezuela-post-election-can-maduro-govern, JMP)
Maduro's narrow victory … himself as the “son of Chávez,” while campaigning – but one has to believe Chávez would have been deeply disappointed with Sunday’s outcome.

c. Anti-americanism
Drezner, 13 -~-- professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (3/7/2013, Daniel W., “Why post-Chavez Venezuela won't be a U.S. ally anytime soon,” http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/category/wordpress_tag/venezuela, JMP)

The …, it sets like concrete. Only genuine political reform in Venezuela will cure it, and I don't expect that anytime soon. ¶ Oh, and by the way: Those commentators anticipating a post-Castro shift by Cuba toward the U.S., should run through the checklist above veeeery carefully.¶ Am I missing anything? 

d. Expulsion of diplomats proves animosity
Daily Mail 10/1 (10/1/13, "'Yankees go home!' President Nicolas Maduro expels three U.S. diplomats from Venezuela, accusing them of encouraging 'acts of sabotage' against his country," www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2439918/President-Nicolas-Maduro-expels-US-diplomat-Venezuela.html, slim_)
Venezuelan President … of bilateral tensions. But the United States and others have found it difficult to engage with the government, or opposition, without opening themselves up to accusations of meddling in the OPEC nation.

e. Rhetoric and political precarity
Shifter, 13 -~-- president of the Inter-American Dialogue (5/3/2013, Michael, “What Does the Future Hold for U.S.-Venezuela Relations?” http://www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32andpubID=3297, JMP)

Q: The future of U.S.-Venezuela relations remains uncertain in the early days of the Nicolás Maduro administration. Maduro has voiced a desire for "respectful relations" with the United States, though Washington has still not recognized his government. The United States has denied that it is considering sanctions against Venezuela, and Venezuelan authorities recently arrested a U.S. citizen on … for a rapprochement. Still, assuming that things begin to settle down, and given that other governments have already recognized Maduro, it would be surprising if Washington didn't eventually come around and deal with the practical reality."

f. Lack of political capital
Alic, 13 -~-- geopolitical analyst, co-founder of ISA Intel in Sarajevo (4/15/2013, Jen, “Foreign Oil and Gas Companies Look to Status Quo in Venezuela,” http://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/South-America/Foreign-Oil-Gas-Companies-Look-to-Status-Quo-in-Venezuela.html, JMP)

Now …. to have the political capital to make any short-term changes in Venezuela’s energy policy, experts at Southern Pulse told Oilprice.com.

g. Snowden and Power comments
Minaya 7/20 (Ezequiel, “Venezuela Ends Attempt to Repair Diplomatic Relations With U.S.”, July 20, The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323993804578618223346497776.html)//DLG

CARACAS—The Venezuelan government has ended fledgling efforts to repair diplomatic … most likely destinations.

h. Imperialism and election policy
PTV 7/24– Press TV, (“No dialogue unless US changes imperialistic stance: Venezuela”, July 24, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/24/315416/us-must-end-imperialistic-stance-maduro/)//sawyer

Venezuelan President … is wanted in the United States for leaking details of Washington’s secret surveillance programs. 

i. Maduro’s gotta be more Chavez than Chavez
NSN, 13 (3/7/2013, National Security Network, “A Post-Chávez Venezuela,” http://nsnetwork.org/a-post-chavez-venezuela/, JMP)

Carl Meacham, .. anti-Americanism, it will be difficult to turn the other cheek for another six years.” NY Times, 3/6/13. Carl Meacham via CNN, 3/6/13. Ted Piccone, 3/6/13

j. internal reform
Saefong, 13 -~-- MarketWatch reporter based in San Francisco (3/6/2013, Myra P., “Post-Chavez Venezuela: oil’s next Saudi Arabia?” http://www.marketwatch.com/story/post-chavez-venezuela-oils-next-saudi-arabia-2013-03-06?link=MW_story_popular, JMP)
*Clinton Carter is associate vice president for Latin America at Frontier Strategy Group

Chavez’s politicization of PDVSA also led to an exodus of talent, and political risk in the nation kept foreign investment in energy low.¶ Now that .. previous oil policy based on tight control over operations,” Bellorin said.