Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wayzata GN | Judge: Sara Sanchez
1

Debt ceiling will be raised without confrontation but lawmakers can shift
Espo 9-18 09/18/2013. DAVID ESPO AP Special Correspondent. “Dodge default, defund Obamacare, GOP leaders say.” http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_24119843/ap-sources-revised-gop-attack-obamacare
The RSC claims a membership of 175 members, about three-quarters of the House Republican rank and file. The bill's introduction comes at a time when party leaders have yet to advance any comprehensive alternative to the law Obama signed in 2010, though the GOP House has voted repeatedly to repeal all or part of it. The GOP pledged three years ago to "repeal and replace" the existing law, a promise Obama often notes with disdain. The approach outlined Wednesday by Boehner and the GOP leadership team underscored how quickly tea party lawmakers have shifted their principal focus in the weeks since Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah as well as the outside groups began stressing the issue in TV ads. The leadership's initial proposal for avoiding a partial government shutdown was to couple funding for federal programs with a requirement for the Senate to cast a vote on defunding the health care program, a requirement that could easily have been evaded. Conservatives quickly rebelled against that approach, forcing Boehner and his lieutenants to regroup. Even as they did, they sought to emphasize their commitment to cutting federal spending and curtailing the debt, two issues that have consistently united the fractious rank and file since Republicans took control of the House nearly three years ago. "Not since the Korean War has the federal government reduced spending two years in a row. We aim to make that happen," said the Republican majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. Spending would be set at $986.3 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, although that would be further reduced in January by a new round of across-the-board sequester cuts that would trim the level to $967 billion. "There should be no conversation about shutting the government down. That's not the goal here," Boehner said. Republicans paid a heavy political price two decades ago as the result of twin government shutdowns, at a time then-Speaker Newt Gingrich was insisting President Bill Clinton agree to cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and other popular programs. Nor are Republicans eager to shoulder the blame for any market-shaking government default, which would probably occur if the Treasury could not continue to borrow funds to pay debts already incurred. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has estimated that without action by Congress, that default will arrive in mid-

IFF legislation has stalled in Congress and enforcement isn’t happening—lack of political will
Cassara ’13 MARCH 5, 2013. JOHN A. CASSARA, INDUSTRY ADVISER TO SAS FEDERAL LLC. “Our anti-money laundering efforts have failed.” http://www.sas.com/knowledge-exchange/risk/fraud-financial-crimes/our-anti-money-laundering-efforts-have-failed/index.html
The overseas metrics are equally depressing. According to the Department of State, “far too many countries that boast solid anti-money laundering standards and infrastructures do not enforce their laws. This is true in all corners of the world and for both developed and developing countries alike. In many instances, the lack of enforcement is due to lack of capacity, but in some cases it is due to a lack of political will.” Talking aimlessly Some believe that recent eye-catching actions against major banks may create change. For example, HSBC was fined $1.9 billion for failing to pursue anti-money laundering within its branches. However, this is a regulatory action. The $1.9 billion is not going to be taken from drug traffickers but from the shareholders of HSBC. And not one individual will be prosecuted  In 2005, I wrote Hide and Seek: Intelligence, Law Enforcement and the Stalled War on Terror Finance. I was very concerned that the US might be moving away from effective anti-money laundering and financial crimes enforcement. I felt our war on terror finance was “stalled.” I suggested that a new emphasis be placed on enforcing the laws, rules and regulations that are already on the books. I urged Congress and regulatory agencies to step up oversight. Most important, I argued that real progress requires a different philosophical and bureaucratic emphasis. Simply put, we have to get back to the basics of enforcement.

Obama’s cooperation is key
Moore 9-10 September 10, 2013. Heidi Moore is Guardian’s US Finance and Economics Editor. “Syria: the great distraction; Obama is focused on a conflict abroad, but the fight he should be gearing up for is with Congress on America's economic security.” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/obama-syria-what-about-sequester
Before President Obama speaks to the nation about Syria tonight, take a look at what this fall will look like inside America. There are 49 million people in the country who suffered inadequate access to food in 2012, leaving the percentage of "food-insecure" Americans at about one-sixth of the US population. At the same time, Congress refused to pass food-stamp legislation this summer, pushing it off again and threatening draconian cuts. The country will crash into the debt ceiling in mid-October, which would be an economic disaster, especially with a government shutdown looming at the same time. These are deadlines that Congress already learned two years ago not to toy with, but memories appear to be preciously short. The Federal Reserve needs a new chief in three months, someone who will help the country confront its raging unemployment crisis that has left 12 million people without jobs. The president has promised to choose a warm body within the next three weeks, despite the fact that his top pick, Larry Summers, would likely spark an ugly confirmation battle – the "fight of the century," according to some – with a Congress already unwilling to do the President's bidding. Congress was supposed to pass a farm bill this summer, but declined to do so even though the task is already two years late. As a result, the country has no farm bill, leaving agricultural subsidies up in the air, farmers uncertain about what their financial picture looks like, and a potential food crisis on the horizon. The two main housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been in limbo for four years and are desperately in need of reform that should start this fall, but there is scant attention to the problem. These are the problems going unattended by the Obama administration while his aides and cabinet members have been wasting the nation's time making the rounds on television and Capitol Hill stumping for a profoundly unpopular war. The fact that all this chest-beating was for naught, and an easy solution seems on the horizon, belies the single-minded intensity that the Obama White House brought to its insistence on bombing Syria. More than one wag has suggested, with the utmost reason, that if Obama had brought this kind of passion to domestic initiatives, the country would be in better condition right now. As it is, public policy is embarrassingly in shambles at home while the administration throws all of its resources and political capital behind a widely hated plan to get involved in a civil war overseas. The upshot for the president may be that it's easier to wage war with a foreign power than go head-to-head with the US Congress, even as America suffers from neglect. This is the paradox that President Obama is facing this fall, as he appears to turn his back on a number of crucial and urgent domestic initiatives in order to spend all of his meager political capital on striking Syria. Syria does present a significant humanitarian crisis, which has been true for the past two years that the Obama administration has completely ignored the atrocities of Bashar al-Assad. Two years is also roughly the same amount of time that key domestic initiatives have also gone ignored as Obama and Congress engage in petty battles for dominance and leave the country to run itself on a starvation diet imposed by sequestration cuts. Leon Panetta tells the story of how he tried to lobby against sequestration only to be told: Leon, you don't understand. The Congress is resigned to failure. Similarly, those on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, those working at government agencies, and voters themselves have become all too practiced at ignoring the determined incompetence of those in Washington. Political capital – the ability to horse-trade and win political favors from a receptive audience – is a finite resource in Washington. Pursuing misguided policies takes up time, but it also eats up credibility in asking for the next favor. It's fair to say that congressional Republicans, particularly in the House, have no love for Obama and are likely to oppose anything he supports. That's exactly the reason the White House should stop proposing policies as if it is scattering buckshot and focus with intensity on the domestic tasks it wants to accomplish, one at a time. The president is scheduled to speak six times this week, mostly about Syria. That includes evening news interviews, an address to the nation, and numerous other speeches. Behind the scenes, he is calling members of Congress to get them to fall into line. Secretary of State John Kerry is omnipresent, so ubiquitous on TV that it may be easier just to get him his own talk show called Syria Today. It would be a treat to see White House aides lobbying as aggressively – and on as many talk shows – for a better food stamp bill, an end to the debt-ceiling drama, or a solution to the senseless sequestration cuts, as it is on what is clearly a useless boondoggle in Syria. There's no reason to believe that Congress can have an all-consuming debate about Syria and then, somehow refreshed, return to a domestic agenda that has been as chaotic and urgent as any in recent memory. The President should have judged his options better. As it is, he should now judge his actions better.

A drawn out debt ceiling debate crushes US legitimacy
Babones ’13 May 21, 2013. Salvatore Babones is a senior lecturer in sociology and social policy Sydney and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. “The Debt Ceiling Debate That Wasn't.” http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16504-the-debt-ceiling-debate-that-wasnt
The debt ceiling has been reached multiple times since the beginning of the global financial crisis, and another debt ceiling crisis is right around the corner. Except that there will be no crisis, because the country is Australia. Just like the United States, Australia has a debt ceiling. Australian borrowing bumps up against this ceiling on a regular basis. And just as in the United States, the debt ceiling is an absolute limit on government spending that cannot be transgressed even if the Australian parliament has passed a bill authorizing additional expenditures. But there the similarity ends. Australia has no debates over default, no dramatic government shutdowns, no sequestration and no fiscal cliffs. When the government reaches the debt ceiling, the ceiling is raised in an orderly manner. No one panics. Everyone gets paid. It used to work that way in the United States, too. The debt ceiling has only come to be politicized in recent years. This situation is ludicrous - and dangerous. Once the government has incurred a legal obligation, we should all expect the government to meet it. America's debt ceiling brinksmanship has made us a global laughingstock. In no other developed country do political parties threaten to push the government into default if they don't get their way. This kind of take-no-prisoners politics is more characteristic of third-world dictatorships than first-world democracies. The United States doesn't have to have a debt ceiling. At the next reauthorization which by most accounts will be the 90th or so Congress could simply abolish the ceiling. But Australia's experience shows this is unnecessary. If America's politicians could be as sober and mature as Australia's, we wouldn't have to worry about it. The Australians I know will be rolling in the aisles to hear their politicians described as "sober and mature." Australian politics is highly partisan, often very personal and nothing if not robust. But it is not self-destructive. America - and America's politicians - could learn some important lessons in democracy from looking overseas. America's own democracy is, perhaps, not the example it once was.

Solves Extinction
Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth ’13
(Stephen, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, 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, 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,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7–51)
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 States’ overseas presence gives it the leverage to restrain partners from taking provocative action. Perhaps more important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security dilemmas. The contention that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the “American Pacifier” is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions replete with security competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasia’s security setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists maintain that the high expected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasia’s major states could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without the American pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship, particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point to—such as democratic governance or dense institutional linkages—are either absent or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal. Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result might be a Europe that is incapable of securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the 1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed by Washington— notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding the region’s prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could stoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It is notable that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity and were only constrained from doing so by a still-engaged United States. 75 The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism’s sanguine portrayal is all of the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism’s optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent on its particular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of post-American tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative to defense. Burgeoning research across the social and other sciences, however, undermines that core assumption: states have preferences not only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives. 76 In addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It follows that even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this is indeed sometimes the case. 77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices. To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant deterioration in the security environment in at least some of the world’s key regions. We have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier will yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity, arms racing, crisis instability, nuclear proliferation, and the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain (and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war). Hence it is unsurprising that retrenchment advocates are prone to focus on the second argument noted above: that avoiding wars and security dilemmas in the world’s core regions is not a U.S. national interest. Few doubt that the United States could survive the return of insecurity and conflict among Eurasian powers, but at what cost? Much of the work in this area has focused on the economic externalities of a renewed threat of insecurity and war, which we discuss below. Focusing on the pure security ramifications, there are two main reasons why decisionmakers may be rationally reluctant to run the retrenchment experiment. First, overall higher levels of conflict make the world a more dangerous place. Were Eurasia to return to higher levels of interstate military competition, one would see overall higher levels of military spending and innovation and a higher likelihood of competitive regional proxy wars and arming of client states—all of which would be concerning, in part because it would promote a faster diffusion of military power away from the United States. Greater regional insecurity could well feed proliferation cascades, as states such as Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia all might choose to create nuclear forces. 78 It is unlikely that proliferation decisions by any of these actors would be the end of the game: they would likely generate pressure locally for more proliferation. Following Kenneth Waltz, many retrenchment advocates are proliferation optimists, assuming that nuclear deterrence solves the security problem. 79 Usually carried out in dyadic terms, the debate over the stability of proliferation changes as the numbers go up. Proliferation optimism rests on assumptions of rationality and narrow security preferences. In social science, however, such assumptions are inevitably probabilistic. Optimists assume that most states are led by rational leaders, most will overcome organizational problems and resist the temptation to preempt before feared neighbors nuclearize, and most pursue only security and are risk averse. Confidence in such probabilistic assumptions declines if the world were to move from nine to twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states. In addition, many of the other dangers noted by analysts who are concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation—including the risk of accidents and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will not have truly survivable forces—seem prone to go up as the number of nuclear powers grows. 80 Moreover, the risk of “unforeseen crisis dynamics” that could spin out of control is also higher as the number of nuclear powers increases. Finally, add to these concerns the enhanced danger of nuclear leakage, and a world with overall higher levels of security competition becomes yet more worrisome. The argument that maintaining Eurasian peace is not a U.S. interest faces a second problem. On widely accepted realist assumptions, acknowledging that U.S. engagement preserves peace dramatically narrows the difference between retrenchment and deep engagement. For many supporters of retrenchment, the optimal strategy for a power such as the United States, which has attained regional hegemony and is separated from other great powers by oceans, is offshore balancing: stay over the horizon and “pass the buck” to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing any local rising power. The United States should commit to onshore balancing only when local balancing is likely to fail and a great power appears to be a credible contender for regional hegemony, as in the cases of Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union in the midtwentieth century. The problem is that China’s rise puts the possibility of its attaining regional hegemony on the table, at least in the medium to long term. As Mearsheimer notes, “The United States will have to play a key role in countering China, because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by themselves.” 81 Therefore, unless China’s rise stalls, “the United States is likely to act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.” 82 It follows that the United States should take no action that would compromise its capacity to move to onshore balancing in the future. It will need to maintain key alliance relationships in Asia as well as the formidably expensive military capacity to intervene there. The implication is to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, reduce the presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia— just what the United States is doing. 83 In sum, the argument that U.S. security commitments are unnecessary for peace is countered by a lot of scholarship, including highly influential realist scholarship. In addition, the argument that Eurasian peace is unnecessary for U.S. security is weakened by the potential for a large number of nasty security consequences as well as the need to retain a latent onshore balancing capacity that dramatically reduces the savings retrenchment might bring. Moreover, switching between offshore and onshore balancing could well be difªcult. Bringing together the thrust of many of the arguments discussed so far underlines the degree to which the case for retrenchment misses the underlying logic of the deep engagement strategy. By supplying reassurance, deterrence, and active management, the United States lowers security competition in the world’s key regions, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse atmosphere for growing new military capabilities. Alliance ties dissuade partners from ramping up and also provide leverage to prevent military transfers to potential rivals. On top of all this, the United States’ formidable military machine may deter entry by potential rivals. Current great power military expenditures as a percentage of GDP are at historical lows, and thus far other major powers have shied away from seeking to match top-end U.S. military capabilities. In addition, they have so far been careful to avoid attracting the “focused enmity” of the United States. 84 All of the world’s most modern militaries are U.S. allies (America’s alliance system of more than sixty countries now accounts for some 80 percent of global military spending), and the gap between the U.S. military capability and that of potential rivals is by many measures growing rather than shrinking. 85

2

Mexico should implement customs reform and pursue macroeconomic stability to achieve transparency in financial counts and transaction. 

The counterplan solves—Mexico must start by implementing custom reforms itself
Kar ’12 Dev Kar. January 2012. “Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows, Macroeconomic Imbalances, and the Underground Economy.” http://www.gfintegrity.org/storage/gfip/documents/reports/mexico/gfi_mexico_report_english-web.pdf
First, it is clear that almost three-quarters of total illicit flows over the period 1970-2010 were generated through trade mispricing (Appendix Table 6). Moreover, model simulations indicate that increasing trade openness since 1994 when NAFTA was implemented led to more trade mispricing (see Section III, Table 3 on Structural Equation Estimates, and Box 1). This would strongly suggest that policy should be focused on curtailing trade mispricing. We will point out three policy measures that can go a long way in curbing related illicit outflows. As part of customs reform (which is an on-going World Bank project; reference footnote 15), we propose the implementation of a risk-based price profiling system to curtail the risk of export and import transactions being mispriced in order to transfer illicit capital out of the country. Furthermore, to reduce the risk of willful trade mispricing, we propose that all customs invoices be accompanied by a legal undertaking by exporters and importers as to pricing accuracy. Finally, we propose that multinationals be subject to financial and accounting reporting requirements in order to curtail abusive transfer pricing (ATP).

Pursuing macroeconomic stability solves transparency
Kar ’12 Dev Kar. January 2012. “Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows, Macroeconomic Imbalances, and the Underground Economy.” http://www.gfintegrity.org/storage/gfip/documents/reports/mexico/gfi_mexico_report_english-web.pdf
Third, as the automatic exchange of information seeks to stem outflows by plugging gaps in information in the international financial system (which tax cheats may be using to hide taxable income), this calls for Mexican regulatory agencies to commit to a policy of seeking full transparency in all financial accounts and transactions. These measures call for extensive cooperation between the tax authority under the Ministry of Finance, the Mexican equivalent of the Securities and Exchange Commission (Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores) which oversees the financial, auditing, and other regulatory aspects of domestic and foreign companies operating in Mexico that are publically owned or listed on the Mexican stock exchange, the central bank Banco de Mexico, and the Mexican Justice Department on domestic laws and penalties that apply to non-compliant transactions carried out by individuals and corporations.

3

Interpretation – economic engagement must be conditional
Shinn 96 James Shinn, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia at the CFR in New York City and director of the council’s multi-year Asia Project, worked on economic affairs in the East Asia Bureau of the US Dept of State, “Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement with China,” pp. 9 and 11, google books
In sum, conditional engagement consists of a set of objectives, a strategy for attaining those objectives, and tactics (specific policies) for implementing that strategy.
The objectives of conditional engagement are the ten principles, which were selected to preserve American vital interests in Asia while accommodating China’s emergence as a major power.
The overall strategy of conditional engagement follows two parallel lines: economic engagement, to promote the integration of China into the global trading and financial systems; and security engagement, to encourage compliance with the ten principles by diplomatic and military means when economic incentives do not suffice, in order to hedge against the risk of the emergence of a belligerent China. The tactics of economic engagement should promote China’s economic integration through negotiations on trade liberalization, institution building, and educational exchanges. While a carrots-and-sticks approach may be appropriate within the economic arena, the use of trade sanction to achieve short-term political goals is discouraged. The tactics of security engagement should reduce the risks posed by China’s rapid military expansion, its lack of transparency, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and transnational problems such as crime and illegal migration, by engaging in arms control negotiations, multilateral efforts, and a loosely-structured defensive military arrangement in Asia.8 To footnotes 8. Conditional engagement’s recommended tactics of tit-for-tat responses are equivalent to using carrots and sticks in response to foreign policy actions by China. Economic engagement calls for what is described as symmetric tit-for-tat and security engagement for asymmetric tit-for-tat. A symmetric response is one that counters a move by China in the same place, time, and manner; an asymmetric response might occur in another place at another time, and perhaps in another manner. A symmetric tit-for-tat would be for Washington to counter a Chinese tariff of 10 percent on imports for the United States with a tariff of 10 percent on imports from China. An asymmetric tit-for-tat would be for the United States to counter a Chines shipment of missiles to Iran with an American shipment of F-16s to Vietnam (John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, (1982). This is also cited in Fareed Zakaria, “The Reagan Strategy of Containment,” Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 3 (1990), pp. 383-88).

Violation – the aff is a unilateral engagement with nothing in return– not a quid pro quo offer

Vote negative – quid pro quo gives competition for conditions cp and say no arguments. Key to fight back against aff bias
4

The affirmative rhetorical silence on whiteness is an active stance that allows white privilege to thrive by masking its existence and treating is as an assumed norm.
DR. CRENSHAW Prof of Speech Comm @ Univ. Ala.  1997
Carrie-PhD. USC; former director of debate @ Univ. of Ala.; WESTERN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

This analysis of Helms’ opening argument illustrates how the ideology of white privilege operates through rhetorical silence. Helms’ statement was an argument over the meaning of the UDC—its members, its actions, and its insignia. It was an ideological struggle to maintain silence about the members’ whiteness and its implications through a strategic use of gender. Two key issues arise here. First, rhetorical silence about whiteness sustains an ideology of white privilege. Second, intersecting gendered discourses work to preserve this silence. Helms’ silence about whiteness naturalized the taken-for-granted assumptions contained in his framework for understanding who is harmed by this decision. The “colossal unseen dimensions of the silences and denials surrounding” whiteness are key political tools for protecting white privilege and maintaining the myth of meritocracy (McIntosh 35). This silence is rhetorical and has important ideological implications. Scott observes that silence and speaking have symbolic impact and as such are both rhetorical. When considering the dialectic of speaking and silence, he thinks of silence as the absence of speech. Silence is active, not passive; it may be interpreted. Furthermore, silence and speech may be both simultaneous and sequential. The absence of speech about whiteness signifies that it exists in our discursive silences. It may often be intentional; it can be interpreted, and it can occur simultaneously with the spoken word. Whiteness’ silence is ideological because it signifies that to be white is the natural condition, the assumed norm. Scott notes that silences symbolize the nature of things—their substance or natural condition. Silences symbolize “hierarchical structures as surely as does speech” (15). Indeed, the very structure of privilege generates silences, and “ironically, the most powerful rhetoric for maintaining an existing scheme of privilege will be silent” (10). Thus, silent rhetorical constructions of whiteness like Helms’ protect material white privilege because they mask its existence.

Racism must be rejected in EVERY INSTANCE without surcease. It justifies atrocities, creates another and is truly the CAPITAL SIN.
MEMMI  Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ Unv. Of Paris 2000, Albert-; RACISM, translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission, probably never achieved, yet for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without surcease and without concessions.  One cannot be indulgent toward racism.  One cannot even let the monster in the house, especially not in a mask.  To give it merely a foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and in other people which is to diminish what is human.  To accept the racist universe to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice, and violence.  It is to accept the persistence of the dark history in which we still largely live.  It is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which person man is not themself himself an outsider relative to someone else?).  Racism illustrates in sum, the inevitable negativity of the condition of the dominated; that is it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human condition.  The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate passage from animality to humanity.  In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge.  However, it remains true that one’s moral conduct only emerges from a choice:  one has to want it.  It is a choice among other choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its consequences.  Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order for which racism is the very negation.  This is almost a redundancy.  One cannot found a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on racism because racism signifies the exclusion of the other and his or her subjection to violence and domination.  From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is “the truly capital sin.”fn22  It is not an accident that almost all of humanity’s spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers.  It is not just a question of theoretical counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows or strangers.  It is not just a question of theoretical morality and disinterested commandments.  Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such sentiments.  All things considered, we have an interest in banishing injustice, because injustice engenders violence and death.  Of course, this is debatable.  There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the assault on and oppression of others is permissible.  But no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest.  One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed.  All unjust society contains within itself the seeds of its own death.  It is probably smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect.  “Recall,” says the bible, “that you were once a stranger in Egypt,” which means both that you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming once again someday.  It is an ethical and a practical appeal – indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be.  In short, the refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical morality.  Because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the political choice.  A just society must be a society accepted by all.  If this contractual principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot.  If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace.  True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.

5

Energy reform will pass—Nieto push and Pact for Mexico
Prados 9-3 LUIS PRADOS. 3 SEP 2013.“Mexico’s Peña Nieto pledges to roll on with energy and education reforms.” http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/09/03/inenglish/1378226365_119969.html
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Monday reiterated his commitment to introduce sweeping reforms, including his controversial measure to open Mexico’s state-run oil industry to private investment and the restructuring of the country’s income tax brackets. “Mexico’s transformation is possible and is now under way,” Peña Nieto said in a nationwide televised address to mark his first nine months in office. The leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said he was optimistic about his country’s future despite ongoing demonstrations by teachers over his education reforms and threats by Mexico’s leftist parties to call a nationwide protest over his proposal to open the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to foreign investment. “In the coming months, it will be decided what our history will be for the coming decades,” he said, calling on Mexicans to take advantage of this opportunity to support the changes he proposes. After just one day in office, Peña Nieto last December signed a far-reaching agreement called the Pact for Mexico with the nation’s two largest opposition parties—the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) – to introduce sweeping changes in important sectors. “The window for opportunity is opened,” he said. “We trust in our potential and dare to take that leap forward.” In his speech from Los Pinos presidential palace, Peña Nieto said the PRI didn’t come to office “to administer but to transform” Mexican society.

US economic cooperation is viewed as meddling—obstructs reform and turns case
Hakim ’13 May 1, 2013. Peter Hakim holds a master’s degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton; he is a professor at MIT and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. This was written for Reuters. “Which Mexico for Obama?” http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/05/01/which-mexico-for-obama/
When President Barack Obama meets this week with President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico, he will be visiting a country that was much maligned throughout his first term. Washington has viewed Mexico largely as a source of problems for the United States in the past six years. Many Mexicans, in a mirror image, consider the United States the origin of their troubles. They blame Mexico’s epidemic of violent crime on an insatiable appetite for drugs and loose control over gun and ammunition sales in the United States. In addition, the U.S. financial crisis left the Mexican economy reeling in 2009. But in the past year, particularly since Peña Nieto’s election in July 2012, Mexico’s standing in the United States and internationally has increased dramatically — along with its national self-esteem. Though organized crime and violence remain key concerns for Mexico, stories of economic and social reform are now among the headlines. A November Economist article about Mexico was titled “From Darkness, Dawn.” And that message has become a standard media refrain. Some in Washington talked about Mexico as a likely failed state, but that has been decisively debunked. Mexico is now viewed as on the rise, though its homicide rate has fallen only slightly and no one is sure that improvements can be sustained. In fact, there are many Mexicos for Obama to deal with — the successful and prospering; the backward, corrupt and stagnant; and everything in between. This mix is not unusual. It is characteristic of most nations, even the United States. Obama needs to bring an optimistic perspective with him to Mexico, reflecting the growing confidence that Mexicans have in their country — and the image they project internationally. In this, Obama has little choice. No country is likely to affect the future of the United States more than Mexico, just as none will affect Mexico’s future more than the United States. No two nations have more to gain from energetically pursuing closer cooperation. Mexico’s reinvigorated economy has proven more resilient and vibrant than anyone expected. It shrank by more than 6 percent in 2009, one year after the Wall Street financial collapse, but economic expansion since has been faster than at any time in the past two decades. Mexico’s growth, while modest by Asian standards, has in the past three years been more robust than that of Brazil, one of the region’s strongest economies. It is also competing successfully with China in U.S. markets. Mexico will displace Canada as the largest U.S. trade partner within roughly six years, according to some economic projections. Close U.S.-Mexico economic ties, once seen as the culprit in our southern neighbor’s sluggish growth and sharp downturn, are now, as the U.S. continues to recover, a prime explanation for Mexico’s rising economic fortunes. The future may be even brighter. Peña Nieto has launched an ambitious reform agenda to overcome the many obstacles to stable, rapid economic growth. He is demonstrating the political talent needed to get his policies approved and put into practice. The Mexican president, for example, managed to negotiate the Pacto por Mexico, an accord among the country’s three major parties that bridged many of their long-held ideological differences and secured their agreement on a broad package of economic changes. Despite suffering some tangles and setbacks in recent weeks, the Pacto continues to provide a path forward to far-reaching reform. Peña Nieto plans to revamp Mexico’s oil industry and open it to foreign investment could reverse the decline in oil production and assure that the country remains a leading exporter. Proposed changes would also pave the way for the systematic exploitation of Mexico’s huge, untapped deposits of shale gas and oil. Other reforms are designed to augment government revenue and improve fiscal management. Peña Nieto wants to increase competition in telecommunications and other critical sectors, and upgrade the country’s mediocre schools and universities to raise productivity and create paths for social mobility. This explosion of reform initiatives has helped change opinion in the United States about Mexico. Less than a year ago, Mexico was widely viewed as an increasingly dangerous neighbor. Today, it is talked about as a promising economic partner. The partnership will be far stronger if — as now appears likely — Congress passes sensible and humane immigration reforms. The Mexican government seems most encouraged by the prospect of U.S. legislation that would include an expanded temporary worker program and would provide immediate legal status and a path to citizenship for most currently undocumented immigrants ? about half of whom are Mexican nationals. These changes could substantially eliminate a persistent tension in U.S.-Mexican relations. Mexicans have long been angered and insulted by U.S. debates on immigration, including insistent demands that the border be walled up; the spread of anti-immigration and often anti-Latino legislation in many states and communities, and absurd and offensive proposals like GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s call for migrants to “self-deport.” Equally important, immigration reform will offer an array of economic benefits to both nations. Despite the Peña Nieto administration’s impressive start, however, there is reason for caution in thinking about the future of the country and its relationship with the United States. Mexico clearly looks better than ever, but it was never as seriously endangered as it was reported to be. It was never close to being a failed state. It is true that its homicide rate and violence rose rapidly in the past five years — and the associated brutality was unparalleled. But Mexico’s murders per capita are still far from the highest in Latin America. They regularly trail those of Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, most of Central America and the Caribbean. On the economic side, yes, Mexico has only recently emerged from some 15 years of listless growth. During that period, however, the economy and banking system were well managed. Mexico maintained ample reserves and a low ratio of debt to gross domestic product. Inflation was kept firmly under control. For more than two decades now, Mexico has been building a modern economy with vibrant manufacturing and export sectors well integrated into U.S. supply chains. The Mexican economy was never as troubled as it was portrayed — and now the opportunities for improvement are greater than ever. Still, Mexico is not the sure bet that many believe it to be. It has to demonstrate that it can make its economy grow faster. The past 30 years offer little evidence that Mexico has the potential for sustained, rapid expansion, or for carrying out the reforms that such growth will require. The Mexican economy has long suffered fundamental shortcomings that restrain its productivity, job creation and capacity to compete. The obstacles to change remain formidable. Peña Nieto’s reform initiatives are just getting started. The legislature has already given its initial approval for changes in education, labor laws, telecommunication policy and some other sectors. But in many cases, original proposals have been watered down, additional legislation will also be required in almost every area and effective implementation is still to come. Success will depend heavily on Peña Nieto’s political skills — as well as the technical mastery of his advisers and managers. It will also hinge on whether the fragile inter-party consensus backing the Pacto por Mexico can be sustained and popular support mobilized for change. Crime and violence are likely to remain unrelenting challenges for Peña Nieto. They could even take central stage again. In fact, public security may not improve anytime soon — despite the new government’s multiple initiatives. Peña Nieto’s predecessor, Felipe Calderón, learned how arduous a task it is to reform Mexico’s police and its justice system, and restore public confidence in them. Now, Peña Nieto is making clear his deep dissatisfaction with — and his intention to overhaul — Calderón U.S.-supported approach to security and drug issues. The expected changes will almost surely irritate many in Washington and may even become a new source of  friction in the bilateral relationship.

Nieto’s political capital is key to passage—shores up public support
Wilkinson and Fausset ’13 August 13, 2013. Tracy Wilkinson and Richard Fausset—journalists for the LA Times. “Mexico's officials wage PR battle to sell energy reform plan.” http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/13/world/la-fg-mexico-pemex-pr-20130814
Even if energy reform does deliver the advantages that Peña Nieto is promising, those benefits may not materialize for years. And in the interim, Peña Nieto will have expended serious political capital to pass the controversial reform. Although it is expected that Peña Nieto will have the votes he needs in Congress to win approval for the reform, he has a restive and skeptical public to deal with. Some of the ubiquitous government ads on television and radio Tuesday seemed to have borrowed a page right out of the left's rhetoric: "No to privatization!" the voice-over starts. Then it quickly adds, "Yes to energy reform!" Many opponents of the reform are relying heavily on nationalistic imagery and rhetoric in arguing that Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party is selling the country out to foreign interests. Columnist Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez, writing in the Reforma newspaper, said changing the constitutional provisions on oil and energy was like "putting a miniskirt on the Virgin of Guadalupe," Mexico's most revered Catholic symbol. Especially on the left, where many activists consider themselves the true ideological heir of Cardenas, there was anger over hearing Peña Nieto use the late president's name to sell the proposal. A Twitter fight of sorts raged between "pros" and "cons." "Peña Nieto, do you know who Lazaro Cardenas was?" asked a Twitter user with the moniker Teotihuachango. "Who are they fooling?" asked Claudia Herrera, another Twitter user. Those in favor primarily cited the lift that a more efficient Pemex would provide the Mexican economy. "Reforming Pemex can't wait," wrote Carlos Alberto G. "Mexico needs this to be able to move ahead."

Energy reform solves Mexican manufacturing
Russell ’13 August 30, 2013. K. Alan Russell, President and C.E.O. of the Tecma Group of Companies. “Energy reform is a potential boon to manufacturers in Mexico.” https://exploreb2b.com/articles/energy-reform-is-a-potential-boon-to-manufacturers-in-mexico
In Mexico, schoolchildren are taught to take pride in the state’s ownership of the oil industry, celebrating “Día de la Expropiación Petrolera” on March 18, the day the oil industry was nationalized in 1938. For 75 years, Mexico’s sole oil and gas company, Pemex, has held a state monopoly in this crucial industry, leaving the country with high energy prices and a wariness for foreign involvement in energy resources. In fact, Mexico’s constitution expressly forbids private companies from owning Mexican oil. Any changes made in the industry in the future is a potential gain in competitiveness for manufacturers in Mexico. Change may be on the horizon. This month, the Mexican government announced plans to reform the structure of its energy industry, stopping just short of privatization. Details are still being debated, but it appears that Mexico will soon offer foreign energy companies options to partner with the Mexican government in profit and risk sharing, thus allowing for a dramatic shift in Mexico’s economy some are comparing to the transformation that occurred with the signing of NAFTA. An increase in the production of energy and/or a lowering of prices will, undoubtedly, make manufacturers in Mexico more competitive. The three primary reforms that are being considered include: allowing private companies to explore and extract resources at will with “concessions,” granting private companies production sharing privileges (giving them a portion of oil produced), and allowing them risk-sharing contracts (giving them a share of the profits from resource sales). Foreign Direct Investment stands to increase dramatically if such reforms are implemented. Net annual investments have averaged $20 billion over the last five years. Oil, gas, and power have only received $360 million in the same time period. Economist Nader Nazmi estimates that the ratio of investment to GDP could rise by an additional 2 percentage points from the effects that energy sector reforms could have on public and private investment. An increased energy supply could bolster investment in factories and manufacturers in Mexico, due to the reduced fuel costs producers would face. Some say FDI could hit $50 billion in just the next decade. While a half-hearted effort could wreck expectations and hurt future growth, the push to reform Mexico’s energy sector has the potential to increase the country’s economic growth by 2. In addition to the attractiveness of their low labor costs, Mexico’s dramatically reduced fuel costs could position the country as one of the most cost-effective locations for manufacturing and other business that are energy intensive in nature. As stated by one of the primary architects of the reform proposal, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, “We have a great opportunity to improve the economy, to generate more jobs and to generate competitiveness for Mexican industry through the energy reform.” Mexico may soon swing open the door to such competition. There are high hopes that economic growth and a new era of energy independence and stability will follow close behind.

Key to US Manufacturing
Wilson ‘12 July 26, 2012. Christopher Wilson is an associate at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and the author of the 2011 Wilson Center report Working Together: Economic Ties between the United States and Mexico (Christopher Wilson, Issues in Science and Technology, 07-26-12, “U.S. Competitiveness: The Mexican Connection”, http://www.issues.org/28.4/p_wilson.html
Regional integration between the United States and Mexico is already vast and deep. As the United States’ second largest export market and third largest trading partner, Mexico is clearly important to the U.S. economy. Merchandise made has more than quintupled since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, and in 2011, bilateral goods and services trade reached approximately a half-trillion dollars for the first time. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has calculated that the jobs of six million American workers depend on U.S.-Mexico trade. Many of those jobs are in border states, which have especially close ties to Mexico, but Mexico is also the top buyer of exports from states as far away as New Hampshire (mostly computers and electronics). In fact, 20 states, from Michigan to Florida, sell more than a billion dollars’ worth of goods to Mexico each year, and Mexico is the first or second most important export market for 21 states. The United States and Mexico are also major investors in one another. In fact, combined foreign direct investment holdings now total more than $100 billion. According to the most recent count by the Department of Commerce, U.S.-owned companies operating in Mexico created $25 billion in value added and employed nearly a million workers. Mexican investment in the United States is less than U.S. investment in Mexico, but it is has been growing rapidly in recent years. Several of Mexico’s top companies, which are increasingly global operations, have made significant investments in the United States. Mexico’s Cemex, for example, is North America’s largest maker of cement and concrete products. Grupo Bimbo, which owns well-known brands such as Entenmanns’s, Thomas’s English Muffins, and Sara Lee, is the largest baked goods company in the Americas. Even Saks Fifth Avenue and the New York Times Company are supported by significant Mexican investment. The massive volume of commerce and investment is important, but the depth of regional integration is the primary reason why Mexico contributes to U.S. competitiveness. Mexico and the United States do not just trade products, they build them together. In fact, to understand regional trade, it is necessary to view imports and exports in a different light. Whereas imports from most of the world are what they appear to be—foreign products—the same cannot be said of imports from Mexico. During production, materials and parts often cross the southwest border numerous times while U.S. and Mexican factories each perform the parts of the manufacturing process they can do most competitively. Because of the complementary nature of the two economies, close geographic proximity, and NAFTA, which eliminated most tariff barriers to regional trade, the U.S. and Mexican manufacturing sectors are deeply integrated. Demonstrating this integration is the fact that 40 of the value of U.S. imports from Mexico comes from materials and parts produced in the United States. This means that 40 cents of every dollar the United States spends on Mexican goods actually supports U.S. firms. The only other major trading partner that comes close to this amount is Canada, the United States’ other NAFTA partner, with 25 U.S. content. Chinese imports, on the other hand, have an average of only 4 U.S. content, meaning that the purchase of imports from China does not have the same positive impact on U.S. manufacturers. The regional auto industry is a good example of this production-sharing phenomenon. The United States, Mexico, and Canada each produce and assemble auto parts, sending them back and forth as they work together to build cars and trucks. Cars built in North America are said to have their parts cross the United States borders eight times as they are being produced, and between 80 and 90 of the U.S. auto industry trade with its North American partners is intra-industry, both of which signal an extremely high level of vertical specialization. As a result, Detroit exports more goods to Mexico than any other U.S. city, and the North American auto industry has proven much more resilient than many expected. Although several of North America’s largest automakers nearly collapsed during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, a robust recovery is now under way. Mexico and the United States have each experienced the sharpest rise in vehicle production of the world’s top 10 auto producers during the past two years, growing 51 and 72, respectively, between 2009 and 2011.

Manufacturing is key to the Agriculture industry
Lind and Freeman 12 (Michael Lind, policy director of New America’s Economic Growth Program and a co-founder of the New America Foundation, Joshua Freedman, program associate in New America’s Economic Growth Program, “Value Added: America’s Manufacturing Future,” New America Foundation, April 2012,http://growth.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Lind,20Michael20and20Freedman,20Joshua20-20NAF20-20Value20Added20America27s20Manufacturing20Future.pdf)
Advanced manufacturing is not limited to new, emerging sectors; even manufacturing tied to one of the most “traditional” industries, agriculture, has heavily incorporated technology into its new products. The need for more accurate and efficient farming, as well as the rise of “precision agriculture”—the utilization of technology to accommodate variations within a field—has changed the agricultural manufacturing industry. i Agricultural equipment manufacturers are now creating products that are a far cry from the farm equipment of earlier generations. Replete with LED alerts, touchscreen monitors, and GPS-enabled systems, a modern farm equipment brochure looks like a consumer electronics guide.

Solves extinction
Trewavas, 2k (Anthony, Professor at the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Edinburgh, “GM IS the Best Option We Have”, http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/biotech-art/best_option.html)
In 535A.D. a volcano near the present Krakatoa exploded with the force of 200 million Hiroshima A bombs. The dense cloud of dust so reduced the intensity of the sun that for at least two years thereafter, summer turned to winter and crops here and elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere failed completely. The population survived by hunting a rapidly vanishing population of edible animals. The after-effects continued for a decade and human history was changed irreversibly. But the planet recovered. Such examples of benign nature's wisdom, in full flood as it were, dwarf and make miniscule the tiny modifications we make upon our environment. There are apparently 100 such volcanoes round the world that could at any time unleash forces as great. And even smaller volcanic explosions change our climate and can easily threaten the security of our food supply. Our hold on this planet is tenuous. In the present day an equivalent 535A.D. explosion would destroy much of our civilisation. Only those with agricultural technology sufficiently advanced would have a chance at survival. Colliding asteroids are another problem that requires us to be forward-looking accepting that technological advance may be the only buffer between us and annihilation.
Case
1

Mexican anti-money laundering law solves—provides regulation for illicit funds
Jackson ’12 October 12, 2012. Allison Jackson is a journalist for Global Post. “Mexico passes law to fight money laundering.” http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/mexico/121011/mexico-law-money-laundering
Mexican lawmakers have unanimously approved a new federal law restricting cash purchases of real estate, armored cars and jewelry as part of a crack down on money laundering, Milenio reported. The law will require companies to report cash purchases exceeding 500,000 pesos ($16,000) for property and 200,000 pesos ($39,000) for automobiles and jewelry, Reuters reported. According to the Associated Press, experts said the new regulation, which was passed by the Senate on Thursday, would put a dent in the estimated $10 billion in drug-money that is laundered in the country every year. "There is an outcry from society to weaken the financial structures of organized crime and that is what this law is about," Senator Roberto Gil, a member of the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN), was quoted by Reuters as saying. More from GlobalPost: Drug war ensnares big banks for letting Mexico cartels stash cash President Felipe Calderon, also from the PAN, proposed the law two years ago as part of his aggressive offensive against the country’s powerful drug cartels. More than 60,000 people have died in drug-related violence since December 2006 when Calderon deployed thousands of soliders and federal police to fight organized crime. Calderon will be leave office in December. He will be replaced by the July 1 presidential election winner Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The Law places regulations on financial transactions—limits illicit businesses and reduces the financial incentives for IFF’s
Andersen ’12 October 16, 2012. “Looking At Mexico’s New Anti-Money Laundering Legislation Looking At Mexico’s New Anti-Money Laundering Legislation.” Arya Andersen is a Policy Intern at Global Financial Integrity. http://www.financialtransparency.org/2012/10/16/looking-at-mexicos-new-anti-money-laundering-legislation/
Mexican President Felipe Calderon signed a bill, unanimously passed by the Senate, today aiming to crack down on money laundering that according to experts may account for at least $10 billion every year in Mexico, or as high as $50 billion, according to estimates from Global Financial Integrity. The bill prohibits the giving or accepting of cash payments greater than half a million pesos ($38,750) for real estate purchases, as well as forbidding cash transactions of more than 200,000 pesos ($15,500) for items such as cars, jewelry or lottery tickets. The law also requires brokers and dealers report the forms of payment for any purchases over half a million pesos and for credit card companies to report when monthly balances exceed 50,000 pesos ($3,875). Violators of the law will face up to 20 years in prison, and a specially-designed financial analysis unit has been set up to work under the prosecutor in tandem with the finance ministry. The reasoning behind the law is simple. Financial windfall provides incentives for criminals to continue to break the law, use violence as a means of communication and to generally act with impunity. Closing one very financially beneficial door for organized crime is a logical step in fighting it. “There is no way to go after organized crime, if not to hit their finances,” said Senator Cristina Diaz Salazar, a member of President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party. As long as cartels can legitimize their illegally-obtained billions in real estate, vehicles, lottery tickets and other luxury goods, they’ll be able to continue to fund the violence that has plagued Mexico since it became the main transit point for U.S.-bound South American narcotics in the early 1990s. If implemented correctly and enforced, stronger anti-money laundering rules could not only help Mexico fight its sophisticated organized crime organizations, but also Some in Mexico are opposed to the law. Those in the jewelry and auto industry, specifically, are worried that they will lose business as a result of more strict regulation. This is understandable. However, Alejandro Encinas of the Democratic Revolution Party summed up the reality of the situation in saying “as long as we don’t effectively combat money laundering and dismantle the financial power of organized crime, the problem of violence and drug trafficking won’t disappear from our country.” In the long run, a less violent and more financially transparent system will be more beneficial for all legal businesses. Losing illicit business is a feature, not a bug. Since President Felipe Calderon’s election in 2006, more than 60,000 people have been killed as a result of the violence stemming from turf wars among drug cartels. This law was first introduced in 2010 as part of Calderon’s multi-pronged plan to combat organized crime, proposing to bar all cash real estate purchases as well as cash purchases of cars, planes and other goods for amounts exceeding 100,000 pesos ($7,700). This initial proposal received considerable pushback, likely due to the amount of money at stake and the notorious levels of corruption in the upper echelon of the Mexican political and law enforcement spheres. The official argument against the bill at its inception was that it would inhibit healthy economic growth due to the fact that many small businesses in Mexico still transacted solely in cash. This argument apparently won some legislators over. Sen. Roberto Gil, of Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, said the legislation now going to Calderon for his signature into law “has achieved a healthy and reasonable balance between the need to inhibit the use of cash and the normal development of our country’s economic activity.” The bill now goes to Calderon to be signed, but will not actually go into effect for another nine months, when president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto will be president. The passage of this law is a fantastic example of the very real and tangible intersection of economic regulation and national and international security. Illicit financial flows allow for drug cartels and organized crime to fund the large-scale violence that Mexico has come to know intimately, and less money will invariably mean fewer weapons in the hands of criminals. Though it is a diluted version of its Calderon’s original proposal, this iteration of the law will be a great tool for the Mexican government to lessen the financial incentives of illegal activity while also providing greater insight into the financial behavior of organized crime. 

1. No impact—
   a) No mass economic instability—structural factors make markets resilient
   Zakaria, 09 – Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard, Editor of Newsweek (Fareed, “The Secrets of Stability,” Newsweek, 12/12/09, http://www.newsweek.com/id/226425)
   Others predicted that these economic shocks would lead to political instability and violence in the worst-hit countries. At his confirmation hearing in February, the new U.S. director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, cautioned the Senate that "the financial crisis and global recession are likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging-market nations over the next year." Hillary Clinton endorsed this grim view. And she was hardly alone. Foreign Policy ran a cover story predicting serious unrest in several emerging markets. Of one thing everyone was sure: nothing would ever be the same again. Not the financial industry, not capitalism, not globalization. One year later, how much has the world really changed? Well, Wall Street is home to two fewer investment banks (three, if you count Merrill Lynch). Some regional banks have gone bust. There was some turmoil in Moldova and (entirely unrelated to the financial crisis) in Iran. Severe problems remain, like high unemployment in the West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis—soaring debt and fears of inflation. But overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The predictions of economic and political collapse have not materialized at all. A key measure of fear and fragility is the ability of poor and unstable countries to borrow money on the debt markets. So consider this: the sovereign bonds of tottering Pakistan have returned 168 percent so far this year. All this doesn't add up to a recovery yet, but it does reflect a return to some level of normalcy. And that rebound has been so rapid that even the shrewdest observers remain puzzled. "The question I have at the back of my head is 'Is that it?' " says Charles Kaye, the co-head of Warburg Pincus. "We had this huge crisis, and now we're back to business as usual?" This revival did not happen because markets managed to stabilize themselves on their own. Rather, governments, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression, were determined not to repeat the same mistakes once this crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economy—through central banks and national treasuries—they buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether they made new mistakes in the process remains to be seen.) The extensive social safety nets that have been established across the industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt by many. Times are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s, when governments played a tiny role in national economies. It's true that the massive state interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash and government guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational exuberance in stock and bond markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of confidence, and confidence is a very powerful economic force. When John Maynard Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed government action could provide only a temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking again—the animal spirits of investors, consumers, and companies seeking risk and profit. Beyond all this, though, I believe there's a fundamental reason why we have not faced global collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the stock-market crash of 1987, the recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, and the tech-bubble collapse of 2000. The current global economic system is inherently more resilient than we think. 

b) Core drivers of foreign policy are constant—economic decline has minimal effect
Blackwill 2009 – former associate dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning (Robert, RAND, “The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic Recession—A Caution”, http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf, WEA)
But it is worth asking, as the magisterial American soldier/statesman George Marshall often did, “Why might I be wrong?” If the global economic numbers continue to decline next year and the year after, one must wonder whether any region would remain stable— whether China would maintain internal stability, whether the United States would continue as the pillar of international order, and whether the European Union would hold together. In that same vein, it is unclear today what eff ect, if any, the reckless financial lending and huge public debt that the United States is accumulating, as well as current massive governmental fiscal and monetary intervention in the American economy, will have on U.S. economic dynamism, entrepreneurial creativity, and, consequently, power projection over the very long term. One can only speculate on that issue at present, but it is certainly worth worrying about, and it is the most important “known unknown”27 regarding this subject.28 In addition, perhaps the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on China is more fragile than posited here, and possibly Pakistan and Mexico are much more vulnerable to failed-state outcomes primarily because of the economic downturn than anticipated in this essay. While it seems unlikely that these worst-case scenarios will eventuate as a result of the world recession, they do illustrate again that crucial uncertainties in this analysis are the global downturn’s length and severity and the long-term effects of the Obama Administration’s policies on the U.S. economy. Finally, if not, why not? If the world is in the most severe international economic crisis since the 1930s, why is it not producing structural changes in the global order? A brief answer is that the transcendent geopolitical elements have not altered in substantial ways with regard to individual nations in the two years since the economic crisis began. What are those enduring geopolitical elements? For any given country, they include the following: • Geographic location, topography, and climate. As Robert Kaplan puts it, “to embrace geography is not to accept it as an implacable force against which humankind is powerless. Rather, it serves to qualify human freedom and choice with a modest acceptance of fate.”29 In this connection, see in particular the works of Sir Halford John Mackinder and his The Geographical Pivot of History (1904)30, and Alfred Th ayer Mahan, The Infl uence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890).31 • Demography—the size, birth rate, growth, density, ethnicity, literacy, religions, migration/emigration/ assimilation/absorption, and industriousness of the population. • The histories, foreign and defense policy tendencies, cultural determinants, and domestic politics of individual countries. • The size and strength of the domestic economy. • The quality and pace of technology. • The presence of natural resources. • The character, capabilities, and policies of neighboring states. For the countries that matter most in the global order, perhaps unsurprisingly, none of these decisive variables have changed very much since the global downturn began, except for nations’ weaker economic performances. That single factor is not likely to trump all these other abiding geopolitical determinants and therefore produce international structural change. Moreover, the fundamental power relationships between and among the world’s foremost countries have also not altered, nor have those nations’ perceptions of their vital national interests and how best to promote and defend them. To sum up this pivotal concept, in the absence of war, revolution, or other extreme international or domestic disruptions, for nation-states, the powerful abiding conditions just listed do not evolve much except over the very long term, and thus neither do countries’ strategic intent and core external policies— even, as today, in the face of world economic trials. This point was made earlier about Russia’s enduring national security goals, which go back hundreds of years. Similarly, a Gulf monarch recently advised—with respect to Iran—not to fasten on the views of President Ahmadinejad or Supreme Leader Khamenei. Rather, he counseled that, to best understand contemporary Iranian policy, one should more usefully read the histories, objectives, and strategies of the Persian kings Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, who successively ruled a vast empire around 500 BC.32 The American filmmaker Orson Welles once opined that “To give an accurate description of what never happened is the proper occupation of the historian.” 33 Perhaps the same is occasionally true of pundits.

Growth does not solve war – history proves
Martin ‘6—prof pol science, U France. Chair in Economics at the Paris School of Economics. Former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Former assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies. Visiting researcher at Princeton. PhD from Georgetown. (Phillipe, “Make Trade not War?”, April 12th, 2006. http://www.ecore.be/Papers/1177063947.pdf)

Does globalization pacify international relations? The “liberal” view in political science argues that increasing trade flows, and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This vision, which can partly be traced back to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential: the main objective of the European trade integration process was to prevent the killing and destruction of the two World Wars from ever happening again1. Figure 1 suggests 2 however that on the 1870-2001 period, the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first era of globalization, at the end of the XIXth century, was a period of rising trade openness and of multiple military conflicts, culminating with World War I. Then, the interwar period was characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade increased rapidly while the number of conflicts decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously high). There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically, was a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts even taking into account the increase in the number of sovereign states. 

Poverty is rapidly decreasing
Wolf 3 (Martin, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator – Financial Times “Are Global Poverty and Inequality Getting Worse?”, Prospect Magazine, March, http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?i d=4982)

All data on incomes and income distribution are questionable, above all those generated in developing countries. But, contrary to what you say, World Bank researchers have calculated the numbers in extreme poverty-less than $1 a day-on a consistent basis, in recent studies. The data shows a decline since 1980 of 200m people in the category of the absolutely poor. This is a fall from 31 per cent of the world's population to 20 per cent (not 24 per cent, which is the proportion in developing countries alone). That is a spectacularly rapid fall in poverty by historical standards. It makes a nonsense of the idea that poverty alleviation has been blighted by globalisation. Now turn to the even murkier area of inequality. Here you argue that if we exclude China and India, there is no obvious trend in inequality. But why would one want to exclude two countries that contained about 60 per cent of the world's poorest people two decades ago and still contain almost 40 per cent of the world's population today? To fail to give these giants their due weight in a discussion ofglobal poverty alleviation or income distribution would be Hamlet without the prince. You then write that changes in relative average incomes across countries are not what we are really interested in, "which is the income distribution among all the world's people or households." This is wrong in itself. If a country's average income rises rapidly, it does also possess greater means for improving the lot of the poor. Maybe the government refuses to use the opportunity, but a successor government could. In any case, we do possess data on relative household incomes. In a Foreign Affairs article, David Dollar and Aart Kraay of the World Bank report a big decline in world-wide income inequality since its peak in about 1970. The study builds on work that goes back to 1820. The underlying method is to calculate the percentage gap between a randomly selected individual and the world average. The more unequal the distribution of world income, the bigger that gap becomes. They report that this gap peaked at 88 per cent of world average income in 1970, before falling to 78 per cent in 1995, roughly where it was in 1950. The chief driver of changes in inequality among households is changes between countries, not within them. This was also the finding of Branko Milanovic's study of global household income distribution between 1988 and 1993, which you cite approvingly. You rely on this study to support the thesis of rising household inequality. But it contains at least four defects. First, there are well-known inconsistencies between data on household expenditures and national accounts. Second, the methods used generate no increase in rural real incomes in China, which is inconsistent with most views of what actually happened. Third, the period of five years is very short. Fourth and most important, this was an atypical period, because India had an economic upheaval in 1991, while China's growth was temporarily slowed by the Tiananmen crisis. My conclusion is that the last two decades saw a decline not just in absolute poverty but also in world-wide inequality among households. The chief explanation for this was the fast growth of China and, to a lesser extent, of India. This progress was not offset by rising inequality within them. In the case of India there was no such rise. In China there has been a rise in inequality in the more recent period of its growth, largely because of controls on the movement of people from the hinterland to the coastal regions.

Poverty inevitable – alt causes overwhelm
Baker and Weisbrot 3 (Dean and Mark, Co-Directors – Center for Economic and Policy Research, “False Promises on Trade”, 7-25, http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0725-02.htm)

Similarly, most of sub-Saharan Africa is suffering from an un-payable debt burden. While there has been some limited relief offered in recent years, the remaining debt burden is still more than the debtor countries spend on health care and education. The list of problems imposed on developing countries can be extended at length bans on the industrial policies that led to successful development in the west, the imposition of patents on drugs and copyrights on computer software and recorded material, inappropriate macro-economic policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. All of these factors are likely to have far more severe consequences for the development prospects of low and middle-income countries than the agricultural policies of rich countries.

2

The Mexican economy is resilient – reforms, diversification, low inflation are boosting growth
Jones and Guthrie 13 5/8/13, Kristin Jones and Amy Guthrie are staff writers and analysts @ the Wall Street Journal “Update: Fitch lifts Mexico Rating on Economy, Reforms”, Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130508-718436.html
Fitch Ratings upgraded Mexico by a notch Wednesday, citing the country's strong economic fundamentals, stable oil production, progress in addressing drug-related violence and a greater-than-anticipated political commitment to pass structural reforms. The ratings firm put Mexico's long-term foreign currency issuer default rating at triple-B-plus, three rungs into investment grade. The outlook is stable. Fitch noted Mexico's economic resilience despite a sluggish economy in the U.S., Mexico's key trading partner, with three-year growth averaging 4.5 in 2012. The agency also praised Mexico's prudent macro-economic policy, which underpins the country's low inflation. In upgrading Mexico, Fitch jumped ahead of Standard and Poor's, which in March changed Mexico's outlook to positive from stable, citing the reform momentum. SandP and Fitch both cut the country to triple-B from triple-B-plus in late 2009, when the global financial crisis led Mexico's economy to contract 6 and the peso to lose more than a quarter of its value against the U.S. dollar. Moody's Investors Service kept Mexico at Baa1, the equivalent of triple-B-plus and two notches above the minimum investment grade. The government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office in December, has "reinvigorated" Mexico's reform momentum to pass structural reforms that had languished for many years, Fitch said Wednesday. Cooperation among Mexico's three major political parties in recent months has led to overhauls of labor rules, public education and telecoms. Still pending are more ambitious reworkings of the tax code and a possible opening of foreign investment in the oil sector. Combined, the reforms are seen eventually boosting Mexico's annual economic growth by one percentage point. A recent dispute over government spending ahead of July local elections threatened to derail the reform drive. The political forces behind the reform effort, known as the Pact for Mexico, reconciled their differences on Tuesday. "The pact has achieved a pace that doesn't cease to surprise, and a pace that shouldn't be lost," Cesar Camacho, national president of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, said Wednesday at an event beside other top political leaders, all of whom reiterated their commitment to secure more reforms. Mr. Pena Nieto thanked his colleagues on Wednesday for their "political will" to overcome differences and advance a common agenda to make Mexico more competitive internationally and more fair at home. The Fitch upgrade gave the Mexican peso a boost Wednesday as the currency moved below MXN12 to the U.S. dollar for the first time since August 2011, trading in Mexico City at MXN11.9780, according to Infosel, compared with MXN12.0355 at the close Tuesday. Local government bonds yields were lower on the day, with 10-year bonds due 2022 yielding 4.46, down four basis points from Tuesday's close. Fitch said its previous concerns about oil production and violence had eased, citing the diversification of the oil production base and a decline in the homicide rate in recent months. Sustained high growth and fiscal flexibility would be positive for ratings, while a persistently underperforming economy and destabilizing debt dynamics would be negative, Fitch said.

No bioterror
Keller 3/7 (Rebecca – Analyst at Stratfor, Post-Doctoral Fellow at University of Colorado at Boulder, 2013, "Bioterrorism and the Pandemic Potential," http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/bioterrorism-and-pandemic-potential)
It is important to remember that the risk of biological attack is very low and that, partly because viruses can mutate easily, the potential for natural outbreaks is unpredictable. The key is having the right tools in case of an outbreak, epidemic or pandemic, and these include a plan for containment, open channels of communication, scientific research and knowledge sharing. In most cases involving a potential pathogen, the news can appear far worse than the actual threat. Infectious Disease Propagation Since the beginning of February there have been occurrences of H5N1 (bird flu) in Cambodia, H1N1 (swine flu) in India and a new, or novel, coronavirus (a member of the same virus family as SARS) in the United Kingdom. In the past week, a man from Nepal traveled through several countries and eventually ended up in the United States, where it was discovered he had a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report stating that antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals are on the rise. In addition, the United States is experiencing a worse-than-normal flu season, bringing more attention to the influenza virus and other infectious diseases. The potential for a disease to spread is measured by its effective reproduction number, or R-value, a numerical score that indicates whether a disease will propagate or die out. When the disease first occurs and no preventive measures are in place, the reproductive potential of the disease is referred to as R0, the basic reproduction rate. The numerical value is the number of cases a single case can cause on average during its infectious period. An R0 above 1 means the disease will likely spread (many influenza viruses have an R0 between 2 and 3, while measles had an R0 value of between 12 and 18), while an R-value of less than 1 indicates a disease will likely die out. Factors contributing to the spread of the disease include the length of time people are contagious, how mobile they are when they are contagious, how the disease spreads (through the air or bodily fluids) and how susceptible the population is. The initial R0, which assumes no inherent immunity, can be decreased through control measures that bring the value either near or below 1, stopping the further spread of the disease. Both the coronavirus family and the influenza virus are RNA viruses, meaning they replicate using only RNA (which can be thought of as a single-stranded version of DNA, the more commonly known double helix containing genetic makeup). The rapid RNA replication used by many viruses is very susceptible to mutations, which are simply errors in the replication process. Some mutations can alter the behavior of a virus, including the severity of infection and how the virus is transmitted. The combination of two different strains of a virus, through a process known as antigenic shift, can result in what is essentially a new virus. Influenza, because it infects multiple species, is the hallmark example of this kind of evolution. Mutations can make the virus unfamiliar to the body's immune system. The lack of established immunity within a population enables a disease to spread more rapidly because the population is less equipped to battle the disease. The trajectory of a mutated virus (or any other infectious disease) can reach three basic levels of magnitude. An outbreak is a small, localized occurrence of a pathogen. An epidemic indicates a more widespread infection that is still regional, while a pandemic indicates that the disease has spread to a global level. Virologists are able to track mutations by deciphering the genetic sequence of new infections. It is this technology that helped scientists to determine last year that a smattering of respiratory infections discovered in the Middle East was actually a novel coronavirus. And it is possible that through a series of mutations a virus like H5N1 could change in such a way to become easily transmitted between humans. Lessons Learned There have been several influenza pandemics throughout history. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is often cited as a worst-case scenario, since it infected between 20 and 40 percent of the world's population, killing roughly 2 percent of those infected. In more recent history, smaller incidents, including an epidemic of the SARS virus in 2003 and what was technically defined as a pandemic of the swine flu (H1N1) in 2009, caused fear of another pandemic like the 1918 occurrence. The spread of these two diseases was contained before reaching catastrophic levels, although the economic impact from fear of the diseases reached beyond the infected areas. Previous pandemics have underscored the importance of preparation, which is essential to effective disease management. The World Health Organization lays out a set of guidelines for pandemic prevention and containment. The general principles of preparedness include stockpiling vaccines, which is done by both the United States and the European Union (although the possibility exists that the vaccines may not be effective against a new virus). In the event of an outbreak, the guidelines call for developed nations to share vaccines with developing nations. Containment strategies beyond vaccines include quarantine of exposed individuals, limited travel and additional screenings at places where the virus could easily spread, such as airports. Further measures include the closing of businesses, schools and borders. Individual measures can also be taken to guard against infection. These involve general hygienic measures -- avoiding mass gatherings, thoroughly washing hands and even wearing masks in specific, high-risk situations. However, airborne viruses such as influenza are still the most difficult to contain because of the method of transmission. Diseases like noroviruses, HIV or cholera are more serious but have to be transmitted by blood, other bodily fluids or fecal matter. The threat of a rapid pandemic is thereby slowed because it is easier to identify potential contaminates and either avoid or sterilize them. Research is another important aspect of overall preparedness. Knowledge gained from studying the viruses and the ready availability of information can be instrumental in tracking diseases. For example, the genomic sequence of the novel coronavirus was made available, helping scientists and doctors in different countries to readily identify the infection in limited cases and implement quarantine procedures as necessary. There have been only 13 documented cases of the novel coronavirus, so much is unknown regarding the disease. Recent cases in the United Kingdom indicate possible human-to-human transmission. Further sharing of information relating to the novel coronavirus can aid in both treatment and containment. Ongoing research into viruses can also help make future vaccines more efficient against possible mutations, though this type of research is not without controversy. A case in point is research on the H5N1 virus. H5N1 first appeared in humans in 1997. Of the more than 600 cases that have appeared since then, more than half have resulted in death. However, the virus is not easily transmitted because it must cross from bird to human. Human-to-human transmission of H5N1 is very rare, with only a few suspected incidents in the known history of the disease. While there is an H5N1 vaccine, it is possible that a new variation of the vaccine would be needed were the virus to mutate into a form that was transmittable between humans. Vaccines can take months or even years to develop, but preliminary research on the virus, before an outbreak, can help speed up development. In December 2011, two separate research labs, one in the United States and one in the Netherlands, sought to publish their research on the H5N1 virus. Over the course of their research, these labs had created mutations in the virus that allowed for airborne transmission between ferrets. These mutations also caused other changes, including a decrease in the virus's lethality and robustness (the ability to survive outside the carrier). Publication of the research was delayed due to concerns that the results could increase the risk of accidental release of the virus by encouraging further research, or that the information could be used by terrorist organizations to conduct a biological attack. Eventually, publication of papers by both labs was allowed. However, the scientific community imposed a voluntary moratorium in order to allow the community and regulatory bodies to determine the best practices moving forward. This voluntary ban was lifted for much of the world on Jan. 24, 2013. On Feb. 21, the National Institutes of Health in the United States issued proposed guidelines for federally funded labs working with H5N1. Once standards are set, decisions will likely be made on a case-by-case basis to allow research to continue. Fear of a pandemic resulting from research on H5N1 continues even after the moratorium was lifted. Opponents of the research cite the possibility that the virus will be accidentally released or intentionally used as a bioweapon, since information in scientific publications would be considered readily available. The Risk-Reward Equation The risk of an accidental release of H5N1 is similar to that of other infectious pathogens currently being studied. Proper safety standards are key, of course, and experts in the field have had a year to determine the best way to proceed, balancing safety and research benefits. Previous work with the virus was conducted at biosafety level three out of four, which requires researchers wearing respirators and disposable gowns to work in pairs in a negative pressure environment. While many of these labs are part of universities, access is controlled either through keyed entry or even palm scanners. There are roughly 40 labs that submitted to the voluntary ban. Those wishing to resume work after the ban was lifted must comply with guidelines requiring strict national oversight and close communication and collaboration with national authorities. The risk of release either through accident or theft cannot be completely eliminated, but given the established parameters the risk is minimal. The use of the pathogen as a biological weapon requires an assessment of whether a non-state actor would have the capabilities to isolate the virulent strain, then weaponize and distribute it. Stratfor has long held the position that while terrorist organizations may have rudimentary capabilities regarding biological weapons, the likelihood of a successful attack is very low. Given that the laboratory version of H5N1 -- or any influenza virus, for that matter -- is a contagious pathogen, there would be two possible modes that a non-state actor would have to instigate an attack. The virus could be refined and then aerosolized and released into a populated area, or an individual could be infected with the virus and sent to freely circulate within a population. There are severe constraints that make success using either of these methods unlikely. The technology needed to refine and aerosolize a pathogen for a biological attack is beyond the capability of most non-state actors. Even if they were able to develop a weapon, other factors such as wind patterns and humidity can render an attack ineffective. Using a human carrier is a less expensive method, but it requires that the biological agent be a contagion. Additionally, in order to infect the large number of people necessary to start an outbreak, the infected carrier must be mobile while contagious, something that is doubtful with a serious disease like small pox. The carrier also cannot be visibly ill because that would limit the necessary human contact. As far as continued research is concerned, there is a risk-reward equation to consider. The threat of a terrorist attack using biological weapons is very low. And while it is impossible to predict viral outbreaks, it is important to be able to recognize a new strain of virus that could result in an epidemic or even a pandemic, enabling countries to respond more effectively. All of this hinges on the level of preparedness of developed nations and their ability to rapidly exchange information, conduct research and promote individual awareness of the threat.

Terror threats on the border are exaggerated—suspicious activity has never been detected
Isacson and Meyer ’12 April 2012. Adam Isacson and Maureen Meyer are Washington’s Office of Latin American Affairs’ border security and migration experts. “Beyond the Border Buildup: Security and Migrants Along the U.S.-Mexico Border.” http://www.wola.org/files/Beyond_the_Border_Buildup_FINAL.pdf
The New Border Context When U.S. political leaders and opinion makers call for more actions to secure the border with Mexico, the threats they cite most frequently are terrorism, drug trafficking, violent organized crime, and uncontrolled migration. This study does not explore the motives behind these positions, which range from concern about national security to pandering to voters’ fears of a foreign “other.” Of greater interest is the degree to which these threats are actually manifesting themselves, and whether they should be considered “threats” at all. TERRORISM The first threat, the possibility that members of a foreign terrorist organization might attempt to cross the border from Mexico to harm U.S. citizens, leaders, or infrastructure, has underlain a tremendous increase in U.S. border security investment since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Today, “The priority mission of Border Patrol is preventing terrorists and terrorists’ weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States,” reads the first text on the gateway page of the agency’s website.6 To date, however, no member of a group on the Department of State’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations has been detected attempting to cross the Mexico-U.S. border with intent to do harm. In December 1999, a “millennium” plot to bomb Los Angeles’ international airport was foiled by customs agents who found a bomb in the car of an Algerian citizen seeking to enter the United States from Canada.7 In October 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged that Iranian officials sought help from sources whom they thought were members of Mexico’s Zetas criminal organization in a bizarre plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States.8 Neither of these episodes involved the United States’ southwest border with Mexico. The “terrorist crossing the porous border through Mexico” scenario continues to worry U.S. planners, though, because of the serious consequences that even a very unlikely event might have. Opinions differ on whether a putative terrorist would seek to work within existing drug or migrant trafficking networks. Some officials and analysts contend that criminal organizations would gladly assist a terrorist for the right price. Others hold the view that “the first time a terrorist uses a trafficker’s route is the last time that trafficker will ever get to use” that lucrative route, which is a cost too high to bear.9

Multiple barriers mean bioterror is extremely unlikely
Schneidmiller, Global Security Newswire, 1-13-09 (Chris, “Experts Debate Threat of Nuclear, Biological Terrorism,” http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090113_7105.php)

Panel moderator Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, said academic and governmental discussions of acts of nuclear or biological terrorism have tended to focus on "worst-case assumptions about terrorists' ability to use these weapons to kill us." There is need for consideration for what is probable rather than simply what is possible, he said. Friedman took issue with the finding late last year of an experts' report that an act of WMD terrorism would "more likely than not" occur in the next half decade unless the international community takes greater action. "I would say that the report, if you read it, actually offers no analysis to justify that claim, which seems to have been made to change policy by generating alarm in headlines." One panel speaker offered a partial rebuttal to Mueller's presentation. Jim Walsh, principal research scientist for the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he agreed that nations would almost certainly not give a nuclear weapon to a nonstate group, that most terrorist organizations have no interest in seeking out the bomb, and that it would be difficult to build a weapon or use one that has been stolen. However, he disputed Mueller's assertion that nations can be trusted to secure their atomic weapons and materials. "I don't think the historical record shows that at all," Walsh said. Black-market networks such as the organization once operated by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan remain a problem and should not be assumed to be easily defeated by international intelligence services, Walsh said (see GSN, Jan. 13). It is also reasonable to worry about extremists gaining access to nuclear blueprints or poorly secured stocks of highly enriched uranium, he said. "I worry about al-Qaeda 4.0, kids in Europe who go to good schools 20 years from now. Or types of terrorists we don't even imagine," Walsh said. Greater consideration must be given to exactly how much risk is tolerable and what actions must be taken to reduce the threat, he added. "For all the alarmism, we haven't done that much about the problem," Walsh said. "We've done a lot in the name of nuclear terrorism, the attack on Iraq, these other things, but we have moved ever so modestly to lock down nuclear materials." Biological Terrorism Another two analysts offered a similar debate on the potential for terrorists to carry out an attack using infectious disease material. Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, played down the threat in comparison to other health risks. Bioterrorism has killed five U.S. citizens in the 21st century -- the victims of the 2001 anthrax attacks, he said. Meanwhile, at least 400,000 deaths are linked each year to obesity in this country. The United States has authorized $57 billion in spending since the anthrax mailings for biological prevention and defense activities, Leitenberg said. Much of the money would have been better used to prepare for pandemic flu, he argued. "Mistaken threat assessments make mistaken policy and make mistaken allocation of financial resources," Leitenberg said. The number of states with offensive biological weapons programs appears to have stabilized at six beginning in the mid-1970s, despite subsequent intelligence estimates that once indicated an increasing number of efforts, Leitenberg said. Caveats in present analyses of those states make it near-impossible to determine the extent to which their activities remain offensive in nature, he added. There has been minimal proliferation of biological expertise or technology to nations of concern in recent decades, Leitenberg said. He identified roughly 12 Russian scientists who ended up in Iran and shipments of technology and pathogen strains to Iraq from France, Germany, the former Soviet Union and the United States between 1980 and 1990. No evidence exists of state assistance to nonstate groups in this sector. Two prominent extremist organizations, al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, failed to produce pathogenic disease strains that could be used in an attack, according to Leitenberg. Terrorists would have to acquire the correct disease strain, handle it safely, correctly reproduce and store the material and then disperse it properly, Leitenberg said. He dismissed their ability to do so. "What we've found so far is that those people have been totally abysmally ignorant of how to read the technical, professional literature," Leitenberg said. "What's on the jihadi Web sites comes from American poisoners' handbooks sold here at gun shows. Which can't make anything and what it would make is just garbage." 

Biological weapons won’t be used and won’t cause extinction
Mueller, 2005 (John, Professor of political science at Ohio State University, “Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration,” International Studies Perspectives, 6, 208-234)

Properly developed and deployed, biological weapons could indeed, if thus far only in theory, kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people. The discussion remains theoretical because biological weapons have scarcely ever been used even though the knowledge about their destructive potential as weapons goes back decades, even centuries in some respects (the English, e.g., made some efforts to spread smallpox among American Indians in the French and Indian War) (Christopher, Cieslak, Pavlin, and Eitzen, 1997:412). Belligerents have eschewed such weapons with good reason: biological weapons are extremely difficult to deploy and to control. Terrorist groups or rogue states may be able to solve such problems in the future with advances in technology and knowledge, but the record thus far is unlikely to be very encouraging to them. For example, Japan reportedly infected wells in Manchuria and bombed several Chinese cities with plague-infested fleas before and during the Second World War. These ventures may have killed thousands of Chinese, but they apparently also caused thousands of unintended casualties among Japanese troops and seem to have had little military impact.18 In the 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult that had some 300 scientists in its employ and an estimated budget of $1 billion, reportedly tried at least nine times over 5 years to set off biological weapons by spraying pathogens from trucks and wafting them from rooftops, hoping fancifully to ignite an apocalyptic war. These efforts failed to create a single fatality in fact, nobody even noticed that the attacks had taken place (Broad, 1998; Rapoport, 1999:57). For the most destructive results, biological weapons need to be dispersed in very lowaltitude aerosol clouds: aerosols do not appreciably settle, and anthrax (which is not easy to spread or catch and is not contagious) would probably have to be sprayed near nose level (Meselson, 1995; Panofsky, 1998; Terry, 1998). Explosive methods of dispersion may destroy the organisms. Moreover, except for anthrax spores, long-term storage of lethal organisms in bombs or warheads is difficult, and, even if refrigerated, most of the organisms have a limited lifetime. The effects of such weapons can take days or weeks to have full effect, during which time they can be countered with civil defense measures. And their impact is very difficult to predict and in combat situationsmay spread back on the attacker (OTA, 1993:48–49, 62; Broad and Miller, 1998; Easterbrook, 2002). 

No Solvency: Their author says you have to ban bioweapons to solve – All other options fail
Ochs – Their Author, MA in Natural Resource Management from Rutgers, 6-9-2 (Richard, “Biological Weapons Must Be Abolished Immediately,” http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)

There are many people who believe it is their God-given right to do whatever is deemed necessary to secure their homeland, their religion and their birthright. Moslems, Jews, Hindus, ultra-patriots (and fundamentalist Christians who believe that Armageddon is God’s prophesy) all have access to the doomsday vials at Fort Detrick and other labs. Fort Detrick and Dugway employees are US citizens but may also have other loyalties. One or more of them might have sent the anthrax letters to the media and Congress last year. Are we willing to trust our security, NO -- trust human survival to people like this? Human frailty, duplicity, greed, zealotry, insanity, intolerance and ignorance, not to speak of ultra-patriotism, will always be with us. The mere existence of these doomsday weapons is a risk too great for rational people to tolerate.  Unless guards do body crevice searches of lab employees every day, smuggling out a few grams will be a piece of cake. Basically, THERE CAN BE NO SECURITY. Humanity is at great risk as we speak. All biological weapons must be destroyed immediately. All genetic engineering of new diseases must be halted. All bioweapons labs must be dismantled. Fort Detrick and Dugway labs must be decommissioned and torn down. Those who continue this research are potential war criminals of the highest order. Secret bioweapons research must be outlawed.  The US, as the world’s leading creator of doomsday diseases, must lead the way and show the example. The US must not only obey the Convention Against Biological Weapons, which it has been violating, but it must sign the Biological Weapons Inspection Treaty, which it has been opposing. International delegations must be allowed to inspect and oversee the destruction of these labs and inventories. The doctrine of military deterrence must give way to the logic of human survival. Human survival must come before national sovereignty. 

No Bioterror escalation
Easterbrook (Gregg, The New Republic Editor) 2003 Wired, "We're All Gonna Die!" 11/7, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/doomsday.html

3. Germ warfare!  Like chemical agents, biological weapons have never lived up to their billing in popular culture. Consider the 1995 medical thriller Outbreak, in which a highly contagious virus takes out entire towns. The reality is quite different. Weaponized smallpox escaped from a Soviet laboratory in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, in 1971; three people died, no epidemic followed. In 1979, weapons-grade anthrax got out of a Soviet facility in Sverdlovsk (now called Ekaterinburg); 68 died, no epidemic. The loss of life was tragic, but no greater than could have been caused by a single conventional bomb.  In 1989, workers at a US government facility near Washington were accidentally exposed to Ebola virus. They walked around the community and hung out with family and friends for several days before the mistake was discovered. No one died.  The fact is, evolution has spent millions of years conditioning mammals to resist germs. Consider the Black Plague. It was the worst known pathogen in history, loose in a Middle Ages society of poor public health, awful sanitation, and no antibiotics. Yet it didn't kill off humanity. Most people who were caught in the epidemic survived. Any superbug introduced into today's Western world would encounter top-notch public health, excellent sanitation, and an array of medicines specifically engineered to kill bioagents. Perhaps one day some aspiring Dr. Evil will invent a bug that bypasses the immune system. Because it is possible some novel superdisease could be invented, or that existing pathogens like smallpox could be genetically altered to make them more virulent (two-thirds of those who contract natural smallpox survive), biological agents are a legitimate concern. They may turn increasingly troublesome as time passes and knowledge of biotechnology becomes harder to control, allowing individuals or small groups to cook up nasty germs as readily as they can buy guns today. But no superplague has ever come close to wiping out humanity before, and it seems unlikely to happen in the future.

Small Risk of Bioterror
Lake (Anthony, G-Town Diplomacy Prof) 2001 The Georgetown Public Policy Review, "Bioterrorism: Interview with Anthony Lake," Spring, LN

It's much harder to develop a biological weapon than a chemical weapon and much, much harder than using computers for terrorist action. So, if you're calculating probabilities, then bioterrorism, probably even more than some forms of nuclear terrorism, is relatively unlikely. I do not walk around everyday worrying that people are dumping microbes in the ventilation ducts of the building I'm in. If we allow ourselves to become scared of this, then in a way, the terrorists have won. If we alter our behavior too much beyond prudent or preventative and preparatory efforts, then the terrorists have won. I don't think the chances are at all high that this will happen; in fact, I think they're very very low. However, the fact is that the Aum Shirinkyo was trying to develop biological weapons and probably used sarin because the Japanese police were closing in on them. (I believe they lost a scientist in the process of trying to develop biological weapons.) We should lament any death, anywhere, but that would be low on the list of lamentations. So while it's very unlikely, it is possible, and in fact we have entered the age in which there have been active efforts to try to develop biological weapons.

Bioweapons can’t be used – too unreliable
Laqueur 99 (Walter, Cochairman, International Research Council, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, The New Terrorism, 1999, pg. 69)

The attractions of biological weapons are obvious: easy access, low cost, toxicity, and the panic they can cause. But there are drawbacks of various kinds that explain why almost no successful attacks have occurred. While explosive or nuclear devices or even chemical agents, however horrific, affect a definite space, biological agents are unpredictable: they can easily get out of control, backfire, or have no effect at all. They constitute a high risk to the attackers, although the same, of course, is true of chemical weapons. This consideration may not dissuade people willing to sacrifice their own lives, but the possibility that the attacker may kill himself before being able to launch an attack may make him hesitate to carry it out.  Biological agents, with some notable exceptions, are affected by changes in heat or cold, and, like chemical agents, by changes in the direction of the wind. They have a limited life span, and their means of delivery are usually complicated. The process of contaminating water res¬ervoirs or foodstuffs involves serious technical problems. Even if an agent survives the various purification systems in water reservoirs, boiling the water would destroy most germs. Dispersing the agent as a vapor or via an aerosol system within a closed space for instance, through the air conditioning system of a big building or in a subway would ear to offer better chances of success, but it is by no mens foolproof.

Technical barriers prevent bioweapons
Tucker 8-99 (Jonathan, director of the CBW Nonproliferation Project at Center for Nonprolif Studies at Monterey Instit, Amy Sands, assoc director, July/August 1999, http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/ja99/ja99tucker.html)

One reason there have been so few successful examples of chemical or biological terrorism is that carrying out an attack requires overcoming a series of major technical hurdles: gaining access to specialized chemical-weapon ingredients or virulent microbial strains; acquiring equipment and know-how for agent production and dispersal; and creating an organizational structure capable of resisting infiltration or early detection by law enforcement. Many of the microorganisms best suited to catastrophic terrorism-virulent strains of anthrax or deadly viruses such as smallpox and Ebola-are difficult to acquire. Further, nearly all viral and rickettsial agents are hard to produce, and bacteria such as plague are difficult to "weaponize" so that they will survive the process of delivery. As former Soviet bioweapons scientist Ken Alibek wrote in his recent memoir, Biohazard, "The most virulent culture in a test tube is useless as an offensive weapon until it has been put through a process that gives it stability and predictability. The manufacturing technique is, in a sense, the real weapon, and it is harder to develop than individual agents." The capability to disperse microbes and toxins over a wide area as an inhalable aerosol-the form best suited for inflicting mass casualties-requires a delivery system whose development would outstrip the technical capabilities of all but the most sophisticated terrorists. Not only is the dissemination process for biological agents inherently complex, requiring specialized equipment and expertise, but effective dispersal is easily disrupted by environmental and meteorological conditions. A large-scale attack with anthrax spores against a city, for example, would require the use of a crop duster with custom-built spray nozzles that could generate a high-concentration aerosol cloud containing particles of agent between one and five microns in size. Particles smaller than one micron would not lodge in the victims' lungs, while particles much larger than five microns would not remain suspended for long in the atmosphere. To generate mass casualties, the anthrax would have to be dried and milled into a fine powder. Yet this type of processing requires complex and costly equipment, as well as systems for high biological containment. Anthrax is simpler to handle in a wet form called a "slurry," but the efficiency of aerosolization is greatly reduced.

US efforts to combat Mexican drug trafficking are counter-productive – new Mexican administration doesn’t want to work with the US
Priest 5/1 May 1, 2013. Dana Priest is a national security reporter whose work focuses on intelligence and counterterrorism. “U.S. role to decrease as Mexico’s drug-war strategy shifts” http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2020902455_mexicoobamaxml.html
The new administration has shifted priorities away from the U.S.-backed strategy of arresting kingpins, which sparked an unprecedented level of violence among the cartels, and toward an emphasis on prevention and keeping Mexico’s streets safe and calm, Mexican authorities said. Some U.S. officials fear the coming of an unofficial truce with cartel leaders. The Mexicans see it otherwise. “The objective of fighting organized crime is not in conflict with achieving peace,” said Eduardo Medina-Mora, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States. Two weeks after Peña Nieto assumed office Dec. 1, the new president sent his top five security officials to an unusual meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. The new attorney general and interior minister sat in silence next to the new leaders of the army, navy and Mexican intelligence agency. Also at the Dec. 15 meeting were representatives from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the CIA, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other U.S. agencies charged with helping Mexico destroy the drug cartels that had besieged the country for the past decade. The Mexicans remained stone-faced as they learned how entwined the two countries had become during the battle against narco-traffickers, and how, in the process, the United States had been given near-complete access to Mexico’s territory and the secrets of its citizens, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. The administration of the previous president, Felipe Calderón, had granted U.S. spy planes access to Mexican airspace to gather intelligence. Unarmed Customs and Border Protection drones had flown from U.S. bases in support of Mexican military and federal police raids against drug targets and to track movements that would establish suspects’ “patterns of life.” The United States had also provided electronic signals technology, ground sensors, voice-recognition gear, cellphone-tracking devices, data-analysis tools, computer hacking kits and airborne cameras that could read license plates from three miles away. Under a classified program code-named SCENIC, the CIA was training Mexicans how to target and vet potential assets for recruitment and how to guard against infiltration by narco-traffickers. In deference to their visitors, the U.S. briefers left out that most of the 25 kingpin taken off the streets in the past five years had been removed because of U.S.-supplied information, according to people familiar with the meeting. Also unremarked upon was the mounting criticism that success against the cartels’ leadership had helped incite more violence than anyone had predicted, more than 60,000 deaths and 25,000 disappearances in the past seven years. Meanwhile, Mexico remains the U.S. market’s largest supplier of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine and the transshipment point for 95 percent of its cocaine. When the Dec. 15 meeting concluded, Mexico’s new security officials remained poker-faced.

Drug violence declining
Bargent 2-7-13 (James, Independent journalism from Colombia and Latin America, “Mexico Drug War Violence Slowing: Report”, Febraury 7th, 2013, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/mexico-drug-war-violence-slowing-report)
A new report analyzing the data behind Mexico’s drug war shows in 2012 organized crime related killings declined or leveled off while becoming increasingly concentrated in key strategic areas. The report, compiled by the San Diego University’s Trans-Border Institute, analyzed a range of data sources -- both official and independent -- to build a comprehensive picture of the shifting violence patterns in Mexico. The most significant trend identified was the slowing rate of drug war killings. While the conclusions of different data sets varied widely, they agreed that in 2012 the substantial year on year increases Mexico has seen since 2007 came to an end. According to data collated by Mexican newspaper Reforma, organized crime related murders dropped by over 21 percent, falling to 8,989 from 12,284. Projections for the government’s as yet unreleased figures show a 28 drop. However, figures from another media source, Milenio, showed an increase in its crime related murder tallies but by less than 1 percent – far lower than in previous years. The report also highlights how Mexico’s drug war violence is increasingly concentrated. Between 2007 and 2011, the number of municipalities that recorded no murders dropped by 28 percent, while the number of municipalities with 25 or more annual homicides grew from 50 to 240. However, in 2012, (for which, the report points out, the data set is incomplete) the number of municipalities free from violence increased 16 while the number with more than 25 homicides decreased more than 25 to 178. Over half the organized crime linked murders nationwide came from just five states; Sinaloa, Chihuaha, Nuevo Leon, Guerrero and Coahuila (although the order depends of the data set). 2012 also saw Acapulco assume the mantle of Mexico’s most violent city, even though the murder rate leveled off, while the cities of Monterrey, Torreon, and Nuevo Laredo posted the largest increases in crime related killings. InSight Crime While the authorities will probably lay claim to the slowdown in drug violence, it is likely a more influential factor has been changing dynamics in the Mexican underworld, as reflected by the shifting geographical patterns. 

1

Debt ceiling will be raised without confrontation but lawmakers can shift
Espo 9-18 09/18/2013. DAVID ESPO AP Special Correspondent. “Dodge default, defund Obamacare, GOP leaders say.” http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_24119843/ap-sources-revised-gop-attack-obamacare
The RSC claims a membership of 175 members, about three-quarters of the House Republican rank and file. The bill's introduction comes at a time when party leaders have yet to advance any comprehensive alternative to the law Obama signed in 2010, though the GOP House has voted repeatedly to repeal all or part of it. The GOP pledged three years ago to "repeal and replace" the existing law, a promise Obama often notes with disdain. The approach outlined Wednesday by Boehner and the GOP leadership team underscored how quickly tea party lawmakers have shifted their principal focus in the weeks since Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah as well as the outside groups began stressing the issue in TV ads. The leadership's initial proposal for avoiding a partial government shutdown was to couple funding for federal programs with a requirement for the Senate to cast a vote on defunding the health care program, a requirement that could easily have been evaded. Conservatives quickly rebelled against that approach, forcing Boehner and his lieutenants to regroup. Even as they did, they sought to emphasize their commitment to cutting federal spending and curtailing the debt, two issues that have consistently united the fractious rank and file since Republicans took control of the House nearly three years ago. "Not since the Korean War has the federal government reduced spending two years in a row. We aim to make that happen," said the Republican majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. Spending would be set at $986.3 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, although that would be further reduced in January by a new round of across-the-board sequester cuts that would trim the level to $967 billion. "There should be no conversation about shutting the government down. That's not the goal here," Boehner said. Republicans paid a heavy political price two decades ago as the result of twin government shutdowns, at a time then-Speaker Newt Gingrich was insisting President Bill Clinton agree to cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and other popular programs. Nor are Republicans eager to shoulder the blame for any market-shaking government default, which would probably occur if the Treasury could not continue to borrow funds to pay debts already incurred. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has estimated that without action by Congress, that default will arrive in mid-

IFF legislation has stalled in Congress and enforcement isn’t happening—lack of political will
Cassara ’13 MARCH 5, 2013. JOHN A. CASSARA, INDUSTRY ADVISER TO SAS FEDERAL LLC. “Our anti-money laundering efforts have failed.” http://www.sas.com/knowledge-exchange/risk/fraud-financial-crimes/our-anti-money-laundering-efforts-have-failed/index.html
The overseas metrics are equally depressing. According to the Department of State, “far too many countries that boast solid anti-money laundering standards and infrastructures do not enforce their laws. This is true in all corners of the world and for both developed and developing countries alike. In many instances, the lack of enforcement is due to lack of capacity, but in some cases it is due to a lack of political will.” Talking aimlessly Some believe that recent eye-catching actions against major banks may create change. For example, HSBC was fined $1.9 billion for failing to pursue anti-money laundering within its branches. However, this is a regulatory action. The $1.9 billion is not going to be taken from drug traffickers but from the shareholders of HSBC. And not one individual will be prosecuted  In 2005, I wrote Hide and Seek: Intelligence, Law Enforcement and the Stalled War on Terror Finance. I was very concerned that the US might be moving away from effective anti-money laundering and financial crimes enforcement. I felt our war on terror finance was “stalled.” I suggested that a new emphasis be placed on enforcing the laws, rules and regulations that are already on the books. I urged Congress and regulatory agencies to step up oversight. Most important, I argued that real progress requires a different philosophical and bureaucratic emphasis. Simply put, we have to get back to the basics of enforcement.

Obama’s cooperation is key
Moore 9-10 September 10, 2013. Heidi Moore is Guardian’s US Finance and Economics Editor. “Syria: the great distraction; Obama is focused on a conflict abroad, but the fight he should be gearing up for is with Congress on America's economic security.” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/obama-syria-what-about-sequester
Before President Obama speaks to the nation about Syria tonight, take a look at what this fall will look like inside America. There are 49 million people in the country who suffered inadequate access to food in 2012, leaving the percentage of "food-insecure" Americans at about one-sixth of the US population. At the same time, Congress refused to pass food-stamp legislation this summer, pushing it off again and threatening draconian cuts. The country will crash into the debt ceiling in mid-October, which would be an economic disaster, especially with a government shutdown looming at the same time. These are deadlines that Congress already learned two years ago not to toy with, but memories appear to be preciously short. The Federal Reserve needs a new chief in three months, someone who will help the country confront its raging unemployment crisis that has left 12 million people without jobs. The president has promised to choose a warm body within the next three weeks, despite the fact that his top pick, Larry Summers, would likely spark an ugly confirmation battle – the "fight of the century," according to some – with a Congress already unwilling to do the President's bidding. Congress was supposed to pass a farm bill this summer, but declined to do so even though the task is already two years late. As a result, the country has no farm bill, leaving agricultural subsidies up in the air, farmers uncertain about what their financial picture looks like, and a potential food crisis on the horizon. The two main housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been in limbo for four years and are desperately in need of reform that should start this fall, but there is scant attention to the problem. These are the problems going unattended by the Obama administration while his aides and cabinet members have been wasting the nation's time making the rounds on television and Capitol Hill stumping for a profoundly unpopular war. The fact that all this chest-beating was for naught, and an easy solution seems on the horizon, belies the single-minded intensity that the Obama White House brought to its insistence on bombing Syria. More than one wag has suggested, with the utmost reason, that if Obama had brought this kind of passion to domestic initiatives, the country would be in better condition right now. As it is, public policy is embarrassingly in shambles at home while the administration throws all of its resources and political capital behind a widely hated plan to get involved in a civil war overseas. The upshot for the president may be that it's easier to wage war with a foreign power than go head-to-head with the US Congress, even as America suffers from neglect. This is the paradox that President Obama is facing this fall, as he appears to turn his back on a number of crucial and urgent domestic initiatives in order to spend all of his meager political capital on striking Syria. Syria does present a significant humanitarian crisis, which has been true for the past two years that the Obama administration has completely ignored the atrocities of Bashar al-Assad. Two years is also roughly the same amount of time that key domestic initiatives have also gone ignored as Obama and Congress engage in petty battles for dominance and leave the country to run itself on a starvation diet imposed by sequestration cuts. Leon Panetta tells the story of how he tried to lobby against sequestration only to be told: Leon, you don't understand. The Congress is resigned to failure. Similarly, those on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, those working at government agencies, and voters themselves have become all too practiced at ignoring the determined incompetence of those in Washington. Political capital – the ability to horse-trade and win political favors from a receptive audience – is a finite resource in Washington. Pursuing misguided policies takes up time, but it also eats up credibility in asking for the next favor. It's fair to say that congressional Republicans, particularly in the House, have no love for Obama and are likely to oppose anything he supports. That's exactly the reason the White House should stop proposing policies as if it is scattering buckshot and focus with intensity on the domestic tasks it wants to accomplish, one at a time. The president is scheduled to speak six times this week, mostly about Syria. That includes evening news interviews, an address to the nation, and numerous other speeches. Behind the scenes, he is calling members of Congress to get them to fall into line. Secretary of State John Kerry is omnipresent, so ubiquitous on TV that it may be easier just to get him his own talk show called Syria Today. It would be a treat to see White House aides lobbying as aggressively – and on as many talk shows – for a better food stamp bill, an end to the debt-ceiling drama, or a solution to the senseless sequestration cuts, as it is on what is clearly a useless boondoggle in Syria. There's no reason to believe that Congress can have an all-consuming debate about Syria and then, somehow refreshed, return to a domestic agenda that has been as chaotic and urgent as any in recent memory. The President should have judged his options better. As it is, he should now judge his actions better.

A drawn out debt ceiling debate crushes US legitimacy
Babones ’13 May 21, 2013. Salvatore Babones is a senior lecturer in sociology and social policy Sydney and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. “The Debt Ceiling Debate That Wasn't.” http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16504-the-debt-ceiling-debate-that-wasnt
The debt ceiling has been reached multiple times since the beginning of the global financial crisis, and another debt ceiling crisis is right around the corner. Except that there will be no crisis, because the country is Australia. Just like the United States, Australia has a debt ceiling. Australian borrowing bumps up against this ceiling on a regular basis. And just as in the United States, the debt ceiling is an absolute limit on government spending that cannot be transgressed even if the Australian parliament has passed a bill authorizing additional expenditures. But there the similarity ends. Australia has no debates over default, no dramatic government shutdowns, no sequestration and no fiscal cliffs. When the government reaches the debt ceiling, the ceiling is raised in an orderly manner. No one panics. Everyone gets paid. It used to work that way in the United States, too. The debt ceiling has only come to be politicized in recent years. This situation is ludicrous - and dangerous. Once the government has incurred a legal obligation, we should all expect the government to meet it. America's debt ceiling brinksmanship has made us a global laughingstock. In no other developed country do political parties threaten to push the government into default if they don't get their way. This kind of take-no-prisoners politics is more characteristic of third-world dictatorships than first-world democracies. The United States doesn't have to have a debt ceiling. At the next reauthorization which by most accounts will be the 90th or so Congress could simply abolish the ceiling. But Australia's experience shows this is unnecessary. If America's politicians could be as sober and mature as Australia's, we wouldn't have to worry about it. The Australians I know will be rolling in the aisles to hear their politicians described as "sober and mature." Australian politics is highly partisan, often very personal and nothing if not robust. But it is not self-destructive. America - and America's politicians - could learn some important lessons in democracy from looking overseas. America's own democracy is, perhaps, not the example it once was.

Solves Extinction
Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth ’13
(Stephen, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, 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, 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,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7–51)
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 States’ overseas presence gives it the leverage to restrain partners from taking provocative action. Perhaps more important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security dilemmas. The contention that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the “American Pacifier” is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions replete with security competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasia’s security setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists maintain that the high expected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasia’s major states could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without the American pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship, particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point to—such as democratic governance or dense institutional linkages—are either absent or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal. Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result might be a Europe that is incapable of securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the 1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed by Washington— notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding the region’s prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could stoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It is notable that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity and were only constrained from doing so by a still-engaged United States. 75 The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism’s sanguine portrayal is all of the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism’s optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent on its particular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of post-American tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative to defense. Burgeoning research across the social and other sciences, however, undermines that core assumption: states have preferences not only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives. 76 In addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It follows that even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this is indeed sometimes the case. 77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices. To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant deterioration in the security environment in at least some of the world’s key regions. We have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier will yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity, arms racing, crisis instability, nuclear proliferation, and the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain (and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war). Hence it is unsurprising that retrenchment advocates are prone to focus on the second argument noted above: that avoiding wars and security dilemmas in the world’s core regions is not a U.S. national interest. Few doubt that the United States could survive the return of insecurity and conflict among Eurasian powers, but at what cost? Much of the work in this area has focused on the economic externalities of a renewed threat of insecurity and war, which we discuss below. Focusing on the pure security ramifications, there are two main reasons why decisionmakers may be rationally reluctant to run the retrenchment experiment. First, overall higher levels of conflict make the world a more dangerous place. Were Eurasia to return to higher levels of interstate military competition, one would see overall higher levels of military spending and innovation and a higher likelihood of competitive regional proxy wars and arming of client states—all of which would be concerning, in part because it would promote a faster diffusion of military power away from the United States. Greater regional insecurity could well feed proliferation cascades, as states such as Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia all might choose to create nuclear forces. 78 It is unlikely that proliferation decisions by any of these actors would be the end of the game: they would likely generate pressure locally for more proliferation. Following Kenneth Waltz, many retrenchment advocates are proliferation optimists, assuming that nuclear deterrence solves the security problem. 79 Usually carried out in dyadic terms, the debate over the stability of proliferation changes as the numbers go up. Proliferation optimism rests on assumptions of rationality and narrow security preferences. In social science, however, such assumptions are inevitably probabilistic. Optimists assume that most states are led by rational leaders, most will overcome organizational problems and resist the temptation to preempt before feared neighbors nuclearize, and most pursue only security and are risk averse. Confidence in such probabilistic assumptions declines if the world were to move from nine to twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states. In addition, many of the other dangers noted by analysts who are concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation—including the risk of accidents and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will not have truly survivable forces—seem prone to go up as the number of nuclear powers grows. 80 Moreover, the risk of “unforeseen crisis dynamics” that could spin out of control is also higher as the number of nuclear powers increases. Finally, add to these concerns the enhanced danger of nuclear leakage, and a world with overall higher levels of security competition becomes yet more worrisome. The argument that maintaining Eurasian peace is not a U.S. interest faces a second problem. On widely accepted realist assumptions, acknowledging that U.S. engagement preserves peace dramatically narrows the difference between retrenchment and deep engagement. For many supporters of retrenchment, the optimal strategy for a power such as the United States, which has attained regional hegemony and is separated from other great powers by oceans, is offshore balancing: stay over the horizon and “pass the buck” to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing any local rising power. The United States should commit to onshore balancing only when local balancing is likely to fail and a great power appears to be a credible contender for regional hegemony, as in the cases of Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union in the midtwentieth century. The problem is that China’s rise puts the possibility of its attaining regional hegemony on the table, at least in the medium to long term. As Mearsheimer notes, “The United States will have to play a key role in countering China, because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by themselves.” 81 Therefore, unless China’s rise stalls, “the United States is likely to act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.” 82 It follows that the United States should take no action that would compromise its capacity to move to onshore balancing in the future. It will need to maintain key alliance relationships in Asia as well as the formidably expensive military capacity to intervene there. The implication is to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, reduce the presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia— just what the United States is doing. 83 In sum, the argument that U.S. security commitments are unnecessary for peace is countered by a lot of scholarship, including highly influential realist scholarship. In addition, the argument that Eurasian peace is unnecessary for U.S. security is weakened by the potential for a large number of nasty security consequences as well as the need to retain a latent onshore balancing capacity that dramatically reduces the savings retrenchment might bring. Moreover, switching between offshore and onshore balancing could well be difªcult. Bringing together the thrust of many of the arguments discussed so far underlines the degree to which the case for retrenchment misses the underlying logic of the deep engagement strategy. By supplying reassurance, deterrence, and active management, the United States lowers security competition in the world’s key regions, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse atmosphere for growing new military capabilities. Alliance ties dissuade partners from ramping up and also provide leverage to prevent military transfers to potential rivals. On top of all this, the United States’ formidable military machine may deter entry by potential rivals. Current great power military expenditures as a percentage of GDP are at historical lows, and thus far other major powers have shied away from seeking to match top-end U.S. military capabilities. In addition, they have so far been careful to avoid attracting the “focused enmity” of the United States. 84 All of the world’s most modern militaries are U.S. allies (America’s alliance system of more than sixty countries now accounts for some 80 percent of global military spending), and the gap between the U.S. military capability and that of potential rivals is by many measures growing rather than shrinking. 85

2

Mexico should implement customs reform and pursue macroeconomic stability to achieve transparency in financial counts and transaction. 

The counterplan solves—Mexico must start by implementing custom reforms itself
Kar ’12 Dev Kar. January 2012. “Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows, Macroeconomic Imbalances, and the Underground Economy.” http://www.gfintegrity.org/storage/gfip/documents/reports/mexico/gfi_mexico_report_english-web.pdf
First, it is clear that almost three-quarters of total illicit flows over the period 1970-2010 were generated through trade mispricing (Appendix Table 6). Moreover, model simulations indicate that increasing trade openness since 1994 when NAFTA was implemented led to more trade mispricing (see Section III, Table 3 on Structural Equation Estimates, and Box 1). This would strongly suggest that policy should be focused on curtailing trade mispricing. We will point out three policy measures that can go a long way in curbing related illicit outflows. As part of customs reform (which is an on-going World Bank project; reference footnote 15), we propose the implementation of a risk-based price profiling system to curtail the risk of export and import transactions being mispriced in order to transfer illicit capital out of the country. Furthermore, to reduce the risk of willful trade mispricing, we propose that all customs invoices be accompanied by a legal undertaking by exporters and importers as to pricing accuracy. Finally, we propose that multinationals be subject to financial and accounting reporting requirements in order to curtail abusive transfer pricing (ATP).

Pursuing macroeconomic stability solves transparency
Kar ’12 Dev Kar. January 2012. “Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows, Macroeconomic Imbalances, and the Underground Economy.” http://www.gfintegrity.org/storage/gfip/documents/reports/mexico/gfi_mexico_report_english-web.pdf
Third, as the automatic exchange of information seeks to stem outflows by plugging gaps in information in the international financial system (which tax cheats may be using to hide taxable income), this calls for Mexican regulatory agencies to commit to a policy of seeking full transparency in all financial accounts and transactions. These measures call for extensive cooperation between the tax authority under the Ministry of Finance, the Mexican equivalent of the Securities and Exchange Commission (Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores) which oversees the financial, auditing, and other regulatory aspects of domestic and foreign companies operating in Mexico that are publically owned or listed on the Mexican stock exchange, the central bank Banco de Mexico, and the Mexican Justice Department on domestic laws and penalties that apply to non-compliant transactions carried out by individuals and corporations.

3

Interpretation – economic engagement must be conditional
Shinn 96 James Shinn, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia at the CFR in New York City and director of the council’s multi-year Asia Project, worked on economic affairs in the East Asia Bureau of the US Dept of State, “Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement with China,” pp. 9 and 11, google books
In sum, conditional engagement consists of a set of objectives, a strategy for attaining those objectives, and tactics (specific policies) for implementing that strategy.
The objectives of conditional engagement are the ten principles, which were selected to preserve American vital interests in Asia while accommodating China’s emergence as a major power.
The overall strategy of conditional engagement follows two parallel lines: economic engagement, to promote the integration of China into the global trading and financial systems; and security engagement, to encourage compliance with the ten principles by diplomatic and military means when economic incentives do not suffice, in order to hedge against the risk of the emergence of a belligerent China. The tactics of economic engagement should promote China’s economic integration through negotiations on trade liberalization, institution building, and educational exchanges. While a carrots-and-sticks approach may be appropriate within the economic arena, the use of trade sanction to achieve short-term political goals is discouraged. The tactics of security engagement should reduce the risks posed by China’s rapid military expansion, its lack of transparency, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and transnational problems such as crime and illegal migration, by engaging in arms control negotiations, multilateral efforts, and a loosely-structured defensive military arrangement in Asia.8 To footnotes 8. Conditional engagement’s recommended tactics of tit-for-tat responses are equivalent to using carrots and sticks in response to foreign policy actions by China. Economic engagement calls for what is described as symmetric tit-for-tat and security engagement for asymmetric tit-for-tat. A symmetric response is one that counters a move by China in the same place, time, and manner; an asymmetric response might occur in another place at another time, and perhaps in another manner. A symmetric tit-for-tat would be for Washington to counter a Chinese tariff of 10 percent on imports for the United States with a tariff of 10 percent on imports from China. An asymmetric tit-for-tat would be for the United States to counter a Chines shipment of missiles to Iran with an American shipment of F-16s to Vietnam (John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, (1982). This is also cited in Fareed Zakaria, “The Reagan Strategy of Containment,” Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 3 (1990), pp. 383-88).

Violation – the aff is a unilateral engagement with nothing in return– not a quid pro quo offer

Vote negative – quid pro quo gives competition for conditions cp and say no arguments. Key to fight back against aff bias
4

The affirmative rhetorical silence on whiteness is an active stance that allows white privilege to thrive by masking its existence and treating is as an assumed norm.
DR. CRENSHAW Prof of Speech Comm @ Univ. Ala.  1997
Carrie-PhD. USC; former director of debate @ Univ. of Ala.; WESTERN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

This analysis of Helms’ opening argument illustrates how the ideology of white privilege operates through rhetorical silence. Helms’ statement was an argument over the meaning of the UDC—its members, its actions, and its insignia. It was an ideological struggle to maintain silence about the members’ whiteness and its implications through a strategic use of gender. Two key issues arise here. First, rhetorical silence about whiteness sustains an ideology of white privilege. Second, intersecting gendered discourses work to preserve this silence. Helms’ silence about whiteness naturalized the taken-for-granted assumptions contained in his framework for understanding who is harmed by this decision. The “colossal unseen dimensions of the silences and denials surrounding” whiteness are key political tools for protecting white privilege and maintaining the myth of meritocracy (McIntosh 35). This silence is rhetorical and has important ideological implications. Scott observes that silence and speaking have symbolic impact and as such are both rhetorical. When considering the dialectic of speaking and silence, he thinks of silence as the absence of speech. Silence is active, not passive; it may be interpreted. Furthermore, silence and speech may be both simultaneous and sequential. The absence of speech about whiteness signifies that it exists in our discursive silences. It may often be intentional; it can be interpreted, and it can occur simultaneously with the spoken word. Whiteness’ silence is ideological because it signifies that to be white is the natural condition, the assumed norm. Scott notes that silences symbolize the nature of things—their substance or natural condition. Silences symbolize “hierarchical structures as surely as does speech” (15). Indeed, the very structure of privilege generates silences, and “ironically, the most powerful rhetoric for maintaining an existing scheme of privilege will be silent” (10). Thus, silent rhetorical constructions of whiteness like Helms’ protect material white privilege because they mask its existence.

Racism must be rejected in EVERY INSTANCE without surcease. It justifies atrocities, creates another and is truly the CAPITAL SIN.
MEMMI  Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ Unv. Of Paris 2000, Albert-; RACISM, translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission, probably never achieved, yet for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without surcease and without concessions.  One cannot be indulgent toward racism.  One cannot even let the monster in the house, especially not in a mask.  To give it merely a foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and in other people which is to diminish what is human.  To accept the racist universe to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice, and violence.  It is to accept the persistence of the dark history in which we still largely live.  It is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which person man is not themself himself an outsider relative to someone else?).  Racism illustrates in sum, the inevitable negativity of the condition of the dominated; that is it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human condition.  The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate passage from animality to humanity.  In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge.  However, it remains true that one’s moral conduct only emerges from a choice:  one has to want it.  It is a choice among other choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its consequences.  Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order for which racism is the very negation.  This is almost a redundancy.  One cannot found a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on racism because racism signifies the exclusion of the other and his or her subjection to violence and domination.  From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is “the truly capital sin.”fn22  It is not an accident that almost all of humanity’s spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers.  It is not just a question of theoretical counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows or strangers.  It is not just a question of theoretical morality and disinterested commandments.  Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such sentiments.  All things considered, we have an interest in banishing injustice, because injustice engenders violence and death.  Of course, this is debatable.  There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the assault on and oppression of others is permissible.  But no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest.  One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed.  All unjust society contains within itself the seeds of its own death.  It is probably smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect.  “Recall,” says the bible, “that you were once a stranger in Egypt,” which means both that you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming once again someday.  It is an ethical and a practical appeal – indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be.  In short, the refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical morality.  Because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the political choice.  A just society must be a society accepted by all.  If this contractual principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot.  If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace.  True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.

5

Energy reform will pass—Nieto push and Pact for Mexico
Prados 9-3 LUIS PRADOS. 3 SEP 2013.“Mexico’s Peña Nieto pledges to roll on with energy and education reforms.” http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/09/03/inenglish/1378226365_119969.html
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Monday reiterated his commitment to introduce sweeping reforms, including his controversial measure to open Mexico’s state-run oil industry to private investment and the restructuring of the country’s income tax brackets. “Mexico’s transformation is possible and is now under way,” Peña Nieto said in a nationwide televised address to mark his first nine months in office. The leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said he was optimistic about his country’s future despite ongoing demonstrations by teachers over his education reforms and threats by Mexico’s leftist parties to call a nationwide protest over his proposal to open the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to foreign investment. “In the coming months, it will be decided what our history will be for the coming decades,” he said, calling on Mexicans to take advantage of this opportunity to support the changes he proposes. After just one day in office, Peña Nieto last December signed a far-reaching agreement called the Pact for Mexico with the nation’s two largest opposition parties—the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) – to introduce sweeping changes in important sectors. “The window for opportunity is opened,” he said. “We trust in our potential and dare to take that leap forward.” In his speech from Los Pinos presidential palace, Peña Nieto said the PRI didn’t come to office “to administer but to transform” Mexican society.

US economic cooperation is viewed as meddling—obstructs reform and turns case
Hakim ’13 May 1, 2013. Peter Hakim holds a master’s degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton; he is a professor at MIT and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. This was written for Reuters. “Which Mexico for Obama?” http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/05/01/which-mexico-for-obama/
When President Barack Obama meets this week with President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico, he will be visiting a country that was much maligned throughout his first term. Washington has viewed Mexico largely as a source of problems for the United States in the past six years. Many Mexicans, in a mirror image, consider the United States the origin of their troubles. They blame Mexico’s epidemic of violent crime on an insatiable appetite for drugs and loose control over gun and ammunition sales in the United States. In addition, the U.S. financial crisis left the Mexican economy reeling in 2009. But in the past year, particularly since Peña Nieto’s election in July 2012, Mexico’s standing in the United States and internationally has increased dramatically — along with its national self-esteem. Though organized crime and violence remain key concerns for Mexico, stories of economic and social reform are now among the headlines. A November Economist article about Mexico was titled “From Darkness, Dawn.” And that message has become a standard media refrain. Some in Washington talked about Mexico as a likely failed state, but that has been decisively debunked. Mexico is now viewed as on the rise, though its homicide rate has fallen only slightly and no one is sure that improvements can be sustained. In fact, there are many Mexicos for Obama to deal with — the successful and prospering; the backward, corrupt and stagnant; and everything in between. This mix is not unusual. It is characteristic of most nations, even the United States. Obama needs to bring an optimistic perspective with him to Mexico, reflecting the growing confidence that Mexicans have in their country — and the image they project internationally. In this, Obama has little choice. No country is likely to affect the future of the United States more than Mexico, just as none will affect Mexico’s future more than the United States. No two nations have more to gain from energetically pursuing closer cooperation. Mexico’s reinvigorated economy has proven more resilient and vibrant than anyone expected. It shrank by more than 6 percent in 2009, one year after the Wall Street financial collapse, but economic expansion since has been faster than at any time in the past two decades. Mexico’s growth, while modest by Asian standards, has in the past three years been more robust than that of Brazil, one of the region’s strongest economies. It is also competing successfully with China in U.S. markets. Mexico will displace Canada as the largest U.S. trade partner within roughly six years, according to some economic projections. Close U.S.-Mexico economic ties, once seen as the culprit in our southern neighbor’s sluggish growth and sharp downturn, are now, as the U.S. continues to recover, a prime explanation for Mexico’s rising economic fortunes. The future may be even brighter. Peña Nieto has launched an ambitious reform agenda to overcome the many obstacles to stable, rapid economic growth. He is demonstrating the political talent needed to get his policies approved and put into practice. The Mexican president, for example, managed to negotiate the Pacto por Mexico, an accord among the country’s three major parties that bridged many of their long-held ideological differences and secured their agreement on a broad package of economic changes. Despite suffering some tangles and setbacks in recent weeks, the Pacto continues to provide a path forward to far-reaching reform. Peña Nieto plans to revamp Mexico’s oil industry and open it to foreign investment could reverse the decline in oil production and assure that the country remains a leading exporter. Proposed changes would also pave the way for the systematic exploitation of Mexico’s huge, untapped deposits of shale gas and oil. Other reforms are designed to augment government revenue and improve fiscal management. Peña Nieto wants to increase competition in telecommunications and other critical sectors, and upgrade the country’s mediocre schools and universities to raise productivity and create paths for social mobility. This explosion of reform initiatives has helped change opinion in the United States about Mexico. Less than a year ago, Mexico was widely viewed as an increasingly dangerous neighbor. Today, it is talked about as a promising economic partner. The partnership will be far stronger if — as now appears likely — Congress passes sensible and humane immigration reforms. The Mexican government seems most encouraged by the prospect of U.S. legislation that would include an expanded temporary worker program and would provide immediate legal status and a path to citizenship for most currently undocumented immigrants ? about half of whom are Mexican nationals. These changes could substantially eliminate a persistent tension in U.S.-Mexican relations. Mexicans have long been angered and insulted by U.S. debates on immigration, including insistent demands that the border be walled up; the spread of anti-immigration and often anti-Latino legislation in many states and communities, and absurd and offensive proposals like GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s call for migrants to “self-deport.” Equally important, immigration reform will offer an array of economic benefits to both nations. Despite the Peña Nieto administration’s impressive start, however, there is reason for caution in thinking about the future of the country and its relationship with the United States. Mexico clearly looks better than ever, but it was never as seriously endangered as it was reported to be. It was never close to being a failed state. It is true that its homicide rate and violence rose rapidly in the past five years — and the associated brutality was unparalleled. But Mexico’s murders per capita are still far from the highest in Latin America. They regularly trail those of Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, most of Central America and the Caribbean. On the economic side, yes, Mexico has only recently emerged from some 15 years of listless growth. During that period, however, the economy and banking system were well managed. Mexico maintained ample reserves and a low ratio of debt to gross domestic product. Inflation was kept firmly under control. For more than two decades now, Mexico has been building a modern economy with vibrant manufacturing and export sectors well integrated into U.S. supply chains. The Mexican economy was never as troubled as it was portrayed — and now the opportunities for improvement are greater than ever. Still, Mexico is not the sure bet that many believe it to be. It has to demonstrate that it can make its economy grow faster. The past 30 years offer little evidence that Mexico has the potential for sustained, rapid expansion, or for carrying out the reforms that such growth will require. The Mexican economy has long suffered fundamental shortcomings that restrain its productivity, job creation and capacity to compete. The obstacles to change remain formidable. Peña Nieto’s reform initiatives are just getting started. The legislature has already given its initial approval for changes in education, labor laws, telecommunication policy and some other sectors. But in many cases, original proposals have been watered down, additional legislation will also be required in almost every area and effective implementation is still to come. Success will depend heavily on Peña Nieto’s political skills — as well as the technical mastery of his advisers and managers. It will also hinge on whether the fragile inter-party consensus backing the Pacto por Mexico can be sustained and popular support mobilized for change. Crime and violence are likely to remain unrelenting challenges for Peña Nieto. They could even take central stage again. In fact, public security may not improve anytime soon — despite the new government’s multiple initiatives. Peña Nieto’s predecessor, Felipe Calderón, learned how arduous a task it is to reform Mexico’s police and its justice system, and restore public confidence in them. Now, Peña Nieto is making clear his deep dissatisfaction with — and his intention to overhaul — Calderón U.S.-supported approach to security and drug issues. The expected changes will almost surely irritate many in Washington and may even become a new source of  friction in the bilateral relationship.

Nieto’s political capital is key to passage—shores up public support
Wilkinson and Fausset ’13 August 13, 2013. Tracy Wilkinson and Richard Fausset—journalists for the LA Times. “Mexico's officials wage PR battle to sell energy reform plan.” http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/13/world/la-fg-mexico-pemex-pr-20130814
Even if energy reform does deliver the advantages that Peña Nieto is promising, those benefits may not materialize for years. And in the interim, Peña Nieto will have expended serious political capital to pass the controversial reform. Although it is expected that Peña Nieto will have the votes he needs in Congress to win approval for the reform, he has a restive and skeptical public to deal with. Some of the ubiquitous government ads on television and radio Tuesday seemed to have borrowed a page right out of the left's rhetoric: "No to privatization!" the voice-over starts. Then it quickly adds, "Yes to energy reform!" Many opponents of the reform are relying heavily on nationalistic imagery and rhetoric in arguing that Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party is selling the country out to foreign interests. Columnist Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez, writing in the Reforma newspaper, said changing the constitutional provisions on oil and energy was like "putting a miniskirt on the Virgin of Guadalupe," Mexico's most revered Catholic symbol. Especially on the left, where many activists consider themselves the true ideological heir of Cardenas, there was anger over hearing Peña Nieto use the late president's name to sell the proposal. A Twitter fight of sorts raged between "pros" and "cons." "Peña Nieto, do you know who Lazaro Cardenas was?" asked a Twitter user with the moniker Teotihuachango. "Who are they fooling?" asked Claudia Herrera, another Twitter user. Those in favor primarily cited the lift that a more efficient Pemex would provide the Mexican economy. "Reforming Pemex can't wait," wrote Carlos Alberto G. "Mexico needs this to be able to move ahead."

Energy reform solves Mexican manufacturing
Russell ’13 August 30, 2013. K. Alan Russell, President and C.E.O. of the Tecma Group of Companies. “Energy reform is a potential boon to manufacturers in Mexico.” https://exploreb2b.com/articles/energy-reform-is-a-potential-boon-to-manufacturers-in-mexico
In Mexico, schoolchildren are taught to take pride in the state’s ownership of the oil industry, celebrating “Día de la Expropiación Petrolera” on March 18, the day the oil industry was nationalized in 1938. For 75 years, Mexico’s sole oil and gas company, Pemex, has held a state monopoly in this crucial industry, leaving the country with high energy prices and a wariness for foreign involvement in energy resources. In fact, Mexico’s constitution expressly forbids private companies from owning Mexican oil. Any changes made in the industry in the future is a potential gain in competitiveness for manufacturers in Mexico. Change may be on the horizon. This month, the Mexican government announced plans to reform the structure of its energy industry, stopping just short of privatization. Details are still being debated, but it appears that Mexico will soon offer foreign energy companies options to partner with the Mexican government in profit and risk sharing, thus allowing for a dramatic shift in Mexico’s economy some are comparing to the transformation that occurred with the signing of NAFTA. An increase in the production of energy and/or a lowering of prices will, undoubtedly, make manufacturers in Mexico more competitive. The three primary reforms that are being considered include: allowing private companies to explore and extract resources at will with “concessions,” granting private companies production sharing privileges (giving them a portion of oil produced), and allowing them risk-sharing contracts (giving them a share of the profits from resource sales). Foreign Direct Investment stands to increase dramatically if such reforms are implemented. Net annual investments have averaged $20 billion over the last five years. Oil, gas, and power have only received $360 million in the same time period. Economist Nader Nazmi estimates that the ratio of investment to GDP could rise by an additional 2 percentage points from the effects that energy sector reforms could have on public and private investment. An increased energy supply could bolster investment in factories and manufacturers in Mexico, due to the reduced fuel costs producers would face. Some say FDI could hit $50 billion in just the next decade. While a half-hearted effort could wreck expectations and hurt future growth, the push to reform Mexico’s energy sector has the potential to increase the country’s economic growth by 2. In addition to the attractiveness of their low labor costs, Mexico’s dramatically reduced fuel costs could position the country as one of the most cost-effective locations for manufacturing and other business that are energy intensive in nature. As stated by one of the primary architects of the reform proposal, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, “We have a great opportunity to improve the economy, to generate more jobs and to generate competitiveness for Mexican industry through the energy reform.” Mexico may soon swing open the door to such competition. There are high hopes that economic growth and a new era of energy independence and stability will follow close behind.

Key to US Manufacturing
Wilson ‘12 July 26, 2012. Christopher Wilson is an associate at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and the author of the 2011 Wilson Center report Working Together: Economic Ties between the United States and Mexico (Christopher Wilson, Issues in Science and Technology, 07-26-12, “U.S. Competitiveness: The Mexican Connection”, http://www.issues.org/28.4/p_wilson.html
Regional integration between the United States and Mexico is already vast and deep. As the United States’ second largest export market and third largest trading partner, Mexico is clearly important to the U.S. economy. Merchandise made has more than quintupled since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, and in 2011, bilateral goods and services trade reached approximately a half-trillion dollars for the first time. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has calculated that the jobs of six million American workers depend on U.S.-Mexico trade. Many of those jobs are in border states, which have especially close ties to Mexico, but Mexico is also the top buyer of exports from states as far away as New Hampshire (mostly computers and electronics). In fact, 20 states, from Michigan to Florida, sell more than a billion dollars’ worth of goods to Mexico each year, and Mexico is the first or second most important export market for 21 states. The United States and Mexico are also major investors in one another. In fact, combined foreign direct investment holdings now total more than $100 billion. According to the most recent count by the Department of Commerce, U.S.-owned companies operating in Mexico created $25 billion in value added and employed nearly a million workers. Mexican investment in the United States is less than U.S. investment in Mexico, but it is has been growing rapidly in recent years. Several of Mexico’s top companies, which are increasingly global operations, have made significant investments in the United States. Mexico’s Cemex, for example, is North America’s largest maker of cement and concrete products. Grupo Bimbo, which owns well-known brands such as Entenmanns’s, Thomas’s English Muffins, and Sara Lee, is the largest baked goods company in the Americas. Even Saks Fifth Avenue and the New York Times Company are supported by significant Mexican investment. The massive volume of commerce and investment is important, but the depth of regional integration is the primary reason why Mexico contributes to U.S. competitiveness. Mexico and the United States do not just trade products, they build them together. In fact, to understand regional trade, it is necessary to view imports and exports in a different light. Whereas imports from most of the world are what they appear to be—foreign products—the same cannot be said of imports from Mexico. During production, materials and parts often cross the southwest border numerous times while U.S. and Mexican factories each perform the parts of the manufacturing process they can do most competitively. Because of the complementary nature of the two economies, close geographic proximity, and NAFTA, which eliminated most tariff barriers to regional trade, the U.S. and Mexican manufacturing sectors are deeply integrated. Demonstrating this integration is the fact that 40 of the value of U.S. imports from Mexico comes from materials and parts produced in the United States. This means that 40 cents of every dollar the United States spends on Mexican goods actually supports U.S. firms. The only other major trading partner that comes close to this amount is Canada, the United States’ other NAFTA partner, with 25 U.S. content. Chinese imports, on the other hand, have an average of only 4 U.S. content, meaning that the purchase of imports from China does not have the same positive impact on U.S. manufacturers. The regional auto industry is a good example of this production-sharing phenomenon. The United States, Mexico, and Canada each produce and assemble auto parts, sending them back and forth as they work together to build cars and trucks. Cars built in North America are said to have their parts cross the United States borders eight times as they are being produced, and between 80 and 90 of the U.S. auto industry trade with its North American partners is intra-industry, both of which signal an extremely high level of vertical specialization. As a result, Detroit exports more goods to Mexico than any other U.S. city, and the North American auto industry has proven much more resilient than many expected. Although several of North America’s largest automakers nearly collapsed during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, a robust recovery is now under way. Mexico and the United States have each experienced the sharpest rise in vehicle production of the world’s top 10 auto producers during the past two years, growing 51 and 72, respectively, between 2009 and 2011.

Manufacturing is key to the Agriculture industry
Lind and Freeman 12 (Michael Lind, policy director of New America’s Economic Growth Program and a co-founder of the New America Foundation, Joshua Freedman, program associate in New America’s Economic Growth Program, “Value Added: America’s Manufacturing Future,” New America Foundation, April 2012,http://growth.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Lind,20Michael20and20Freedman,20Joshua20-20NAF20-20Value20Added20America27s20Manufacturing20Future.pdf)
Advanced manufacturing is not limited to new, emerging sectors; even manufacturing tied to one of the most “traditional” industries, agriculture, has heavily incorporated technology into its new products. The need for more accurate and efficient farming, as well as the rise of “precision agriculture”—the utilization of technology to accommodate variations within a field—has changed the agricultural manufacturing industry. i Agricultural equipment manufacturers are now creating products that are a far cry from the farm equipment of earlier generations. Replete with LED alerts, touchscreen monitors, and GPS-enabled systems, a modern farm equipment brochure looks like a consumer electronics guide.

Solves extinction
Trewavas, 2k (Anthony, Professor at the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Edinburgh, “GM IS the Best Option We Have”, http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/biotech-art/best_option.html)
In 535A.D. a volcano near the present Krakatoa exploded with the force of 200 million Hiroshima A bombs. The dense cloud of dust so reduced the intensity of the sun that for at least two years thereafter, summer turned to winter and crops here and elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere failed completely. The population survived by hunting a rapidly vanishing population of edible animals. The after-effects continued for a decade and human history was changed irreversibly. But the planet recovered. Such examples of benign nature's wisdom, in full flood as it were, dwarf and make miniscule the tiny modifications we make upon our environment. There are apparently 100 such volcanoes round the world that could at any time unleash forces as great. And even smaller volcanic explosions change our climate and can easily threaten the security of our food supply. Our hold on this planet is tenuous. In the present day an equivalent 535A.D. explosion would destroy much of our civilisation. Only those with agricultural technology sufficiently advanced would have a chance at survival. Colliding asteroids are another problem that requires us to be forward-looking accepting that technological advance may be the only buffer between us and annihilation.
Case
1

Mexican anti-money laundering law solves—provides regulation for illicit funds
Jackson ’12 October 12, 2012. Allison Jackson is a journalist for Global Post. “Mexico passes law to fight money laundering.” http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/mexico/121011/mexico-law-money-laundering
Mexican lawmakers have unanimously approved a new federal law restricting cash purchases of real estate, armored cars and jewelry as part of a crack down on money laundering, Milenio reported. The law will require companies to report cash purchases exceeding 500,000 pesos ($16,000) for property and 200,000 pesos ($39,000) for automobiles and jewelry, Reuters reported. According to the Associated Press, experts said the new regulation, which was passed by the Senate on Thursday, would put a dent in the estimated $10 billion in drug-money that is laundered in the country every year. "There is an outcry from society to weaken the financial structures of organized crime and that is what this law is about," Senator Roberto Gil, a member of the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN), was quoted by Reuters as saying. More from GlobalPost: Drug war ensnares big banks for letting Mexico cartels stash cash President Felipe Calderon, also from the PAN, proposed the law two years ago as part of his aggressive offensive against the country’s powerful drug cartels. More than 60,000 people have died in drug-related violence since December 2006 when Calderon deployed thousands of soliders and federal police to fight organized crime. Calderon will be leave office in December. He will be replaced by the July 1 presidential election winner Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The Law places regulations on financial transactions—limits illicit businesses and reduces the financial incentives for IFF’s
Andersen ’12 October 16, 2012. “Looking At Mexico’s New Anti-Money Laundering Legislation Looking At Mexico’s New Anti-Money Laundering Legislation.” Arya Andersen is a Policy Intern at Global Financial Integrity. http://www.financialtransparency.org/2012/10/16/looking-at-mexicos-new-anti-money-laundering-legislation/
Mexican President Felipe Calderon signed a bill, unanimously passed by the Senate, today aiming to crack down on money laundering that according to experts may account for at least $10 billion every year in Mexico, or as high as $50 billion, according to estimates from Global Financial Integrity. The bill prohibits the giving or accepting of cash payments greater than half a million pesos ($38,750) for real estate purchases, as well as forbidding cash transactions of more than 200,000 pesos ($15,500) for items such as cars, jewelry or lottery tickets. The law also requires brokers and dealers report the forms of payment for any purchases over half a million pesos and for credit card companies to report when monthly balances exceed 50,000 pesos ($3,875). Violators of the law will face up to 20 years in prison, and a specially-designed financial analysis unit has been set up to work under the prosecutor in tandem with the finance ministry. The reasoning behind the law is simple. Financial windfall provides incentives for criminals to continue to break the law, use violence as a means of communication and to generally act with impunity. Closing one very financially beneficial door for organized crime is a logical step in fighting it. “There is no way to go after organized crime, if not to hit their finances,” said Senator Cristina Diaz Salazar, a member of President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party. As long as cartels can legitimize their illegally-obtained billions in real estate, vehicles, lottery tickets and other luxury goods, they’ll be able to continue to fund the violence that has plagued Mexico since it became the main transit point for U.S.-bound South American narcotics in the early 1990s. If implemented correctly and enforced, stronger anti-money laundering rules could not only help Mexico fight its sophisticated organized crime organizations, but also Some in Mexico are opposed to the law. Those in the jewelry and auto industry, specifically, are worried that they will lose business as a result of more strict regulation. This is understandable. However, Alejandro Encinas of the Democratic Revolution Party summed up the reality of the situation in saying “as long as we don’t effectively combat money laundering and dismantle the financial power of organized crime, the problem of violence and drug trafficking won’t disappear from our country.” In the long run, a less violent and more financially transparent system will be more beneficial for all legal businesses. Losing illicit business is a feature, not a bug. Since President Felipe Calderon’s election in 2006, more than 60,000 people have been killed as a result of the violence stemming from turf wars among drug cartels. This law was first introduced in 2010 as part of Calderon’s multi-pronged plan to combat organized crime, proposing to bar all cash real estate purchases as well as cash purchases of cars, planes and other goods for amounts exceeding 100,000 pesos ($7,700). This initial proposal received considerable pushback, likely due to the amount of money at stake and the notorious levels of corruption in the upper echelon of the Mexican political and law enforcement spheres. The official argument against the bill at its inception was that it would inhibit healthy economic growth due to the fact that many small businesses in Mexico still transacted solely in cash. This argument apparently won some legislators over. Sen. Roberto Gil, of Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, said the legislation now going to Calderon for his signature into law “has achieved a healthy and reasonable balance between the need to inhibit the use of cash and the normal development of our country’s economic activity.” The bill now goes to Calderon to be signed, but will not actually go into effect for another nine months, when president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto will be president. The passage of this law is a fantastic example of the very real and tangible intersection of economic regulation and national and international security. Illicit financial flows allow for drug cartels and organized crime to fund the large-scale violence that Mexico has come to know intimately, and less money will invariably mean fewer weapons in the hands of criminals. Though it is a diluted version of its Calderon’s original proposal, this iteration of the law will be a great tool for the Mexican government to lessen the financial incentives of illegal activity while also providing greater insight into the financial behavior of organized crime. 

1. No impact—
   a) No mass economic instability—structural factors make markets resilient
   Zakaria, 09 – Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard, Editor of Newsweek (Fareed, “The Secrets of Stability,” Newsweek, 12/12/09, http://www.newsweek.com/id/226425)
   Others predicted that these economic shocks would lead to political instability and violence in the worst-hit countries. At his confirmation hearing in February, the new U.S. director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, cautioned the Senate that "the financial crisis and global recession are likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging-market nations over the next year." Hillary Clinton endorsed this grim view. And she was hardly alone. Foreign Policy ran a cover story predicting serious unrest in several emerging markets. Of one thing everyone was sure: nothing would ever be the same again. Not the financial industry, not capitalism, not globalization. One year later, how much has the world really changed? Well, Wall Street is home to two fewer investment banks (three, if you count Merrill Lynch). Some regional banks have gone bust. There was some turmoil in Moldova and (entirely unrelated to the financial crisis) in Iran. Severe problems remain, like high unemployment in the West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis—soaring debt and fears of inflation. But overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The predictions of economic and political collapse have not materialized at all. A key measure of fear and fragility is the ability of poor and unstable countries to borrow money on the debt markets. So consider this: the sovereign bonds of tottering Pakistan have returned 168 percent so far this year. All this doesn't add up to a recovery yet, but it does reflect a return to some level of normalcy. And that rebound has been so rapid that even the shrewdest observers remain puzzled. "The question I have at the back of my head is 'Is that it?' " says Charles Kaye, the co-head of Warburg Pincus. "We had this huge crisis, and now we're back to business as usual?" This revival did not happen because markets managed to stabilize themselves on their own. Rather, governments, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression, were determined not to repeat the same mistakes once this crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economy—through central banks and national treasuries—they buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether they made new mistakes in the process remains to be seen.) The extensive social safety nets that have been established across the industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt by many. Times are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s, when governments played a tiny role in national economies. It's true that the massive state interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash and government guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational exuberance in stock and bond markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of confidence, and confidence is a very powerful economic force. When John Maynard Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed government action could provide only a temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking again—the animal spirits of investors, consumers, and companies seeking risk and profit. Beyond all this, though, I believe there's a fundamental reason why we have not faced global collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the stock-market crash of 1987, the recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, and the tech-bubble collapse of 2000. The current global economic system is inherently more resilient than we think. 

b) Core drivers of foreign policy are constant—economic decline has minimal effect
Blackwill 2009 – former associate dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning (Robert, RAND, “The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic Recession—A Caution”, http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf, WEA)
But it is worth asking, as the magisterial American soldier/statesman George Marshall often did, “Why might I be wrong?” If the global economic numbers continue to decline next year and the year after, one must wonder whether any region would remain stable— whether China would maintain internal stability, whether the United States would continue as the pillar of international order, and whether the European Union would hold together. In that same vein, it is unclear today what eff ect, if any, the reckless financial lending and huge public debt that the United States is accumulating, as well as current massive governmental fiscal and monetary intervention in the American economy, will have on U.S. economic dynamism, entrepreneurial creativity, and, consequently, power projection over the very long term. One can only speculate on that issue at present, but it is certainly worth worrying about, and it is the most important “known unknown”27 regarding this subject.28 In addition, perhaps the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on China is more fragile than posited here, and possibly Pakistan and Mexico are much more vulnerable to failed-state outcomes primarily because of the economic downturn than anticipated in this essay. While it seems unlikely that these worst-case scenarios will eventuate as a result of the world recession, they do illustrate again that crucial uncertainties in this analysis are the global downturn’s length and severity and the long-term effects of the Obama Administration’s policies on the U.S. economy. Finally, if not, why not? If the world is in the most severe international economic crisis since the 1930s, why is it not producing structural changes in the global order? A brief answer is that the transcendent geopolitical elements have not altered in substantial ways with regard to individual nations in the two years since the economic crisis began. What are those enduring geopolitical elements? For any given country, they include the following: • Geographic location, topography, and climate. As Robert Kaplan puts it, “to embrace geography is not to accept it as an implacable force against which humankind is powerless. Rather, it serves to qualify human freedom and choice with a modest acceptance of fate.”29 In this connection, see in particular the works of Sir Halford John Mackinder and his The Geographical Pivot of History (1904)30, and Alfred Th ayer Mahan, The Infl uence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890).31 • Demography—the size, birth rate, growth, density, ethnicity, literacy, religions, migration/emigration/ assimilation/absorption, and industriousness of the population. • The histories, foreign and defense policy tendencies, cultural determinants, and domestic politics of individual countries. • The size and strength of the domestic economy. • The quality and pace of technology. • The presence of natural resources. • The character, capabilities, and policies of neighboring states. For the countries that matter most in the global order, perhaps unsurprisingly, none of these decisive variables have changed very much since the global downturn began, except for nations’ weaker economic performances. That single factor is not likely to trump all these other abiding geopolitical determinants and therefore produce international structural change. Moreover, the fundamental power relationships between and among the world’s foremost countries have also not altered, nor have those nations’ perceptions of their vital national interests and how best to promote and defend them. To sum up this pivotal concept, in the absence of war, revolution, or other extreme international or domestic disruptions, for nation-states, the powerful abiding conditions just listed do not evolve much except over the very long term, and thus neither do countries’ strategic intent and core external policies— even, as today, in the face of world economic trials. This point was made earlier about Russia’s enduring national security goals, which go back hundreds of years. Similarly, a Gulf monarch recently advised—with respect to Iran—not to fasten on the views of President Ahmadinejad or Supreme Leader Khamenei. Rather, he counseled that, to best understand contemporary Iranian policy, one should more usefully read the histories, objectives, and strategies of the Persian kings Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, who successively ruled a vast empire around 500 BC.32 The American filmmaker Orson Welles once opined that “To give an accurate description of what never happened is the proper occupation of the historian.” 33 Perhaps the same is occasionally true of pundits.

Growth does not solve war – history proves
Martin ‘6—prof pol science, U France. Chair in Economics at the Paris School of Economics. Former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Former assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies. Visiting researcher at Princeton. PhD from Georgetown. (Phillipe, “Make Trade not War?”, April 12th, 2006. http://www.ecore.be/Papers/1177063947.pdf)

Does globalization pacify international relations? The “liberal” view in political science argues that increasing trade flows, and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This vision, which can partly be traced back to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential: the main objective of the European trade integration process was to prevent the killing and destruction of the two World Wars from ever happening again1. Figure 1 suggests 2 however that on the 1870-2001 period, the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first era of globalization, at the end of the XIXth century, was a period of rising trade openness and of multiple military conflicts, culminating with World War I. Then, the interwar period was characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade increased rapidly while the number of conflicts decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously high). There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically, was a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts even taking into account the increase in the number of sovereign states. 

Poverty is rapidly decreasing
Wolf 3 (Martin, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator – Financial Times “Are Global Poverty and Inequality Getting Worse?”, Prospect Magazine, March, http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?i d=4982)

All data on incomes and income distribution are questionable, above all those generated in developing countries. But, contrary to what you say, World Bank researchers have calculated the numbers in extreme poverty-less than $1 a day-on a consistent basis, in recent studies. The data shows a decline since 1980 of 200m people in the category of the absolutely poor. This is a fall from 31 per cent of the world's population to 20 per cent (not 24 per cent, which is the proportion in developing countries alone). That is a spectacularly rapid fall in poverty by historical standards. It makes a nonsense of the idea that poverty alleviation has been blighted by globalisation. Now turn to the even murkier area of inequality. Here you argue that if we exclude China and India, there is no obvious trend in inequality. But why would one want to exclude two countries that contained about 60 per cent of the world's poorest people two decades ago and still contain almost 40 per cent of the world's population today? To fail to give these giants their due weight in a discussion ofglobal poverty alleviation or income distribution would be Hamlet without the prince. You then write that changes in relative average incomes across countries are not what we are really interested in, "which is the income distribution among all the world's people or households." This is wrong in itself. If a country's average income rises rapidly, it does also possess greater means for improving the lot of the poor. Maybe the government refuses to use the opportunity, but a successor government could. In any case, we do possess data on relative household incomes. In a Foreign Affairs article, David Dollar and Aart Kraay of the World Bank report a big decline in world-wide income inequality since its peak in about 1970. The study builds on work that goes back to 1820. The underlying method is to calculate the percentage gap between a randomly selected individual and the world average. The more unequal the distribution of world income, the bigger that gap becomes. They report that this gap peaked at 88 per cent of world average income in 1970, before falling to 78 per cent in 1995, roughly where it was in 1950. The chief driver of changes in inequality among households is changes between countries, not within them. This was also the finding of Branko Milanovic's study of global household income distribution between 1988 and 1993, which you cite approvingly. You rely on this study to support the thesis of rising household inequality. But it contains at least four defects. First, there are well-known inconsistencies between data on household expenditures and national accounts. Second, the methods used generate no increase in rural real incomes in China, which is inconsistent with most views of what actually happened. Third, the period of five years is very short. Fourth and most important, this was an atypical period, because India had an economic upheaval in 1991, while China's growth was temporarily slowed by the Tiananmen crisis. My conclusion is that the last two decades saw a decline not just in absolute poverty but also in world-wide inequality among households. The chief explanation for this was the fast growth of China and, to a lesser extent, of India. This progress was not offset by rising inequality within them. In the case of India there was no such rise. In China there has been a rise in inequality in the more recent period of its growth, largely because of controls on the movement of people from the hinterland to the coastal regions.

Poverty inevitable – alt causes overwhelm
Baker and Weisbrot 3 (Dean and Mark, Co-Directors – Center for Economic and Policy Research, “False Promises on Trade”, 7-25, http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0725-02.htm)

Similarly, most of sub-Saharan Africa is suffering from an un-payable debt burden. While there has been some limited relief offered in recent years, the remaining debt burden is still more than the debtor countries spend on health care and education. The list of problems imposed on developing countries can be extended at length bans on the industrial policies that led to successful development in the west, the imposition of patents on drugs and copyrights on computer software and recorded material, inappropriate macro-economic policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. All of these factors are likely to have far more severe consequences for the development prospects of low and middle-income countries than the agricultural policies of rich countries.

2

The Mexican economy is resilient – reforms, diversification, low inflation are boosting growth
Jones and Guthrie 13 5/8/13, Kristin Jones and Amy Guthrie are staff writers and analysts @ the Wall Street Journal “Update: Fitch lifts Mexico Rating on Economy, Reforms”, Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130508-718436.html
Fitch Ratings upgraded Mexico by a notch Wednesday, citing the country's strong economic fundamentals, stable oil production, progress in addressing drug-related violence and a greater-than-anticipated political commitment to pass structural reforms. The ratings firm put Mexico's long-term foreign currency issuer default rating at triple-B-plus, three rungs into investment grade. The outlook is stable. Fitch noted Mexico's economic resilience despite a sluggish economy in the U.S., Mexico's key trading partner, with three-year growth averaging 4.5 in 2012. The agency also praised Mexico's prudent macro-economic policy, which underpins the country's low inflation. In upgrading Mexico, Fitch jumped ahead of Standard and Poor's, which in March changed Mexico's outlook to positive from stable, citing the reform momentum. SandP and Fitch both cut the country to triple-B from triple-B-plus in late 2009, when the global financial crisis led Mexico's economy to contract 6 and the peso to lose more than a quarter of its value against the U.S. dollar. Moody's Investors Service kept Mexico at Baa1, the equivalent of triple-B-plus and two notches above the minimum investment grade. The government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office in December, has "reinvigorated" Mexico's reform momentum to pass structural reforms that had languished for many years, Fitch said Wednesday. Cooperation among Mexico's three major political parties in recent months has led to overhauls of labor rules, public education and telecoms. Still pending are more ambitious reworkings of the tax code and a possible opening of foreign investment in the oil sector. Combined, the reforms are seen eventually boosting Mexico's annual economic growth by one percentage point. A recent dispute over government spending ahead of July local elections threatened to derail the reform drive. The political forces behind the reform effort, known as the Pact for Mexico, reconciled their differences on Tuesday. "The pact has achieved a pace that doesn't cease to surprise, and a pace that shouldn't be lost," Cesar Camacho, national president of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, said Wednesday at an event beside other top political leaders, all of whom reiterated their commitment to secure more reforms. Mr. Pena Nieto thanked his colleagues on Wednesday for their "political will" to overcome differences and advance a common agenda to make Mexico more competitive internationally and more fair at home. The Fitch upgrade gave the Mexican peso a boost Wednesday as the currency moved below MXN12 to the U.S. dollar for the first time since August 2011, trading in Mexico City at MXN11.9780, according to Infosel, compared with MXN12.0355 at the close Tuesday. Local government bonds yields were lower on the day, with 10-year bonds due 2022 yielding 4.46, down four basis points from Tuesday's close. Fitch said its previous concerns about oil production and violence had eased, citing the diversification of the oil production base and a decline in the homicide rate in recent months. Sustained high growth and fiscal flexibility would be positive for ratings, while a persistently underperforming economy and destabilizing debt dynamics would be negative, Fitch said.

No bioterror
Keller 3/7 (Rebecca – Analyst at Stratfor, Post-Doctoral Fellow at University of Colorado at Boulder, 2013, "Bioterrorism and the Pandemic Potential," http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/bioterrorism-and-pandemic-potential)
It is important to remember that the risk of biological attack is very low and that, partly because viruses can mutate easily, the potential for natural outbreaks is unpredictable. The key is having the right tools in case of an outbreak, epidemic or pandemic, and these include a plan for containment, open channels of communication, scientific research and knowledge sharing. In most cases involving a potential pathogen, the news can appear far worse than the actual threat. Infectious Disease Propagation Since the beginning of February there have been occurrences of H5N1 (bird flu) in Cambodia, H1N1 (swine flu) in India and a new, or novel, coronavirus (a member of the same virus family as SARS) in the United Kingdom. In the past week, a man from Nepal traveled through several countries and eventually ended up in the United States, where it was discovered he had a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report stating that antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals are on the rise. In addition, the United States is experiencing a worse-than-normal flu season, bringing more attention to the influenza virus and other infectious diseases. The potential for a disease to spread is measured by its effective reproduction number, or R-value, a numerical score that indicates whether a disease will propagate or die out. When the disease first occurs and no preventive measures are in place, the reproductive potential of the disease is referred to as R0, the basic reproduction rate. The numerical value is the number of cases a single case can cause on average during its infectious period. An R0 above 1 means the disease will likely spread (many influenza viruses have an R0 between 2 and 3, while measles had an R0 value of between 12 and 18), while an R-value of less than 1 indicates a disease will likely die out. Factors contributing to the spread of the disease include the length of time people are contagious, how mobile they are when they are contagious, how the disease spreads (through the air or bodily fluids) and how susceptible the population is. The initial R0, which assumes no inherent immunity, can be decreased through control measures that bring the value either near or below 1, stopping the further spread of the disease. Both the coronavirus family and the influenza virus are RNA viruses, meaning they replicate using only RNA (which can be thought of as a single-stranded version of DNA, the more commonly known double helix containing genetic makeup). The rapid RNA replication used by many viruses is very susceptible to mutations, which are simply errors in the replication process. Some mutations can alter the behavior of a virus, including the severity of infection and how the virus is transmitted. The combination of two different strains of a virus, through a process known as antigenic shift, can result in what is essentially a new virus. Influenza, because it infects multiple species, is the hallmark example of this kind of evolution. Mutations can make the virus unfamiliar to the body's immune system. The lack of established immunity within a population enables a disease to spread more rapidly because the population is less equipped to battle the disease. The trajectory of a mutated virus (or any other infectious disease) can reach three basic levels of magnitude. An outbreak is a small, localized occurrence of a pathogen. An epidemic indicates a more widespread infection that is still regional, while a pandemic indicates that the disease has spread to a global level. Virologists are able to track mutations by deciphering the genetic sequence of new infections. It is this technology that helped scientists to determine last year that a smattering of respiratory infections discovered in the Middle East was actually a novel coronavirus. And it is possible that through a series of mutations a virus like H5N1 could change in such a way to become easily transmitted between humans. Lessons Learned There have been several influenza pandemics throughout history. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is often cited as a worst-case scenario, since it infected between 20 and 40 percent of the world's population, killing roughly 2 percent of those infected. In more recent history, smaller incidents, including an epidemic of the SARS virus in 2003 and what was technically defined as a pandemic of the swine flu (H1N1) in 2009, caused fear of another pandemic like the 1918 occurrence. The spread of these two diseases was contained before reaching catastrophic levels, although the economic impact from fear of the diseases reached beyond the infected areas. Previous pandemics have underscored the importance of preparation, which is essential to effective disease management. The World Health Organization lays out a set of guidelines for pandemic prevention and containment. The general principles of preparedness include stockpiling vaccines, which is done by both the United States and the European Union (although the possibility exists that the vaccines may not be effective against a new virus). In the event of an outbreak, the guidelines call for developed nations to share vaccines with developing nations. Containment strategies beyond vaccines include quarantine of exposed individuals, limited travel and additional screenings at places where the virus could easily spread, such as airports. Further measures include the closing of businesses, schools and borders. Individual measures can also be taken to guard against infection. These involve general hygienic measures -- avoiding mass gatherings, thoroughly washing hands and even wearing masks in specific, high-risk situations. However, airborne viruses such as influenza are still the most difficult to contain because of the method of transmission. Diseases like noroviruses, HIV or cholera are more serious but have to be transmitted by blood, other bodily fluids or fecal matter. The threat of a rapid pandemic is thereby slowed because it is easier to identify potential contaminates and either avoid or sterilize them. Research is another important aspect of overall preparedness. Knowledge gained from studying the viruses and the ready availability of information can be instrumental in tracking diseases. For example, the genomic sequence of the novel coronavirus was made available, helping scientists and doctors in different countries to readily identify the infection in limited cases and implement quarantine procedures as necessary. There have been only 13 documented cases of the novel coronavirus, so much is unknown regarding the disease. Recent cases in the United Kingdom indicate possible human-to-human transmission. Further sharing of information relating to the novel coronavirus can aid in both treatment and containment. Ongoing research into viruses can also help make future vaccines more efficient against possible mutations, though this type of research is not without controversy. A case in point is research on the H5N1 virus. H5N1 first appeared in humans in 1997. Of the more than 600 cases that have appeared since then, more than half have resulted in death. However, the virus is not easily transmitted because it must cross from bird to human. Human-to-human transmission of H5N1 is very rare, with only a few suspected incidents in the known history of the disease. While there is an H5N1 vaccine, it is possible that a new variation of the vaccine would be needed were the virus to mutate into a form that was transmittable between humans. Vaccines can take months or even years to develop, but preliminary research on the virus, before an outbreak, can help speed up development. In December 2011, two separate research labs, one in the United States and one in the Netherlands, sought to publish their research on the H5N1 virus. Over the course of their research, these labs had created mutations in the virus that allowed for airborne transmission between ferrets. These mutations also caused other changes, including a decrease in the virus's lethality and robustness (the ability to survive outside the carrier). Publication of the research was delayed due to concerns that the results could increase the risk of accidental release of the virus by encouraging further research, or that the information could be used by terrorist organizations to conduct a biological attack. Eventually, publication of papers by both labs was allowed. However, the scientific community imposed a voluntary moratorium in order to allow the community and regulatory bodies to determine the best practices moving forward. This voluntary ban was lifted for much of the world on Jan. 24, 2013. On Feb. 21, the National Institutes of Health in the United States issued proposed guidelines for federally funded labs working with H5N1. Once standards are set, decisions will likely be made on a case-by-case basis to allow research to continue. Fear of a pandemic resulting from research on H5N1 continues even after the moratorium was lifted. Opponents of the research cite the possibility that the virus will be accidentally released or intentionally used as a bioweapon, since information in scientific publications would be considered readily available. The Risk-Reward Equation The risk of an accidental release of H5N1 is similar to that of other infectious pathogens currently being studied. Proper safety standards are key, of course, and experts in the field have had a year to determine the best way to proceed, balancing safety and research benefits. Previous work with the virus was conducted at biosafety level three out of four, which requires researchers wearing respirators and disposable gowns to work in pairs in a negative pressure environment. While many of these labs are part of universities, access is controlled either through keyed entry or even palm scanners. There are roughly 40 labs that submitted to the voluntary ban. Those wishing to resume work after the ban was lifted must comply with guidelines requiring strict national oversight and close communication and collaboration with national authorities. The risk of release either through accident or theft cannot be completely eliminated, but given the established parameters the risk is minimal. The use of the pathogen as a biological weapon requires an assessment of whether a non-state actor would have the capabilities to isolate the virulent strain, then weaponize and distribute it. Stratfor has long held the position that while terrorist organizations may have rudimentary capabilities regarding biological weapons, the likelihood of a successful attack is very low. Given that the laboratory version of H5N1 -- or any influenza virus, for that matter -- is a contagious pathogen, there would be two possible modes that a non-state actor would have to instigate an attack. The virus could be refined and then aerosolized and released into a populated area, or an individual could be infected with the virus and sent to freely circulate within a population. There are severe constraints that make success using either of these methods unlikely. The technology needed to refine and aerosolize a pathogen for a biological attack is beyond the capability of most non-state actors. Even if they were able to develop a weapon, other factors such as wind patterns and humidity can render an attack ineffective. Using a human carrier is a less expensive method, but it requires that the biological agent be a contagion. Additionally, in order to infect the large number of people necessary to start an outbreak, the infected carrier must be mobile while contagious, something that is doubtful with a serious disease like small pox. The carrier also cannot be visibly ill because that would limit the necessary human contact. As far as continued research is concerned, there is a risk-reward equation to consider. The threat of a terrorist attack using biological weapons is very low. And while it is impossible to predict viral outbreaks, it is important to be able to recognize a new strain of virus that could result in an epidemic or even a pandemic, enabling countries to respond more effectively. All of this hinges on the level of preparedness of developed nations and their ability to rapidly exchange information, conduct research and promote individual awareness of the threat.

Terror threats on the border are exaggerated—suspicious activity has never been detected
Isacson and Meyer ’12 April 2012. Adam Isacson and Maureen Meyer are Washington’s Office of Latin American Affairs’ border security and migration experts. “Beyond the Border Buildup: Security and Migrants Along the U.S.-Mexico Border.” http://www.wola.org/files/Beyond_the_Border_Buildup_FINAL.pdf
The New Border Context When U.S. political leaders and opinion makers call for more actions to secure the border with Mexico, the threats they cite most frequently are terrorism, drug trafficking, violent organized crime, and uncontrolled migration. This study does not explore the motives behind these positions, which range from concern about national security to pandering to voters’ fears of a foreign “other.” Of greater interest is the degree to which these threats are actually manifesting themselves, and whether they should be considered “threats” at all. TERRORISM The first threat, the possibility that members of a foreign terrorist organization might attempt to cross the border from Mexico to harm U.S. citizens, leaders, or infrastructure, has underlain a tremendous increase in U.S. border security investment since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Today, “The priority mission of Border Patrol is preventing terrorists and terrorists’ weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States,” reads the first text on the gateway page of the agency’s website.6 To date, however, no member of a group on the Department of State’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations has been detected attempting to cross the Mexico-U.S. border with intent to do harm. In December 1999, a “millennium” plot to bomb Los Angeles’ international airport was foiled by customs agents who found a bomb in the car of an Algerian citizen seeking to enter the United States from Canada.7 In October 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged that Iranian officials sought help from sources whom they thought were members of Mexico’s Zetas criminal organization in a bizarre plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States.8 Neither of these episodes involved the United States’ southwest border with Mexico. The “terrorist crossing the porous border through Mexico” scenario continues to worry U.S. planners, though, because of the serious consequences that even a very unlikely event might have. Opinions differ on whether a putative terrorist would seek to work within existing drug or migrant trafficking networks. Some officials and analysts contend that criminal organizations would gladly assist a terrorist for the right price. Others hold the view that “the first time a terrorist uses a trafficker’s route is the last time that trafficker will ever get to use” that lucrative route, which is a cost too high to bear.9

Multiple barriers mean bioterror is extremely unlikely
Schneidmiller, Global Security Newswire, 1-13-09 (Chris, “Experts Debate Threat of Nuclear, Biological Terrorism,” http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090113_7105.php)

Panel moderator Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, said academic and governmental discussions of acts of nuclear or biological terrorism have tended to focus on "worst-case assumptions about terrorists' ability to use these weapons to kill us." There is need for consideration for what is probable rather than simply what is possible, he said. Friedman took issue with the finding late last year of an experts' report that an act of WMD terrorism would "more likely than not" occur in the next half decade unless the international community takes greater action. "I would say that the report, if you read it, actually offers no analysis to justify that claim, which seems to have been made to change policy by generating alarm in headlines." One panel speaker offered a partial rebuttal to Mueller's presentation. Jim Walsh, principal research scientist for the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he agreed that nations would almost certainly not give a nuclear weapon to a nonstate group, that most terrorist organizations have no interest in seeking out the bomb, and that it would be difficult to build a weapon or use one that has been stolen. However, he disputed Mueller's assertion that nations can be trusted to secure their atomic weapons and materials. "I don't think the historical record shows that at all," Walsh said. Black-market networks such as the organization once operated by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan remain a problem and should not be assumed to be easily defeated by international intelligence services, Walsh said (see GSN, Jan. 13). It is also reasonable to worry about extremists gaining access to nuclear blueprints or poorly secured stocks of highly enriched uranium, he said. "I worry about al-Qaeda 4.0, kids in Europe who go to good schools 20 years from now. Or types of terrorists we don't even imagine," Walsh said. Greater consideration must be given to exactly how much risk is tolerable and what actions must be taken to reduce the threat, he added. "For all the alarmism, we haven't done that much about the problem," Walsh said. "We've done a lot in the name of nuclear terrorism, the attack on Iraq, these other things, but we have moved ever so modestly to lock down nuclear materials." Biological Terrorism Another two analysts offered a similar debate on the potential for terrorists to carry out an attack using infectious disease material. Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, played down the threat in comparison to other health risks. Bioterrorism has killed five U.S. citizens in the 21st century -- the victims of the 2001 anthrax attacks, he said. Meanwhile, at least 400,000 deaths are linked each year to obesity in this country. The United States has authorized $57 billion in spending since the anthrax mailings for biological prevention and defense activities, Leitenberg said. Much of the money would have been better used to prepare for pandemic flu, he argued. "Mistaken threat assessments make mistaken policy and make mistaken allocation of financial resources," Leitenberg said. The number of states with offensive biological weapons programs appears to have stabilized at six beginning in the mid-1970s, despite subsequent intelligence estimates that once indicated an increasing number of efforts, Leitenberg said. Caveats in present analyses of those states make it near-impossible to determine the extent to which their activities remain offensive in nature, he added. There has been minimal proliferation of biological expertise or technology to nations of concern in recent decades, Leitenberg said. He identified roughly 12 Russian scientists who ended up in Iran and shipments of technology and pathogen strains to Iraq from France, Germany, the former Soviet Union and the United States between 1980 and 1990. No evidence exists of state assistance to nonstate groups in this sector. Two prominent extremist organizations, al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, failed to produce pathogenic disease strains that could be used in an attack, according to Leitenberg. Terrorists would have to acquire the correct disease strain, handle it safely, correctly reproduce and store the material and then disperse it properly, Leitenberg said. He dismissed their ability to do so. "What we've found so far is that those people have been totally abysmally ignorant of how to read the technical, professional literature," Leitenberg said. "What's on the jihadi Web sites comes from American poisoners' handbooks sold here at gun shows. Which can't make anything and what it would make is just garbage." 

Biological weapons won’t be used and won’t cause extinction
Mueller, 2005 (John, Professor of political science at Ohio State University, “Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration,” International Studies Perspectives, 6, 208-234)

Properly developed and deployed, biological weapons could indeed, if thus far only in theory, kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people. The discussion remains theoretical because biological weapons have scarcely ever been used even though the knowledge about their destructive potential as weapons goes back decades, even centuries in some respects (the English, e.g., made some efforts to spread smallpox among American Indians in the French and Indian War) (Christopher, Cieslak, Pavlin, and Eitzen, 1997:412). Belligerents have eschewed such weapons with good reason: biological weapons are extremely difficult to deploy and to control. Terrorist groups or rogue states may be able to solve such problems in the future with advances in technology and knowledge, but the record thus far is unlikely to be very encouraging to them. For example, Japan reportedly infected wells in Manchuria and bombed several Chinese cities with plague-infested fleas before and during the Second World War. These ventures may have killed thousands of Chinese, but they apparently also caused thousands of unintended casualties among Japanese troops and seem to have had little military impact.18 In the 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult that had some 300 scientists in its employ and an estimated budget of $1 billion, reportedly tried at least nine times over 5 years to set off biological weapons by spraying pathogens from trucks and wafting them from rooftops, hoping fancifully to ignite an apocalyptic war. These efforts failed to create a single fatality in fact, nobody even noticed that the attacks had taken place (Broad, 1998; Rapoport, 1999:57). For the most destructive results, biological weapons need to be dispersed in very lowaltitude aerosol clouds: aerosols do not appreciably settle, and anthrax (which is not easy to spread or catch and is not contagious) would probably have to be sprayed near nose level (Meselson, 1995; Panofsky, 1998; Terry, 1998). Explosive methods of dispersion may destroy the organisms. Moreover, except for anthrax spores, long-term storage of lethal organisms in bombs or warheads is difficult, and, even if refrigerated, most of the organisms have a limited lifetime. The effects of such weapons can take days or weeks to have full effect, during which time they can be countered with civil defense measures. And their impact is very difficult to predict and in combat situationsmay spread back on the attacker (OTA, 1993:48–49, 62; Broad and Miller, 1998; Easterbrook, 2002). 

No Solvency: Their author says you have to ban bioweapons to solve – All other options fail
Ochs – Their Author, MA in Natural Resource Management from Rutgers, 6-9-2 (Richard, “Biological Weapons Must Be Abolished Immediately,” http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)

There are many people who believe it is their God-given right to do whatever is deemed necessary to secure their homeland, their religion and their birthright. Moslems, Jews, Hindus, ultra-patriots (and fundamentalist Christians who believe that Armageddon is God’s prophesy) all have access to the doomsday vials at Fort Detrick and other labs. Fort Detrick and Dugway employees are US citizens but may also have other loyalties. One or more of them might have sent the anthrax letters to the media and Congress last year. Are we willing to trust our security, NO -- trust human survival to people like this? Human frailty, duplicity, greed, zealotry, insanity, intolerance and ignorance, not to speak of ultra-patriotism, will always be with us. The mere existence of these doomsday weapons is a risk too great for rational people to tolerate.  Unless guards do body crevice searches of lab employees every day, smuggling out a few grams will be a piece of cake. Basically, THERE CAN BE NO SECURITY. Humanity is at great risk as we speak. All biological weapons must be destroyed immediately. All genetic engineering of new diseases must be halted. All bioweapons labs must be dismantled. Fort Detrick and Dugway labs must be decommissioned and torn down. Those who continue this research are potential war criminals of the highest order. Secret bioweapons research must be outlawed.  The US, as the world’s leading creator of doomsday diseases, must lead the way and show the example. The US must not only obey the Convention Against Biological Weapons, which it has been violating, but it must sign the Biological Weapons Inspection Treaty, which it has been opposing. International delegations must be allowed to inspect and oversee the destruction of these labs and inventories. The doctrine of military deterrence must give way to the logic of human survival. Human survival must come before national sovereignty. 

No Bioterror escalation
Easterbrook (Gregg, The New Republic Editor) 2003 Wired, "We're All Gonna Die!" 11/7, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/doomsday.html

3. Germ warfare!  Like chemical agents, biological weapons have never lived up to their billing in popular culture. Consider the 1995 medical thriller Outbreak, in which a highly contagious virus takes out entire towns. The reality is quite different. Weaponized smallpox escaped from a Soviet laboratory in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, in 1971; three people died, no epidemic followed. In 1979, weapons-grade anthrax got out of a Soviet facility in Sverdlovsk (now called Ekaterinburg); 68 died, no epidemic. The loss of life was tragic, but no greater than could have been caused by a single conventional bomb.  In 1989, workers at a US government facility near Washington were accidentally exposed to Ebola virus. They walked around the community and hung out with family and friends for several days before the mistake was discovered. No one died.  The fact is, evolution has spent millions of years conditioning mammals to resist germs. Consider the Black Plague. It was the worst known pathogen in history, loose in a Middle Ages society of poor public health, awful sanitation, and no antibiotics. Yet it didn't kill off humanity. Most people who were caught in the epidemic survived. Any superbug introduced into today's Western world would encounter top-notch public health, excellent sanitation, and an array of medicines specifically engineered to kill bioagents. Perhaps one day some aspiring Dr. Evil will invent a bug that bypasses the immune system. Because it is possible some novel superdisease could be invented, or that existing pathogens like smallpox could be genetically altered to make them more virulent (two-thirds of those who contract natural smallpox survive), biological agents are a legitimate concern. They may turn increasingly troublesome as time passes and knowledge of biotechnology becomes harder to control, allowing individuals or small groups to cook up nasty germs as readily as they can buy guns today. But no superplague has ever come close to wiping out humanity before, and it seems unlikely to happen in the future.

Small Risk of Bioterror
Lake (Anthony, G-Town Diplomacy Prof) 2001 The Georgetown Public Policy Review, "Bioterrorism: Interview with Anthony Lake," Spring, LN

It's much harder to develop a biological weapon than a chemical weapon and much, much harder than using computers for terrorist action. So, if you're calculating probabilities, then bioterrorism, probably even more than some forms of nuclear terrorism, is relatively unlikely. I do not walk around everyday worrying that people are dumping microbes in the ventilation ducts of the building I'm in. If we allow ourselves to become scared of this, then in a way, the terrorists have won. If we alter our behavior too much beyond prudent or preventative and preparatory efforts, then the terrorists have won. I don't think the chances are at all high that this will happen; in fact, I think they're very very low. However, the fact is that the Aum Shirinkyo was trying to develop biological weapons and probably used sarin because the Japanese police were closing in on them. (I believe they lost a scientist in the process of trying to develop biological weapons.) We should lament any death, anywhere, but that would be low on the list of lamentations. So while it's very unlikely, it is possible, and in fact we have entered the age in which there have been active efforts to try to develop biological weapons.

Bioweapons can’t be used – too unreliable
Laqueur 99 (Walter, Cochairman, International Research Council, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, The New Terrorism, 1999, pg. 69)

The attractions of biological weapons are obvious: easy access, low cost, toxicity, and the panic they can cause. But there are drawbacks of various kinds that explain why almost no successful attacks have occurred. While explosive or nuclear devices or even chemical agents, however horrific, affect a definite space, biological agents are unpredictable: they can easily get out of control, backfire, or have no effect at all. They constitute a high risk to the attackers, although the same, of course, is true of chemical weapons. This consideration may not dissuade people willing to sacrifice their own lives, but the possibility that the attacker may kill himself before being able to launch an attack may make him hesitate to carry it out.  Biological agents, with some notable exceptions, are affected by changes in heat or cold, and, like chemical agents, by changes in the direction of the wind. They have a limited life span, and their means of delivery are usually complicated. The process of contaminating water res¬ervoirs or foodstuffs involves serious technical problems. Even if an agent survives the various purification systems in water reservoirs, boiling the water would destroy most germs. Dispersing the agent as a vapor or via an aerosol system within a closed space for instance, through the air conditioning system of a big building or in a subway would ear to offer better chances of success, but it is by no mens foolproof.

Technical barriers prevent bioweapons
Tucker 8-99 (Jonathan, director of the CBW Nonproliferation Project at Center for Nonprolif Studies at Monterey Instit, Amy Sands, assoc director, July/August 1999, http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/ja99/ja99tucker.html)

One reason there have been so few successful examples of chemical or biological terrorism is that carrying out an attack requires overcoming a series of major technical hurdles: gaining access to specialized chemical-weapon ingredients or virulent microbial strains; acquiring equipment and know-how for agent production and dispersal; and creating an organizational structure capable of resisting infiltration or early detection by law enforcement. Many of the microorganisms best suited to catastrophic terrorism-virulent strains of anthrax or deadly viruses such as smallpox and Ebola-are difficult to acquire. Further, nearly all viral and rickettsial agents are hard to produce, and bacteria such as plague are difficult to "weaponize" so that they will survive the process of delivery. As former Soviet bioweapons scientist Ken Alibek wrote in his recent memoir, Biohazard, "The most virulent culture in a test tube is useless as an offensive weapon until it has been put through a process that gives it stability and predictability. The manufacturing technique is, in a sense, the real weapon, and it is harder to develop than individual agents." The capability to disperse microbes and toxins over a wide area as an inhalable aerosol-the form best suited for inflicting mass casualties-requires a delivery system whose development would outstrip the technical capabilities of all but the most sophisticated terrorists. Not only is the dissemination process for biological agents inherently complex, requiring specialized equipment and expertise, but effective dispersal is easily disrupted by environmental and meteorological conditions. A large-scale attack with anthrax spores against a city, for example, would require the use of a crop duster with custom-built spray nozzles that could generate a high-concentration aerosol cloud containing particles of agent between one and five microns in size. Particles smaller than one micron would not lodge in the victims' lungs, while particles much larger than five microns would not remain suspended for long in the atmosphere. To generate mass casualties, the anthrax would have to be dried and milled into a fine powder. Yet this type of processing requires complex and costly equipment, as well as systems for high biological containment. Anthrax is simpler to handle in a wet form called a "slurry," but the efficiency of aerosolization is greatly reduced.

US efforts to combat Mexican drug trafficking are counter-productive – new Mexican administration doesn’t want to work with the US
Priest 5/1 May 1, 2013. Dana Priest is a national security reporter whose work focuses on intelligence and counterterrorism. “U.S. role to decrease as Mexico’s drug-war strategy shifts” http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2020902455_mexicoobamaxml.html
The new administration has shifted priorities away from the U.S.-backed strategy of arresting kingpins, which sparked an unprecedented level of violence among the cartels, and toward an emphasis on prevention and keeping Mexico’s streets safe and calm, Mexican authorities said. Some U.S. officials fear the coming of an unofficial truce with cartel leaders. The Mexicans see it otherwise. “The objective of fighting organized crime is not in conflict with achieving peace,” said Eduardo Medina-Mora, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States. Two weeks after Peña Nieto assumed office Dec. 1, the new president sent his top five security officials to an unusual meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. The new attorney general and interior minister sat in silence next to the new leaders of the army, navy and Mexican intelligence agency. Also at the Dec. 15 meeting were representatives from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the CIA, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other U.S. agencies charged with helping Mexico destroy the drug cartels that had besieged the country for the past decade. The Mexicans remained stone-faced as they learned how entwined the two countries had become during the battle against narco-traffickers, and how, in the process, the United States had been given near-complete access to Mexico’s territory and the secrets of its citizens, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. The administration of the previous president, Felipe Calderón, had granted U.S. spy planes access to Mexican airspace to gather intelligence. Unarmed Customs and Border Protection drones had flown from U.S. bases in support of Mexican military and federal police raids against drug targets and to track movements that would establish suspects’ “patterns of life.” The United States had also provided electronic signals technology, ground sensors, voice-recognition gear, cellphone-tracking devices, data-analysis tools, computer hacking kits and airborne cameras that could read license plates from three miles away. Under a classified program code-named SCENIC, the CIA was training Mexicans how to target and vet potential assets for recruitment and how to guard against infiltration by narco-traffickers. In deference to their visitors, the U.S. briefers left out that most of the 25 kingpin taken off the streets in the past five years had been removed because of U.S.-supplied information, according to people familiar with the meeting. Also unremarked upon was the mounting criticism that success against the cartels’ leadership had helped incite more violence than anyone had predicted, more than 60,000 deaths and 25,000 disappearances in the past seven years. Meanwhile, Mexico remains the U.S. market’s largest supplier of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine and the transshipment point for 95 percent of its cocaine. When the Dec. 15 meeting concluded, Mexico’s new security officials remained poker-faced.

Drug violence declining
Bargent 2-7-13 (James, Independent journalism from Colombia and Latin America, “Mexico Drug War Violence Slowing: Report”, Febraury 7th, 2013, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/mexico-drug-war-violence-slowing-report)
A new report analyzing the data behind Mexico’s drug war shows in 2012 organized crime related killings declined or leveled off while becoming increasingly concentrated in key strategic areas. The report, compiled by the San Diego University’s Trans-Border Institute, analyzed a range of data sources -- both official and independent -- to build a comprehensive picture of the shifting violence patterns in Mexico. The most significant trend identified was the slowing rate of drug war killings. While the conclusions of different data sets varied widely, they agreed that in 2012 the substantial year on year increases Mexico has seen since 2007 came to an end. According to data collated by Mexican newspaper Reforma, organized crime related murders dropped by over 21 percent, falling to 8,989 from 12,284. Projections for the government’s as yet unreleased figures show a 28 drop. However, figures from another media source, Milenio, showed an increase in its crime related murder tallies but by less than 1 percent – far lower than in previous years. The report also highlights how Mexico’s drug war violence is increasingly concentrated. Between 2007 and 2011, the number of municipalities that recorded no murders dropped by 28 percent, while the number of municipalities with 25 or more annual homicides grew from 50 to 240. However, in 2012, (for which, the report points out, the data set is incomplete) the number of municipalities free from violence increased 16 while the number with more than 25 homicides decreased more than 25 to 178. Over half the organized crime linked murders nationwide came from just five states; Sinaloa, Chihuaha, Nuevo Leon, Guerrero and Coahuila (although the order depends of the data set). 2012 also saw Acapulco assume the mantle of Mexico’s most violent city, even though the murder rate leveled off, while the cities of Monterrey, Torreon, and Nuevo Laredo posted the largest increases in crime related killings. InSight Crime While the authorities will probably lay claim to the slowdown in drug violence, it is likely a more influential factor has been changing dynamics in the Mexican underworld, as reflected by the shifting geographical patterns.

Tournament: MBA | Round: 6 | Opponent: Carrolton GR | Judge: Grellinger
Minor “reforms fail” and mask domestic warfare – we are a politics of disaffirmation from the state. We need a disaffirmation from the federal government
Rodriguez ‘8
Dylan Rodriguez 2008 Assistant Professor at University of California Riverside, Abolition Now! p.93-100
We are collectively witnessing, surviving, and working in a time of unprecedented state
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, every desperate act, and every attack aborted or drowned in blood.”

Economic engagement toward Latin America is based off of white supremacist norms
THORBURN representative of the WORKERS PARTY, USA 2k4
Michael-; “US Imperialism, Hands Off Latin America;” a Chicago-area meeting organized by the Peace Agenda Forum on October 21, 2004; published online-November 9; http://www.anti-imperialist.org/Hands-Off-Latin-America_11-9-04.htm
Economic Basis
Of course, behind all this military intervention are the economic interests of the U
AND
and imperialism - against the Republicans and Democrats. (to be continued).

We must burn civil society to the ground.
Burn and leave nothing white behind you. We have been trained to think in
AND
itself no matter how much it is changed. We must kill it.
Farley 5 Boston College (Anthony, “Perfecting Slavery”, http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028andcontext=lsfp)
VII. BURN What is to be done? Two hundred years ago, when
AND
the slave must become to pursue its calling that is not a calling.

Tournament: MBA | Round: 1 | Opponent: Cypress Bay | Judge: Rubaie
White supremacy is the un-named political system that governs status-quo politics. We pass policies to satisfy a “social contract” that is inherently racist. The omission of any mention of this system is not accidental but a coordinated condition of the system.
White supremacy is the unnamed political system, however political theory has no mention of it—this omission is not accidental—white privilege is taken for granted that it isn’t seen as political and is the background against which other systems are highlighted—the 1AC works in a way to not situate a broader debate about the role of racism as the political system—that’s Mills
Mills ‘97 1997, Charles-; Associate Prof of Philosophy @ U Illinois, Chicago The Racial Contract; p. 1-3
White Supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it
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talk is, after all, the political lingua franca of our times.

The 1AC is the perfection of slavery
The 1AC’s demand for legal relief is the perfection of the slave as a slave
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the slave expresses its fidelity and accepts it role as depending on the master
Farley 5 Boston College (Anthony, “Perfecting Slavery”, http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028andcontext=lsfp)
Slavery is with us still. We are haunted by slavery. We are animated
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beyond the veil, beyond death; hence, the end of forever.  

Economic engagement toward Latin America is based off of white supremacist norms
THORBURN representative of the WORKERS PARTY, USA 2k4
Michael-; “US Imperialism, Hands Off Latin America;” a Chicago-area meeting organized by the Peace Agenda Forum on October 21, 2004; published online-November 9; http://www.anti-imperialist.org/Hands-Off-Latin-America_11-9-04.htm
Economic Basis
Of course, behind all this military intervention are the economic interests of the U
AND
and imperialism - against the Republicans and Democrats. (to be continued).

The affirmative rhetorical silence on whiteness is an active stance that allows white privilege to thrive by masking its existence and treating is as an assumed norm.
DR. CRENSHAW Prof of Speech Comm @ Univ. Ala.  1997
Carrie-PhD. USC; former director of debate @ Univ. of Ala.; WESTERN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

This analysis of Helms’ opening argument illustrates how the ideology of white privilege operates through
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of whiteness like Helms’ protect material white privilege because they mask its existence.

Try or Die – Isolation of racially oppressed groups leads to the TERMINATION OF HUMANITY.
Marable Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies 1984
Manning-Professor of History @ Columbia University; “Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Resistance and Radicalism; p. 198-199.
Black Americans also comprehend that peace is not the absence of conflict.  As long
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the electoral mainstream, the results may be the termination of humanity itself.

IT’S THE ALTERNATIVE AT ALL COSTS/BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
SEEING as citizens of the undiscovered country is an invitation to another better world, memory out of repetition is making life out of death and it is possible to work through the repetitions, work through the TRAUMA of the original accumulation and even if there is a PRICE to be paid for such knowing, WHAT OF IT?  We have an entire world to win and NOTHING to lose
Farley, ’10 2010, James Campbell Farley is a Matthews Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence Albany Law School, Anthony Paul Farley, “SHATTERED:  Afterword for Defining Race, A Joint Symposium of The Albany Law Review and the Albany Journal of Science and Technology”; Albany Law Review _{Vo. 72:1053
We are citizens of the undiscovered country. It is a country we must leave
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, nothing to lose but scattered leaves, and it is only November.}

Racism must be rejected in EVERY INSTANCE without surcease. It justifies atrocities, creates another and is truly the CAPITAL SIN.
Memmi ’00 2000, Albert is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ Unv. Of Paris, Albert-; RACISM, translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission
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.  True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.

Tournament: Blake | Round: 2 | Opponent: Kent Denver | Judge: Kevin Hirn
Immigration will pass – delay collapses economy
Bush 12-19 Jeb Bush Jr. “Time is now for immigration reform”, thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/193578-time-is-now-for-immigration-reform
Wide acknowledgement from Republican House leadership — and support among Republican constituents — shows that
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the higher the costs to our economy, our security and our families.

Plan is unpopular – green energy
Ludwig 6/28 (Mike Ludwig, 6/28/13 “Why Big Coal and the Anti-Frackers Are Up in Arms Over Obamas Climate Plan”, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/17272-why-big-coal-and-the-anti-frackers-are-up-in-arms-over-obamas-climate-plan, JG)
President Obama laid out an ambitious national plan to tackle climate change last Tuesday that
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be raising this issue at the White House with the president later today."

PC key
Orlando Sentinel 11-1 11/1/13, It’s a newspaper that follows Congress, “What we think: It'll take both parties to clear immigration logjam”, http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-11-01/news/os-ed-immigration-reform-congress-20131031_1_immigration-reform-comprehensive-reform-house-republicans
For those who thought the end of the government shutdown would provide a break from
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earn citizenship. House Democratic leaders will have to underscore the president's message.

Visas are key to cybersecurity preparedness
McLarty 9 (Thomas F. III, President – McLarty Associates and Former White House Chief of Staff and Task Force Co-Chair, “U.S. Immigration Policy: Report of a CFR-Sponsored Independent Task Force”, 7-8, http://www.cfr.org/ publication/19759/us_immigration_policy.html)
We have seen, when you look at the table of the top 20 firms
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going to strengthen, I think, our system, our security needs.

Prevents Nuclear war
Fritz 9 Researcher for International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament Jason, researcher for International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, former Army officer and consultant, and has a master of international relations at Bond University, “Hacking Nuclear Command and Control,” July,  http://www.icnnd.org/latest/research/Jason_Fritz_Hacking_NC2.pdf
This paper will analyse the threat of cyber terrorism in regard to nuclear weapons.
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its own, without the need for compromising command and control centres directly.

Tournament: Blake | Round: 2 | Opponent: Kent Denver | Judge: Kevin Hirn
Economic engagement toward Latin America is based off of white supremacist norms
THORBURN representative of the WORKERS PARTY, USA 2k4
Michael-; “US Imperialism, Hands Off Latin America;” a Chicago-area meeting organized by the Peace Agenda Forum on October 21, 2004; published online-November 9; http://www.anti-imperialist.org/Hands-Off-Latin-America_11-9-04.htm
Economic Basis
Of course, behind all this military intervention are the economic interests of the U
AND
and imperialism - against the Republicans and Democrats. (to be continued).

The affirmative rhetorical silence on whiteness is an active stance that allows white privilege to thrive by masking its existence and treating is as an assumed norm.
DR. CRENSHAW Prof of Speech Comm @ Univ. Ala.  1997
Carrie-PhD. USC; former director of debate @ Univ. of Ala.; WESTERN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

This analysis of Helms’ opening argument illustrates how the ideology of white privilege operates through
AND
of whiteness like Helms’ protect material white privilege because they mask its existence.

Racism must be rejected in EVERY INSTANCE without surcease – prerequisite to morality.
Memmi ’00 2000, Albert is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ Unv. Of Paris, Albert-; RACISM, translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission
AND
peace.  True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible

Tournament: Blake | Round: 4 | Opponent: Polytech | Judge: Sydney Doe
Our Interpretation is that we should have pragmatic responses to combat state violence that attempt to take over the state

DEBATE HAS BECOME A GAME IN WHICH WE BECOME SPECTATORS
KETELS Assc Prof of English @Temple University 1996
Violet-THE HOLOCAUST: REMEMBERING FOR THE FUTURE: "Havel to the Castle!" The Power of the Word; THE ANNALS OF AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, November; 548 Annals 45;
THE INTELLECTUALS' DILEMMA
Books, essays, speeches by eyewitnesses to totalitarian experience plead for a reaffirmation of basic human rights. They are exhortations to plunder history for usable analogy.
But well-schooled intellectuals know that contingency rules human history. The flow of events does not stop, does not seem to hold fast long enough, for us to use the lessons historians exact from the past. Language seems pitifully unequal to history's caprice of presenting new configurations. In midthought, examples we adduce become obsolete as news of new horrors flash onto the screens of our moral imaginations.
Preachments about basic human rights, however elegantly urged, do not summon us to
AND
being ac-cused of vapid moralizing ties our tongues and retards reaction.
Such failures of nerve seem justified by the history we are enjoined to plunder. They precipitate descent into a fatal-istic nihilism that relieves us from responsibility. Words do not matter; they rarely mean what they say. What does it matter, then, how intellectuals use their verbal virtuosity? Values are relative and truth elusive.
We stand precisely where many gifted French intellectuals stood during World War II, in
AND
writing of history impossible," n14 because it let them off the hook.
History has survived them and provides a regenerative, other view against nihilism and detachment. It testifies that our terror of being found guilty of phrases too smooth or judgment too simple is not in itself a value. Some longing for transcendence persists in the human spirit, some tenacious faith that truth and goodness exist and can prevail.
What happened in the death camps, the invasion of Prague by Russian tanks, the rape of Muslim women, the dis-membering of Bosnian men, the degrading of a sophisticated society to subsistence and barbarous banditry: these things do not become fictions simply because we cannot speak of them adequately or because composing abstractions is safer than responding to the heinous reality of criminal acts.
No response to the Holocaust and its murderous wake or to the carnage in the
AND
repudiate humanist values because they are inadequate as an antidote to evil." n16
Basic human rights asserted in words cannot be restored in reality unless they are matched
AND
ill matched to the dark complexities of the human experience we would illumine.
To be fair, it is not just a desire to evade responsibility or to
AND
We need fresh air in our "separate national and linguistic rooms." n17
The executioners have not earned forgiveness. We have not earned the right to "turn away from the dilemmas posed by the writers who bore witness to the ugly European past." n18

ALL IMPACTS ARE INEVITABLE WITHOUT APPROPRIATE ACTION
KETELS Assc Prof of English @Temple University 1996
Violet-THE HOLOCAUST: REMEMBERING FOR THE FUTURE: "Havel to the Castle!" The Power of the Word; THE ANNALS OF AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, November; 548 Annals 45;
Even though, as Americans, we have not experienced "by fire, hunger
AND
. Our impotence to action against the brutality of mass slaughter shames us.
We have the historical record to ransack for precedent and corollaries--letters, documents
AND
not yet--still not yet--sufficiently pene-trated human consciousness.
Herein lies the supreme lesson for intellectuals, those who have the projective power to
AND
their way of playing the game"  n23 in order to avoid violence.
The history of the gentle revolutions of Poland, Hungary, and  *51  Czechoslovakia suggests that those revolutions would not have happened at all, and certainly not bloodlessly, without the moral engagement and political activism of intellectuals in those besieged cultures.
Hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and peasants joined in the final efforts
AND
and literally took to the streets to lead nonviolent protests that became revolutions.
The most profound insights into this process that gradually penetrated social consciousness sufficiently to make
AND
lies chiefly in what we understand as the human spirit." He continues:
If we don't wish to destroy ourselves in national, religious or political discord;
AND
mind and a sense of responsibility--somehow come to our senses.  n25
 Somehow we must come together in "a kind of general mobilization of human consciousness, of the human mind and spirit, human responsibility, human reason."  

Engaging the organs of power is good for the empowerment of oppressed individuals– not doing so will only hurt the progresses that others have made
Williams, ’70 1970, Robert F. Williams, interviewed by The Black Scholar, “Interviews,”, Vol. 1, No. 7, BLACK REVOLUTION (May 1970), pp. 2-14, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41163455
Williams: It is erroneous to think that one can isolate oneself completely from institutions
AND
people enter the vital organs of the establishment. Infiltrate the man's institutions.

The Role of the ballot is who has the best strategiest for Combating violence against indegionous and minority people
Politics  provides opportunity for Black debaters to learn about modern day politics and gain important training to become active and meaningful participants in modern day democratic decisionmaking.  

That’s Key to Black empowerment
Woodson ’33 1933, Carter G. Woodson is an African American historian and educator; he is the founder and editor of the Journal of Negro History and the Negro History Bulletin and the founder of the association for the study of Negro life and history. “The Miseducation of the Negro,” p92
In the North the Negroes have a better chance to acquire knowledge of political matters
AND
Negro while the highly favorable party was doing so much for the race.

Rejection of state institutions and education is akin to the policy of racial exclusion as seen previoiusly
Woodson ’33 1933, Carter G. Woodson is an African American historian and educator; he is the founder and editor of the Journal of Negro History and the Negro History Bulletin and the founder of the association for the study of Negro life and history. “The Miseducation of the Negro,” p83-84
Not long ago a measure was introduced in a certain State Legislature to have the
AND
to conform to the policy of “keeping the Negro in his place.”

A take over of the State is the only solvency
Franklin 1993
John Hope, James B Duke Professor Emeritus of History Duke University, 1985-1992 was Professor of legal History in the Law School at Duke University; THE COLOR LINE:  Legacy for the Twenty First Century; p. 45
Neither the courts nor the Congress nor the president can declare by fiat, resolution
AND
it and, indeed, would be horrified if we even approached it.

their abdication of the resolution has dangerous societal implications—their performance is based in a plea for negation that crushes chances of state based reform
Pasha ’96 July-Sept. 1996, Mustapha Kamal, Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, “Security as Hegemony”, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 283-302, JSTOR

An attack on the postcolonial state as the author of violence and its drive to
AND
more savage and less capable of ad- justing to rhythms dictated by globalization

Tournament: Blake | Round: 2 | Opponent: Kent Denver | Judge: Kevin Hirn
Turn – increased carbon emissions is key to check high altitude water vapor, which outweighs – prefer our evidence – their authors falsify data and their models don’t evaluate water vapor
Andrews, ’10 January 29, 2010, Michael Andrews, “Dropping Water Vapor Levels are Naturally Negating Carbon's Warming Effects”, http://www.dailytech.com/Dropping+Water+Vapor+Levels+are+Naturally+Negating+Carbons+Warming+Effects+/article17553.htm 

*Note – he is citing a peer-reviewed study by Susan Solomon , Karen H. Rosenlof and Robert W. Portmann, John S. Daniel, Sean M. Davis, Todd J. Sanford –research scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Gian-Kasper Plattner – works at Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Sidlerstrasse 5, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
Recently there has been a rash of incidents in which climate alarmists have been embarrassingly
AND
of the model based research used to predict warming is likely badly flawed.

CO2 is key to avert a global agricultural crisis and collapse of the biosphere resulting from global species extinction – outweighs the uncertain effects of warming
Idso, et. al, ’02 Sherwood PhD and fmr research physicist for the Dept of Ag, Keith PhD Botany, Craig PhD Geography, “Feeding Humanity to Help Save Natural Ecosystems: The Role of the Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentration”, CO2 Science, Volume 5, Number 36: 4 September 2002
How much land can ten billion people spare for nature? This provocative question was
AND
Any policies that stand in the way of that objective are truly obscene.

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wayzata GN | Judge: Sara Sanchez
1NR Overview

Reform turn economy
Hale ’13 August 15, 2013. Colin Hale is the Executive Producer at Neon Tommy, a new source at the University of Southern California; it won two L.A. Press Club awards in 2011 and received two honorable mentions.
 “Mexico's Energy Reforms: What Does It Mean For The U.S.?” http://www.neontommy.com/news/2013/08/mexicos-energy-reforms-what-does-it-mean-us
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced on Monday one of the most "sweeping economic overhauls" in Mexico's history with his proposal to open the country's closed energy industry to foreign investment for the first time in 75 years. For Mexico's northern neighbor, the question is how do these reforms affect the average American consumer, the North American energy sector, and the overall U.S. economy? According to energy and economic analysts, the answer is simple: A lot. These changes have the potential to dramatically alter North America's energy markets—a discussion most politicians and pundits in Washington, D.C. and on AM talk radio are actually referring to (usually by accident) when they wax poetic about "American energy independence." Coined as a "quiet energy revolution" by Bloomberg, the proposed reforms of the energy sector in Mexico would, for the first time since 1938, allow foreign companies (including American entities like Chevron and Exxon Mobil) to establish "profit-sharing contracts" with the state-owned oil company, Pemex, for oil exploration and export. While foreign companies would still be prohibited from running oil fields on their own in Mexico, the reforms would allow for profit sharing and are designed to help invigorate Mexico's energy industry, which suffers from a lack of investment in modern and efficient infrastructure and exploration. Under the current proposal, foreign companies would be able to receive a share of profits, but not reserves of oil. Critics of Peña Nieto's reforms, including his opponent in the 2012 presidential election, have said that this contractual caveat would prevent large companies from signing contracts with Pemex and making sizeable investments. An executive with an independent U.S.-based oil company told Reuters that the inability for foreign companies to own the reserves could prevent these reforms from being "a game changer." However, others, including the president of Peña Nieto's political party, the PRI, have suggested that the energy reforms would be the biggest win for the Mexican economy since the enactment of NAFTA in 1995. PRI president Cesar Camacho said that the reforms would "create a world-class company" in Pemex, but "won't privatize" Mexico's oil industry. Juan Pardinas Carpizo, the CEO of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, said that the reforms were a "positive step," but that its successes will be judged based on Mexico's ability to attract investment, talent, human capital, and technology. Pemex has suffered from a lack of investment in infrastructure and exploration. In July, its oil output was at its lowest point in 18 years and Pemex is, according to Bloomberg, heading toward a ninth straight year of declining production. Since 2001, Mexico's "proven reserves" (oil commercially recoverable under current conditions) have fallen by 41. Analysts have reported that at Pemex's current rate of extraction, Mexico will exhaust its existing reserves by 2022. Oil rig in Gulf of Mexico Oil rig in Gulf of Mexico For the United States, the proposed reforms of Mexico's energy industry should be viewed as a positive. In the last twenty years, the two economies have become more and more interconnected and mutually dependent on each other, in areas such as shale natural gas production, manufacturing, agriculture, electricity generation, as well as petroleum import-export. The opening of Mexico's energy industry should be seen as an opportunity to not only make potentially profitable investments for American oil companies (and a boost for the stock market), but also as part of the U.S.'s stated goal of North American energy independence and breaking away from dependence on importing oil from OPEC. In a press release on Monday, U.S.-based Chevron Corporation welcomed "any decision ... by Mexico to provide new opportunities for investments." For the North American consumer, these reforms have the potential to not only create high-paying energy jobs for Mexicans and Americans, but also dramatically boost the Mexican economy. With the interconnectedness of the U.S. and Mexican economies, a boost for one means a boost for both. Peña Nieto has been pushing to double Mexico's economic growth which has trailed the rest of Latin America over the last ten years, and during his 2012 presidential campaign, Peña Nieto made energy reform a centerpiece of his proposals. Pemex's drop in production and revenue has not only hurt the Mexican oil industry, but the Mexican government as well. Nearly one-third of the Mexican government's budget comes from Pemex's oil fields. Perhaps the most visible result of Mexico's energy reforms could be the price of gasoline, oil and other forms of hydrocarbon energy for Mexican and North American consumers. Mexico currently imports almost half of its gasoline since it lacks the necessary refining infrastructure, and with new foreign investments in the petroleum industry, Mexico could not only begin to refine its own gasoline but also export that gasoline to the United States. The reforms could also potentially decrease the cost of electricity in Mexico and southwestern United States, which according to the Mexican government is nearly 25 higher than competitors in other countries. Peña Nieto also announced reforms to the state-owned electricity utility on Monday, but to much less fanfare. 

2NC Will Pass 

The public approves of reform
Mills 9-4 Time for U.S. to emulate Mexico? By Mark P. Mills. Mills, a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and author of “Unleashing the North American Energy Colossus.” September 4, 2013 http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Sep/04/time-for-us-to-emulate-mexico/?#article-copy
South of the border, President Enrique Peña Nieto appears to be on track to gain approval from the General Congress of the United Mexican States to reverse decades of tight federal control over the country’s oil and gas resources. Polls in Mexico show citizens favor Peña’s idea 62 percent to 28 percent. And in a reversal of roles, Mexico is setting an example that the United States should follow: not just permitting, but encouraging, private investment in publicly controlled energy resources. In Mexico, stakes are high. At least one-third of the government’s revenues come from oil and gas. But Pemex, the monopoly player, has struggled of late, overseeing a 25 percent fall in Mexico’s oil production as the easy deposits have been tapped out. Peña doubtless knows that, after managing his domestic politics, it is mainly American high-tech hydrocarbon know-how his country needs to unlock billions of untapped barrels in its enormous shale deposits and the monster fields deep in the Gulf of Mexico. Given the proximity, American companies both large and small and their workers will be co-beneficiaries of a Mexican energy revival.

Analysts conclude momentum ensures passage
Newbery 9-3 Charles Newbery et al.  “LatamWatch: Mexico President Rallies Support for Key Reforms.” SEPTEMBER 3, 2013. https://mninews.marketnews.com/index.php/latamwatch-mexico-president-rallies-support-key-reforms?q=content/latamwatch-mexico-president-rallies-support-key-reforms
BUENOS AIRES, MEXICO CITY AND SAO PAULO, SEPT 3 (MNI) - Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto used his first state of the nation speech to rally a divided public to place their faith in his landmark reform agenda as Congress enters its first full week of the fall session with the energy, fiscal and finance reform bills set for debate. "We have 120 days left in 2013 to make it a year remembered for great changes, a year when Mexico dared to take off," Pena Nieto said Monday. "We have clarity of path. We have the energy and determination to move and transform our country." With energy reform now in committee, and finance reform nearing floor debate, the introduction of fiscal reform, the final pillar of the ambitious agenda will be introduced "in the coming days," the President said. The administration is nearly certain to introduce the tax reform package by Sept. 8 - the deadline to submit the 2014 budget proposal. "This reform will strengthen the economic stability of the nation by simplifying the tax system, increase competitiveness in the manufacturing sector and especially in micro- small- and mid-sized businesses," Pena Nieto said. "Furthermore, it will foster a more formal economy, will increase transparency of the spending of public resources, and it will give renewed push to Pemex by way of a new fiscal regime." He also focused on the need for higher growth. Second quarter GDP contracted 0.74 and the country barely avoided recession for the first half of 2013, and the Bank of Mexico released its latest private sector poll on growth and inflation Monday, which now has a 2013 GDP estimate of 1.78, compared to 2.65 last month. "We cannot allow ourselves be defined by the kind of growth we saw in the first half of this year," Pena Nieto said. "The external scenario slowed the pace of our growth, but the opportunity to accelerate our own economy is within this country. It is within the decisions we take as a nation." "Only we Mexicans can remove once and for all the obstacles that have limited growth," he added. He also applauded the passage overnight Sunday of secondary laws to education reform. Those changes, which include standardized testing of teachers, have generated multiple and occasionally violent clashes between teachers and authorities in Mexico City, becoming particularly turbulent Sunday. The capital is preparing for further demonstrations in the days and weeks ahead with teachers and those opposing the energy sector and higher sales taxes, but analysts think the political momentum favors the reforms. Morgan Stanley LatAm economist Luis Arcentales in a note to investors, "The coming weeks are likely to determine whether Mexico stays the course of its reform agenda: we expect it will, we will be watching carefully." In an Aug. 26 poll conducted by Consulta Mitofsky, 40.2 of Mexicans surveyed said the number one factor in energy reform is for it to reduce electricity and gas bills, opposed to 29.8 who said it was to retain state ownership of oil and gas rights.

Vote counts prove it’s passing now
Sada and Zissis 9-5 September 05, 2013. Andres Sada and Carin Zissis—writers for the American Society Council on the Americas. Mexico Update: Taking on Education and Energy Reforms. http://www.as-coa.org/articles/mexico-update-taking-education-and-energy-reforms
The Outlook for Energy Reform In terms of the Pacto por México, energy reform is arguably the most anticipated, and comes 75 years after President Lázaro Cárdenas led the expropriation of Mexico’s oil sector. On August 12, Peña Nieto presented an energy reform that seeks, among other measures, constitutional changes to Articles 27 and 28 to allow for profit-sharing energy agreements between Mexico’s government and the private sector. As well, fiscal changes would reduce the government’s dependency on Pemex’s revenues, allowing it to reinvest these funds. In mentioning Article 27, Peña Nieto invoked Cárdenas, saying the reform follows that president’s original wording of that section of the Constitution. In his remarks, Peña Nieto stressed that both Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission would remain wholly government-owned. The PAN, PRD, and PRI agree that Mexico’s energy sector must be modernized. Even as oil production accounts for over a third of the country’s revenues, state oil monopoly Pemex has been plagued by operating losses, outdated technology, and reduced output. For the past eight years, production has declined, leading the government to warn that Mexico could become a net oil importer by 2018. But even as the three main parties agree that changes are needed to reverse Pemex’s course, their proposals differ. The PRD opposes constitutional changes that would allow for private sector participation via contracts or concessions. Conversely, the PAN advocates modifying Articles 25, 27, and 28 in order to allow for increased private sector participation through royalty-paying concessions. While the president and his party the PRI coincide on requiring constitutional changes to for more private sector participation, Peña Nieto’s proposal is less aggressive, giving companies a share of profits rather than production. Significantly, the three parties agree that Pemex must be given fiscal autonomy, so that it’s able to productively reinvest its revenues. Currently, 72 percent of Pemex’s revenues go to the federal government. The Pacto por México set 2014 as the deadline for legislative approval of energy reform. The reform is slated for discussion during the current congressional session, which runs September 1 to December 15. If the energy reform is to modify the Constitution, as both the PAN and PRI propose, the initiative will need the support of two-thirds of the legislature. This works out to 85 of 128 senators and 334 out of 500 congressmen. Once approved federally, a majority—or 16 out of 31 states—must pass the reform. The PAN and PRI, in agreement on several portions of the reform along with their allies, appear to have more than enough votes to pass a reform, with 71 percent support in the Chamber of Deputies and 77 percent in the Senate. Though the energy reform could gain approval without any PRD support, figures such as the PRI’s coordinator in the Senate Emilio Gamboa have stated that they will do their best to work with the PRD. Through the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, a leading Mexican business advocacy group, the private sector has also expressed support for the reform.

Protestors are on the backfoot—there’s a consensus for reforms
Economist 9-7 The suits v the street. Economist. Sep 7th 2013. http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21584972-enrique-pe-nieto-sticks-defiantly-his-reform-plans-he-bumpy-ride-suits-v
In the nick of time, Mr Peña won a reprieve. The day before his annual address, the lower house of Congress approved, by an impressive majority, the most contentious aspect of the education-reform bill, which would make teachers’ continuing employment subject to annual appraisals. That put the protesters on the back foot and gave the president something tangible to celebrate in his speech. He went on to call on the country to back sweeping energy and fiscal reforms, which he said he planned to pass in the next 120 days. Such reforms have been the big achievement of his first nine months in office. His Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which lost power in 2000 having ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, spent its 12 years in opposition relentlessly banging on about its usurpers’ amateurishness. Since returning to power in December it has prided itself on Mr Peña’s ability to forge a consensus for reform among the main opposition parties. The cornerstone of that success has been the Pact for Mexico, an agreement to fast-track reforms, signed by all three main parties in December. But approval of the education bill may be the high-water mark of that effort. The Pact is now fraying. 

Link
Link alone turns case—US interference damages the bilateral relationship
Starr ‘12 October 2012. Pamela K. Starr is the Director of the U.S.-Mexico Network and an Associate Professor at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. “The United States and Mexican Domestic Politics,” college.usc.edu/usmexnet/wp-content/.../Camp-Oxford-paper-final.doc
Fourth, the double-edged sword of interdependence will continue to restrain the behavior of both countries. In the case of the United States, this is most evident in the rising costs associated with the application of its coercive might. In the case of Mexico, it is most evident with the absorption of “American” ideas. In both cases, it has dramatically increased the complexity of the bilateral relationship and the resulting room for bilateral discord, but it has also increased the dependence of each actor on the other. In this situation, there is simply too much at stake to risk serious bilateral conflict and too many national problems that can be resolved only through cooperation. Therefore, U.S. interference in Mexican affairs, insisting that Mexico accept counsel that it is uninterested in receiving, will most often not be worth the damage it could cause to the bilateral relationship.

Drug war aid is seen as intervention—crushes Nieto’s capital
Long ’13 Tom Long—writer for AULA, center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University. 04-16-2013. “Will tensions over security spoil the Obama-Peña Nieto Summit?” http://aulablog.net/2013/04/16/will-tensions-over-security-spoil-the-obama-pena-nieto-summit/
Peña Nieto’s political incentives do not point to the same, high-profile cooperation with the United States that occurred under President Felipe Calderón, who had already begun shifting priorities last year.  Despite the major turnaround signified by the PRI’s signing NAFTA almost 20 years ago, Peña Nieto’s PRI still contains elements more skeptical of U.S. “intervention” than Calderón’s PAN.  Materially, moreover, most of the U.S. aid planned under the Mérida Initiative has been disbursed, and Congress exhibits little appetite for major new appropriations.  Even at its height, U.S. spending was a fraction of Mexico’s contribution to the drug war.  That reduction, coupled with growing awareness that the Calderón strategy actually fueled violence, diminishes the enthusiasm in and outside of government for continuing his policies.   Frustration from the left in both countries regarding persisting human rights violations and the slow pace of judicial reform could also grow more serious.

The Nieto administration is walking a fine line, and any move could undermine the government’s political standing
Hope ’13 July 25, 2013. Alejandro Hope is a security policy analyst at IMCO, a Mexico City think tank, and a former intelligence officer. “In Mexico’s Drug War, Real Progress Is Local” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-25/in-mexico-s-drug-war-real-progress-is-local.html
When Mexican marines recently captured Miguel Angel Trevino, the head of Los Zetas, the country’s most infamous and ruthless drug gang, Mexicans heard about it not from President Enrique Pena Nieto or one of his cabinet officials, but from a spokesman at the Interior Ministry. That low-key approach fits with the government’s effort to play down information about drugs and violence, and it has been rewarded with improved public perceptions about crime and security. Yet this strategy is also fraught with risk. Pena Nieto’s administration is caught between saying so much that fear is reignited and saying so little that it appears insensitive to the very serious threats still facing many Mexicans. Another threat is the potential public backlash if security doesn’t improve at a faster rate in coming months. Combined with slow economic growth, unmet expectations on the security front could undermine the government’s political standing.

US engagement with Mexico is unpopular—hyper nationalism and past interventionism produces a strong barrier to cooperation
Starr ‘12 October 2012. Pamela K. Starr is the Director of the U.S.-Mexico Network and an Associate Professor at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. “The United States and Mexican Domestic Politics,” college.usc.edu/usmexnet/wp-content/.../Camp-Oxford-paper-final.doc
The nature, depth, and anti-American undertones of Mexican nationalism have operated as a powerful impediment to U.S. interference in Mexican domestic matters. While Mexico’s resulting hypersensitivity to any sign that the United States might be trying to have an effect on its internal affairs has softened in recent years, it remains a strong barrier to the capacity of the United States to exercise its power to positive effect. Growing interdependence between the United States and Mexico beginning in the last decades of the twentieth century transformed a traditionally arm’s-length relationship into one characterized by mutual dependencies that have narrowed the range of viable policy options for both countries. At the same time, the gradual emergence of shared ideas about economics, politics, and most recently narcotics control has encouraged each country to perceive the challenges and policy solutions for a key set of national interests in a similar light. This has reduced the range of situations in which Mexico follows a policy approach unacceptable to U.S. national interests and which might thereby stimulate the natural impulse of the powerful to exploit its position to gain cooperation through coercion. Shared ideas and policy approaches have also encouraged the United States to see Mexico as a kindred state worthy of the benefit of the doubt. Finally, as interdependence has amplified Mexico’s impact on U.S. domestic concerns, the role of the U.S. Congress in bilateral affairs has increased. The bias of this institution, and especially the House of Representatives, toward domestic instead of international concerns weakens the restraining influence that interdependence and shared ideas can have on the interventionist impulse. Members of the U.S. Congress are thus prone to demand and even require the exercise of U.S. power to force Mexico to help resolve a U.S. domestic policy problem. As a consequence, Mexico has repeatedly found its policy autonomy constrained in situations where Congress has interests. 

Nieto’s presidency will cut back in engagement with the US—Mexicans have grown skeptical of cooperation
Nelsen ’13 APRIL 25, 2013. Aaron Nelsen is a Rio Grande Valley Correspondent at San Antonio Express-News , a previous Correspondent at TIME.com and Markets Reporter at Reuters. “U.S. and Mexico circle warily.” http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/U-S-and-Mexico-circle-warily-4464166.php
When President Barack Obama and Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto meet on Thursday, issues of bilateral trade and immigration will occupy a significant portion of the visit, and for good reason. As our second-largest trading partner with more than $1 billion in goods and services exchanged daily, the long-term prospects for prosperity in the United States depend on the continued economic growth of Mexico's booming middle-class. However, on the sticky issue of how to confront the drug-fueled violence that has gripped communities along the border the past several years, details remain mostly unknown. “The Peña Nieto administration has kept its cards very close to its vest in terms of what it plans for the future of U.S.-Mexico cooperation,” said David A. Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. So far, the neighbors have given the obligatory nod to bilateral collaboration, and Obama's visit is another important symbolic gesture, but tangible elements on the next phase of the Mérida Initiative counter-narcotics program has been notably absent. Historically, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its acronym PRI, has always been leery of Washington involvement in domestic affairs. During 71 years of uninterrupted rule, the PRI dominated Mexico's political landscape until opposition party candidate Vicente Fox was elected president in 2000. Conservative Felipe Calderón followed in 2006, marking a 12-year stretch of unprecedented U.S.-Mexico cooperation. But with the PRI's return to Los Pinos, Mexico's presidential palace, some U.S. officials sense the relationship has already begun to erode. “On the one hand the Mexican government may be more skeptical about the value and urgency of cooperating with the U.S. in the same manner that Calderón did,” Shirk said. The recent dismissal of high-profile prosecutions of army officers on drug-trafficking charges, ostensibly to root out corruption, has raised questions about Calderón-era justice. Set against this uncertain backdrop, Shirk questioned whether historic levels of extraditions and information sharing will continue. U.S. administration officials have their own concerns that the Peña Nieto administration will be more tolerant if not directly collude with drug trafficking organizations, echoing corruption of former PRI governments. Observers will be paying close attention to any details that might hint at how the two nations will manage security, but specifics are unlikely to emerge from this round of meetings. At this stage, neither side knows how much they want to work with the other. “My concern is that in some ways we are slipping back in time in the dynamics of U.S.-Mexico cooperation on security issues,” said Shirk, a professor of political science. “We might find that after all the progress that's been made we're right back where we started.” A return to the '90s would represent a significant retreat from trust built between agencies and the two governments on thorny international legal questions, but Peña Nieto administration officials could hardly be blamed for wanting to reconsider the arrangement. “Some people are very skeptical of that cooperation over the past ten years and all it's wrought and they would say 'good' because at the end of the day, what does Mexico gain?” Shirk said. Still, meetings taking place in Washington ahead of and during Obama's visit are hardly just about security and violence — it's also significantly about economies. Economic integration over the last 20 years has played a crucial role in creating jobs on both sides of the border, underscoring a strategic partnership that is as much historical as it is economic. “U.S. competitiveness depends on Mexican competitiveness,” said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Expect to see further investment in educational exchange and innovation; however, the biggest investment should be made in border infrastructure to limit illegal flows of weapons while developing programs to speed legitimate business, according to Wood. “You want to make your border secure, because it's your economic lifeline,” said Wood. “That should be one of the two big priorities.” But how can the border be made to serve the best interests of both nations in economic and security terms? On security matters, a few key areas will fundamentally define the U.S.-Mexico relationship, including intelligence sharing, police standards and training, institution building and money laundering. And yet, on the ground little appears to have changed “A lot of people think it will go back to the way it was,” said Tristan Reed, a Mexico security analyst for Stratfor, an Austin-based private global intelligence firm.
Nieto’s political capital is key to passage—shores up public support
Wilkinson and Fausset ’13 August 13, 2013. Tracy Wilkinson and Richard Fausset—journalists for the LA Times. “Mexico's officials wage PR battle to sell energy reform plan.” http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/13/world/la-fg-mexico-pemex-pr-20130814
Even if energy reform does deliver the advantages that Peña Nieto is promising, those benefits may not materialize for years. And in the interim, Peña Nieto will have expended serious political capital to pass the controversial reform. Although it is expected that Peña Nieto will have the votes he needs in Congress to win approval for the reform, he has a restive and skeptical public to deal with. Some of the ubiquitous government ads on television and radio Tuesday seemed to have borrowed a page right out of the left's rhetoric: "No to privatization!" the voice-over starts. Then it quickly adds, "Yes to energy reform!" Many opponents of the reform are relying heavily on nationalistic imagery and rhetoric in arguing that Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party is selling the country out to foreign interests. Columnist Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez, writing in the Reforma newspaper, said changing the constitutional provisions on oil and energy was like "putting a miniskirt on the Virgin of Guadalupe," Mexico's most revered Catholic symbol. Especially on the left, where many activists consider themselves the true ideological heir of Cardenas, there was anger over hearing Peña Nieto use the late president's name to sell the proposal. A Twitter fight of sorts raged between "pros" and "cons." "Peña Nieto, do you know who Lazaro Cardenas was?" asked a Twitter user with the moniker Teotihuachango. "Who are they fooling?" asked Claudia Herrera, another Twitter user. Those in favor primarily cited the lift that a more efficient Pemex would provide the Mexican economy. "Reforming Pemex can't wait," wrote Carlos Alberto G. "Mexico needs this to be able to move ahead."

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wayzata GN | Judge: Sara Sanchez
Here’s proof – they allow tons of random unilateral measures
CSG 13 Cuba Study Group, a non-profit, non-partisan organization, comprised of business and community leaders of Cuban descent who share a common interest and vision of a free and democratic Cuba, “Restoring Executive Authority Over U.S. Policy Toward Cuba,” Feb 2013, http://www.cubastudygroup.org/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=45d8f827-174c-4d43-aa2f-ef7794831032
4. Additional Steps the U.S. President Can Take to Promote Change in Cuba¶ While we wait for Congress to act, the Executive Branch should exercise its licensing authority to further safeguard the flow of contacts and resources into the Island, encourage independent economic and political activity, and further empower the Cuban people. To that end, the Cuba Study Group proposes that the President pursue the following measures:¶ i) Modify Remittance and Export Limitations: Increase the $3,000 limit on remittances that can be carried to Cuba by authorized travelers and expand the types of goods that travelers may legally take to Cuba to support micro entrepreneurs. Fewer limitations in these areas will make it easier for U.S. travelers to provide seed capital and in-kind contributions for start-ups.¶ ii) Authorize Travel by General License for NGOs and Allow Them to Open Cuban Bank Accounts: Regulations enacted on January 28, 2011 allow U.S. full- and part-time university staff to travel to Cuba by general license. These regulations also allow U.S.-based academic institutions to open accounts in Cuban banks with funds to support their educational programs in Cuba. A similar license for foundations and NGOs whose mission involves support for micro and small businesses would also help support this growing segment of civil society.¶ iii) Establish New Licenses for the Provision of Services to Cuban Private Entrepreneurs: The President could build on existing authorizations that allow U.S. persons and institutions to pay individual Cuban scholars musicians and artists for their work. New licenses could extend to additional groups, such as artisans or farmers, and authorize a greater scope of activities such as recording, publication, distribution, etc.¶ iv) Authorize Imports of Certain Goods and Services to Businesses and Individuals Engaged in Certifiably Independent Economic Activity in Cuba: The President could authorize the importation of limited types of Cuban-origin goods and services under general or specific licenses, particularly when such authorizations could be justified as providing support for the Cuban people or democratic change in Cuba. For example, the President could authorize imports from private producers or allow U.S. persons to directly engage and hire Cuban professionals.¶ v) Authorize Export and Sale of Goods and Services to Businesses and Individuals Engaged in Certifiably Independent Economic Activity in Cuba: Amend existing licensing policy to establish a presumption of approval for specific items deemed to support the U.S.-stated policy goal of promoting independent economic activity on the Island. Since 2000, legislation has allowed the export of a broad range of agricultural products and a limited range of medicines and medical devices. This should be expanded to include other inputs in demand by indepen - dent businesses, including—but not limited to—good such as art supplies, food preparation equipment, bookkeeping materials, and basic electronic equipment and software required for retail sales and business administration.¶ vi) Authorize the Sale of Telecommunications Hardware in Cuba : Current U.S. regulations, as amended by the Obama administration in 2009, allow for donations of some telecommunications equipment, thereby recognizing that these goods by themselves do not violate the embargo. The next step should be to allow for the sales of those same goods inside the Island. Along with those provisions, changes should also allow for the provision of general travel licenses for research, marketing and sale of those goods.¶ vii) Authorize the Reestablishment of Ferry Services to Cuba : Current U.S. regulations allow both “aircraft and vessels” to serve Cuba as an exception to the U.S. embargo against the Island. The use of chartered aircrafts to transport Cuban-Americans and other licensed U.S. travelers to and from Cuba has long been authorized by the U.S. Department of Treasury. The next step should be to reestablish safe and secure chartered ferry services to transport the same categories of passengers to and from Cuba. Ferry service offers an affordable alternative to airline travel to Cuba and would allow an increase in the amount of goods that Cuban-Americans and other licensed travelers may legally take to Cuba to support their families and micro entrepreneurs.¶ viii) Simplify the Provision of Controlled Commodities, such as Computers and Laptops Direct the Department of Commerce to provide more detailed guidance for individuals to determine whether or not controlled commodities, such as laptops and printers, qualify under the general export waiver.¶ ix) Allow Licensed U.S. Travelers Access to U.S.-Issued Debit, Credit, and Pre-Paid Cards and Other Financial Services While on Authorized Travel in Cuba: Currently, U.S. travelers to Cuba have no access to U.S. bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards or other basic financial services. With few exceptions, U.S. travelers are forced to carry cash with them to Cuba. Allowing U.S. travelers access to electronic payment systems would help ensure their safety and security while being on the Island. Moreover, authorizing new electronic payment systems would facilitate the Administration’s goal of promoting people-to-people contacts and facilitating private economic activity by safeguarding the transfer of money from U.S. residents to relatives and independent entrepreneurs on the island.¶ x) Review Cuba’s Designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism: Cuba’s status on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism has been subject to debate for more than a decade. The President should order a comprehensive, apolitical review to determine whether this designation reflects the reality of Cuba today.¶ xi) Develop an expanded bilateral agenda with a range of specific topics of mutual interest : Agenda should include topics such as the resolution of property claims to help foster an environment of dialogue, problem- solving and trust building— thereby helping to set the stage for an eventual normalization of relations.
LIMITS outweigh – their interpretation dis-insentivises in depth debate and pre round prep – impossibility to prepare for the infinite amount of affs means the neg relies on process counter-plans that destroy topic education and plan education – small topic means a better depth of education – a broad range of education is inevitable through the news – but depth is the only way to master knowledge and apply it outside of debate
Education is the only portable impact to debate – fairness fades outside the room.

The CP solves—it shrinks the underground economy to help curtail illicit flows—model simulations prove
Kar ’12 Dev Kar. January 2012. “Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows, Macroeconomic Imbalances, and the Underground Economy.” http://www.gfintegrity.org/storage/gfip/documents/reports/mexico/gfi_mexico_report_english-web.pdf
The results of model simulations provided an insight into policy measures required to curtail the generation and transmission of illicit capital. We found that macroeconomic instability such as high fiscal deficits, inflation, and external debt can lead to loss of confidence in the economy triggering widely expected depreciation of the exchange rate which in turn can drive illegal capital flight. Hence prudent macroeconomic policies geared towards maintaining economic stability can curtail illicit flows. However, structural and governance-related issues also need to be addressed to stem the outflows. For instance, because trade openness tends to lead to greater trade mispricing in the absence of stronger regulatory oversight, specific measures to reform Customs administration would probably be required. Moreover, since the underground economy is a significant and positive driver of illicit flows, policy measures that shrink the underground economy would help curtail the cross-border transfer of illicit capital.

Pursuing macroeconomic stability—sustainable fiscal policy and monetary discipline—lowers inflation and solves investment—curtailing IFF’s
Kar ’12 Dev Kar. January 2012. “Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows, Macroeconomic Imbalances, and the Underground Economy.” http://www.gfintegrity.org/storage/gfip/documents/reports/mexico/gfi_mexico_report_english-web.pdf
(v) The importance of maintaining macroeconomic stability The simulation model developed in this paper showed that in retrospect, macroeconomic instability played an important role in driving illicit financial flows from Mexico. Fiscal policies that result in large deficits lead to monetary expansion to the extent that deficits are financed through central bank credits or outright money creation. The model shows how expansionary fiscal policies drive growth in the money supply which together with inflationary expectations, drive inflation. High (and, for that matter, highly variable) inflation in turn was found to be a significant driver of illicit flows from the country. We also found illicit outflows to have increased significantly following every macroeconomic crisis that Mexico faced over the period covered in this study. Outflows always increased over the year immediately preceding the crisis and tended to fall below crisis levels at varying speeds. Following the first oil crisis and global economic crisis, illicit flows from Mexico fell below crisis levels in the year following the crisis. For instance, the peso crisis had a strong impact on illicit flows—the troughs still exceed the peak reached during the peso crisis. Often, macroeconomic imbalances lead to widely anticipated exchange rate depreciation, inducing capital flight and further instability. It therefore follows that sustainable fiscal policies together with monetary discipline can go a long way in ensuring macroeconomic stability which can help curtail illicit financial outflows. This finding contrasts with the case of India where we did not find a strong link between macroeconomic stability and illicit flows. A possible explanation is that unlike Mexico, India hardly experienced inflation in the double- and sometimes, triple-digit levels. Moreover, central government deficits as percent of GDP in the case of Mexico were on average much higher than those registered in India. Finally, Mexico also racked up external debt much more than India did so that rising debt contributed to macroeconomic instability in a way that was not the case with India. Briefly, the observation that macroeconomic instability is more likely to drive licit than illicit flows needs to be qualified—if instability is severe enough, it can indeed drive illicit outflows. In the more recent decade, the Mexican central bank has been quite successful in bringing down inflation and lowering its variability. Fiscal deficits as percent of GDP have also been reduced significantly and the external debt to GDP ratio has fallen to about 23.0 percent. There is no question that Mexico has managed to attain macroeconomic stabilization in recent years which has contributed to a much better investment climate according to World Bank estimates. While illicit flows have continued to increase due to a number of other factors, the attainment of macroeconomic stabilization has had a salutatory effect on total outflows. Hence, it would be very important for Mexican economic policies to continue to pursue macroeconomic stability in an effort to contain illicit flows.
Russia

No impact to Russian economy
Blackwill, 09 – former associate dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning (Robert, RAND, “The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic Recession—A Caution”, http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf, WEA)

Now on to Russia. Again, five years from today. Did the global recession and Russia’s present serious economic problems substantially modify Russian foreign policy? No. (President Obama is beginning his early July visit to Moscow as this paper goes to press; nothing fundamental will result from that visit). Did it produce a serious weakening of Vladimir Putin’s power and authority in Russia? No, as recent polls in Russia make clear. Did it reduce Russian worries and capacities to oppose NATO enlargement and defense measures eastward? No. Did it affect Russia’s willingness to accept much tougher sanctions against Iran? No. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has said there is no evidence that Iran intends to make a nuclear weapon.25 In sum, Russian foreign policy is today on a steady, consistent path that can be characterized as follows: to resurrect Russia’s standing as a great power; to reestablish Russian primary influence over the space of the former Soviet Union; to resist Western eff orts to encroach on the space of the former Soviet Union; to revive Russia’s military might and power projection; to extend the reach of Russian diplomacy in Europe, Asia, and beyond; and to oppose American global primacy. For Moscow, these foreign policy first principles are here to stay, as they have existed in Russia for centuries. 26 None of these enduring objectives of Russian foreign policy are likely to be changed in any serious way by the economic crisis.

Russian economy resilient
Stokes, 08 (Bruce Stokes. "Don't Ignore the Russian Bear." Council on Foreign Relations,  http://www.cfr.org/publication/3225/dont_ignore_the_russian_bear.html)

A little less than a year ago, August 17 to be precise, the post-Cold War Russian economic experiment imploded. The ruble collapsed and debt payments to foreigners were frozen. Wall Street lost billions of dollars. Long Term Capital Management, one of the world's biggest hedge funds, had to be taken over by its bankers. Once burned, international investors yanked their capital out of all emerging markets— from Latin America to East Asia— causing world interest rates to spike. The global economy teetered on the edge of depression.   But, much to the surprise of most economic pundits, international markets quickly righted themselves. The Russian economy proved far more resilient than anticipated. And, in retrospect, the events of August, 1998 were little more than a very large bump in the road.   The lessons of this "crisis that wasn't" are now clear: Russia is not too big to fail (the volume of its debts do not dictate special treatment by its creditors); the financial world can cope with such failure; and the Russian economy can bounce back without much overt help from the West. But the impending $4.5 billion loan to Russia by the International Monetary Fund— reflecting Washington's gratitude for Moscow's help in Kosovo, continued fear of Russian nuclear proliferation and concern about Russia's internal political stability— demonstrates that Russia still remains too important for the world to ignore.   This contradiction— not too big to fail, but still too big to flounder— highlights the friction inherent when economic policy is used to further geo-political goals. Up until a year ago, the Clinton Administration argued that aid to Russia was needed, in part, to avoid global economic collapse. August, 1998 exposed that rationale as a charade. Now American support for assistance to Russia can only be justified for two reasons: to reinforce Russia's transition to a market economy or as ransom in Moscow's continued strategic blackmail of the West. Evidence to justify the former is dubious. Its time to own up to the latter.   Last summer's fleeting economic fright reflected Russia's staggering economic collapse. The ruble fell by more than 70 per cent in a couple of weeks. The economy shrank by 4.3 per cent. Real wages fell 41 per cent.   But the crisis was cathartic. "The shock accomplished what reform was intended to achieve," said Anders Aslund, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. The banking system now functions better. Barter is declining. Most important, there has been no reversion to central planning, government-directed lending, industrial subsidies or government reliance on simply printing money.

Russian economic collapse is inevitable
Khruscheva, 08 (Nina L. Khrushcheva is an associate professor of international affairs at the New School, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9-5)

That scenario, however, is unlikely. The unstable conditions that are stoking Russia's current economic boom may soon bring about a crisis similar to the financial meltdown of 1998, when, as a result of the decline in world commodity prices, Russia, which is heavily dependent on the export of raw materials, lost most of its income. Widespread corruption at every level of private and state bureaucracy, coupled with the fact that the government invests little of its oil money in fostering areas like technological innovation, corporate responsibility, and social and political reform, could spin the economic balance out of control. Rampant inflation might bring the Putin-Medvedev Kremlin down. Even if Russia withstands that scenario, global forces will ultimately burst its economic bubble. The temporary release of the U.S. oil reserves, and tough economic and legal sanctions against oil speculators around the world, should end Russia's oil supremacy and hasten its economic collapse. And sooner or later, alternative solutions to the world's dependence on oil and gas will be found.

2NC Status Quo Solves

The Law places regulations on financial transactions—limits illicit businesses and reduces the financial incentives for IFF’s
Andersen ’12 October 16, 2012. “Looking At Mexico’s New Anti-Money Laundering Legislation Looking At Mexico’s New Anti-Money Laundering Legislation.” Arya Andersen is a Policy Intern at Global Financial Integrity. http://www.financialtransparency.org/2012/10/16/looking-at-mexicos-new-anti-money-laundering-legislation/
Mexican President Felipe Calderon signed a bill, unanimously passed by the Senate, today aiming to crack down on money laundering that according to experts may account for at least $10 billion every year in Mexico, or as high as $50 billion, according to estimates from Global Financial Integrity. The bill prohibits the giving or accepting of cash payments greater than half a million pesos ($38,750) for real estate purchases, as well as forbidding cash transactions of more than 200,000 pesos ($15,500) for items such as cars, jewelry or lottery tickets. The law also requires brokers and dealers report the forms of payment for any purchases over half a million pesos and for credit card companies to report when monthly balances exceed 50,000 pesos ($3,875). Violators of the law will face up to 20 years in prison, and a specially-designed financial analysis unit has been set up to work under the prosecutor in tandem with the finance ministry. The reasoning behind the law is simple. Financial windfall provides incentives for criminals to continue to break the law, use violence as a means of communication and to generally act with impunity. Closing one very financially beneficial door for organized crime is a logical step in fighting it. “There is no way to go after organized crime, if not to hit their finances,” said Senator Cristina Diaz Salazar, a member of President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party. As long as cartels can legitimize their illegally-obtained billions in real estate, vehicles, lottery tickets and other luxury goods, they’ll be able to continue to fund the violence that has plagued Mexico since it became the main transit point for U.S.-bound South American narcotics in the early 1990s. If implemented correctly and enforced, stronger anti-money laundering rules could not only help Mexico fight its sophisticated organized crime organizations, but also Some in Mexico are opposed to the law. Those in the jewelry and auto industry, specifically, are worried that they will lose business as a result of more strict regulation. This is understandable. However, Alejandro Encinas of the Democratic Revolution Party summed up the reality of the situation in saying “as long as we don’t effectively combat money laundering and dismantle the financial power of organized crime, the problem of violence and drug trafficking won’t disappear from our country.” In the long run, a less violent and more financially transparent system will be more beneficial for all legal businesses. Losing illicit business is a feature, not a bug. Since President Felipe Calderon’s election in 2006, more than 60,000 people have been killed as a result of the violence stemming from turf wars among drug cartels. This law was first introduced in 2010 as part of Calderon’s multi-pronged plan to combat organized crime, proposing to bar all cash real estate purchases as well as cash purchases of cars, planes and other goods for amounts exceeding 100,000 pesos ($7,700). This initial proposal received considerable pushback, likely due to the amount of money at stake and the notorious levels of corruption in the upper echelon of the Mexican political and law enforcement spheres. The official argument against the bill at its inception was that it would inhibit healthy economic growth due to the fact that many small businesses in Mexico still transacted solely in cash. This argument apparently won some legislators over. Sen. Roberto Gil, of Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, said the legislation now going to Calderon for his signature into law “has achieved a healthy and reasonable balance between the need to inhibit the use of cash and the normal development of our country’s economic activity.” The bill now goes to Calderon to be signed, but will not actually go into effect for another nine months, when president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto will be president. The passage of this law is a fantastic example of the very real and tangible intersection of economic regulation and national and international security. Illicit financial flows allow for drug cartels and organized crime to fund the large-scale violence that Mexico has come to know intimately, and less money will invariably mean fewer weapons in the hands of criminals. Though it is a diluted version of its Calderon’s original proposal, this iteration of the law will be a great tool for the Mexican government to lessen the financial incentives of illegal activity while also providing greater insight into the financial behavior of organized crime. 

Prefer evidence post-implementation—the law limits cash transactions and increases supervision—solves money laundering
Reluyo ’13 Celina Realuyo is a journalist for GlobalList. July 23, 2013. “To Fight Mexican Cartels, Follow The Money.” http://www.theglobalist.com/to-fight-mexican-cartels-follow-the-money/
The capture of the Zetas cartel leader, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, in mid-July 2013 represents a major coup for Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto’s Administration and his campaign pledge to reduce drug-related violence in Mexico. Mexican Marines caught the Zeta kingpin on July 15, 2013, along with a bodyguard and one of his financial operatives, in a vehicle with eight rifles and $2 million in cash near Nuevo Laredo. The Zetas were founded by deserters from the Mexican Special Forces and are considered the most brutal of the Mexican cartels. They are engaged in diversified criminal activities, including drug trafficking, human smuggling, extortion and kidnappings. Their “trademark” is to use highly publicized beheadings and dismemberment of their victims to terrorize local populations. The military operation against Treviño is reminiscent of the “kill/capture decapitation” strategy deployed by former President Felipe Calderon’s Administration. He, too, focused on dismantling cartel leadership structures. Under Calderon’s mano dura (iron fist) strategy, the Mexican military was deployed to fight the cartels head on. Calderon was subsequently blamed for triggering unprecedented levels of violence with over 65,000 deaths in Mexico in six years. As we have seen during the war on drugs, decapitation and mano dura strategies have failed to impact these armed groups significantly. All that such operations yield is violent succession crises. New leaders rise quickly to fill the power vacuum. It is reported that Treviño’s brother, Omar, has already ascended as the new leader of the Zetas. As the saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. This truth applies despite President Peña Nieto’s promise to move away from his predecessor’s hard power counter-cartel approach and focus on reducing violence. While the leadership of the Mexican cartels may change, what remains constant is the primary motive for their criminal enterprises — profit. It’s all about the money  Money serves as the lifeblood for any activity, licit or illicit. U.S. authorities estimate that U.S. drug users send between $19 and $29 billion annually to Mexican drug cartels. In recent years, investigative tools like “following the money trail” have helped security forces around the world better detect, disrupt and dismantle terrorist and criminal groups, including Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. For that reason, the Mexican government should focus more of its counter-crime efforts on cartel finances. Targeting that trail is the only true disrupter, since money is the objective, driver and enabler of the Mexican cartels. It is said that cartel kingpins fear two things: extradition to the United States and losing their money. There are promising signs that the Mexican government has gotten the message. It is now investing in the financial front against the cartels. On July 17, 2013, a new, more rigorous anti-money laundering law went into effect in Mexico. It is aimed at limiting cash transactions and supervising a broader array of businesses vulnerable to money laundering. That same day, the Mexican Attorney General’s office announced the launch of its new Specialized Financial Analysis Unit. The unit is responsible for detecting and dismantling the financial structures of the cartels. These measures will contribute to more comprehensive Mexican efforts to address the supply and demand sides of these criminal enterprises. With the recent arrest of Miguel Angel Treviño and one of his accountants, the Mexican government has a golden opportunity to bring this ruthless cartel leader to justice.

d) Deterrence solves the impact
Deudney ‘99 Daniel, Asst Prof of Poli Sci at Johns Hopkins, Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics
Part of the reason for this loosening of the link between economic and military power has been the nuclear revolution, which has made it relatively cheap for the leading states to deploy staggering levels of violence capacity. Given that the major states field massively oversufficient nuclear forces at the cost of a few percent of their GDP, environmentally induced economic decline would have to be extreme before their ability to field a minimum nuclear deterrent would be jeopardized. A stark example of this new pattern is the fact that the precipitious decline in Russia's economy and defense spending in the 1990s has not diminished Russia's ability to deter great power attack.

Some distinctions--
First, Empirics—93 crises after WW2 prove
Miller, ‘2K Morris Miller is an economist, adjunct professor in the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Administration, consultant on international development issues, former Executive Director and Senior Economist at the World Bank _{Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, “Poverty as a cause of wars?” http://www.management.uottawa.ca/miller/poverty.htm, SM
Do wars spring from a popular reaction to an economic crisis that exacerbates poverty and/or from a heightened awareness of the poor of the wide and growing disparities in wealth and incomes that diminishes their tolerance to poverty? It seems reasonable to believe that a powerful "shock" factor might act as a catalyst for a violent reaction on the part of the people or on the part of the political leadership. The leadership, finding that this sudden adverse economic and social impact destabilizing, would possibly be tempted to seek a diversion by finding or, if need be, fabricating an enemy and setting in train the process leading to war. There would not appear to be any merit in this hypothesis according to a study undertaken by Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After studying 93 episodes of economic crisis in 22 countries in Latin America and Asia in the years since World War II they concluded that Much of the conventional wisdom about the political impact of economic crises may be wrong …..The severity of economic crisis - as measured in terms of inflation and negative growth – bore no relationship to the collapse of regimes….(or, in democratic states, rarely) to an outbreak of violence…In the cases of dictatorships and semi-democracies, the ruling elites responded to crises by increasing repression (thereby using one form of violence to abort another.) If armed conflict is not caused by (nor even correlated with) poverty or the blows of economic crisis with its ensuing exacerbation of poverty, there is a fall-back position that is frequently put forward, namely, that it is the increased awareness of the poor of the sudden widening of the divergence of incomes and wealth between themselves and the rich who they see as managing to weather the economic downturn with little or no loss. There have been several such events in the past four decades but the gap has continued to grow wider and wider. The bald statistics are eloquent: in 1960 there was a 30:1 gap in average per capita incomes between the fifth of the world’s people who live in the rich industrialized countries and the fifth who live in the poorer countries, but by 1990 the gap was 60:1, and as we enter the new millennium, it is 74+:1, a contrast of about $30,000 annual average income per person to less than $400.} 

And, our data is better—their pre WW2 empirics don’t apply
Deudney, ’91 (Daniel, Hewlett Fellow in Science, Technology, and Society at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April)
Poverty wars. First cause internal turmoil, then war. If groups at all levels of affluence protect their standard of living by pushing deprivation on other groups, class war and revolutionary upheavals could result. Faced with these pressures, liberal democracy and free market systems could increasingly be replaced by authoritarian systems capable of maintaining minimum order. If authoritarian regimes are more war-prone because they lack democratic control, and if revolutionary regimes are war-prone because of their ideological fervor and isolation, then the world is likely to become more violent. The record of previous depressions supports the proposition that widespread economic stagnation and unmet economic expectations contribute to international conflict. Although initially compelling, this scenario has major flaws. One is that it is arguably based on unsound economic theory. Wealth is formed not so much by the availability of cheap natural resources as by capital formation through savings and more efficient production. Many resource-poor countries, like Japan, are very wealthy, while many countries with more extensive resources are poor. Environmental constraints require an end to economic growth based on growing use of raw materials, but not necessarily an end to growth in the production of goods and services. In addition, economic decline does not necessarily produce conflict. How societies respond to economic decline may largely depend upon the rate at which such declines occur. And as people get poorer, they may become less willing to spend scarce resources for military forces. As Bernard Brodie observed about the modern era, “The predisposing factors to military aggression are full bellies, not empty ones.” The experience of economic depressions over the last two centuries may be irrelevant, because such depressions were characterized by under-utilized production capacity and falling resource prices. In the 1930's, increased military spending stimulated economies, but if economic growth is retarded by environmental constraints, military spending will exacerbate the problem.

Second, reject their evidence as fear mongering—recent statistics disprove their impact
Barnett 2009 – WPR columnist and editor for Esquire, senior managing director of Enterra Solutions (8/24, Thomas, World Politics Review, “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis”, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/4213/the-new-rules-security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis, WEA)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: *No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); *The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); *Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); *No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); *A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and *No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic fear-mongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.

   Ext. Decreasing

The official poverty rate statistics distort actual poverty, overall trends show massive improvement
Eberstadt, 08 – senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (Nicholas, The Poverty of “The Poverty Rate”
http://www.aei.org/docLib/20081117_PovertyofthePovertyRate.pdf   OPR = Official Poverty Rate

Taken at face value, these stark numbers would seem to be a cause for dismay, if not outright alarm. To go by the OPR, modern America has failed stunningly to lift the more vulnerable elements of society out of deprivation— out from below the income line where, according to the author of the federal poverty measure, “everyday living implied choosing between an adequate diet of the most economical sort and some other necessity because there was not money enough to have both.”3 This statistical portrait of an apparent long-term rise in absolute poverty in the contemporary United States evokes the specter of profound economic, social, and political dysfunction in a highly affluent capitalist democracy. All the more troubling is the near-total failure of social policy implied by such numbers. Despite the War on Poverty and all subsequent governmental antipoverty initiatives, official poverty rates for the nation have mainly moved in the wrong direction over the past three decades. If these numbers cast a disturbing and unfamiliar picture of their country for American citizens and policymakers, it is worth remembering that they would be regarded as utterly unsurprising by many of the most convinced critics of the American system, who would regard such results as exactly what they would expect. The apparent paradox of steady economic growth and persistent or increasing poverty, for example, conforms rather well with some of the Marxian and neo-Marxist critiques of industrial and global capitalism, which accused such systems of inherently generating “immiserating growth.”4 Among non-Marxists, these contours of the U.S. tableau are viewed today as affirming the critique of what is known internationally as “neoliberal reform,” and providing powerful particulars for vigorously rejecting the “American model.”5 But, as we shall demonstrate in the following chapters, the social and economic portrait afforded by America’s official poverty statistics is woefully distorted—almost bizarrely miscast. In reality, the prevalence of absolute deprivation in the United States has declined dramatically over the decades since the debut of the official poverty rate. In reality, the purchasing power of lower-income households is far higher today than it was in the 1960s or ’70s. In reality, the standard of living of the poverty population itself has improved manifestly, decade by decade, since the federal poverty measure was first introduced. The problem is, the statistical measure our democracy has devised for charting our national performance against poverty does not register these basic realities—and worse, cannot even recognize them.

2. Overall material conditions of the poor are improving across every major indicator
Eberstadt, 08 – senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (Nicholas, The Poverty of “The Poverty Rate”
http://www.aei.org/docLib/20081117_PovertyofthePovertyRate.pdf   OPR = Official Poverty Rate

One additional and signal failure of the official poverty rate must be flagged in any empirical discussion of poverty and material well-being in America today. This is its manifest inability to provide an accurate reading of absolute poverty in the United States—the charge that the indicator was expressly assigned from the 1960s on. The OPR is, by explicit official designation, meant to monitor absolute poverty—that is to say, to measure poverty in relation to a set income threshold, rather than in relation to the current incomes reported by families or some other relative, and thus perennially changing, standard. Ever since the OPR’s original poverty thresholds were established back in 1965, they have been annually revised solely to take account of changes in the Consumer Price Index. In principle, this should mean that a fixed and unchanging income criterion is being used for determining the poverty status of families. Further, since the inflation-adjusted income threshold of those counted officially poor is supposed to remain constant over time, the material condition of those below the poverty line should similarly be more or less consistent from one decade to the next. Yet, as we saw, this supposition is completely refuted by biometric and other physical data on the living conditions of the U.S. poverty population. With regard to food and nutrition, anthropometric data demonstrate that our poor are incontestably better off today than in 1965; ironically, in fact, overweight and obesity are the prime problems that have emerged over this interim as major nutritional concerns with regard to this population. With respect to housing, the poor today live in decidedly less crowded, more spacious, and better-furnished dwellings than they did four decades ago—and those housing standards appear to have improved steadily, decade by decade. By a number of benchmarks, indeed, the officially poor today enjoy better housing conditions than the nonpoor in 1970, or the American population as a whole as recently as 1980. With respect to transportation, a steadily increasing proportion (by now, the vast majority) of officially poor households own cars, trucks, or other sorts of motor vehicles, and a significant and rising minority of officially poor families have two or more motor vehicles. Finally, utilization of medical and health-care services by the officially poor has progressively expanded over the decades—so much so that children in families below the poverty line in 2004 were more likely to have at least one annual doctor’s visit than were children in families with incomes well above the official poverty line only two decades earlier
 

A. Nobody dies
Dove 12 Alan Dove, PhD in Microbiology, science journalist and former Adjunct Professor at New York University, “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Bioterrorist?” Jan 24 2012, http://alandove.com/content/2012/01/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-bioterrorist/
The second problem is much more serious. Eliminating the toxins, we’re left with a list of infectious bacteria and viruses. With a single exception, these organisms are probably near-useless as weapons, and history proves it.¶ There have been at least three well-documented military-style deployments of infectious agents from the list, plus one deployment of an agent that’s not on the list. I’m focusing entirely on the modern era, by the way. There are historical reports of armies catapulting plague-ridden corpses over city walls and conquistadors trying to inoculate blankets with Variola (smallpox), but it’s not clear those “attacks” were effective. Those diseases tended to spread like, well, plagues, so there’s no telling whether the targets really caught the diseases from the bodies and blankets, or simply picked them up through casual contact with their enemies.¶ Of the four modern biowarfare incidents, two have been fatal. The first was the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax incident, which killed an estimated 100 people. In that case, a Soviet-built biological weapons lab accidentally released a large plume of weaponized Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) over a major city. Soviet authorities tried to blame the resulting fatalities on “bad meat,” but in the 1990s Western investigators were finally able to piece together the real story. The second fatal incident also involved anthrax from a government-run lab: the 2001 “Amerithrax” attacks. That time, a rogue employee (or perhaps employees) of the government’s main bioweapons lab sent weaponized, powdered anthrax through the US postal service. Five people died.¶ That gives us a grand total of around 105 deaths, entirely from agents that were grown and weaponized in officially-sanctioned and funded bioweapons research labs. Remember that.¶ Terrorist groups have also deployed biological weapons twice, and these cases are very instructive. The first was the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack, in which members of a cult in Oregon inoculated restaurant salad bars with Salmonella bacteria (an agent that’s not on the “select” list). 751 people got sick, but nobody died. Public health authorities handled it as a conventional foodborne Salmonella outbreak, identified the sources and contained them. Nobody even would have known it was a deliberate attack if a member of the cult hadn’t come forward afterward with a confession. Lesson: our existing public health infrastructure was entirely adequate to respond to a major bioterrorist attack.¶ The second genuine bioterrorist attack took place in 1993. Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult successfully isolated and grew a large stock of anthrax bacteria, then sprayed it as an aerosol from the roof of a building in downtown Tokyo. The cult was well-financed, and had many highly educated members, so this release over the world’s largest city really represented a worst-case scenario.¶ Nobody got sick or died. From the cult’s perspective, it was a complete and utter failure. Again, the only reason we even found out about it was a post-hoc confession. Aum members later demonstrated their lab skills by producing Sarin nerve gas, with far deadlier results. Lesson: one of the top “select agents” is extremely hard to grow and deploy even for relatively skilled non-state groups. It’s a really crappy bioterrorist weapon.¶ Taken together, these events point to an uncomfortable but inevitable conclusion: our biodefense industry is a far greater threat to us than any actual bioterrorists.

B. Terrorists are terrible at using them
O’Neill 4 O’Neill 8/19/2004  Brendan, “Weapons of Minimum Destruction” http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA694.htm
David C Rapoport, professor of political science at University of California, Los Angeles and editor of the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence, has examined what he calls 'easily available evidence' relating to the historic use of chemical and biological weapons.  He found something surprising - such weapons do not cause mass destruction. Indeed, whether used by states, terror groups or dispersed in industrial accidents, they tend to be far less destructive than conventional weapons. 'If we stopped speculating about things that might happen in the future and looked instead at what has happened in the past, we'd see that our fears about WMD are misplaced', he says.  Yet such fears remain widespread. Post-9/11, American and British leaders have issued dire warnings about terrorists getting hold of WMD and causing mass murder and mayhem. President George W Bush has spoken of terrorists who, 'if they ever gained weapons of mass destruction', would 'kill hundreds of thousands, without hesitation and without mercy' (1).  The British government has spent £28million on stockpiling millions of smallpox vaccines, even though there's no evidence that terrorists have got access to smallpox, which was eradicated as a natural disease in the 1970s and now exists only in two high-security labs in America and Russia (2). In 2002, British nurses became the first in the world to get training in how to deal with the victims of bioterrorism (3).  The UK Home Office's 22-page pamphlet on how to survive a terror attack, published last month, included tips on what to do in the event of a 'chemical, biological or radiological attack' ('Move away from the immediate source of danger', it usefully advised). Spine-chilling books such as Plague Wars: A True Story of Biological Warfare, The New Face of Terrorism: Threats From Weapons of Mass Destruction and The Survival Guide: What to Do in a Biological, Chemical or Nuclear Emergency speculate over what kind of horrors WMD might wreak. TV docudramas, meanwhile, explore how Britain might cope with a smallpox assault and what would happen if London were 'dirty nuked' (4).  The term 'weapons of mass destruction' refers to three types of weapons: nuclear, chemical and biological. A chemical weapon is any weapon that uses a manufactured chemical, such as sarin, mustard gas or hydrogen cyanide, to kill or injure. A biological weapon uses bacteria or viruses, such as smallpox or anthrax, to cause destruction - inducing sickness and disease as a means of undermining enemy forces or inflicting civilian casualties. We find such weapons repulsive, because of the horrible way in which the victims convulse and die - but they appear to be less 'destructive' than conventional weapons.  'We know that nukes are massively destructive, there is a lot of evidence for that', says Rapoport. But when it comes to chemical and biological weapons, 'the evidence suggests that we should call them "weapons of minimum destruction", not mass destruction', he says.  Chemical weapons have most commonly been used by states, in military warfare. Rapoport explored various state uses of chemicals over the past hundred years: both sides used them in the First World War; Italy deployed chemicals against the Ethiopians in the 1930s; the Japanese used chemicals against the Chinese in the 1930s and again in the Second World War; Egypt and Libya used them in the Yemen and Chad in the postwar period; most recently, Saddam Hussein's Iraq used chemical weapons, first in the war against Iran (1980-1988) and then against its own Kurdish population at the tail-end of the Iran-Iraq war.  In each instance, says Rapoport, chemical weapons were used more in desperation than from a position of strength or a desire to cause mass destruction. 'The evidence is that states rarely use them even when they have them', he has written. 'Only when a military stalemate has developed, which belligerents who have become desperate want to break, are they used.' (5) As to whether such use of chemicals was effective, Rapoport says that at best it blunted an offensive - but this very rarely, if ever, translated into a decisive strategic shift in the war, because the original stalemate continued after the chemical weapons had been deployed.  He points to the example of Iraq. The Baathists used chemicals against Iran when that nasty trench-fought war had reached yet another stalemate. As Efraim Karsh argues in his paper 'The Iran-Iraq War: A Military Analysis': 'Iraq employed chemical weapons only in vital segments of the front and only when it saw no other way to check Iranian offensives. Chemical weapons had a negligible impact on the war, limited to tactical rather than strategic effects.' (6)  According to Rapoport, this 'negligible' impact of chemical weapons on the direction of a war is reflected in the disparity between the numbers of casualties caused by chemicals and the numbers caused by conventional weapons. It is estimated that the use of gas in the Iran-Iraq war killed 5,000 - but the Iranian side suffered around 600,000 dead in total, meaning that gas killed less than one per cent.  The deadliest use of gas occurred in the First World War but, as Rapoport points out, it still only accounted for five per cent of casualties. Studying the amount of gas used by both sides from1914-1918 relative to the number of fatalities gas caused, Rapoport has written: 'It took a ton of gas in that war to achieve a single enemy fatality. Wind and sun regularly dissipated the lethality of the gases. Furthermore, those gassed were 10 to 12 times as likely to recover than those casualties produced by traditional weapons.' (7)  Indeed, Rapoport discovered that some earlier documenters of the First World War had a vastly different assessment of chemical weapons than we have today - they considered the use of such weapons to be preferable to bombs and guns, because chemicals caused fewer fatalities. One wrote: 'Instead of being the most horrible form of warfare, it is the most humane, because it disables far more than it kills, ie, it has a low fatality ratio.' (8) 'Imagine that', says Rapoport, 'WMD being referred to as more humane'. He says that the contrast between such assessments and today's fears shows that actually looking at the evidence has benefits, allowing 'you to see things more rationally'.  According to Rapoport, even Saddam's use of gas against the Kurds of Halabja in 1988 - the most recent use by a state of chemical weapons and the most commonly cited as evidence of the dangers of 'rogue states' getting their hands on WMD - does not show that unconventional weapons are more destructive than conventional ones. Of course the attack on Halabja was horrific, but he points out that the circumstances surrounding the assault remain unclear.  'The estimates of how many were killed vary greatly', he tells me. 'Some say 400, others say 5,000, others say more than 5,000. The fighter planes that attacked the civilians used conventional as well as unconventional weapons; I have seen no study which explores how many were killed by chemicals and how many were killed by firepower. We all find these attacks repulsive, but the death toll may actually have been greater if conventional bombs only were used. We know that conventional weapons can be more destructive.'  Rapoport says that terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons is similar to state use - in that it is rare and, in terms of causing mass destruction, not very effective. He cites the work of journalist and author John Parachini, who says that over the past 25 years only four significant attempts by terrorists to use WMD have been recorded. The most effective WMD-attack by a non-state group, from a military perspective, was carried out by the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka in 1990. They used chlorine gas against Sri Lankan soldiers guarding a fort, injuring over 60 soldiers but killing none.  The Tamil Tigers' use of chemicals angered their support base, when some of the chlorine drifted back into Tamil territory - confirming Rapoport's view that one problem with using unpredictable and unwieldy chemical and biological weapons over conventional weapons is that the cost can be as great 'to the attacker as to the attacked'. The Tigers have not used WMD since.

C. They don’t have a dispersal mechanism
Smithson 5 (Amy E., PhD, project director for biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center. “Likelihood of Terrorists Acquiring and Using Chemical or Biological Weapons”. http://www.stimson.org/cbw/?SN=CB2001121259)
Terrorists cannot count on just filling the delivery system with agent, pointing the device, and flipping the switch to activate it. Facets that must be deciphered include the concentration of agent in the delivery system, the ways in which the delivery system degrades the potency of the agent, and the right dosage to incapacitate or kill human or animal targets. For open-air delivery, the meteorological conditions must be taken into account. Biological agents have extreme sensitivity to sunlight, humidity, pollutants in the atmosphere, temperature, and even exposure to oxygen, all of which can kill the microbes.  Biological agents can be dispersed in either dry or wet forms. Using a dry agent can boost effectiveness because drying and milling the agent can make the particles very fine, a key factor since particles must range between 1 to 10 ten microns, ideally to 1 to 5, to be breathed into the lungs. Drying an agent, however, is done through a complex and challenging process that requires a sophistication of equipment and know-how that terrorist organizations are unlikely to possess. The alternative is to develop a wet slurry, which is much easier to produce but a great deal harder to disperse effectively. Wet slurries can clog sprayers and undergo mechanical stresses that can kill 95 percent or more of the microorganisms.

Tournament: Cites | Round: 1 | Opponent: Cites | Judge: Cites
email:
sreckhaus@mcdonogh.org for all aff and neg cites

Tournament: UMich | Round: 7 | Opponent: GBN DK | Judge: DML
CP – The Executive Branch of the United States should;
- acknowledge that current reforms in Cuba are real and effective
- loosen restrictions on US citizens to travel to Cuba
- clarify remittance expansion rules
-should reform the Renewable Fuel Standard’s targets.
The State of California should implement fuel standards and invest in cellulosic ethanol technology. 

Reform solves and is popular
Mead 13 (Walter Mead, Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College, co-founder of the New American Foundation, Editor-at-Large of The American Interest magazine, former Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, “Ethanol Still a Boondoggle,” July 17, 2013, http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/07/17/ethanol-still-a-boondoggle/)
This is a mess even before you consider the foibles of the source of the
AND
the ethanol lobby acknowledges that these biofuels targets have been set too high.

Investment in cellulosic ethanol solves
Zhang et al ’10 January-March 2010. Yimin Zhang1, Satish Joshi2 and Heather L MacLean1--1 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Toronto, 2 Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, 3 Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry and School of Public Policy and Governance, “Can ethanol alone meet California's low carbon fuel standard? An evaluation of feedstock and conversion alternatives.” http://m.iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/1/014002?rel=semandrelno=2
The feasibility of meeting California's low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) using ethanol from
AND
and need to be refined based on commercial scale production data when available.

CP leads to investment in Cuba that solves their economy
Laverty ’11 2011, Collin Laverty is a Cuba consultant at the Center for Democracy in the Americas. “Cuba’s New Resolve Economic Reform and its Implications for US Policy”http:democracyinamericas.org/pdfs/CDA_Cubas_New_Resolve.pdf
U.S. sanctions are premised on the belief that strangling Cuba’s economy will
AND
$50 million fund for rotating micro-loans and other measures.131

Tournament: Wake | Round: 2 | Opponent: Milton MF | Judge:
ERROR

Tournament: UMich | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Westminster FM | Judge:
1NC Recession Good
Economic recession key to innovation—consensus of top economists
Florida, ‘10 Richard Florida is Senior Editor at The Atlantic and Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. “Start-Ups Surge in the Great Reset”, May 21 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/05/start-ups-surge-in-the-great-reset/57052/
Economic crises like the current one have devastating economic and social costs, but they
AND
economy begins to recover, ushering in powerful new waves of technological change.

That’s key to make growth sustainable
Florida, ’10 8/12/10, Richard Florida is the Senior Editor at The Atlantic, Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, previously held professorships at George Mason University and Carnegie Mellon University and taught as a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT, holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, The Roadmap to a High-Speed Recovery,” http://www.tnr.com/print/article/economy/76961/richard-florida-reset-recovery-economy-future
But now we find ourselves having the wrong debate—about whether a stimulus is
AND
work at PARC, realized their potential, and put the pieces together.

That’s independently key to soft power
Wei, ’12 Ran Wei (China Daily), 2012-03-06, “The Great Recession's silver lining”, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/2012-03/06/content_14766712.htm
The ongoing recession in the United States was named the Great Recession, a parallel
AND
provides fertile ground for innovative products like iPhones and innovators like Steve Jobs.

Soft power solves multiple extinction scenarios
Stanley 7
Elizabeth, of Sandia National Laboratories, “International perceptions of U.S. Nuclear Policy” http://www.prod.sandia.gov/cgi-bin/techlib/access-control.pl/2007/070903.pdf
Such reputation effects can have significant impact in terms of gaining international cooperation in addressing
AND
multi-lateral cooperation that will be necessary to address such threats effectively. 

Economic collapse inevitable in the long term – double dip recession key to structural reforms
Caw, ’11 5/11/11, CAW, Canadian Autoworkers Union,  “Financial Regulatory Reform Still Needed to Avoid Similar Recession”, http://www.caw.ca/en/10256.htm

Financial reform coming out of the great recession has been very weak and totally insufficient
AND
presidential election could cost more than $1 billion dollars for each party.

That outweighs—extended recessions are key to long term macroeconomic stability
Mihm ’09 9/13/09, Stephen Mihm is a professor of history at the University of Georgia, The Boston Globe, “Why Capitalism Fails”
Instead, Minsky drew his own, far darker, lessons from Keynes’s landmark writings
AND
risk. When storied financial firms started to fall, sending shockwaves through the
“real” economy, his predictions started to look a lot like a road map.

2NC Recession Good
Terrorism causes extinction
Ayson 2k10 Robert Ayson, July 7th 2010, “ After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects”, Center for Strategic Studies, Victoria University, “http:pdfserve.informaworld.com/484356_918013288_923238837.pdf
A Catalytic Response: Dragging in the Major Nuclear Powers A terrorist nuclear attack,
AND
be admitted that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating response.

Environmental degradation causes extinction
Diner 1994.  
David.  Major-JAG Corps US Army.  Military Law Review
No  species  has ever dominated its fellow  species  as man has.  In most cases
AND
wings, humankind may be edging closer to the abyss.

That makes growth sustainable—current economic decline forces spatial and regional shifts that key to long term prosperity, but government intervention collapses it
Florida, ’11 6/5/11, Richard Florida is Senior Editor at The Atlantic and Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto., “How the Great Reset Has Already Changed America”, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/how-the-great-reset-has-already-changed-america/241200/
A year ago, I published a book that argued that, for all the
AND
many, and ushering in a new era of sustainable prosperity for everyone.

Last recession puts us at the tipping point to our turn – start ups have the culture of innovation and now is key to force
Florida, ’11 Richard Florida is Senior Editor at The Atlantic and Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. 10/20/11, “The Spread of Start-Up America and the Rise of the High-Tech South”, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/the-spread-of-start-up-america-and-the-rise-of-the-high-tech-south/246916/
The United States has been and continues to be one of the world's great start
AND
well as local problems. It is the ethos of the Creative Class. 

Financial crisis key to innovation –
A) Race to the top
Haertel ‘08
Carlos Haertel, managing director of GE Global Research in Europe, interviewed by Geoff Brumfiel, 11-4, 2008, “Innovating out of the financial crisis,” Nature Magazine
How will the financial crisis affect industrial research? Nature asked Carlos Haertel, managing
AND
you can bring to market quickly and away from very speculative seed funding.

B) Shifts the economy to focus on innovation
Haertel ‘08
Carlos Haertel, managing director of GE Global Research in Europe, interviewed by Geoff Brumfiel, 11-4, 2008, “Innovating out of the financial crisis,” Nature Magazine
Could the financial crisis actually be good for research and innovation in any way?  
AND
is that the fundamentals for a good economy are basically innovation and technology. 

D) Most recent studies prove our argument
Florida, ‘10 Richard Florida is Senior Editor at The Atlantic and Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. “Start-Ups Surge in the Great Reset”, May 21 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/05/start-ups-surge-in-the-great-reset/57052/
 A study released today by the Kauffman Foundation (h/t: Ian
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for African Americans also surged to record levels, according to the study.

E) Economic scarcity key
Vossoughi, ’12 “The Silver Lining to Scarcity: It Drives Innovation”, Sohrab Vossoughi is founder and President of Ziba Design. Harvard Business Review, http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/03/the_silver_lining_to_scarcity.html, 3/1/12
When times are good, businesses tend to stick with what's working. "It's
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one of the finest learning opportunities an innovation-driven business can have.

Failure to reform makes the economy works a couple ways
a. Minimizes individual borrowing
Morris ‘08
Charles Morris, Practicing Attorney and former banker, 11-22, 2008, “The upside to a serious downturn,” Houston Chronicle, online: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6126845.html
Virtually all of America's financial and political artillery has been dragooned into the great task
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to a more balanced system that's less addicted to high-leverage finance.

b. Prevents focus on structural factors in the economy
FRBA ‘08
FRBA (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta), 11-7, 2008, “Atlanta Fed's Lockhart: Economic Weakness to Extend into 2009,” online: http://www.frbatlanta.org/invoke.cfm?objectid=77A70814-5056-9F12-1283A61254E59EF2andmethod=display_pressrelease
PALM BEACH, Fla.—Dennis P. Lockhart, president and chief executive officer
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we are to lower the potential for recurrence of instability," he said.