Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[5]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[6]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[5]

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@
1		-2017-02-05 05:47:33.56
	1	+2017-02-05 05:47:33.0

Caselist.CitesClass[6]

Cites

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,12 @@
	1	+Surveillance operations by Predator drones key to Mexico border security-
	2	+RT ’14 (RT, “Drone surge: Predators patrol nearly half of US-Mexico border”, http://rt.com/usa/205343-cpb-mexico-border-drone-patrols/, November 13, 2014)
	3	+Predator drones are silently patrolling almost half of the United States’ border with Mexico, looking for illegal immigrants, human traffickers and drug cartels in desolated areas the government agents can’t realistically patrol. The unmanned aircraft fly over about 900 miles of rural areas where there are no US Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) agents, camera towers, ground sensors or fences along the 1,954-mile border, according to a new report by the Associated Press. The Predator Bs use a high-resolution video camera and then return within three days for another video in the same spot, two officials told the wire service. The two videos are then overlaid for analysts who use sophisticated software to identify tiny changes. There are changes in terrain in only eight percent of the drone missions under the current strategy ‒ known internally as “change detection” ‒ since it began in March 2013. Of those flagged missions, about four percent were false alarms, like tracks from livestock or farmers, and about two percent are inconclusive to the agents dispatched to the area to investigate. The remaining 2 percent offer evidence ‒ like footprints, broken twigs, trash ‒ of illegal crossings from Mexico, which typically results in ground sensors being planted for closer monitoring. In the last year and a half, CPB has operated about 10,000 drone flights, with much of their missions over Texas. Border missions fly out of Sierra Vista, home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, or Corpus Christi, Texas. They patrol at altitudes between 19,000 at 28,000 feet and between 25 and 60 miles of the border. The program is expected to expand the Canadian border by the end of 2015. The purpose is to assign agents where illegal activity is highest, R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol's parent agency, which operates nine unmanned aircraft across the country, told AP. "You have finite resources," he said in an interview. "If you can look at some very rugged terrain (and) you can see there's not traffic, whether it's tire tracks or clothing being abandoned or anything else, you want to deploy your resources to where you have a greater risk, a greater threat." Gregory McNeal, a law professor and drone expert at Pepperdine University, told NBC News in July that the money spent on drones is worth it. "This is a better way to patrol the border than helicopters," he said. "It’s not a comprehensive immigration solution or border security solution, but more surveillance time in the air will help plug gaps in the border." A typical Predator drone can fly for 12 hours before landing, compared to three for a standard helicopter. But the cost is much higher: Predator drones require a crew of between five to eight people ‒ plus maintenance staff ‒ to operate, coming out to about $3,000 an hour to fly. And each one has an $18 million price tag, NBC News reported. CPB began rolling out Predators in 2005, but rapidly expanded the unmanned aerial reconnaissance operation along the US-Mexico border at the beginning of this decade, the Washington Post reported in 2011. Michael Kostelnik, a retired Air Force general and former test pilot who is the assistant commissioner of CPB’s Office of Air and Marine, told the Post then that he had yet to be challenged in Congress about the appropriate use of domestic drones. “Instead, the question is: Why can’t we have more of them in my district?” Kostelnik said. In July, President Barack Obama requested $39.4 million for aerial surveillance, including troops, along the US-Mexican border. The emergency funding was for 16,526 additional drone and manned aircraft flight hours for border surveillance, and 16 additional drone crews to better detect and stop illegal activity, according to administration officials. The request was in response to the humanitarian crisis after tens of thousands of unaccompanied children and families illegally entered the country in the first half of the year. “Border Patrol wants the money and it wants the drones,” McNeal said. “This is the kind of crisis where, if you are Border Patrol, you seize the opportunity to get more funding from Congress.” The agency’s “unmanned and manned aircraft can continue to support ongoing border security operations, specifically regarding the tracking of illegal cross-border smuggling operations,” a CBP official told Nextgov. The president’s request was part of a larger funding appeal of $3.7 billion to deal with the illegal immigrants and border security problems. In January, CPB was forced to ground its entire fleet of drones after a mechanical function forced a crew to crash an unmanned aircraft valued at $12 million. The mishap lowered the number of agency drones to only nine.
	4	+
	5	+Mexican border instability hamstrings US hegemony- destroys military effectiveness
	6	+Kaplan ’12 – chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor (Robert D., With the Focus on Syria, Mexico Burns, Stratfor, 3-28-2012, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/focus-syria-mexico-burns)
	7	+While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria ~-~- half a world away from the United States ~-~- more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States' southern border, Mexico will affect America's destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East. Indeed, Mexico may constitute the world's seventh-largest economy in the near future. Certainly, while the Mexican violence is largely criminal, Syria is a more clear-cut moral issue, enhanced by its own strategic consequences. A calcified authoritarian regime in Damascus is stamping out dissent with guns and artillery barrages. Moreover, regime change in Syria, which the rebels demand, could deliver a pivotal blow to Iranian influence in the Middle East, an event that would be the best news to U.S. interests in the region in years or even decades. Nevertheless, the Syrian rebels are divided and hold no territory, and the toppling of pro-Iranian dictator Bashar al Assad might conceivably bring to power an austere Sunni regime equally averse to U.S. interests ~-~- if not lead to sectarian chaos. In other words, all military intervention scenarios in Syria are fraught with extreme risk. Precisely for that reason, that the U.S. foreign policy elite has continued for months to feverishly debate Syria, and in many cases advocate armed intervention, while utterly ignoring the vaster panorama of violence next door in Mexico, speaks volumes about Washington's own obsessions and interests, which are not always aligned with the country's geopolitical interests. Syria matters and matters momentously to U.S. interests, but Mexico ultimately matters more, so one would think that there would be at least some degree of parity in the amount written on these subjects. I am not demanding a switch in news coverage from one country to the other, just a bit more balance. Of course, it is easy for pundits to have a fervently interventionist view on Syria precisely because it is so far away, whereas miscalculation in Mexico on America's part would carry far greater consequences. For example, what if the Mexican drug cartels took revenge on San Diego? Thus, one might even argue that the very noise in the media about Syria, coupled with the relative silence about Mexico, is proof that it is the latter issue that actually is too sensitive for loose talk. It may also be that cartel-wracked Mexico ~-~- at some rude subconscious level ~-~- connotes for East Coast elites a south of the border, 7-Eleven store culture, reminiscent of the crime movie "Traffic," that holds no allure to people focused on ancient civilizations across the ocean. The concerns of Europe and the Middle East certainly seem closer to New York and Washington than does the southwestern United States. Indeed, Latin American bureaus and studies departments simply lack the cachet of Middle East and Asian ones in government and universities. Yet, the fate of Mexico is the hinge on which the United States' cultural and demographic future rests. U.S. foreign policy emanates from the domestic condition of its society, and nothing will affect its society more than the dramatic movement of Latin history northward. By 2050, as much as a third of the American population could be Hispanic. Mexico and Central America constitute a growing demographic and economic powerhouse with which the United States has an inextricable relationship. In recent years Mexico's economic growth has outpaced that of its northern neighbor. Mexico's population of 111 million plus Central America's of more than 40 million equates to half the population of the United States. Because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, 85 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States, even as half of Central America's trade is with the United States. While the median age of Americans is nearly 37, demonstrating the aging tendency of the U.S. population, the median age in Mexico is 25, and in Central America it is much lower (20 in Guatemala and Honduras, for example). In part because of young workers moving northward, the destiny of the United States could be north-south, rather than the east-west, sea-to-shining-sea of continental and patriotic myth. (This will be amplified by the scheduled 2014 widening of the Panama Canal, which will open the Greater Caribbean Basin to megaships from East Asia, leading to the further development of Gulf of Mexico port cities in the United States, from Texas to Florida.) Since 1940, Mexico's population has increased more than five-fold. Between 1970 and 1995 it nearly doubled. Between 1985 and 2000 it rose by more than a third. Mexico's population is now more than a third that of the United States and growing at a faster rate. And it is northern Mexico that is crucial. That most of the drug-related homicides in this current wave of violence that so much dwarfs Syria's have occurred in only six of Mexico's 32 states, mostly in the north, is a key indicator of how northern Mexico is being distinguished from the rest of the country (though the violence in the city of Veracruz and the regions of Michoacan and Guerrero is also notable). If the military-led offensive to crush the drug cartels launched by conservative President Felipe Calderon falters, as it seems to be doing, and Mexico City goes back to cutting deals with the cartels, then the capital may in a functional sense lose even further control of the north, with concrete implications for the southwestern United States. One might argue that with massive border controls, a functional and vibrantly nationalist United States can coexist with a dysfunctional and somewhat chaotic northern Mexico. But that is mainly true in the short run. Looking deeper into the 21st century, as Arnold Toynbee notes in A Study of History (1946), a border between a highly developed society and a less highly developed one will not attain an equilibrium but will advance in the more backward society's favor. Thus, helping to stabilize Mexico ~-~- as limited as the United States' options may be, given the complexity and sensitivity of the relationship ~-~- is a more urgent national interest than stabilizing societies in the Greater Middle East. If Mexico ever does reach coherent First World status, then it will become less of a threat, and the healthy melding of the two societies will quicken to the benefit of both. Today, helping to thwart drug cartels in rugged and remote terrain in the vicinity of the Mexican frontier and reaching southward from Ciudad Juarez (across the border from El Paso, Texas) means a limited role for the U.S. military and other agencies ~-~- working, of course, in full cooperation with the Mexican authorities. (Predator and Global Hawk drones fly deep over Mexico searching for drug production facilities.) But the legal framework for cooperation with Mexico remains problematic in some cases because of strict interpretation of 19th century posse comitatus laws on the U.S. side. While the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to affect historical outcomes in Eurasia, its leaders and foreign policy mandarins are somewhat passive about what is happening to a country with which the United States shares a long land border, that verges on partial chaos in some of its northern sections, and whose population is close to double that of Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Mexico, in addition to the obvious challenge of China as a rising great power, will help write the American story in the 21st century. Mexico will partly determine what kind of society America will become, and what exactly will be its demographic and geographic character, especially in the Southwest. The U.S. relationship with China will matter more than any other individual bilateral relationship in terms of determining the United States' place in the world, especially in the economically crucial Pacific. If policymakers in Washington calculate U.S. interests properly regarding those two critical countries, then the United States will have power to spare so that its elites can continue to focus on serious moral questions in places that matter less.
	8	+
	9	+ISIS threat through Mexico highest ever- qualified experts agree- will shut down the grid - extinction
	10	+WND 9/4 (WND, WorldNetDaily News Company, “ISIS THREAT LOOMS OVER U.S. HOMELAND”, http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/09/isis-threat-looms-over-u-s-homeland/, September 9, 2014)
	11	+*edited for language
	12	+'Militants expressing increased interest in notion they could infiltrate' ISIS bluster that threatens the U.S. Long-known al-Qaida links to south-of-the-border drug cartels. A porous U.S-Mexico border. Gunshots at a California power plant. The individual reports may not cause immediate alarm, but a panel of experts who have connected the dots on threats against the U.S. is warning that the nation needs to be looking at the big picture – and preparing its defenses appropriately. Now. The warnings come from a panel set up by the Secure the Grid Coalition at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy. At a National Press Club news conference this week were Frank Gaffney, former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and now president of the CSP; threat expert Dr. Peter Vincent Pry; Ambassador Henry F. Cooper; actress and activist Kelly Carson; and F. Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense and now a senior writer with WND. He’s authored “A Nation Forsaken” on the dangers to the U.S. from an attack on its power grid, especially from electromagnetic pulse. There have been multiple reports of ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria making statements threatening an attack on the U.S. homeland. And it’s well-documented that al-Qaida, the Muslim terror world’s bad boy before ISIS arrived, is linked closely with drug cartels, many of which have a presence inside some 1,200 of America’s large cities. Further, the U.S. southern border now easily can be crossed illegally. And there already may have been a “dry run” attack on the U.S. power grid, which, in a collapse, would leave America’s defense capabilities severely harmed handicapped. Such concerns have been underscored in recent days by an interview Judicial Watch had with U.S. intelligence officials and the Texas Department Safety. It confirmed that ISIS is present across the Texas border in Juarez, Mexico, where an intelligence unit has picked up increased “chatter” in recent days. While Mexican authorities have denied ISIS’ presence in Mexico and its ability to illegally enter the U.S., Maloof pointed out that three hardened Ukrainian criminals walked into the U.S. from Mexico undetected and have yet to be apprehended. Similarly, there has been evidence uncovered that various nationalities from Pakistan and various Arab countries have entered the U.S. undetected, taking advantage of the porous southern border. Put it all together, panel members said at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday, and the threat the U.S. is facing should be considered immediate and substantial. “It’s all related,” Maloof said. “One thing leads to another … It’s the domino effect.” He noted a series of incidents at a Metcalf power plant in San Jose, California, that suggest someone – still unknown – has been exploring what it takes to bring down a major component of the nation’s grid. Former Rep. Allen West bluntly called the situation a “‘dry run’ for something bigger.” WND reported the utility company, whose operation was disabled in the attack, has offered a $250,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators. West explained, “On April 16, 2013, snipers waged a 52-minute attack on a central California electrical substation. According to reports by Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, the sniper attack started when at least one person entered an underground vault to cut telephone cables, and attackers fired more than 100 shots into Pacific Gas and Electric’s Metcalf transmission substation, knocking out 17 transformers. Electric officials were able to avert a blackout, but it took 27 days to repair the damage,” he wrote. “My concern is that this may have been a dry run for something far bigger. We should be demanding an update on the investigation as to the perpetrators of this attack who escaped without detection,” he said. WB248Pry pointed out that jihadists already are aware of the vulnerability of a country’s grid system by having knocked out completely the entire grid of the country of Yemen last June. Read the book that’s documenting the worry about the EMP threat, “A Nation Forsaken.” The Metcalf attack came one day after the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and wounded 264 others. The Boston Marathon suspects are from the Russian North Caucasus, which prompted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to get involved in the investigation of the sniper attack on the transformers. There is a large community of Chechen and North Caucasus immigrants in the San Jose area. Chechen jihadists also have been very prominent in Syria where it is battling to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. There also were reports only days after the California sniper attack of a shoot-out when a security guard at the TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tennessee, was confronted by a suspect at 2 a.m. “TVA spokesperson Jim Hopson said the subject traveled up to the plant on a boat and walked onto the property. When the officer questioned the suspect, the individual fired multiple shots at the officer. The officer shot back, and when he called for backup, the suspect sped away on his boat,” reports said. And just a few days ago, the California plant, after spending millions of dollars on heightened security, again was targeted by a break-in attempt, authorities have reported. Maloof explained after the news conference that the big picture “underscores the potential for an ISIS threat on the grid.” He pointed out how al-Qaida, which is known to have drug cartel links and likely sleeper agents in the United States through those organizations, has been morphing into ISIS, and the belligerent threats made against the U.S. by that group. And he noted that the U.S. grid remains vulnerable and taking it down in any significant way could cause calamities for the U.S., since the nation’s food, fuel, energy, banking and communications industries all are dependent on electricity. “Whenever you start tampering with the grid, you’re affecting the life-sustaining critical infrastructures,” Maloof said. “Our entire survival is based on technology and electronics that, in turn, are based on the electrical flow. If that’s interrupted for any period of time, there are catastrophes over a wide geographic area.” Reports just this week revealed social media chatter shows Islamic State militants “are keenly aware of the porous U.S.-Mexico border, and are ‘expressing an increased interest’ in crossing over to carry out a terrorist attack.” A law enforcement advisory said, “A review of ISIS social media messaging during the week ending August 26 shows that militants are expressing an increased interest in the notion that they could clandestinely infiltrate the southwest border of U.S., for a terror attack.” Maloof explained at the news conference that America’s enemies know “the vulnerabilities of our grid … they will at some point try” to attack. “The threat is there,” he said. “ISIS operatives can easily come through the southern border. And because they ISIS have proxies in the U.S.,” the potential for a catastrophe exists. “The president could take his pen and make the problem a priority,” he said. “At the federal level they don’t have a plan, so the state and local level won’t have a plan.”

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2017-02-05 05:47:37.487

Judge

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Donald Fagan

Opponent

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Lynbrook YZ

ParentRound

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+5

Round

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+4

Team

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Harvard Westlake Berliin Neg

Title

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+JanFab - DA - Mexico Border Terrorism

Tournament

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Golden Desert