Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 2 | Opponent: Westwood RM | Judge: Chetan Hertzig
Interp:
Debaters may only advocate one, unconditional, advocacy
Violation:

The standard is clash
Vote on substantive engagement
Drop the debater
Use competing interps

Tournament: St Marks | Round: Finals | Opponent: Strake Jesuit CP RC | Judge: Panel
Interp: If the NEG reads an NC and turns the AFF, the NC must be link turnable  

Violation: The NC is an unturnable NIB – we’d have to prove an object is constitutively evil which is impossible.  If they can prove that nuke power is intended for good use in even once instance we lose

The standard is reciprocity

Drop the argument

1AR theory outweighs

Tournament: CPS | Round: 1 | Opponent: Mountain View AR | Judge: Ellen Ivens-Duran
Part 1: Framing

Free speech is a pre-requisite to any rational moral system- without it self-realization is impossible. Eberle 94
Eberle, Law @ Roger Williams, 94  (Wake Forest LR, Winter)

The Court's decision in R.A.V. reaffirms the preeminence of free speech in our constitutional value structure. n62 Theoretically, free speech is intrinsically valuable as a chief means by which we develop our faculties and control our destinies. n63 Free speech is also of instrumental value in facilitating other worthy ends such as democratic or personal self-government, n64 public and private decisionmaking, n65 and the advancement of knowledge and truth. n66 Ultimately, the value of free speech rests upon a complex set of justifications, as compared to reliance on any single foundation. n67 The majority of the Court in R.A.V. preferred a nonconsequentialist view, finding that speech is valuable as an end itself, independent of any consequences that it might produce. In this view, free speech is an essential part of a just and free society that treats all people as responsible moral agents. Accordingly, people are entrusted with the responsibility of making judgments about the use or abuse of speech. n68 From this vantage point, the majority saw a certain moral equivalency in all speech. Even hate speech merits protection under the First Amendment, because all speech has intrinsic value. This is so because all speech, even hate speech, is a communication to the world, and therefore implicates the speaker's autonomy or self-realization. Additionally, any information might be valuable to a listener who can then decide its importance or how best to use it. Accordingly, any suspicion or evidence of governmental censorship must be vigilantly investigated.

Free speech facilitates the development of moral reasoning- restrictions should be prima facie rejected. Dwyer 01
(Susan, Phil@Maryland, Nordic Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 2 ® Philosophia Press 2001)

Direct Nonconsequentialism Let us return to the central topic: free speech. From the perspective just sketched, the value of a marketplace of ideas – that notion so central to the consequentialist justification of free speech – lies not so much in its long-term all-things-considered good consequences (the avoidance of dogmatism, democracy, truth, etc.) Rather, free speech is seen as a necessary condition for the realization of any human goods. Constraints on inquiry and expression are constraints on humanity itself. Echoing this thought, Nagel (1995) writes: That the expression of what one thinks and feels should be overwhelmingly one's own business, subject to restriction only when clearly necessary to prevent serious harm distinct from the expression itself, is a condition of being an independent thinking being. It is a form of moral recognition that you have a mind of your own: even if you never want to say anything to which others would object, the idea that they could stop you if they did object is in itself a violation of your integrity (96). A simple yet powerful fact both explains why speech is valuable in and of itself and justifies its stringent protection: when speech is threatened, we are threatened. Direct nonconsequentialism stands in stark contrast to consequentialist approaches which, as we have seen, make the value of speech contingent on its effects. And unlike indirect nonconsequentialism, it makes our status as language users, not our autonomy, the ground for limiting the state's attempts to interfere with our liberty. To repeat: direct nonconsequentialism asserts that speech is valuable because linguistic capacities are the expression of the essence of creatures (us) to whom we attribute the highest moral status. The way in which the direct nonconsequentialist makes explicit what is special about speech helps to make sense of a commonly experienced wariness regarding restrictions on speech we hate. We worry equally when the state seeks to prohibit the speech of sexists or Flat-Earthers. The consequentialist thinks this reaction is explained by attributing to us the belief that any state restriction of speech is the thin end of a wedge: we are discomforted by the thought of the muzzled sexist or Flat-Earther because we think our speech may be next. This may well be the right account of human psychology in these matters. But it is hardly an explanation of the prima facie wrongness of restrictions on lunatics' and sexists’ speech. Our discomfort is a moral discomfort. In bringing out the idea that speech is the expression of our essence, the direct nonconsequentialist is able to capture the true nature of our reaction to state restrictions on others' speech we do not particularly care for. Direct nonconsequentialism also gives substance to a powerful idea that some influential critics – notably, Catharine Mackinnon (1987) – find hopelessly abstract. This is the thought that “every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere (164).” And seeing how direct nonconsequentialism does so will help illustrate some of the practical implications of this strategy for justifying free speech. Proponents of legislation designed to restrict or prohibit problematic speech and courts that rule on the constitutionality of such legislation, often reason in terms of how free speech interests are to be balanced with other interests. For example, proponents of speech codes argue that racist speech harms minorities’ interests in social and political equality; and in the United States, the constitutionality of restrictions on ‘fighting words’ is defended in light of the state’s interests in maintaining law and order. These arguments imply that the expressive rights of individual racists and troublemakers may sometimes be infringed in order to promote the good of some collective. But as the history of free speech debates reveal, once we admit that collective interests can trump individual rights, it is extremely difficult consistently to maintain the belief that a right to free speech imposes severe limits on what the state may do. The direct nonconsequentialist justification of free speech avoids this particular difficulty. Recall, we are working within the context of constitutional provisions – that is, we are thinking about rationales for stringent protections of speech, where these are understood as mechanisms for keeping the government out of some aspect of our lives. In this sense, such provisions express rights had by individuals against the state. But the direct nonconsequentialist’s account of the basis of these rights suggests that it is a mistake to think of them as radically individualistic. True, each of us has a right to free speech, but we have that right in virtue of our membership in a collective – the species H. sapiens – where every member has the same right for the same reason. Thus, in stressing that a universal feature of the species – language mastery – grounds protections on speech, the direct nonconsequentialist avoids individualizing the right to free speech in a way that makes it perpetually vulnerable to the assertion of some collective good. If we think of a person’s right to free speech as protecting just one aspect of his liberty among others, we run the risk of obscuring what is morally relevant about speech. The hatemonger and the pornographer each have a right to free speech, but this is not to be understood in terms of their being free to act on contingent desires they have. My occurrent desire to eat ice-cream holds no weight in the big scheme of things; even I would concede that it is permissible for the state to thwart my satisfying this desire, if doing so meant promoting some very important collective good. But speech is different. It is worthy of protection not because people want to say certain things, but (to repeat) because speech expresses our very nature. What someone wants to say is neither here nor there. Thus, in decoupling the value of free speech from individual desires, direct nonconsequentialism gives content to the idea that when we strengthen (protect) free speech in one place, we strengthen (protect) it everywhere.

Consequentially, Free speech is a gateway to every other impact. D’Souza 96
(Frances, Prof. Anthropology Oxford, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/hearings/19960425/droi/freedom_en.htm?textMode=on)

In the absence of freedom of expression which includes a free and independent media, it is impossible to protect other rights, including the right to life. Once governments are able to draw a cloak of secrecy over their actions and to remain unaccountable for their actions then massive human rights violations can, and do, take place. For this reason alone the right to freedom of expression, specifically protected in the major international human rights treaties, must be considered to be a primary right. It is significant that one of the first indications of a government's intention to depart from democratic principles is the ever increasing control of information by means of gagging the media, and preventing the freeflow of information from abroad. At one end of the spectrum there are supposedly minor infringements of this fundamental right which occur daily in Western democracies and would include abuse of national security laws to prevent the publication of information which might be embarrassing to a given government: at the other end of the scale are the regimes of terror which employ the most brutal moves to suppress opposition, information and even the freedom to exercise religious beliefs. It has been argued, and will undoubtedly be discussed at this Hearing, that in the absence of free speech and an independent media, it is relatively easy for governments to capture, as it were, the media and to fashion them into instruments of propaganda, for the promotion of ethnic conflict, war and genocide. 2. Enshrining the right to freedom of expression The right to freedom of expression is formally protected in the major international treaties including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, it is enshrined in many national constitutions throughout the world, although this does not always guarantee its protection. Furthermore, freedom of expression is, amongst other human rights, upheld, even for those countries which are not signatories to the above international treaties through the concept of customary law which essentially requires that all states respect the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by virtue of the widespread or customary respect which has been built up in the post World War II years. 3. Is free speech absolute? While it is generally accepted that freedom of expression is, and remains the cornerstone of democracy, there are permitted restrictions encoded within the international treaties which in turn allow for a degree of interpretation of how free free speech should be. Thus, unlike the American First Amendment Rights which allow few, if any, checks on free speech or on the independence of the media, the international treaties are concerned that there should be a balance between competing rights: for example, limiting free speech or media freedom where it impinges on the individual's right to privacy; where free speech causes insult or injury to the rights and reputation of another; where speech is construed as incitement to violence or hatred, or where free speech would create a public disturbance. Given that these permitted restrictions are necessarily broad, the limits of free speech are consistently tested in national law courts and, perhaps even more importantly, in the regional courts such as the European Commission and Court of Human Rights. In recent years several landmark cases have helped to define more closely what restrictions may be imposed by government and under what circumstances. In particular, it has been emphasised by the European Court that any restriction must comply with a three-part test which requires that any such restriction should first of all be prescribed by law, and thus not arbitrarily imposed: proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued, and demonstrably necessary in a democratic society in order to protect the individual and/or the state. 4. Who censors what? Despite the rather strict rules which apply to restrictions on free speech that governments may wish to impose, many justifications are nevertheless sought by governments to suppress information which is inimical to their policies or their interests. These justifications include arguments in defence of national and/or state security, the public interst, including the need to protect public morals and public order and perfectly understandable attempts to prevent racism, violence, sexism, religious intolerance and damage to the indi-vidual's reputation or privacy. The mechanisms employed by governments to restrict the freeflow of information are almost endless and range from subtle economic pressures and devious methods of undermining political opponents and the independent media to the enactment of restrictive press laws and an insist-ence on licensing journalists and eventually to the illegal detention, torture and disappearances of journalists and others associated with the expression of independent views. 5. Examples of censorship To some the right to free speech may appear to be one of the fringe human rights, especially when compared to such violations as torture and extra-judicial killings. It is also sometimes difficult to dissuade the general public that censorship, generally assumed to be something to do with banning obscene books or magazines, is no bad thing! It requires a recognition of some of the fundamental principles of democracy to understand why censorship is so immensely dangerous. The conditon of democracy is that people are able to make choices about a wide variety of issues which affect their lives, including what they wish to see, read, hear or discuss. While this may seem a somewhat luxurious distinction preoccupying, perhaps, wealthy Western democracies, it is a comparatively short distance between government censorship of an offensive book to the silencing of political dissidents. And the distance between such silencing and the use of violence to suppress a growing political philosophy which a government finds inconvenient is even shorter. Censorship tends to have small beginnings and to grow rapidly. Allowing a government to have the power to deny people information, however trivial, not only sets in place laws and procedures which can and will be used by those in authority against those with less authority, but it also denies people the information which they must have in order to monitor their governments actions and to ensure accountability. There have been dramatic and terrible examples of the role that censorship has played in international politics in the last few years: to name but a few, the extent to which the media in the republics of former Yugoslavia were manipulated by government for purposes of propaganda; the violent role played by the government associated radio in Rwanda which incited citizens to kill each other in the name of ethnic purity and the continuing threat of murder issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran against a citizen of another country for having written a book which displeased them. 6. The link between poverty, war and denial of free speech There are undoubted connections between access to information, or rather the lack of it, and war, as indeed there are between poverty, the right to freedom of expression and development. One can argue that democracy aims to increase participation in political and other decision-making at all levels. In this sense democracy empowers people. The poor are denied access to information on decisions which deeply affect their lives, are thus powerless and have no voice; the poor are not able to have influence over their own lives, let alone other aspect of society. Because of this essential powerlessness, the poor are unable to influence the ruling elite in whose interests it may be to initiate conflict and wars in order to consolidate their own power and position. Of the 126 developing countries listed in the 1993 Human Development Report, war was ongoing in 30 countries and severe civil conflict in a further 33 countries. Of the total 63 countries in conflict, 55 are towards the bottom scale of the human development index which is an indicator of poverty. There seems to be no doubt that there is a clear association between poverty and war. It is reasonably safe to assume that the vast majority of people do not ever welcome war. They are normally coerced, more often than not by propaganda, into fear, extreme nationalist sentiments and war by their governments. If the majority of people had a democratic voice they would undoubtedly object to war. But voices are silenced. Thus, the freedom to express one's views and to challenge government decisions and to insist upon political rather than violent solutions, are necessary aspects of democracy which can, and do, avert war. Government sponsored propaganda in Rwanda, as in former Yugoslavia, succeeded because there weren't the means to challenge it. One has therefore to conclude that it is impossible for a particular government to wage war in the absence of a compliant media willing to indulge in government propaganda. This is because the government needs civilians to fight wars for them and also because the media is needed to re-inforce government policies and intentions at every turn.

Plan Text: Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not restrict constitutionally protected journalist speech.

Advantage 1: Stop The Press

Censorship of student journalism is increasing at the worst possible time. Censorship discourages questioning the government. Schuman 12-8
(Rebecca, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2016/12/student_journalists_are_under_threat.html)
Well, here’s some great news to cheer you up: The American student press is under siege! Apparently, we’ve been too busy blowing gaskets over professor watch lists and “safe spaces” to recognize the actual biggest threat to free speech on college campuses today. According to a new report by the American Association of University Professors, in conjunction with three other nonpartisan free-speech advocacy organizations, a disquieting trend of administrative censorship of student-run media has been spreading quietly across the country—quietly, of course, because according to the report, those censorship efforts have so far been successful. The report finds that recent headlines out of Mount St. Mary’s University, for example, may be “just the tip of a much larger iceberg.” Indeed, “it has become disturbingly routine for student journalists and their advisers to experience overt hostility that threatens their ability to inform the campus community and, in some instances, imperils their careers or the survival of their publications.” The report chronicles more than 20 previously unreported cases of media advisers “suffering some degree of administrative pressure to control, edit, or censor student journalistic content.” Furthermore, this pressure came “from every segment of higher education and from every institutional type: public and private, four-year and two-year, religious and secular.” It gets worse. In many of the cases in the report, administration officials “threatened retaliation against students and advisers not only for coverage critical of the administration but also for otherwise frivolous coverage that the administrators believed placed the institution in an unflattering light,” including an innocuous listicle of the best places to hook up on campus. In many cases, the student publications were subject to prior review from either an adviser who reported directly to the administration or the administration itself. Prior review means getting what’s in your newspaper signed off on by someone up top before it can be published. It is—to use the parlance of my years of professional journalistic training that began with my time as features editor of the Vassar College Miscellany News in the mid-’90s—absolute bullshit. (At public universities, it’s also illegal.) First, and most obviously, this is because a free student press is a hallmark of the American higher education system, and any threat to that freedom is on its face worrying. But there’s also this: The last thing we need right now, in the creeping shadow of American authoritarianism, is an entire generation of fledgling journalists who’ve come up thinking censorship is acceptable.

The legal justification for newspaper censorship is a 7th circuit decision that applied Hazelwood to universities-this allows unchecked arbitrary censorship by administrators. Goodman 05
( S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center 2005 WL 2736314 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba, Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 20, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief of Amici Curiae Student Press Law Center, Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Advisers, Community College Journalism Association, Society for Collegiate Journalists, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, American Society of Newspaper Editors, National Newspaper Association, Newspaper Association of America, Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors, College Newspaper Business and Advertising Managers, National Federation of Press Women, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the Independent Press Association/Campus Journalism Project in Support of Petition of Margaret L. Hosty, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba for Writ of Certiorari Of Counsel: S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Ste 1100, Arlington, VA 22209-2211, (703) 807-1904. Richard M. Goehler, (Counsel of Record), Frost Brown Todd LLC, 2200 PNC Center, 201 East Fifth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, (513) 651-6800, Counsel for Amici Curiae.)
In contrast to many high school censorship incidents, public college administrators today are less likely to be successful in their efforts to restrict the student press. This is usually (and perhaps only) because of the First Amendment protections that courts have consistently accorded college journalists. That circumstance would surely change were Hazelwood extended to limit the rights of college student journalists. Among some of the stories in college student publications that could be subject to censorship under the Hazelwood standard: • An opinion piece opposing an upcoming referendum that would have provided the college with revenue collected from property taxes. University officials, claiming the paper contained typographical and grammatical errors, confiscated and destroyed 10,000 copies of the paper. After students threatened legal action, the school agreed to reprint the newspaper.14 • An article detailing the incoming university president’s expenditure of state funds, including more than $100,000 spent to remodel the president’s home and pay for *17 his inauguration. Following publication, the president transferred the newspaper’s adviser to another position at the school, an act that generated considerable public attention. The president later resigned after being questioned by state legislators regarding the spending that had been reported in the student newspaper. The adviser was remstated.15 • A yearbook story reporting that members of the school’s volleyball team were removed for bringing alcohol on a team trip and a feature spread on sex and relationships. Following publication, the yearbook editor lost his job. After the editor sued, the school agreed to a settlement in which it paid the editor $10,000 and agreed to a publications policy that prohibited administrative interference with the content of student publications.16 • An editorial cartoon, featuring cartoon figures as university officials, commenting on a U.S. Department of Education report that found the school had misused public funds when it paid for a trip to Disney World by students and school officials. One of those portrayed, the vice president of student affairs, temporarily halted printing of the issue - but released them after students objected.17 If Hazelwood is allowed to determine the level of First Amendment protection to which America’s college student media are entitled, there is no doubt university administrators are poised to take advantage of their new *18 censorship powers. Word has already begun to spread that the standard “hands-off student media” policies recognized by college officials in the past may no longer be required. In California, for example - 2,000 miles west of the Governors State University campus and far beyond the jurisdiction of the Seventh Circuit - administrators at California State University system schools received a memo from the system’s legal counsel on June 30, 2005 - ten days after the Seventh Circuit handed down its decision - informing them that “Hosty appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers….”18 Extending Hazelwood to the university setting is a recipe for encouraging censorship that would dramatically hinder the production of good journalism and the training of good journalists. Amici do not believe this Court intended the censorship of college and university student newspapers to be the legacy of Hazelwood.

Regulation of newspapers is a crucial precedent used to justify widespread campus censorship-it uniquely empowers and protects administrators to censor. Lukianoff 05
(George, Samantha Harris, Foundation for Individual, Rights in Education, 2005 WL 2736313 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY et al., Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 19, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief Amici Curiae of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; The Coalition for Student and Academic Rights; Feminists for Free Expression; The First Amendment Project; Ifeminists.Net; National Association of Scholars; Accuracy in Academia; Leadership Institute; The Individual Rights Foundation; The American Council of Trustees and Alumni; and Students for Academic Freedom in Support of Petitioners)
Commentators from across the political spectrum, while often disagreeing on the source, the scale, and the cause of the chilling of free speech on campus, have described the current campus environment as one where the “marketplace of ideas” is under siege.13 Whether in the name of “ tolerance,” *17 risk management, or merely peace and quiet, hundreds (if not thousands) of universities have enacted policies and engaged in practices hostile to free and open discourse over the past few decades.14 Starting in the 1980s, colleges enacted “speech codes” under a variety of creative legal theories. Despite numerous decisions ruling these codes unconstitutional15 and this Court's decision in R.A. E v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), which indicated that viewpoint-based speech codes would be unconstitutional, the number of university speech codes actually increased through the 1990s, see Jon Gould, The Precedent that Wasn't, 35 Law and Soc'y Rev. 345 (2001). Over the past twenty years, numerous books have been written alleging an illiberal, intolerant, and/or partisan atmosphere on campus16 in which dissenting viewpoints and unpopular groups are repressed through a variety of measures. More recently, universities have adopted highly restrictive, and sometimes absurd “speech *18 zone” policies restricting speech from all but small comers of the university.17 Thus far, the law has served to protect the collegiate marketplace of ideas from overreaching administrations, requiring policies and practices in keeping with the First Amendment and academic freedom. For example, in Rosenberger, this Court granted religious student groups equal access to student fee funding. In Bait v. Shippensburg University, 280 F. Supp. 2d 357 (M.D. Pa. 2003), a federal court in Pennsylvania ruled Shippensburg University's speech code was unconstitutionally overbroad, and in Roberts v. Haragan, 346 F. Supp. 2d 853 (N.D. Tex. 2004), a federal court in Texas dismissed a speech zone policy as unconstitutionally overbroad. The Hosty decision, however, is a step in the opposite direction. College administrators have already demonstrated a tenacious will to censor even when the law clearly limited their ability to do so. The legal ambiguity that Hosty creates, the unparalleled discretion it grants college administrators, and the legal protection it provides to administrators who censor all threaten to dramatically worsen the campus free speech crisis. If allowed to stand, Hosty will have numerous, specific, predictable, and far reaching negative consequences for free speech and robust debate on America's college campuses. It is no exaggeration to say that the Hosty opinion threatens the existence of the independent collegiate media. Universities have not shown great tolerance for the free press. If there is no longer a presumption of independence or of public forum status when a public university establishes a student newspaper, *19 there should be no doubt that administrators who wish to censor will take advantage of this ambiguity. Public universities will be able to argue that any paper that receives any kind of benefit - whether financial support or simply the use of office space - from the university is subject to administrative control. If past experience is any guide, colleges will pay lip service to the importance of student press freedom, but they will quickly take advantage of any legal means available to punish or control student newspapers that anger or offend students or administrators. For example, in a memorandum to all California State University presidents written only ten days after the Hosty decision, California State University General Counsel Christine Helwick wrote that: while the Hosty decision is from another jurisdiction and, as such, does not directly impact the CSU, the case appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers, provided that there is an established practice of regularized content review and approval for pedagogical purposes.18 In this same way, Hosty threatens the existence of independent student groups. If the primary question under Hosty is whether a student group is in some way “subsidized,” any group that receives any sort of benefit or student fees could be threatened with administrative control. The possibility that a court might later determine that the student group or publication was entitled to some form of public forum status would hardly protect the overwhelming majority of these groups that are neither willing nor affluent enough to mount a legal defense. *20 This case also re-opens issues relating to collegiate liability for student media and student groups formerly considered settled. It also allows administrators virtually unlimited freedom to experiment with censorship above and beyond even the broad discretion granted to them under Hosty. Finally, there is no reason to believe this holding will remain limited to public colleges - private colleges that promise free speech to their students tend to base their own speech policies on First Amendment standards.19 Hosty v. Carter will have reverberations from the community college to the Ivy League. Administrators will impose the “intellectual strait jacket” that this Court has long feared, and the consequences will be profound. As FIRE co-founder Alan Charles Kors once said, “A nation that does not educate in freedom will not survive in freedom, and will not even know when it is lost.”20

Universities are the most important site of first amendment activity- ignore negative evidence written about other contexts. Goodman 05
( S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center 2005 WL 2736314 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba, Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 20, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief of Amici Curiae Student Press Law Center, Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Advisers, Community College Journalism Association, Society for Collegiate Journalists, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, American Society of Newspaper Editors, National Newspaper Association, Newspaper Association of America, Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors, College Newspaper Business and Advertising Managers, National Federation of Press Women, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the Independent Press Association/Campus Journalism Project in Support of Petition of Margaret L. Hosty, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba for Writ of Certiorari Of Counsel: S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Ste 1100, Arlington, VA 22209-2211, (703) 807-1904. Richard M. Goehler, (Counsel of Record), Frost Brown Todd LLC, 2200 PNC Center, 201 East Fifth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, (513) 651-6800, Counsel for Amici Curiae.)
The University is the paradigmatic “marketplace of ideas,” rendering “the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms…nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.” Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169, 180 (1972) (citation omitted). This Court has specifically recognized there is “no doubt that the First Amendment rights of speech and association extend to the campuses of state universities.” Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 268-69. This Court’s restrictive First Amendment standard in Hazelwood sprung from the premise that the special circumstances of the secondary and elementary school environment permit school authorities to exercise more control over school-sponsored student expression than the First Amendment would otherwise permit. However, the judicial deference necessary in the high school setting and below - and in the factual context of Hazelwood - is inappropriate for a university setting. A high school is an entirely different environment from a university. This Court acknowledged such a difference when it explicitly reserved the question of whether the same level of deference to school officials expressed in Hazelwood would be “appropriate with respect to school-sponsored expressive activity at the college and university level.” Hazelwood, Id. at 273, n.7. In fact, every effort to justify censorship of college student media under Hazelwood has been rejected by the lower courts except by the Seventh Circuit in Hosty. As Justice Souter has noted, the “cases dealing with the right of teaching institutions to limit expressive freedom of students have been *8 confined to high schools, whose students and their school’s relation to them are different and at least arguably distinguishable from their counterparts in college education.” Board of Regents of the Univ. of Wisconsin System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000) (Sourer, J., concurring in the judgment) (citations omitted). This Court has explicitly recognized that where the “vital” principles of the First Amendment are at stake, “the first danger to liberty lies in granting the State the power to examine publications to determine whether or not they are based on some ultimate idea and, if so, for the State to classify them. The second, and corollary, danger to speech is from the chilling of individual thought and expression.” Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819, 835-36 (1995). These dangers are especially threatening in the university setting, where “the quality and creative power of student intellectual life to this day remains a vital measure of a school’s influence and attainment.” Id. Yet that right to review and censor a student publication is precisely what the Seventh Circuit has approved in Hosty. Such restrictions have no place at a public college or university. “For the University, by regulation, to cast disapproval on particular viewpoints of its students risks the suppression of free speech and creative inquiry in one of the vital centers for the Nation’s intellectual life.” Id. Lower courts have consistently struck down administrative attempts to limit free and robust student expression at the postsecondary level. Joyner v. Whiting, 477 F.2d 456 (4th Cir. 1973) (university withdrawal of funding to student publication at North Carolina State University based on editorial condemning integration rejected); Stanley v. Magrath, 719 F.2d 279 (8th Cir. 1983) (attempt by *9 University of Minnesota to change student newspaper funding mechanism after publication of controversial humor issue rejected); Bazaar v. Fortune, 476 F.2d 570 (5th Cir. 1973), aff’d with modification, 489 F.2d 255 (en banc per curiam) (University of Mississippi’s censorship of student magazine because of “coarse language” and story about interracial love affair rejected). In fact, two appellate courts have explicitly refused to apply Hazelwood to college student media. Student Government Association v. Board of Trustees of the University of Massachusetts, 868 F. 2d 473, 480 n. 6 (1st Cir. 1989); Kincaid v. Gibson, 236 F.3d 342, 346 n. 4-5 (6th Cir. 2001) (en banc). College student expression should be subject to no greater restrictions than those applicable to the public at large. Healy, 408 U.S. at 180. The driving force prompting the enactment of the First Amendment was the founders’ unwavering commitment to the freedom of the mind. Nowhere is the mind more provoked, more nurtured, more challenged to new levels of enlightenment than on the university campus. Hazelwood did not, and should not be interpreted to have taken these fundamental precepts of college education into account when it diluted high school students’ First Amendment rights. Nothing in Hazelwood or its progeny should be read to alter the venerated balance favoring free and independent thought on America’s college and university campuses.

Campus free speech solves extinction. Lukianoff 05
(George, Samantha Harris, Foundation for Individual, Rights in Education, 2005 WL 2736313 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY et al., Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 19, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief Amici Curiae of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; The Coalition for Student and Academic Rights; Feminists for Free Expression; The First Amendment Project; Ifeminists.Net; National Association of Scholars; Accuracy in Academia; Leadership Institute; The Individual Rights Foundation; The American Council of Trustees and Alumni; and Students for Academic Freedom in Support of Petitioners)
This Court has long emphasized and understood the importance of free and open expression on campus: The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation … Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957). *6 In the nearly fifty years since Sweezy, this Court and lower courts have repeatedly reaffirmed the special importance of robust free expression in higher education.3 In Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972), this Court made clear that students are an important part of the collegiate marketplace of ideas when it ruled that a college, acting “as the instrumentality of the State, may not restrict speech … simply because it finds the views expressed by any group to be abhorrent.” Healy at 187-88. See also Papish v. Bd. of Curators of the Univ. of Mo., 410 U.S. 667, 670 (1973) (“the mere dissemination of ideas - no matter how offensive to good taste - on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’ ”).

Advantage 2: Civic Engagement 

Censorship of college journalism guts civic engagement. LoMonte 12-1
(Frank D., http://www.splc.org/article/2016/12/college-media-threats-report-2016)
Frank D. LoMonte, executive director of the SPLC, said, “It is hypocritical for colleges to claim they support civic engagement while defunding student news organizations, removing well-qualified faculty advisers, and otherwise intimidating journalists into compliance. Colleges are more obsessed with promoting a favorable public image than ever before, but a college that retaliates against students and faculty for unflattering journalism doesn't just look bad—it is bad. We need a top-level commitment from the presidents of America's colleges and universities to support editorially independent student-run news coverage, including secure funding and retaliation protection for students and their advisers.” Joan Bertin, NCAC executive director, said, “This report exposes restrictions on press and speech freedoms on campus and exhorts college and university administrators to educate students in the operation of our constitutional system by allowing students to engage in its most critical functions: seeking information, becoming engaged and informed, and speaking out on matters of importance.” Kelley Lash, president of CMA, said, “This issue impacts millions of educators and students. College Media Association emphatically supports the First Amendment freedoms of all student media at all institutions, both public and private, and agrees that these media must be free from all forms of external interference designed to influence content. Student media participants, and their advisers, should not be threatened or punished due to the content of the student media. Their rights of free speech and free press must always be guaranteed.”

Civic engagement is the vital internal link to solving every existential problem- its try or die for the affirmative. Small 06
(Jonathan, former Americorps VISTA for the Human Services Coalition,  “Moving Forward,” The Journal for Civic Commitment,  Spring, http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/Journal/Issue7/Small.jsp)
What will be the challenges of the new millennium? And how should we equip young people to face these challenges? While we cannot be sure of the exact nature of the challenges, we can say unequivocally that humankind will face them together. If the end of the twentieth century marked the triumph of the capitalists, individualism, and personal responsibility, the new century will present challenges that require collective action, unity, and enlightened self-interest. Confronting global warming, depleted natural resources, global super viruses, global crime syndicates, and multinational corporations with no conscience and no accountability will require cooperation, openness, honesty, compromise, and most of all solidarity – ideals not exactly cultivated in the twentieth century. We can no longer suffer to see life through the tiny lens of our own existence. Never in the history of the world has our collective fate been so intricately interwoven. Our very existence depends upon our ability to adapt to this new paradigm, to envision a more cohesive society.  With humankind’s next great challenge comes also great opportunity. Ironically, modern individualism backed us into a corner. We have two choices, work together in solidarity or perish together in alienation. Unlike any other crisis before, the noose is truly around the neck of the whole world at once. Global super viruses will ravage rich and poor alike, developed and developing nations, white and black, woman, man, and child. Global warming and damage to the environment will affect climate change and destroy ecosystems across the globe. Air pollution will force gas masks on our faces, our depleted atmosphere will make a predator of the sun, and chemicals will invade and corrupt our water supplies. Every single day we are presented the opportunity to change our current course, to survive modernity in a manner befitting our better nature. Through zealous cooperation and radical solidarity we can alter the course of human events. Regarding the practical matter of equipping young people to face the challenges of a global, interconnected world, we need to teach cooperation, community, solidarity, balance and tolerance in schools. We need to take a holistic approach to education. Standardized test scores alone will not begin to prepare young people for the world they will inherit. The three staples of traditional education (reading, writing, and arithmetic) need to be supplemented by three cornerstones of a modern education, exposure, exposure, and more exposure. How can we teach solidarity? How can we teach community in the age of rugged individualism? How can we counterbalance crass commercialism and materialism? How can we impart the true meaning of power? These are the educational challenges we face in the new century. It will require a radical transformation of our conception of education. We’ll need to trust a bit more, control a bit less, and put our faith in the potential of youth to make sense of their world.  In addition to a declaration of the gauntlet set before educators in the twenty-first century, this paper is a proposal and a case study of sorts toward a new paradigm of social justice and civic engagement education. Unfortunately, the current pedagogical climate of public K-12 education does not lend itself well to an exploratory study and trial of holistic education. Consequently, this proposal and case study targets a higher education model. Specifically, we will look at some possibilities for a large community college in an urban setting with a diverse student body.  Our guides through this process are specifically identified by the journal Equity and Excellence in Education. The dynamic interplay between ideas of social justice, civic engagement, and service learning in education will be the lantern in the dark cave of uncertainty. As such, a simple and straightforward explanation of the three terms is helpful to direct this inquiry. Before we look at a proposal and case study and the possible consequences contained therein, this paper will draw out a clear understanding of how we should characterize these ubiquitous terms and how their relationship to each other affects our study. Social Justice, Civic Engagement, Service Learning and Other Commie Crap Social justice is often ascribed long, complicated, and convoluted definitions. In fact, one could fill a good-sized library with treatises on this subject alone. Here we do not wish to belabor the issue or argue over fine points. For our purposes, it will suffice to have a general characterization of the term, focusing instead on the dynamics of its interaction with civic engagement and service learning. Social justice refers quite simply to a community vision and a community conscience that values inclusion, fairness, tolerance, and equality. The idea of social justice in America has been around since the Revolution and is intimately linked to the idea of a social contract. The Declaration of Independence is the best example of the prominence of social contract theory in the US. It states quite emphatically that the government has a contract with its citizens, from which we get the famous lines about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Social contract theory and specifically the Declaration of Independence are concrete expressions of the spirit of social justice.  Similar clamor has been made over the appropriate definitions of civic engagement and service learning, respectively. Once again, let’s not get bogged down on subtleties. Civic engagement is a measure or degree of the interest and/or involvement an individual and a community demonstrate around community issues. There is a longstanding dispute over how to properly quantify civic engagement. Some will say that today’s youth are less involved politically and hence demonstrate a lower degree of civic engagement. Others cite high volunteer rates among the youth and claim it demonstrates a high exhibition of civic engagement. And there are about a hundred other theories put forward on the subject of civic engagement and today’s youth. But one thing is for sure; today’s youth no longer see government and politics as an effective or valuable tool for affecting positive change in the world. Instead of criticizing this judgment, perhaps we should come to sympathize and even admire it. Author Kurt Vonnegut said, “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president.” Maybe the youth’s rejection of American politics isn’t a shortcoming but rather a rational and appropriate response to their experience. Consequently, the term civic engagement takes on new meaning for us today. In order to foster fundamental change on the systemic level, which we have already said is necessary for our survival in the twenty-first century, we need to fundamentally change our systems. Therefore, part of our challenge becomes convincing the youth that these systems, and by systems we mean government and commerce, have the potential for positive change. Civic engagement consequently takes on a more specific and political meaning in this context.  Service learning is a methodology and a tool for teaching social justice, encouraging civic engagement, and deepening practical understanding of a subject. Since it is a relatively new field, at least in the structured sense, service learning is only beginning to define itself. Through service learning students learn by experiencing things firsthand and by exposing themselves to new points of view. Instead of merely reading about government, for instance, a student might experience it by working in a legislative office. Rather than just studying global warming out of a textbook, a student might volunteer time at an environmental group. If service learning develops and evolves into a discipline with the honest goal of making better citizens, teaching social justice, encouraging civic engagement, and most importantly, exposing students to different and alternative experiences, it could be a major feature of a modern education. Service learning is the natural counterbalance to our current overemphasis on standardized testing. Social justice, civic engagement, and service learning are caught in a symbiotic cycle. The more we have of one of them; the more we have of all of them. However, until we get momentum behind them, we are stalled. Service learning may be our best chance to jumpstart our democracy. In the rest of this paper, we will look at the beginning stages of a project that seeks to do just that.

Trump victory proves the case is a disad to every K- failure to prioritize civic engagement causes rightwing takeover. Rorty 98
(Richard, Stanford Philosophy Professor, Achieving Our Country, pp. 87-94)
If the formation of hereditary castes continues unimpeded, and if the pressures of globalization create such castes not only in the United States but in all the old democracies, we shall end up in an Orwellian world.  In such a world, there may be no supernational analogue of Big Brother, or any official creed analogous to Ingsoc.  But there will be an analogue of the Inner Party—namely, the international, cosmopolitan super-rich.  They will make all the important decisions.  The analogue of Orwell’s Outer Party will be educated, comfortably off, cosmopolitan professionals—Lind’s “overclass,” the people like you and me.  The job of people like us will be to make sure that the decisions made by the Inner Party are carried out smoothly and efficiently.  It will be in the interest of the international super-rich to keep our class relatively prosperous and happy.  For they need people who can pretend to be the political class of each of the individual nation-states.  For the sake of keeping the proles quiet, the super-rich will have to keep up the pretense that national politics might someday make a difference.  Since economic decisions are their prerogative, they will encourage politicians, of both the Left and the Right, to specialize in cultural issues.7  The aim will be to keep the minds of the proles elsewhere—to keep the bottom 75 percent of Americans and the bottom 95 percent of the world’s population busy with ethnic and religious hostilities, and with debates about sexual mores.  If the proles can be distracted from their own despair by media-created psuedo-events, including the occasional brief and bloody war, the super-rich will have little to fear.  Contemplation of this possible world invites two responses from the Left.  The first is to insist that the inequalities between nations need to be mitigated—and, in particular, that the Northern Hemisphere must share its wealth with the Southern.  The second is to insist that the primary responsibility of each democratic nation-state is to its own least advantaged citizens.  These two responses obviously conflict with each other.  In particular, the first response suggests that the old democracies should open their borders, whereas the second suggests that they should close them.8  The first response comes naturally to academic leftists, who have always been internationally minded.  The second response comes naturally to members of trade unions, and to the marginally employed people who can most easily be recruited into right-wing populist movements.  Union members in the United States have watched factory after factory close, only to reopen in Slovenia, Thailand, or Mexico.  It is no wonder that  they see the result of international free trade as prosperity for managers and stockholders, a better standard of living for workers in developing countries, and a very much worse standard of living for American workers.  It would be no wonder if they saw the American leftist intelligentsia as on the same side of the managers and stockholders—as sharing the same class interests.  For we intellectuals, who are mostly academics, are ourselves quite well insulated, at least in the short run, from the effects of globalization.  To make things worse, we often seem more interested in the workers of the developing world than in the fate of our fellow citizens.  Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments.  Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future.  The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported.  Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.  At that point, something will crack.  The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone will assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salemen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.  A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out.  For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen.  In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.  One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out.  Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion.  The words “nigger” and “kike” will once again be heard in the workplace.  All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back.  All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.  But such a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of selfishness.  For after my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make peace with the international superrich, just as Hitler made with the German industrialists.  He will invoke the glorious memory of the Gulf War to provoke military adventures which will generate short-term prosperity.  He will be a disaster for the country and the world.  People will wonder why there was so little resistance to his evitable rise.  Where, they will ask, was the American Left?  Why was it only rightists like Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the consequences of globalization?  Why could not the Left channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossesed?  It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the twentieth century, no longer have a Left.  Since nobody denies the existence of what I have called the cultural Left, this amounts to an admission that that Left is unable to engage in national politics.  It is not the sort of the Left which can be asked to deal with the consequences of globalization.  To get the country to deal with those consequences, the present cultural Left would have to transform itself by opening relations with the residue of the old reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions.  It would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of talking less about stigma.  I have two suggestions about how to effect this transition.  The first is that the Left should put a moratorium on theory.  It should try to kick its philosophy habit.  The second is that the Left should try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans.  It should ask the public to consider how the country of Lincoln and Whitman might be achieved.  In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy in which he expresses his exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the rubric of “individualism versus communitarianism.”  Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a common defect.  They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific situations are to be brought.  What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or that concrete human being, this or that special institution or social arrangement.  For such a logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts and their dialectical relationships with one another.  Dewey was right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction.  He was wrong when he went on to say that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one which supplies “the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the established order.”9 For such ascents are now more common on the Left than on the Right.  The contemporary academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the established order you can be.  The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique.  When one of today’s academic leftists says that some topic has been “inadequately theorized,” you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism.  Theorists of the Left think that dissolving political agents into plays of differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan’s impossible object of desire, helps to subvert the established order.  Such subversion, they say, is accomplished by “problematizing familiar concepts.”  Recent attempts to subvert social institutitons by problematizing concepts have produced a few very good books.  They have also produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its worts.  The authors of these purportedly “subversive” books honestly believe that the are serving human liberty.  But it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a candidate or a political strategy.  Even though what these authors “theorize” is often something very concrete and near at hand—a curent TV show, a media celebrity, a recent scandal—they offer the most absract and barren explanations imaginable.  These futile attempts to philosophize one’s way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country.  Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations.  These result in an intellec- tual environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which is called "power." This is the name of what Edmund- son calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook."10

Underview

Censorship is based in PR/funding concerns, not student wellbeing. Protest solves NC offense. Schuman 12/8
(Rebecca, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2016/12/student_journalists_are_under_threat.html)
My three years on the editorial board of Vassar’s weekly surely ran this gamut. There was the feature on heroin use on campus, complete with a diagram showing how to sterilize a syringe; there was the junior who stormed our meeting incensed that the headline “Student Convicted of Rape and Expelled” was not sufficient trigger warning for details of a sexual assault (and of a victim’s name, which was used with her explicit permission). We never heard a single word from the higher-ups. Then as now, in fact, it was students, rather than the administration, with demands to change our content. Indeed, as the result of the odd ill-conceived op-ed, or the accidental inclusion of a paid advertisement by an ovum donation company (whoops), the Misc., as we called it, was subject to outraged student “speak-outs.” But that was exactly the point—everyone got to speak out. Indeed, none of the five former editors in chief I worked with remembered a single instance when then-President Frances Daly “Fran” Fergusson subjected the Misc. to administrative reprimand, much less something as draconian as prior review. The closest thing we got came in the form of a letter “from” Fran’s two omnipresent dogs—on the dogs’ personalized letterhead—gently reprimanding us for misidentifying their breed. (Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, not Cocker Spaniels.) And plenty of what we published made the school look bad either because the news itself was bad—rape, suicide, drugs—or because we’d written it badly (ahem). We had no faculty adviser, received no course credit, and certainly enjoyed a mixed reputation on campus, but we loved every second of it, and some of us even grew up to be (more or less) journalists. The difference between then and now, of course, is the internet. Viral outrage—and chances are at least one of our foibles would have brought it—translates to fewer alumni donations, and that can pique the attention of the front office in a way nothing else can. It’s entirely possible that the shenanigans we got away with on our insular, 2,400-person campus in the ’90s were indeed only possible in a less-connected world. However, when I emailed Rhys Johnson, the Misc.’s current editor, he assured me the paper’s present-day relationship with the administration is still “quite peaceful,” and while he sometimes has to endure uncomfortable post-publication meetings with administrators, the newspaper under his leadership has never been subject to prior review or administrative censorship. I’d like to think that the Misc. represents the norm, and the disturbing cases the AAUP report chronicles the outliers. But as more universities gain success quashing poor PR from their student-run outlets—success that, by its nature, goes unnoticed by the public—the outliers may easily creep toward normalcy. I understand that many American institutions are in constant funding crises, and all it takes are a few scandalized alums to halt construction of the new rock climbing wall. But if our universities are not instructing students in both the power and responsibility of a free press, they are putting not only the next generation of journalists at risk, but all of us. There is little more frightening in a liberal democracy than a press under constant, vague threat of censorship by an authoritarian power figure. There is little more frightening, but there is something: a generation of journalists trained to submit to censorship without question. If the trend toward restricting the American university press continues, that is what will happen, at exactly the hour in the American experiment when democracy—and dissent—need vigorous protection. When more than half of the people who voted for the president-elect already do not believe the media when we uncover that individual’s blatant, terrifying lies—when Nazi terminology for the press returns to use in his supporters, when those supporters wear T-shirts suggesting journalists be hanged—the idea of a new generation of journalists trained in simpering acquiescence to the powerful is among the more worrying in a litany of worrying ideas about the direction of the United States. It’s not too late. American university administrations still have the power to put their own PR behind the survival of the republic and stop meddling in the student press. But it remains to be seen whether, in the coming years, universities will seek to distinguish themselves from a presidential administration that wants to destroy the free press—or act more in its image.

Using the state doesn’t ethically legitimate it – the state is inevitably a unit of analysis given that it exists now even if we want to move beyond it.  Frost 96
Mervyn Frost, U of Kent, 1996, Ethics in Int’l Relations, p. 90-1.  NS

A first objection which seems inherent in Donelan’s approach is that utilizing the modern state domain of discourse in effect sanctifies the state: it assumes that people will always live in states and that it is not possible within such a language to consider alternatives to the system.  This objection is not well founded, by having recourse to the ordinary language of international relations I am not thereby committed to argue that the state system as it exists is the best mode of human political organization or that people ought always to live in states as we know them.  As I have said, my argument is that whatever proposals for piecemeal or large-scale reform of the state system are made, they must of necessity be made in the language of the modern state.  Whatever proposals are made, whether in justification or in criticism of the state system, will have to make use of concepts which are at present part and parcel of the theory of states. Thus,for example. any proposal for a new global institutional arrangement superseding the state system will itself have to be justified, and that justification will have to include within it reference to a new and good form of individual citizenship, reference to a new legislative machinery equipped with satisfactory checks and balances, reference to satisfactory law enforcement procedures, reference to a satisfactory arrangement for distributing the goods produced in the world, and so on. All of these notions are notions which have been developed and finely honed within the theory of the modern state. It is not possible to imagine a justification of a new world order succeeding which used, for example, feudal, or traditional/tribal, discourse. More generally there is no worldwide language of political morality which is not completely shot through with state-related notions such as citizenship, rights under law, representative government and so on.

Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 1 | Opponent: New Trier BSe | Judge: Ashan Peiris
The standard is preserving the rule of law

First, the rule of law animates democracy- its crucial to rights protections and reducing all forms of violence
Rummel 91 – Professor of Political Science @ University of Hawaii R.J. Rummel, THE RULE OF LAW:TOWARDS ELIMINATING WAR AND DEMOCIDE, S peech given to the ABA National Security Conference on "The Rule of Law in United States Foreign Policy and the New World Order. Washington, D.C., October 10-11, 1991. pg. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ABA.SPEECH.HTM
Obviously we are all riding a democratic wave. The technology of the mass media has brought us all together (and who can forget watching the coup and its defeat unfolding in Moscow) and in its universal availability and content it has carried implicitly the message of democracy and freedom. And freedom and the rule of law itself has become the most universally accepted political idea. The components of this idea are clear in broad brush although the details, as always, are subject to academic dispute. These are political rights, such as to compete and choose one's candidates for political power, equal and secret ballot, and freedom to organize and protest against office holders; and civil rights, such as freedom of religion, organization, and speech. Often we collectively refer to these rights by the term Rule of Law, a basic constitutional order that protects these rights and that lies above the whims of government, groups, and individuals. But in our enthusiasm for the global movement toward democracy we should ask ourselves why we support it. A century and more ago the answer would have been almost automatic, as it was for the writers of the American Constitution. It is a natural law, an inalienable right, a self-evident principle that people should be free. But natural law is no longer intellectually popular and indeed the idea is now so strange that journalists cannot understand the references to it by conservative nominees to the Supreme Court. They classify it along with such sayings as, "God wills it." A currently more respectable justification for democracy is that freedom is a fundamental human value and desire. People want to live their own lives, pursue their own interests as free from the meddling of others as possible. If such intrusion is necessary, they want to play a role in determining the who, what, and when of it. And since this is what people universally want it is what they should have. Although the non sequitur in this argument is glaring--one cannot derive a "should" from a "want" or "desire" alone--it at least can be made respectable by reference to the Social Contract Theory of justice. That is, if we argue that a just social system is one whose fundamental principles people would universally choose if they were blind to their selfish interests (if they had no knowledge of where they would end up in that system--rich or poor, tall or fat, black or white), then persuasive is the argument that people would choose as their first principle freedom under the Rule of Law. But this approach to justifying democracy has been unsatisfactory to many. We live in a utilitarian age and it is hardly strange that the major justification for democracy should be in terms of its consequences. Particularly, that where people are free under law that is fair and equally applied to all, they are most happy. Of course, this utilitarian justification itself is subject to question. What is happiness? Although people prefer happiness to sadness, grief, and pain, do they really know what will make them happy? The democrat argues that we really do not know what makes people happy in general and that this is something that only they can decide for themselves, and if for some issues it must be determined generally, as with regard to pollution or public education, it should be through publicly elected representatives under law. And the democratic individualist has argued further with their democratic socialist friends that the free market is a necessary mechanism through which individuals have the greatest choice as to what will make them happy, both in the relative diversity and cheapness of goods and in the creation and dissemination of wealth. This utilitarian argument for democracy is what has now won the battle for the minds of men. Democracy, it is widely believed, assures the happiness of the greatest number because it provides freedom and wealth (through economic development). There is much to quibble about this, as can be seen in the arguments between Democrats and Republicans and among liberals and conservatives of both parties, and I do not intend to get into these debates. But leaving these details aside, I think that we can accept this as the general argument of the American, Soviet, or Chinese democrat (even those who favor social democracy no longer mean full-scale socialism but now mean a free market qualified by government welfare, safety nets, regulation, and limited government ownership of basic services and production, such as in the public health sector). But those who make this utilitarian argument for democracy have missed perhaps the strongest possible justification. Democracy preserves human life. In theory and fact, the more democratic two states, the less deadly violence between them; and if they are both democratic, lethal violence is precluded altogether. That is, democratic states do not make war on each other. Moreover, the less democratic two states, the more probable war between them. And also, the less democratic a state, the more likely will occur internal warfare. This is not all. Perhaps least surprising is that the less democratic a government, the more likely that it will murder its own citizens in cold blood, independent of any foreign or domestic war. Now, war is not the most deadly form of violence. Indeed, I have found that while about 37,000,000 people have been killed in battle in all foreign and domestic wars in our century, government democide (genocide and mass murder) have killed over 150,944,000 million more, and I am still counting. And over 85 percent of these were killed by totalitarian governments. Table 1 lists the partial data (these data are still in the process of being collected) on "mega-murderers"--governments that have killed a million or more people outside of warfare. These megamurderers form, of course, an elite group. The list of regimes--kilomurderers--murdering "only" in the thousands is much longer and would include, for example, communist Afghanistan, Angola, Laos, Ethiopia, North Korea, and Rumania, as well as authoritarian Argentina, Burundi, Chile, Croatia (1941-44), Czechoslovakia (1945-46), Indonesia, Iran, Rwanda, Spain, Sudan, and Uganda. There is no case of democratic central governments killing en masse their own citizens. The point is this. If a utilitarian justification for democracy is to be given, then in addition to the happiness that follows from freedom and the from wealth produced by the free market, democracy preserves and extends human life. It does this through the life extending benefits of the market (as in food production). But most important, it does this through the reduction of deadly violence. Democracy is the successful institutionalization of the forces, culture, and techniques of non-violence. This is also what we should be shouting from the roof tops. This is also what should be the substance of our utilitarian justification for democracy. Yes, freedom. Yes, development. Yes, happiness. But yes, also life for those saved from murder by their own governments and death from war. Nothing is certain about the future, but this is true of all predictions based on past events, natural or social. Within this limitation think about this. By fact and theory we appear to have within the power of democracy the opportunity to end war, genocide, and mass murder, and minimize revolutionary and civil violence. And the epochal movement of our times is toward universal democracy. 

Second, Rule of law is a gateway to every disad impact
RHYNE 1958 – FORMER PRESIDENT AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION
LAW DAY SPEECH, VOICE OF AMERICA, http://www.abanet.org/publiced/lawday/rhyne58.html)
The rule of law has been the bulwark of our democracy. It has afforded protection to the weak, the oppressed, the minorities, the unpopular; it has made it possible to achieve responsiveness of the government to the will of people. It stands as the very antithesis of Communism and dictatorship. When we talk about “justice” under our rule of law, the absence of such justice behind the Iron Curtain is apparent to all. When we talk about “freedom” for the individual, Hungary is recalled to the minds of all men. And when we talk about peace under law—peace without the bloodbath of war—we are appealing to the foremost desire of all peoples everywhere. The tremendous yearning of all peoples for peace can only be answered by the use of law to replace weapons in resolving international disputes. We in our country sincerely believe that mankind’s best hope for preventing the tragic consequences of nuclear-satellite-missile warfare is to persuade the nations of the entire world to submit all disputes to tribunals of justice for all adjudication under the rule of law. We lawyers of America would like to join lawyers from every nation in the world in fashioning an international code of law so appealing that sentiment will compel its general acceptance. Man’s relation to man is the most neglected field of study, exploration and development in the world community. It is also the most critical. The most important basic fact of our generation is that the rapid advance of knowledge in science and technology has forced increased international relationships in a shrunken and indivisible world. Men must either live together in peace or in modern war we will surely die together. History teachers that the rule of law has enabled mankind to live together peacefully within nations and it is clear that this same rule of law offers our best hope as a mechanism to achieve and maintain peace between nations. The lawyer is the technician in man’s relationship to man. There exists a worldwide challenge to our profession to develop law to replace weapons before the dreadful holocaust of nuclear war overtake our people. It is said that an idea can be more powerful than an atom because strength today resides in man’s mind—not his muscle. We lawyers of the world must take the idea of peace under the rule of law and make it a force superior to weapons and thus outlaw wars of weapons. Law offers the best hope for order in a disordered world.  The law of force or the force of law will rule the world. In the field of human conduct the law has never confessed failure. The struggle for a world ruled by law must go on with increased intensity. We must prove that the genius of man in the field of science and technology has not so far outstripped his inventiveness in the sphere of human relations as to make catastrophe inevitable. If man can conquer space he can also solve the need for legal machinery to insure universal and lasting peace.

Third, the rule of law requires the protection of individual civil rights
Novak, 2005 Michael, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission and to the Bern Round of the Helsinki Talks, holds the George F. Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, “Global Liberty,” National Review, 1/20, p. Lexis

30. The rights of the individual cannot be alienated from him by any other individual or institution or earthly power. But such rights are only mere words--air through lips--unless they are protected by a democratic regime. On this point, Sakharov and Sharansky and many other moral heroes of the past century gave witness. It is in the nature of dictators to use individuals as means and to abuse their rights. It is also their nature to seek enemies, in order to keep their subjects in fear.By contrast, democracies rooted in the rule of law and committed to honoring both individual rights and the consent of the governed tend toward peace. When the governed must give consent to war, they tend to count the costs, and agree only as a last resort. Thus, in our time, democracy has become the new word for peace. And it has also become the new word for personal dignity. For the institutions that constitute democracy rightly understood--the rule of law, the separation of powers, the protection of individual rights, limited government, and the like--provide the best ecology in which rights can actually be exercised, talents developed, and personal dignity respected.

SCOTUS ruled in Saucier V Katz that a duplicative “double reasonableness” standard must be applied in 4th amendment cases. This has disrupted the balance of immunity jurisprudence tilting the playing field overwhelmingly in favor of police gutting section 1983 and civil rights protections broadly
Brown, JD, 03
(Peter A., - Qualified Immunity Illogically Applies to Excessive Force Claims Suffolk University Law Review 2003 36 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 607 )
In Saucier v. Katz, the Supreme Court considered whether the duplicative objective reasonableness analysis is necessary to protect law enforcement in civil rights cases alleging excessive force. n32 The Court upheld the application of qualified immunity in excessive force complaints, thereby providing an additional layer of protection to law enforcement. n33 Declaring qualified immunity protects reasonable mistakes of both fact and law, the Court concluded that the mere application of Graham's factor test would not sufficiently address the goals underlying qualified immunity. n34 Surprisingly, the Court never addressed whether a Fourth Amendment violation actually occurred in this case. n35 Due to its procedural posture, the Court presumed a constitutional deprivation and continued to clarify the proper analysis for qualified immunity. n36 Concerned over the Ninth Circuit's approach, which enables section 1983 cases to get to trial whenever there is a material dispute of fact, the Court emphatically reinforced the policies behind the doctrine and reversed the denial of summary judgment. n37 In Saucier, the Court blatantly sacrificed policy for sound legal reasoning while attempting to protect law enforcement officials from frivolous lawsuits. n38 *613 The Court created an incoherent qualified immunity analysis, which undoubtedly will contribute to ongoing confusion. n39 Specifically, the Court's decision may chill future claims, significantly hindering the ability of individuals to vindicate constitutional violations. n40 Most importantly, Saucier neglected Graham's extensive protection of law enforcement. n41 Graham contained sufficient protections to law enforcement, and as such, the Court in Saucier did not confront any legitimate concerns that officers would be liable for conduct that they did not know violated the law. n42 Additionally, the Court's mistake of fact versus mistake of law distinction is inapposite, because Graham provides for a fact-specific analysis pertaining to the deprivation element. n43 The Court focused heavily on the effect that the Ninth Circuit's approach would have had on otherwise dismissed claims. n44 This insubstantial concern lacks merit because lower courts consistently dismiss excessive force cases based on the Fourth Amendment, never reaching qualified immunity. n45 Saucier ignored precedent by sacrificing, rather than balancing, the competing policy interests and covertly altering section 1983 litigation in excessive force cases. n46 *614 In Saucier v. Katz, the Court considered the role of qualified immunity in excessive force cases. The Court foreclosed its prior attempts to strike a fair balance between competing interests by favoring a judicially created defense over civil rights remedies. Rejecting the strength of its own decision in Graham, the Saucier Court created an illogical and undue hurdle for civil rights plaintiffs attempting to vindicate constitutional violations.
The 4th amendment already provides broad protection for police conduct-Saucier goes too far in protecting police at the expense of civil rights through duplicative legal sleight of hand
Shapiro, JD, et al, 01
(Steven R. Shapiro American Civil Liberties Union Foundation 125 Broad Street New York, New York 10004 (212) 549-2500 Alan L. Schlosser American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California 1663 Mission Street San Francisco, California 94103 (415) 621-2488 William Goodman Center for Constitutional Rights 666 Broadway New York, New York 10012 (212) 614-6464 David Rudovsky (Counsel of Record) 924 Cherry Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107 (215) 925-4400 Michael Avery Suffolk Law School 41 Temple Street Boston, Massachusetts 02114 (617) 573-8551 Ruth E. Harlow Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500 New York, New York 10005 (212) 809-8585 2001 WL 173522 (U.S.) (Appellate Brief) United States Supreme Court Amicus Brief. Donald SAUCIER, Petitioner, v. Elliot M. KATZ and In Defense of Animals, Respondents. No. 99-1977. October Term, 2000. February 16, 2001. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT )
The qualified immunity defense is not applicable to claims of excessive force under the Fourth Amendment. The standard for determining whether excessive force has been used in a particular case is identical to the standard for determining whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity from liability for a Fourth Amendment violation. To prove a Fourth Amendment violation, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the officer acted in an objectively unreasonable manner and, in determining reasonableness, the fact-finder must make “allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments -- in circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989). As the courts have consistently recognized, the Fourth Amendment itself provides the officer with a wide zone of protection. The officer can use a range of force in response to perceived danger and need not use the least force necessary under the circumstances. *6 Once it is determined that the force that was used was objectively unreasonable, a defense of qualified immunity is logically inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment determination because it is measured by the same “objective reasonableness” standard. A police officer cannot have an objectively reasonable belief that the force used was necessary (thus entitling him to qualified immunity) when it has already been determined that an objectively reasonable officer could not have believed that the force used was necessary (thus establishing a Fourth Amendment violation). Any such findings would be irreconcilable. At the very least, the two inquiries merge into a single analytic question. Qualified immunity is available in probable cause determinations because of the difficult legal issues that may be presented in any particular decision to arrest or search. No such difficult legal issues are presented in the excessive force context: the sole question for the officer is whether force is necessary to effect an arrest or other police action, or to defend oneself or others from harm. Given the broad protection the officer has under Graham, no officer who acts unreasonably for Fourth Amendment purposes could be said to act reasonably in terms of qualified immunity. The existence of such broad protection in the Fourth Amendment itself, moreover, eliminates any fear that officers will be unreasonably chilled from acting in the absence of a separate qualified immunity defense. Petitioner's suggested standard for determining qualified immunity in the context of an excessive force claim demonstrates the duplicative nature of such an enterprise. According to petitioner, where a court has determined that the force used was objectively unreasonable, it would still have to ask whether this fact would be “obvious” to the officer. But in reaching the conclusion that the force was unreasonable in the first place under the Graham standard, the court will have considered this fact and already decided that it would *7 have been apparent to an objectively reasonable officer that the force was excessive.
Duplicative immunity is a threat to freedom- it eviscerates the 4th amendment by allowing illogical exceptions
Shapiro, JD, et al, 01
(Steven R. Shapiro American Civil Liberties Union Foundation 125 Broad Street New York, New York 10004 (212) 549-2500 Alan L. Schlosser American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California 1663 Mission Street San Francisco, California 94103 (415) 621-2488 William Goodman Center for Constitutional Rights 666 Broadway New York, New York 10012 (212) 614-6464 David Rudovsky (Counsel of Record) 924 Cherry Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107 (215) 925-4400 Michael Avery Suffolk Law School 41 Temple Street Boston, Massachusetts 02114 (617) 573-8551 Ruth E. Harlow Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500 New York, New York 10005 (212) 809-8585 2001 WL 173522 (U.S.) (Appellate Brief) United States Supreme Court Amicus Brief. Donald SAUCIER, Petitioner, v. Elliot M. KATZ and In Defense of Animals, Respondents. No. 99-1977. October Term, 2000. February 16, 2001. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT )
The Supreme Court has justified immunity doctrines as approximating of the scope of public-official liability that prevailed when §1983 was enacted. See Richardson v. McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 402-07, 117 S.Ct. 2100, 138 L.Ed.2d 540 (1997); Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U.S. 158, 164, 112 S.Ct. 1827, 118 L.Ed. 2d 504 (1992). Fair enough in many parts of the law, but not when dealing with the fourth amendment. Until this century police faced absolute liability (in trespass or battery) for their acts; probable cause and reasonableness were defenses, and immunity (on top of these defenses) was unheard of. … All the great early opinions defining the scope of freedom from official intrusion resolve damages claims, without a hint that if the officers behaved unreasonably they might still be immune from liability. Thus a general doctrine of official immunity, independent of legal uncertainty, is not only anti-textual but also anti-historical in fourth amendment cases. 234 F.3d at 356. Allowing a qualified immunity defense in this type of case will serve no legitimate purpose and can only serve to eviscerate the protections of the Fourth Amendment's proscription against excessive force.

1983 is crucial to the rule of law- it’s the lynchpin of rights protections
Pittman, JD candidate, 12
(Nathan R., UNINTENTIONAL LEVELS OF FORCE IN § 1983 EXCESSIVE FORCE CLAIMS William and Mary Law Review William and Mary Law Review May, 2012 William and Mary Law Review 53 Wm. and Mary L. Rev. 2107)
The evolution of § 1983 has transformed the statute that was once almost a dead letter into the preeminent vehicle for the vindication of constitutional rights. Section 1983 has become more than just a tort statute, and the normative values that underlie it speak to society's promise to protect constitutional rights and uphold the rule of law. To facilitate this end, the Supreme Court has expunged subjective intent from the excessive force analysis, instead relying on objective reasonableness to assess a plaintiff's claims. The vindication of the right to be free from excessive force, however, is constrained by vagueness in the excessive force doctrine and the development of the qualified immunity standard, which stretches toward absolute immunity. This concern is heightened in unintentional level of force cases, because the misuse of the reasonable mistake standard, even in egregious cases in which qualified immunity has been denied, invites the same errors that qualified immunity can create. By relying on reasonable mistake analysis, courts abdicate their role under § 1983 to protect constitutional rights.

Successful civil rights challenges to police misconduct are crucial to challenging cultural militarism
Tom Carter – WSWS Legal Correspondent, a lawyer (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/24/cart-f24.html). “US Supreme Court Expands Immunity for Killer Cops.” Center for Research on Globalization. November 12, 2015. http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-supreme-court-expands-immunity-for-killer-cops/5488366 JJN
When a civil rights case is summarily dismissed by a judge on the grounds of “qualified immunity,” the case is legally terminated. It never goes to trial before a jury and is never decided on its constitutional merits. In March of 2010, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Chadrin Mullenix climbed onto an overpass with a rifle and, disobeying a direct order from his supervisor, fired six shots at a vehicle that the police were pursuing. Mullenix was not in any danger, and his supervisor had told him to wait until other officers tried to stop the car using spike strips. Four shots struck Israel Leija, Jr., killing him and causing the car, which was going 85 miles per hour, to crash. After the shooting, Mullenix boasted to his supervisor, “How’s that for proactive?” The Luna v. Mullenix case was filed by Leija’s family members, who claimed that Mullenix used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights. The district court that originally heard the case, together with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, denied immunity to Mullenix on the grounds that his conduct violated clearly established law. The Supreme Court intervened to uphold the Mullenix’s entitlement to immunity—a decision that will set a precedent for the summary dismissal of civil rights lawsuits against police brutality around the country. This is the Supreme Court’s response to the ongoing wave of police mayhem and murder. The message is clear: The killings will continue. Do not question the police. If you disobey the police, you forfeit your life. So far this year, more than 1,000 people have been killed by the police in America. Almost every day, there are new videos posted online showing police shootings, intrusions into homes and cars, asphyxiations, beatings and taserings. Last week, two police officers in Louisiana opened fire on Jeremy Mardis, a six-year-old autistic boy, and his father Chris Few. The boy’s father had his hands up during the shooting and is currently hospitalized with serious injuries. His son succumbed to the police bullets while still buckled into the front seat of the car. The Supreme Court’s decision reflects the fact that in the face of rising popular anger over police killings, the entire political apparatus—including all of the branches of government—is closing ranks behind the police. This includes the establishment media, which has largely remained silent about Monday’s pro-police Supreme Court decision. The police operate with almost total impunity, confident that no matter what they do, they will have the backing of the state. Two weeks ago, a South Carolina grand jury refused to return an indictment against the officer who was caught on video killing 19-year-old Zachary Hammond. This follows the exoneration of the police who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York City and Tamir Rice in Cleveland. The Obama administration’s position regarding the surge of police violence was most clearly and simply articulated by FBI director James Comey in aspeech on October 23. “May God protect our cops,” Comey declared. He went on to accuse those who film the police of promoting violent crime. Meanwhile, in virtually every police brutality case that has come before the federal courts, the Obama administration has taken the side of the police. On Monday, the Supreme Court went out of its way to cite approvingly anamicus curiae (friend of court) brief filed by the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), which defended Mullenix. With this citation, notwithstanding its ostensible role as a neutral arbiter and guarantor of the Constitution, the Supreme Court sent a clear signal as to which side it is on. During the imposition of de facto martial law in Ferguson last year, NAPO issued statements vociferously defending Michael Brown’s killer, labeling demonstrators as “violent outsiders,” and denouncing “the violent idiots on the street chanting ‘time to kill a cop!’” “Qualified immunity” is a reactionary doctrine invented by judges in the later part of the 20th century to shield public officials from lawsuits. As a practical matter, this doctrine allows judges to toss out civil rights cases without a jury trial if, in the judge’s opinion, the official misconduct in question was not “plainly incompetent” or a “knowing violation of clearly established law.” Over recent decades, the doctrine has been stretched to Kafkaesque proportions to shield police officers from accountability. In the landmark case ofTennessee v. Garner (1985), the Supreme Court held that it violates the Constitution to shoot an “unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect,” and required an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury before the police could open fire. But the Supreme Court in its decision on Monday dismissed this language as constituting a “high level of generality” that was not “particular” enough to “clearly establish” any particular constitutional rights. Since cases that are dismissed on the grounds of qualified immunity do not result in decisions on the constitutional issues, this circular pseudo-logic ensures that no rights will ever be “clearly established.” It also ensures that, instead of the democratic procedure of a jury trial, cases involving the police will be decided by judges. The Supreme Court issued Monday’s decision without full briefing or oral argument, designating it “per curiam,” i.e., in the name of the court, not any specific judges. Justice Antonin Scalia filed a concurring opinion, displaying his trademark sophistry. According to Scalia, Mullenix did not use “deadly force” within the meaning of the Supreme Court’s prior cases, since he was shooting at a car, not a person. (Four bullets struck Leija, but none of the six shots struck the engine block at which Mullenix was supposedly aiming.) Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed the sole dissent, noting that this decision “renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow,” and sanctions a “shoot first, think later” approach to policing. However, Sotomayor wrote that she would have used a “balancing” analysis instead, in which a “particular government interest” would need to be “balanced” against the use of deadly force. This “balancing” rhetoric mirrors the Obama administration’s justifications for assassination and domestic spying, according to which national security is balanced against democratic rights. The Bill of Rights itself—that old, yellow, forgotten piece of paper—does not make itself contingent on the subjective mental states of police officers, “clearly established law,” or the “balancing” of “government interests.” America confronts a massive social crisis. Decades of endless war and occupations abroad, the degradation of wages and living conditions at home, the enrichment of a tiny layer of financial criminals at the expense of the rest of the society, rampant speculation and corruption at the highest levels—these factors contribute to mounting social tensions and the danger, from the standpoint of the ruling class, of the growth of social opposition. Such opposition can already be seen, in its earliest stages, in the struggle by autoworkers against the sellout contract being imposed by the United Auto Workers union. Like the tyrant who proposes to solve the problem of hunger by imposing a hefty fine on everyone who starves, the Supreme Court’s decision Monday confirms that the entire social system has nothing to offer by way of a solution to the crisis except more of the same. The abrogation of democratic rights, torture, military commissions, drone assassinations, unlimited surveillance, the lockdown of entire cities, internment camps, beatings, murder, martial law, war—this is how the ruling class plans to deal with the social crisis. Notwithstanding the epidemic of police violence, the flow of unlimited cash and military hardware to police departments from the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon continues unabated. The buildup of the police as a militarized occupation force operating outside the law, pumped up and ready to kill, must be seen as a part of preparations by the ruling class for mass repression and dictatorship in response to the growth of working class opposition.

Independent of civil rights protections an incoherent, government biased QI system undercuts law enforcement and the rule of law broadly
Pittman, JD candidate, 12
(Nathan R., UNINTENTIONAL LEVELS OF FORCE IN § 1983 EXCESSIVE FORCE CLAIMS William and Mary Law Review William and Mary Law Review May, 2012 William and Mary Law Review 53 Wm. and Mary L. Rev. 2107)
Qualified immunity has distorted other values in the legal system and provided perverse incentives to law enforcement officers. First, as Evan Mandery argues, qualified immunity "departs from the commonly accepted maxim that all citizens are to be held strictly liable for knowledge of the law." n138 That is, law enforcement officers can escape liability by being ignorant of the law. Of course, one might respond to Mandery's criticism by pointing to Harlow's requirement that ignorance is excused only when a reasonable person would not have known. n139 Mandery's stronger criticism is that because qualified immunity holds officers to a low standard for their knowledge of the law, n140 they have no incentive to learn it and thus provide enforcement more consistent with the Constitution. n141 Mandery argues that this creates particular problems in the context of excessive force cases, in which victims of police misconduct are often powerless to mitigate that conduct because the level of care that victims take to comply with the law is often irrelevant. n142 In response, Mandery suggests that strict liability might be applied to § 1983 cases, a beneficial move that would remove uncertainty about which rights the statute will vindicate and would fully expunge subjective criteria from *2128 liability. n143 The public policy justifications of qualified immunity n144 would, of course, require that strict liability be packaged with a mandatory indemnification scheme or a respondeat superior theory of liability for municipalities, n145 and Mandery admits that such packaging has been explicitly rejected by the Court. n146 Another criticism leveled at qualified immunity is that, in general, it widens the gap between rights and their remedies. This is the argument taken up by John Jeffries, who argues that "doctrines that curtail individual redress thus not only deny full remediation to some victims; they also call into question the adequacy of the overall structure of constitutional enforcement." n147 Jeffries explains that this gap is particularly wide in § 1983 claims. n148 This is not to say that Jeffries disregards the policy arguments for qualified immunity; his argument is that although society must tolerate some gaps, it should not come to believe that such gaps are anything more than a necessary evil whose social value should be carefully evaluated. n149 The chief benefit that Jeffries identifies in such a gap is that it "facilitates constitutional change by reducing the costs of innovation." n150 Jeffries is concerned that, if government had to bear the true cost of constitutional violations, then courts would be reluctant to develop new rights. n151 Jeffries is careful to point out that his framework views the proper role of qualified immunity as shielding government actors from liability, not as an endorsement of current law. n152 Diana Hassel is one of the most strident critics of qualified immunity. She argues that qualified immunity is essentially a smoke *2129 screen that "obscures the choices that are being made on the fundamental and divisive issues of what constitutional wrongs should be compensated." n153 In practice, the veil of qualified immunity allows judges to exercise their policy preferences on a case-by-case basis. n154 This system, Hassel argues, leads toward a qualified immunity doctrine that is both highly uncertain n155 and inappropriately focused on government interests n156 rather than the violation of constitutional rights. n157 Hassel's critique suggests that qualified immunity returns civil rights analysis to the sort of methodology that Justice Frankfurter advocated in Rochin. n158 Judges, using their own sound discretion, determine what "shocks the conscience" to the point that judicial intervention is warranted. n159 A return to this jurisprudence vests judges with the power to decide which rights will be vindicated. n160 Although judges may already exercise this power, Hassel's argument is that this method hides the policy choices behind which rights will be enforced, contributing to an impoverished doctrine. n161

The Supreme Court ought to limit qualified immunity in excessive force cases 

The aff is goldilocks- it protects officers while eliminating judicial confusion and bias
Sheng, JD with Distinction @Brigham Young, 11
(Philip, B.A., Stanford University, John Arrillaga Scholar. An "Objectively Reasonable" Criticism of the Doctrine of Qualified Immunity in Excessive Force Cas-es Brought Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 BYU Journal of Public Law 2011 The BYU Journal of Public Law 26 BYU J. Pub. L. 99)
In light of the confusion after Saucier, Hope, and Brosseau, the Court should consider reformulating the doctrine of qualified immunity, at least in the context of excessive force cases. The Ninth Circuit's approach in Saucier was persuasive - recognizing that Harlow and Graham are substantially the same inquiry and denying qualified immunity in favor of the jury deciding the question of reasonableness. Apparently however, the Supreme Court felt that this approach did not provide law enforcement officers with sufficient protection for reasonable mistakes. One explanation could be that the Court is wary of juries having to apply a constitutional standard on a consistent basis. n82 If that is the case, the following approach could be a reasonable alternative to qualified immunity in excessive force cases. A better approach might be to eliminate qualified immunity altogether in excessive force cases; but rather than create a whole new test, the Court should remove the question of reasonableness from the jury and allow judges to decide whether the use of force was objectively reasonable. Under this approach, jury interaction would remain much the same, except that after all the facts are resolved, the judge would decide the ultimate constitutional question of reasonableness based on the jury's findings. While this would be a departure from settled practice, it appears to have an adequate basis in the law. For instance, trial court judges already decide the question of reasonableness on motions for summary judgment whenever facts are undisputed or viewed in the light most *109 favorable to the plaintiff. n83 Moreover, appellate judges routinely decide the question of reasonableness every time an excessive force case goes on appeal. n84 Judges are well-equipped, yet it seems odd that the constitutional question of reasonableness only goes to the judge when facts are not in dispute, but at all other times, is entrusted to the jury. It would perhaps make better sense to have the jury resolve the facts, and have the judge decide the question of reasonableness based on those facts. There are several benefits to this approach. First, it would eliminate the need for line drawing between Hope and Brosseau, and courts would not have to worry about clearly established law. Second, the Court could retreat from its "irreducibly murky" n85 distinction between Graham and Harlow. If applied judiciously, Graham alone provides law enforcement officers with adequate protection for reasonable mistakes. Third, even though they would be denied qualified immunity, law enforcement officers would benefit by having judges decide the constitutional question of reasonableness. Judges are in a better position to decide constitutional questions, having been trained in the law and having developed expertise through experience. This approach would also eliminate potential jury bias. While jury bias can cut both ways, n86 consider the case of Jared Massey, a YouTube sensation and public hero after being Tasered by a Utah Highway Patrol officer in 2007. n87 Despite an internal investigation clearing the officer, the state settled for $ 40,000 rather than risk a jury awarding more. n88 Fourth, the approach would serve the same purposes as qualified immunity by allowing claims to be decided early on summary judgment. If no material issues of fact remain in an excessive force case, instead of looking to see whether there is a clearly established law, the judge would simply decide the case. This would not be an unprecedented expansion of judicial power; as mentioned above, our legal system already allows judges to do this in a variety of circumstances. Lastly, the approach would keep judges honest by holding them to the Fourth Amendment standard. Granted there is still flexibility for judges to decide cases based on their own personal *110 ideologies, but the amount of discretion is far less than what the current doctrine of qualified immunity allows. n89 In conclusion, the doctrine of qualified immunity is incompatible with excessive force cases. Both qualified immunity and the Fourth Amendment constitutional standard focus on reasonableness, and the Supreme Court's attempts to distinguish the two have made qualified immunity cases near impossible to predict. Under Brosseau, a plaintiff will be hard-pressed to find case law that is materially similar in a world of "limitless factual circumstances." n90 Under Hope, law enforcement officers arguably have fair warning of everything. The difficulty is fashioning a rule that balances these two extremes, something the Supreme Court has not been able to do. Asking whether the constitutional violation is "obvious," as suggested in Brosseau, is no more helpful than asking whether the constitutional violation is clearly established. The reality that it is possible for law enforcement officers to "reasonably act unreasonably" is evidence that the doctrine of qualified immunity needs to be eliminated from excessive force cases, or the Supreme Court needs to fashion a whole new test.
The aff is key to meaningful challenges to police conduct and legitimacy of the rule of law
Hassel, Law @ Roger Williams, 09
(Diana, JD Rutgers, Excessive Reasonableness The Trustees of Indiana University Indiana Law Review 2009 Indiana Law Review 43 Ind. L. Rev. 117)
Over the past thirty years, courts and litigants have attempted to forge a workable regime for applying qualified immunity in excessive force cases. These attempts have been largely unsuccessful and have led to an increasingly complicated and unsatisfactory set of steps that a district court must execute when these cases arise. Because of its complexity and incoherence, the current system seems to work for no one-not police defendants, not judges, and most particularly not victims of police abuse. It has become apparent that periodic fixes by the Supreme Court will not solve the problem-a more profound rethinking of the doctrine is required. In excessive force cases the qualified immunity defense should be modified to eliminate the reasonableness inquiry, allowing the Fourth Amendment to do the work of assessing reasonableness. This change would go a long way toward simplifying and reforming the defense. Other changes in the doctrine may well also be necessary to create a more usable and rational system. If the current approach is left intact without any profound alternations, the promise of § 1983 as a meaningful remedy to police abuse will be unfulfilled, and judges will be left to dance through a complex set of steps without any music to give it meaning.

QI is the key barrier- counterplans don’t solve the case
Hassel, Law @ Roger Williams, 09
(Diana, JD Rutgers, Excessive Reasonableness The Trustees of Indiana University Indiana Law Review 2009 Indiana Law Review 43 Ind. L. Rev. 117)
Meanwhile, far removed from the debate over doctrinal niceties, the operational problem of how to address the use of unjustified force by police officers persists. The current legal regime has largely failed in its attempt to control excessive police violence. n8 At least in part that failure flows from the difficulty faced by claimants under § 1983 to overcome the insulation from liability that defendants derive from both the Fourth Amendment requirements and the qualified immunity standard. Until the nearly insurmountable barrier to recovery created by excessive reasonableness is somehow relieved, civil actions based on the Fourth Amendment will not effectively deter police violence.
Apply a strict filter to all negative arguments- if they aren’t
A. About the use of excessive force
B. Based on legal reasoning other than Anderson V. Creighton
Then their evidence comes from inaccurate and incoherent legal scholarship and should be ignored
Shapiro, JD, et al, 01
(Steven R. Shapiro American Civil Liberties Union Foundation 125 Broad Street New York, New York 10004 (212) 549-2500 Alan L. Schlosser American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California 1663 Mission Street San Francisco, California 94103 (415) 621-2488 William Goodman Center for Constitutional Rights 666 Broadway New York, New York 10012 (212) 614-6464 David Rudovsky (Counsel of Record) 924 Cherry Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107 (215) 925-4400 Michael Avery Suffolk Law School 41 Temple Street Boston, Massachusetts 02114 (617) 573-8551 Ruth E. Harlow Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500 New York, New York 10005 (212) 809-8585 2001 WL 173522 (U.S.) (Appellate Brief) United States Supreme Court Amicus Brief. Donald SAUCIER, Petitioner, v. Elliot M. KATZ and In Defense of Animals, Respondents. No. 99-1977. October Term, 2000. February 16, 2001. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT )
In the rare situation where the standard for qualified immunity and the constitutional claim are identical, qualified immunity cannot be a separate defense to a claim of a constitutional violation. In the excessive force context, once it *10 is determined that an objectively reasonable officer would not have used the force in question, it makes no sense -- indeed it is conceptually incoherent -- to assert that the very same objectively reasonable officer could have believed that the force was reasonable. In other words, a police officer cannot have an objectively reasonable belief that his conduct was lawful when the unlawfulness of that conduct rests on a determination that an objectively reasonable officer would not have acted in the same way in the same circumstances. A significant number of lower federal courts have held that the Fourth Amendment and the qualified immunity doctrine pose precisely the same legal issue and that any differing determinations would be legally irreconcilable. See, e.g., McNair v. Coffey, 234 F.3d 352 (7th Cir. 2000); Frazell v. Flanagan, 102 F.3d 877, 886-87 (7th Cir. 1966) (“once a jury has determined under the Fourth Amendment that the officer's conduct was objectively unreasonable, that conclusion necessarily resolves for immunity purposes whether a reasonable officer could have believed that his conduct was lawful”); Scott v. District of Columbia, 101 F.3d 748 (D.C.Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1231 (1997); Alexander v. County of Los Angeles, 64 F.3d 1315 (9th Cir. 1995); Roy v. City of Lewiston, 42 F.3d 691 (1st Cir. 1994); Street v. Parham, 929 F.2d 537 (10th Cir. 1991); Ramirez v. City of Reno, 925 F.Supp. 681, 687-89 (D.Nev. 1996)(“intrinsic analytical incompatibility of an excessive force claim with a qualified immunity claim” given the objective reasonableness test; the “two lines of inquiry converge”); Landy v. Irizarry, 884 F.Supp. 788 (S.D.N.Y. 1995). 4 *11 Petitioner, in arguing for a qualified immunity defense in excessive force cases, relies almost exclusively on Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635. In our view, arguments based on Anderson are significantly misplaced. There, this Court ruled that the qualified immunity doctrine is applicable in cases alleging Fourth Amendment violations for warrantless searches or arrests without probable cause or exigent circumstances. The Court reasoned that where an officer is found to have violated the Fourth Amendment by making an arrest or conducting a search without the requisite cause or suspicion, the officer is entitled to the defense of qualified immunity if an objectively reasonable officer could have believed that probable cause existed. Anderson is premised on the understanding that the “reasonableness” element of probable cause is different from the “objectively reasonable” standard of qualified immunity. That is because the probable cause determination will often require the drawing of *12 fine legal lines. 5 Recognizing that reality, this Court held in Anderson that given the “difficulty of determining whether particular searches or seizures comport with the Fourth Amendment … law enforcement officers whose judgments in making these difficult determinations are objectively legally reasonable … are entitled to qualified immunity.” Id. at 644 (emphasis added). Thus, in the probable cause context, a police officer might mistakenly violate a citizen's rights without acting unreasonably. The probable cause determination for a search or seizure always requires an officer to decide whether the known facts would warrant a reasonable officer to believe that a crime has been committed or that a search would disclose contraband or material of evidentiary value, Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975), and must be made pursuant to evolving legal doctrine under the Fourth Amendment. Consider, for example, this Court's jurisprudence concerning investigatory stops or arrests of persons based on information provided by anonymous informants. In Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325 (1990), the Court determined that information from an anonymous source would justify an investigatory stop if critical predictive details were corroborated by the police. In Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000), the Court declined to extend White to situations where the anonymous source provided information regarding a man with a gun at a certain location, and police investigation led to an observation of a person fitting the general description at that location. In the wake of J.L. (and this Court's opinion in Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000)), there will no *13 doubt be close cases, depending upon the information received, the observations of the officers and other relevant factors. See, e.g., United States v. Valentine, 232 F.3d 350 (3d Cir. 2000) (stop based on anonymous informant who personally provided information to police). And in some of these cases, an officer will make a stop on information that a court will later declare to be insufficient to satisfy the Fourth Amendment; yet, given the lack of a particularized legal standard, the officer may still have acted in an objectively reasonable manner. No such legal difficulties face the officer who must determine how much force to use in a particular incident, whether in self-defense or in effectuating an arrest. This Court ruled in Graham that police officers act consistently with the Fourth Amendment when their conduct is objectively reasonable -- a nontechnical and deferential constitutional doctrine that reflects well established and commonly held judgments on the limits of police force. 6 This standard provides a margin of error, precludes “Monday morning quarterbacking” by a court, permits the officer a wide range of reasonable responses, and does not require the officer to make finely tuned legal determinations. Thus, once it has been determined that an officer has acted in an excessive fashion, it is not possible to claim that an objectively reasonable officer could have thought these actions to be proper. In many “tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving” situations, reasonable force may comprise a range of options or responses that the officer might employ. Different officers in the identical situation, each behaving reasonably, might elect to use a baton, a chemical agent, a take-down hold, or *14 a different technique; and each might use greater or lesser force, within a reasonable range, in employing the chosen technique. 7Recognition that reasonable force may include a range of responses is consistent with this Court's observation in Graham that “the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application.” 490 U.S. at 396. Understanding that the Fourth Amendment recognizes a range of forcible responses as reasonable also implements this Court's injunction in Graham that there be “allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments.” Id. at 396-97. How wide the allowance or range may be “requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case.” Id. at 396. In some cases, the facts and circumstances may be simple enough that the range of permissible options available to the officer will be quite narrow. In some circumstances no use of force is reasonable if none *15 is required. See Cox v. Treadway, 75 F.3d 230, 234 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 821 (1996); Bauer v. Norris, 713 F.2d 408 (8th Cir. 1983). In others, the difficulties confronting officers making split-second, life and death decisions may raise sufficient problems that the range of responses that should be deemed reasonable may be quite broad. The critical point is that this “zone of protection” in use of force cases is provided as part of the Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard itself. And where, as here, the standard for determining qualified immunity is the same as that for deciding the constitutional question itself, the defense is superfluous. This is not a matter of semantics or linguistic similarity; rather, it is a case of doctrinal identity. In determining whether an officer's use of force was within a range of reasonable options, the jury is also (and necessarily) answering the question whether a reasonable officer “could have believed” his use of force “to be lawful.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. at 638. Once this question is answered, there is no other inquiry that must be resolved in order to impose liability. 8 The existence of such broad protection in the Fourth Amendment itself, moreover, eliminates any fear that officers will be unreasonably chilled from acting in the absence of a separate qualified immunity defense.

Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Westwood RM | Judge: Panel
Government action is about the process of deliberation not finding an exact rule to follow in every circumstance. Generation of values requires the ability to speak out. . Singer 84

Singer, Joseph William. "The player and the cards: nihilism and legal theory." The Yale Law Journal 94.1 (1984): 1-70.

Moreover, we cannot respond adequately to problems faced in life by¶ generating abstract moral categories. Discussion of moral and legal choices¶ must focus on the rich context in which those problems occur. For some¶ purposes, it may be useful to characterize two persons as "employer" and¶ "employee" and to develop generalizations to describe and govern their¶ relationships. But it is important to remember that these are real people¶ we are talking about, and when we describe them in this way for the¶ purpose of judging what their relations should be like, we are closing our-¶ selves off from their actual life experiences. We can think impersonally¶ about a busboy as simply representing the table-clearing function; or we¶ can describe him, say, as a forty-year-old man, recently divorced, with¶ back trouble and money problems. As Robert Gordon argues, we need "to¶ unfreeze the world as it appears to common sense as a bunch of more or¶ less objectively determined social relations and to make it appear as (we¶ believe) it really is: people acting, imagining, rationalizing, justifying."'179¶ It may indeed be useful to develop general models to describe social life.¶ But when it comes time to make decisions, we should recognize that we¶ are making decisions rather than discovering ourselves. In making those¶ decisions, it is right to focus on the particular social context, to decide¶ whether our descriptive model actually applies in that case and whether¶ we are allowing the model to turn our attention away from facts that we¶ would otherwise consider to be important. Expressive theory emphasizes the active role of the theorist in deciding¶ how to characterize situations, and in deliberating, conversing, intro-¶ specting, and judging.180 Expressive theory also emphasizes the communal¶ nature of theory and its complex relations with social life. The kernel of¶ truth in the idea of rational consensus is that all ideas and actions involve¶ relations among people. "Individuals do not simply 'have' opinions, they¶ form opinions. . . . The formation of opinions is not a private activity¶ performed by a solitary thinker."'' Traditional theorists have reified the¶ idea of rational consensus by treating it as a basis for what we do, as a¶ source of answers, as a generator of outcomes. But consensus, if it exists,¶ is not something that just happens to be there, that we could describe¶ accurately. It must be created, and the work of creating it is the work and¶ play of daily life, of living, contending, sharing, and being with other peo-¶ ple. Like law, consensus must be made, not found.182¶ Emphasis on the creative, communal nature of common understanding¶ creates an appropriate relationship between thought and action. The proc-¶ ess of generating values is something we do with others in the context of¶ relationships that continue over time.¶ Democratic politics is an encounter among people with differing in-¶ terests, perspectives, and opinions-an encounter in which they re-¶ consider and mutually revise opinions and interests, both individual¶ and common. It happens always in a context of conflict, imperfect¶ knowledge, and uncertainty, but where community action is neces-¶ sary. The resolutions achieved are always more or less temporary,¶ subject to reconsideration, and rarely unanimous. What matters is¶ not unanimity but discourse. The substantive common interest is¶ only discovered or created in democratic political struggle, and it re-¶ mains contested as much as shared. Far from being inimical to de-¶ mocracy, conflict-handled in democratic ways, with openness and¶ persuasion-is what makes democracy work, what makes for the¶ mutual revision of opinions and interest.'83¶ Legal theory can help create communal ties and shared values by freeing¶ us from the sense that current practices and doctrines are natural and¶ necessary and by suggesting new forms of expression to replace outworn¶ ones. For example, Gabel and Harris have suggested replacing our cur- rent rights orientation with a power orientation.'84 They would shift our¶ focus from viewing individuals as abstract citizens whose relations to each¶ other are governed by rights enforced by the state to viewing them as¶ active participants in shaping their relations in daily life. Such changes in¶ language may help focus our attention on facts we had previously ignored¶ and make us more keenly aware of alternative social arrangements.'85

The law can either be used to forward the claims of the powerless or to perpetuate those of the powerful. We embrace a system of politics that allows for the powerless to speak out. Balkin 08

Balkin, Jack M. "Critical legal theory today." (2008).

The relative autonomy of law from politics – rather than its complete¶ autonomy – simultaneously poses a threat and a promise. The threat is that law¶ will fail to do much more than ratify and legitimate the interests of the powerful;¶ the promise is that it might hold off the worst excesses of power by giving people¶ discursive and institutional tools to talk back to power, to restrain its selfishness¶ and inhumanity, and to imagine finer, better visions of human association.¶ The threat and the promise of law are joined together inseparably. What¶ gives law its power to legitimate is its ability to re-describe unjust and unfair¶ events, social practices and institutions in terms of valued ideals of human¶ association like consent, freedom, dignity, equality and fairness. In the hands of¶ lawyers and politicians, law can disguise, mystify and legitimate great injustices¶ using the very ideas and ideals we admire. But law can only do this because it¶ appeals to these values and claims to try to put them into practice through law.¶ Recourse to law forces the powerful to talk in terms in which the powerless can¶ also participate and can also make claims.¶ From this standpoint, law is not simply an efficient tool of power that¶ powerful people and powerful groups can wield any way they like. They do not¶ merely shape the world with it; rather it shapes them and their world, because¶ they have bought into law as a means of achieving and wielding power. Law¶ shapes their beliefs and desires, their sense of the appropriate and the¶ inappropriate, their conceptions of the possible and impossible. Law generates its¶ own institutions and its own demands; it creates its own culture, it is its own form¶ of life; it struggles with other forms of knowledge and power for dominance.¶ That struggle might lead to yet another form of professional power displacing older ones. But it might offer a space for something far more beneficial and¶ noble.¶ The critical approach to law—or at any rate, my version of it—has always¶ been doubled, has always reflected the Janus word “legitimate.” On the one hand,¶ powerful people have used law to subordinate others and secure their own¶ interests under the guise of promoting laudable goals like freedom, equality,¶ liberty, consent, community and human dignity. On the other hand, by choosing¶ to speak in the language of law, powerful people and interests can sometimes be¶ called to account because they try to legitimate what they are doing in those¶ terms. The people they take advantage of can argue that this is a misuse of law,¶ an illegitimate attempt at mystifying rhetoric. They can appeal to the values that¶ law seeks to protect to promote better, more just, and more humane practices and¶ forms of human association.¶ Important theoretical debates among critical scholars in the 1970s and¶ 1980s period revolved around which conception of law was the best one. Some¶ critical scholars adopted a largely pejorative conception, focusing primarily on¶ law’s defects. They argued that the rule of law was enmeshed in irreconcilable¶ contradictions; they denounced rights talk as sterile, useless and¶ counterproductive.5¶ Others, especially feminist and critical race theory scholars,¶ pointed out that rights discourse and rule of law values were among the few¶ resources that disempowered people had.6¶ Rule of law and rights talk were¶ potentially emancipatory discourses. They held a limited but important potential¶ for liberation and for contesting the arbitrary and unjust use of power.¶ These feminist and critical race theorists understood the deemphasized elements – the other side – of critical claims about the relative autonomy of law.¶ They well recognized that rule of law values and rights discourse were hardly¶ perfect – after all, they had been used repeatedly to justify slavery and the¶ subordination of women – but that they had also allowed people to speak out¶ against and to restrain the worst excesses of power. Even in a period of deep¶ skepticism and disillusionment about what law could do, these critical scholars¶ retained a sense of the political importance of rule of law values and rights¶ discourse. That is not because they believed in a strict autonomy of law from¶ politics, but because they understood the political values that legal culture and¶ rights discourse might serve. The best version of critical theory, I think, employs an ambivalent¶ conception of law rather than a pejorative conception: it recognizes law’s relative¶ autonomy from other forms of power in social life, and it understands the dual or¶ Janus-faced nature of that relative autonomy. It sees both law’s limitations in the¶ face of power and its possibilities as a means of channeling power and preventing¶ its most serious injustices.
SCOTUS ruled in Saucier V Katz that a duplicative “double reasonableness” standard must be applied in 4th amendment cases. This has disrupted the balance of immunity jurisprudence tilting the playing field overwhelmingly in favor of police gutting section 1983 and civil rights protections broadly. Brown 03
(Peter A., - Qualified Immunity Illogically Applies to Excessive Force Claims Suffolk University Law Review 2003 36 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 607 )
In Saucier v. Katz, the Supreme Court considered whether the duplicative objective reasonableness analysis is necessary to protect law enforcement in civil rights cases alleging excessive force. n32 The Court upheld the application of qualified immunity in excessive force complaints, thereby providing an additional layer of protection to law enforcement. n33 Declaring qualified immunity protects reasonable mistakes of both fact and law, the Court concluded that the mere application of Graham's factor test would not sufficiently address the goals underlying qualified immunity. n34 Surprisingly, the Court never addressed whether a Fourth Amendment violation actually occurred in this case. n35 Due to its procedural posture, the Court presumed a constitutional deprivation and continued to clarify the proper analysis for qualified immunity. n36 Concerned over the Ninth Circuit's approach, which enables section 1983 cases to get to trial whenever there is a material dispute of fact, the Court emphatically reinforced the policies behind the doctrine and reversed the denial of summary judgment. n37 In Saucier, the Court blatantly sacrificed policy for sound legal reasoning while attempting to protect law enforcement officials from frivolous lawsuits. n38 *613 The Court created an incoherent qualified immunity analysis, which undoubtedly will contribute to ongoing confusion. n39 Specifically, the Court's decision may chill future claims, significantly hindering the ability of individuals to vindicate constitutional violations. n40 Most importantly, Saucier neglected Graham's extensive protection of law enforcement. n41 Graham contained sufficient protections to law enforcement, and as such, the Court in Saucier did not confront any legitimate concerns that officers would be liable for conduct that they did not know violated the law. n42 Additionally, the Court's mistake of fact versus mistake of law distinction is inapposite, because Graham provides for a fact-specific analysis pertaining to the deprivation element. n43 The Court focused heavily on the effect that the Ninth Circuit's approach would have had on otherwise dismissed claims. n44 This insubstantial concern lacks merit because lower courts consistently dismiss excessive force cases based on the Fourth Amendment, never reaching qualified immunity. n45 Saucier ignored precedent by sacrificing, rather than balancing, the competing policy interests and covertly altering section 1983 litigation in excessive force cases. n46 *614 In Saucier v. Katz, the Court considered the role of qualified immunity in excessive force cases. The Court foreclosed its prior attempts to strike a fair balance between competing interests by favoring a judicially created defense over civil rights remedies. Rejecting the strength of its own decision in Graham, the Saucier Court created an illogical and undue hurdle for civil rights plaintiffs attempting to vindicate constitutional violations.

The 4th amendment already provides broad protection for police conduct-Saucier goes too far in protecting police at the expense of civil rights through duplicative legal sleight of hand. Shapiro et al. 01
(Steven R. Shapiro American Civil Liberties Union Foundation 125 Broad Street New York, New York 10004 (212) 549-2500 Alan L. Schlosser American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California 1663 Mission Street San Francisco, California 94103 (415) 621-2488 William Goodman Center for Constitutional Rights 666 Broadway New York, New York 10012 (212) 614-6464 David Rudovsky (Counsel of Record) 924 Cherry Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107 (215) 925-4400 Michael Avery Suffolk Law School 41 Temple Street Boston, Massachusetts 02114 (617) 573-8551 Ruth E. Harlow Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500 New York, New York 10005 (212) 809-8585 2001 WL 173522 (U.S.) (Appellate Brief) United States Supreme Court Amicus Brief. Donald SAUCIER, Petitioner, v. Elliot M. KATZ and In Defense of Animals, Respondents. No. 99-1977. October Term, 2000. February 16, 2001. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT )
The qualified immunity defense is not applicable to claims of excessive force under the Fourth Amendment. The standard for determining whether excessive force has been used in a particular case is identical to the standard for determining whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity from liability for a Fourth Amendment violation. To prove a Fourth Amendment violation, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the officer acted in an objectively unreasonable manner and, in determining reasonableness, the fact-finder must make “allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments -- in circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989). As the courts have consistently recognized, the Fourth Amendment itself provides the officer with a wide zone of protection. The officer can use a range of force in response to perceived danger and need not use the least force necessary under the circumstances. *6 Once it is determined that the force that was used was objectively unreasonable, a defense of qualified immunity is logically inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment determination because it is measured by the same “objective reasonableness” standard. A police officer cannot have an objectively reasonable belief that the force used was necessary (thus entitling him to qualified immunity) when it has already been determined that an objectively reasonable officer could not have believed that the force used was necessary (thus establishing a Fourth Amendment violation). Any such findings would be irreconcilable. At the very least, the two inquiries merge into a single analytic question. Qualified immunity is available in probable cause determinations because of the difficult legal issues that may be presented in any particular decision to arrest or search. No such difficult legal issues are presented in the excessive force context: the sole question for the officer is whether force is necessary to effect an arrest or other police action, or to defend oneself or others from harm. Given the broad protection the officer has under Graham, no officer who acts unreasonably for Fourth Amendment purposes could be said to act reasonably in terms of qualified immunity. The existence of such broad protection in the Fourth Amendment itself, moreover, eliminates any fear that officers will be unreasonably chilled from acting in the absence of a separate qualified immunity defense. Petitioner's suggested standard for determining qualified immunity in the context of an excessive force claim demonstrates the duplicative nature of such an enterprise. According to petitioner, where a court has determined that the force used was objectively unreasonable, it would still have to ask whether this fact would be “obvious” to the officer. But in reaching the conclusion that the force was unreasonable in the first place under the Graham standard, the court will have considered this fact and already decided that it would *7 have been apparent to an objectively reasonable officer that the force was excessive.

Duplicative immunity is a threat to freedom- it eviscerates the 4th amendment by allowing illogical exceptions. Shapiro et al. 01
(Steven R. Shapiro American Civil Liberties Union Foundation 125 Broad Street New York, New York 10004 (212) 549-2500 Alan L. Schlosser American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California 1663 Mission Street San Francisco, California 94103 (415) 621-2488 William Goodman Center for Constitutional Rights 666 Broadway New York, New York 10012 (212) 614-6464 David Rudovsky (Counsel of Record) 924 Cherry Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107 (215) 925-4400 Michael Avery Suffolk Law School 41 Temple Street Boston, Massachusetts 02114 (617) 573-8551 Ruth E. Harlow Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500 New York, New York 10005 (212) 809-8585 2001 WL 173522 (U.S.) (Appellate Brief) United States Supreme Court Amicus Brief. Donald SAUCIER, Petitioner, v. Elliot M. KATZ and In Defense of Animals, Respondents. No. 99-1977. October Term, 2000. February 16, 2001. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT )
The Supreme Court has justified immunity doctrines as approximating of the scope of public-official liability that prevailed when §1983 was enacted. See Richardson v. McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 402-07, 117 S.Ct. 2100, 138 L.Ed.2d 540 (1997); Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U.S. 158, 164, 112 S.Ct. 1827, 118 L.Ed. 2d 504 (1992). Fair enough in many parts of the law, but not when dealing with the fourth amendment. Until this century police faced absolute liability (in trespass or battery) for their acts; probable cause and reasonableness were defenses, and immunity (on top of these defenses) was unheard of. … All the great early opinions defining the scope of freedom from official intrusion resolve damages claims, without a hint that if the officers behaved unreasonably they might still be immune from liability. Thus a general doctrine of official immunity, independent of legal uncertainty, is not only anti-textual but also anti-historical in fourth amendment cases. 234 F.3d at 356. Allowing a qualified immunity defense in this type of case will serve no legitimate purpose and can only serve to eviscerate the protections of the Fourth Amendment's proscription against excessive force.

1983 is crucial to the rule of law- it’s the lynchpin of rights protections. Pittman 12
(Nathan R., UNINTENTIONAL LEVELS OF FORCE IN § 1983 EXCESSIVE FORCE CLAIMS William and Mary Law Review William and Mary Law Review May, 2012 William and Mary Law Review 53 Wm. and Mary L. Rev. 2107)
The evolution of § 1983 has transformed the statute that was once almost a dead letter into the preeminent vehicle for the vindication of constitutional rights. Section 1983 has become more than just a tort statute, and the normative values that underlie it speak to society's promise to protect constitutional rights and uphold the rule of law. To facilitate this end, the Supreme Court has expunged subjective intent from the excessive force analysis, instead relying on objective reasonableness to assess a plaintiff's claims. The vindication of the right to be free from excessive force, however, is constrained by vagueness in the excessive force doctrine and the development of the qualified immunity standard, which stretches toward absolute immunity. This concern is heightened in unintentional level of force cases, because the misuse of the reasonable mistake standard, even in egregious cases in which qualified immunity has been denied, invites the same errors that qualified immunity can create. By relying on reasonable mistake analysis, courts abdicate their role under § 1983 to protect constitutional rights.

Successful civil rights challenges to police misconduct are crucial to challenging cultural militarism. Carter 15
Tom Carter – WSWS Legal Correspondent, a lawyer (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/24/cart-f24.html). “US Supreme Court Expands Immunity for Killer Cops.” Center for Research on Globalization. November 12, 2015. http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-supreme-court-expands-immunity-for-killer-cops/5488366 JJN
When a civil rights case is summarily dismissed by a judge on the grounds of “qualified immunity,” the case is legally terminated. It never goes to trial before a jury and is never decided on its constitutional merits. In March of 2010, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Chadrin Mullenix climbed onto an overpass with a rifle and, disobeying a direct order from his supervisor, fired six shots at a vehicle that the police were pursuing. Mullenix was not in any danger, and his supervisor had told him to wait until other officers tried to stop the car using spike strips. Four shots struck Israel Leija, Jr., killing him and causing the car, which was going 85 miles per hour, to crash. After the shooting, Mullenix boasted to his supervisor, “How’s that for proactive?” The Luna v. Mullenix case was filed by Leija’s family members, who claimed that Mullenix used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights. The district court that originally heard the case, together with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, denied immunity to Mullenix on the grounds that his conduct violated clearly established law. The Supreme Court intervened to uphold the Mullenix’s entitlement to immunity—a decision that will set a precedent for the summary dismissal of civil rights lawsuits against police brutality around the country. This is the Supreme Court’s response to the ongoing wave of police mayhem and murder. The message is clear: The killings will continue. Do not question the police. If you disobey the police, you forfeit your life. So far this year, more than 1,000 people have been killed by the police in America. Almost every day, there are new videos posted online showing police shootings, intrusions into homes and cars, asphyxiations, beatings and taserings. Last week, two police officers in Louisiana opened fire on Jeremy Mardis, a six-year-old autistic boy, and his father Chris Few. The boy’s father had his hands up during the shooting and is currently hospitalized with serious injuries. His son succumbed to the police bullets while still buckled into the front seat of the car. The Supreme Court’s decision reflects the fact that in the face of rising popular anger over police killings, the entire political apparatus—including all of the branches of government—is closing ranks behind the police. This includes the establishment media, which has largely remained silent about Monday’s pro-police Supreme Court decision. The police operate with almost total impunity, confident that no matter what they do, they will have the backing of the state. Two weeks ago, a South Carolina grand jury refused to return an indictment against the officer who was caught on video killing 19-year-old Zachary Hammond. This follows the exoneration of the police who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York City and Tamir Rice in Cleveland. The Obama administration’s position regarding the surge of police violence was most clearly and simply articulated by FBI director James Comey in aspeech on October 23. “May God protect our cops,” Comey declared. He went on to accuse those who film the police of promoting violent crime. Meanwhile, in virtually every police brutality case that has come before the federal courts, the Obama administration has taken the side of the police. On Monday, the Supreme Court went out of its way to cite approvingly anamicus curiae (friend of court) brief filed by the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), which defended Mullenix. With this citation, notwithstanding its ostensible role as a neutral arbiter and guarantor of the Constitution, the Supreme Court sent a clear signal as to which side it is on. During the imposition of de facto martial law in Ferguson last year, NAPO issued statements vociferously defending Michael Brown’s killer, labeling demonstrators as “violent outsiders,” and denouncing “the violent idiots on the street chanting ‘time to kill a cop!’” “Qualified immunity” is a reactionary doctrine invented by judges in the later part of the 20th century to shield public officials from lawsuits. As a practical matter, this doctrine allows judges to toss out civil rights cases without a jury trial if, in the judge’s opinion, the official misconduct in question was not “plainly incompetent” or a “knowing violation of clearly established law.” Over recent decades, the doctrine has been stretched to Kafkaesque proportions to shield police officers from accountability. In the landmark case ofTennessee v. Garner (1985), the Supreme Court held that it violates the Constitution to shoot an “unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect,” and required an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury before the police could open fire. But the Supreme Court in its decision on Monday dismissed this language as constituting a “high level of generality” that was not “particular” enough to “clearly establish” any particular constitutional rights. Since cases that are dismissed on the grounds of qualified immunity do not result in decisions on the constitutional issues, this circular pseudo-logic ensures that no rights will ever be “clearly established.” It also ensures that, instead of the democratic procedure of a jury trial, cases involving the police will be decided by judges. The Supreme Court issued Monday’s decision without full briefing or oral argument, designating it “per curiam,” i.e., in the name of the court, not any specific judges. Justice Antonin Scalia filed a concurring opinion, displaying his trademark sophistry. According to Scalia, Mullenix did not use “deadly force” within the meaning of the Supreme Court’s prior cases, since he was shooting at a car, not a person. (Four bullets struck Leija, but none of the six shots struck the engine block at which Mullenix was supposedly aiming.) Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed the sole dissent, noting that this decision “renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow,” and sanctions a “shoot first, think later” approach to policing. However, Sotomayor wrote that she would have used a “balancing” analysis instead, in which a “particular government interest” would need to be “balanced” against the use of deadly force. This “balancing” rhetoric mirrors the Obama administration’s justifications for assassination and domestic spying, according to which national security is balanced against democratic rights. The Bill of Rights itself—that old, yellow, forgotten piece of paper—does not make itself contingent on the subjective mental states of police officers, “clearly established law,” or the “balancing” of “government interests.” America confronts a massive social crisis. Decades of endless war and occupations abroad, the degradation of wages and living conditions at home, the enrichment of a tiny layer of financial criminals at the expense of the rest of the society, rampant speculation and corruption at the highest levels—these factors contribute to mounting social tensions and the danger, from the standpoint of the ruling class, of the growth of social opposition. Such opposition can already be seen, in its earliest stages, in the struggle by autoworkers against the sellout contract being imposed by the United Auto Workers union. Like the tyrant who proposes to solve the problem of hunger by imposing a hefty fine on everyone who starves, the Supreme Court’s decision Monday confirms that the entire social system has nothing to offer by way of a solution to the crisis except more of the same. The abrogation of democratic rights, torture, military commissions, drone assassinations, unlimited surveillance, the lockdown of entire cities, internment camps, beatings, murder, martial law, war—this is how the ruling class plans to deal with the social crisis. Notwithstanding the epidemic of police violence, the flow of unlimited cash and military hardware to police departments from the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon continues unabated. The buildup of the police as a militarized occupation force operating outside the law, pumped up and ready to kill, must be seen as a part of preparations by the ruling class for mass repression and dictatorship in response to the growth of working class opposition.

Independent of civil rights protections an incoherent, government biased QI system undercuts law enforcement and the rule of law broadly. Pittman 12
(Nathan R., UNINTENTIONAL LEVELS OF FORCE IN § 1983 EXCESSIVE FORCE CLAIMS William and Mary Law Review William and Mary Law Review May, 2012 William and Mary Law Review 53 Wm. and Mary L. Rev. 2107)
Qualified immunity has distorted other values in the legal system and provided perverse incentives to law enforcement officers. First, as Evan Mandery argues, qualified immunity "departs from the commonly accepted maxim that all citizens are to be held strictly liable for knowledge of the law." n138 That is, law enforcement officers can escape liability by being ignorant of the law. Of course, one might respond to Mandery's criticism by pointing to Harlow's requirement that ignorance is excused only when a reasonable person would not have known. n139 Mandery's stronger criticism is that because qualified immunity holds officers to a low standard for their knowledge of the law, n140 they have no incentive to learn it and thus provide enforcement more consistent with the Constitution. n141 Mandery argues that this creates particular problems in the context of excessive force cases, in which victims of police misconduct are often powerless to mitigate that conduct because the level of care that victims take to comply with the law is often irrelevant. n142 In response, Mandery suggests that strict liability might be applied to § 1983 cases, a beneficial move that would remove uncertainty about which rights the statute will vindicate and would fully expunge subjective criteria from *2128 liability. n143 The public policy justifications of qualified immunity n144 would, of course, require that strict liability be packaged with a mandatory indemnification scheme or a respondeat superior theory of liability for municipalities, n145 and Mandery admits that such packaging has been explicitly rejected by the Court. n146 Another criticism leveled at qualified immunity is that, in general, it widens the gap between rights and their remedies. This is the argument taken up by John Jeffries, who argues that "doctrines that curtail individual redress thus not only deny full remediation to some victims; they also call into question the adequacy of the overall structure of constitutional enforcement." n147 Jeffries explains that this gap is particularly wide in § 1983 claims. n148 This is not to say that Jeffries disregards the policy arguments for qualified immunity; his argument is that although society must tolerate some gaps, it should not come to believe that such gaps are anything more than a necessary evil whose social value should be carefully evaluated. n149 The chief benefit that Jeffries identifies in such a gap is that it "facilitates constitutional change by reducing the costs of innovation." n150 Jeffries is concerned that, if government had to bear the true cost of constitutional violations, then courts would be reluctant to develop new rights. n151 Jeffries is careful to point out that his framework views the proper role of qualified immunity as shielding government actors from liability, not as an endorsement of current law. n152 Diana Hassel is one of the most strident critics of qualified immunity. She argues that qualified immunity is essentially a smoke *2129 screen that "obscures the choices that are being made on the fundamental and divisive issues of what constitutional wrongs should be compensated." n153 In practice, the veil of qualified immunity allows judges to exercise their policy preferences on a case-by-case basis. n154 This system, Hassel argues, leads toward a qualified immunity doctrine that is both highly uncertain n155 and inappropriately focused on government interests n156 rather than the violation of constitutional rights. n157 Hassel's critique suggests that qualified immunity returns civil rights analysis to the sort of methodology that Justice Frankfurter advocated in Rochin. n158 Judges, using their own sound discretion, determine what "shocks the conscience" to the point that judicial intervention is warranted. n159 A return to this jurisprudence vests judges with the power to decide which rights will be vindicated. n160 Although judges may already exercise this power, Hassel's argument is that this method hides the policy choices behind which rights will be enforced, contributing to an impoverished doctrine. n161
The Supreme Court ought to limit qualified immunity in excessive force cases 

The aff is goldilocks- it protects officers while eliminating judicial confusion and bias. Sheng 11
(Philip, B.A., Stanford University, John Arrillaga Scholar. An "Objectively Reasonable" Criticism of the Doctrine of Qualified Immunity in Excessive Force Cas-es Brought Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 BYU Journal of Public Law 2011 The BYU Journal of Public Law 26 BYU J. Pub. L. 99)
In light of the confusion after Saucier, Hope, and Brosseau, the Court should consider reformulating the doctrine of qualified immunity, at least in the context of excessive force cases. The Ninth Circuit's approach in Saucier was persuasive - recognizing that Harlow and Graham are substantially the same inquiry and denying qualified immunity in favor of the jury deciding the question of reasonableness. Apparently however, the Supreme Court felt that this approach did not provide law enforcement officers with sufficient protection for reasonable mistakes. One explanation could be that the Court is wary of juries having to apply a constitutional standard on a consistent basis. n82 If that is the case, the following approach could be a reasonable alternative to qualified immunity in excessive force cases. A better approach might be to eliminate qualified immunity altogether in excessive force cases; but rather than create a whole new test, the Court should remove the question of reasonableness from the jury and allow judges to decide whether the use of force was objectively reasonable. Under this approach, jury interaction would remain much the same, except that after all the facts are resolved, the judge would decide the ultimate constitutional question of reasonableness based on the jury's findings. While this would be a departure from settled practice, it appears to have an adequate basis in the law. For instance, trial court judges already decide the question of reasonableness on motions for summary judgment whenever facts are undisputed or viewed in the light most *109 favorable to the plaintiff. n83 Moreover, appellate judges routinely decide the question of reasonableness every time an excessive force case goes on appeal. n84 Judges are well-equipped, yet it seems odd that the constitutional question of reasonableness only goes to the judge when facts are not in dispute, but at all other times, is entrusted to the jury. It would perhaps make better sense to have the jury resolve the facts, and have the judge decide the question of reasonableness based on those facts. There are several benefits to this approach. First, it would eliminate the need for line drawing between Hope and Brosseau, and courts would not have to worry about clearly established law. Second, the Court could retreat from its "irreducibly murky" n85 distinction between Graham and Harlow. If applied judiciously, Graham alone provides law enforcement officers with adequate protection for reasonable mistakes. Third, even though they would be denied qualified immunity, law enforcement officers would benefit by having judges decide the constitutional question of reasonableness. Judges are in a better position to decide constitutional questions, having been trained in the law and having developed expertise through experience. This approach would also eliminate potential jury bias. While jury bias can cut both ways, n86 consider the case of Jared Massey, a YouTube sensation and public hero after being Tasered by a Utah Highway Patrol officer in 2007. n87 Despite an internal investigation clearing the officer, the state settled for $ 40,000 rather than risk a jury awarding more. n88 Fourth, the approach would serve the same purposes as qualified immunity by allowing claims to be decided early on summary judgment. If no material issues of fact remain in an excessive force case, instead of looking to see whether there is a clearly established law, the judge would simply decide the case. This would not be an unprecedented expansion of judicial power; as mentioned above, our legal system already allows judges to do this in a variety of circumstances. Lastly, the approach would keep judges honest by holding them to the Fourth Amendment standard. Granted there is still flexibility for judges to decide cases based on their own personal *110 ideologies, but the amount of discretion is far less than what the current doctrine of qualified immunity allows. n89 In conclusion, the doctrine of qualified immunity is incompatible with excessive force cases. Both qualified immunity and the Fourth Amendment constitutional standard focus on reasonableness, and the Supreme Court's attempts to distinguish the two have made qualified immunity cases near impossible to predict. Under Brosseau, a plaintiff will be hard-pressed to find case law that is materially similar in a world of "limitless factual circumstances." n90 Under Hope, law enforcement officers arguably have fair warning of everything. The difficulty is fashioning a rule that balances these two extremes, something the Supreme Court has not been able to do. Asking whether the constitutional violation is "obvious," as suggested in Brosseau, is no more helpful than asking whether the constitutional violation is clearly established. The reality that it is possible for law enforcement officers to "reasonably act unreasonably" is evidence that the doctrine of qualified immunity needs to be eliminated from excessive force cases, or the Supreme Court needs to fashion a whole new test.
The aff is key to meaningful challenges to police conduct and legitimacy of the rule of law. Hassel 09
(Diana, JD Rutgers, Excessive Reasonableness The Trustees of Indiana University Indiana Law Review 2009 Indiana Law Review 43 Ind. L. Rev. 117)
Over the past thirty years, courts and litigants have attempted to forge a workable regime for applying qualified immunity in excessive force cases. These attempts have been largely unsuccessful and have led to an increasingly complicated and unsatisfactory set of steps that a district court must execute when these cases arise. Because of its complexity and incoherence, the current system seems to work for no one-not police defendants, not judges, and most particularly not victims of police abuse. It has become apparent that periodic fixes by the Supreme Court will not solve the problem-a more profound rethinking of the doctrine is required. In excessive force cases the qualified immunity defense should be modified to eliminate the reasonableness inquiry, allowing the Fourth Amendment to do the work of assessing reasonableness. This change would go a long way toward simplifying and reforming the defense. Other changes in the doctrine may well also be necessary to create a more usable and rational system. If the current approach is left intact without any profound alternations, the promise of § 1983 as a meaningful remedy to police abuse will be unfulfilled, and judges will be left to dance through a complex set of steps without any music to give it meaning.

QI is the key barrier- counterplans don’t solve the case. Hassel 09
 (Diana, JD Rutgers, Excessive Reasonableness The Trustees of Indiana University Indiana Law Review 2009 Indiana Law Review 43 Ind. L. Rev. 117)
Meanwhile, far removed from the debate over doctrinal niceties, the operational problem of how to address the use of unjustified force by police officers persists. The current legal regime has largely failed in its attempt to control excessive police violence. n8 At least in part that failure flows from the difficulty faced by claimants under § 1983 to overcome the insulation from liability that defendants derive from both the Fourth Amendment requirements and the qualified immunity standard. Until the nearly insurmountable barrier to recovery created by excessive reasonableness is somehow relieved, civil actions based on the Fourth Amendment will not effectively deter police violence.
Apply a strict filter to all negative arguments- if they aren’t
A. About the use of excessive force
B. Based on legal reasoning other than Anderson V. Creighton
Then their evidence comes from inaccurate and incoherent legal scholarship and should be ignored
Shapiro, JD, et al, 01
(Steven R. Shapiro American Civil Liberties Union Foundation 125 Broad Street New York, New York 10004 (212) 549-2500 Alan L. Schlosser American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California 1663 Mission Street San Francisco, California 94103 (415) 621-2488 William Goodman Center for Constitutional Rights 666 Broadway New York, New York 10012 (212) 614-6464 David Rudovsky (Counsel of Record) 924 Cherry Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107 (215) 925-4400 Michael Avery Suffolk Law School 41 Temple Street Boston, Massachusetts 02114 (617) 573-8551 Ruth E. Harlow Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500 New York, New York 10005 (212) 809-8585 2001 WL 173522 (U.S.) (Appellate Brief) United States Supreme Court Amicus Brief. Donald SAUCIER, Petitioner, v. Elliot M. KATZ and In Defense of Animals, Respondents. No. 99-1977. October Term, 2000. February 16, 2001. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT )
In the rare situation where the standard for qualified immunity and the constitutional claim are identical, qualified immunity cannot be a separate defense to a claim of a constitutional violation. In the excessive force context, once it *10 is determined that an objectively reasonable officer would not have used the force in question, it makes no sense -- indeed it is conceptually incoherent -- to assert that the very same objectively reasonable officer could have believed that the force was reasonable. In other words, a police officer cannot have an objectively reasonable belief that his conduct was lawful when the unlawfulness of that conduct rests on a determination that an objectively reasonable officer would not have acted in the same way in the same circumstances. A significant number of lower federal courts have held that the Fourth Amendment and the qualified immunity doctrine pose precisely the same legal issue and that any differing determinations would be legally irreconcilable. See, e.g., McNair v. Coffey, 234 F.3d 352 (7th Cir. 2000); Frazell v. Flanagan, 102 F.3d 877, 886-87 (7th Cir. 1966) (“once a jury has determined under the Fourth Amendment that the officer's conduct was objectively unreasonable, that conclusion necessarily resolves for immunity purposes whether a reasonable officer could have believed that his conduct was lawful”); Scott v. District of Columbia, 101 F.3d 748 (D.C.Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1231 (1997); Alexander v. County of Los Angeles, 64 F.3d 1315 (9th Cir. 1995); Roy v. City of Lewiston, 42 F.3d 691 (1st Cir. 1994); Street v. Parham, 929 F.2d 537 (10th Cir. 1991); Ramirez v. City of Reno, 925 F.Supp. 681, 687-89 (D.Nev. 1996)(“intrinsic analytical incompatibility of an excessive force claim with a qualified immunity claim” given the objective reasonableness test; the “two lines of inquiry converge”); Landy v. Irizarry, 884 F.Supp. 788 (S.D.N.Y. 1995). 4 *11 Petitioner, in arguing for a qualified immunity defense in excessive force cases, relies almost exclusively on Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635. In our view, arguments based on Anderson are significantly misplaced. There, this Court ruled that the qualified immunity doctrine is applicable in cases alleging Fourth Amendment violations for warrantless searches or arrests without probable cause or exigent circumstances. The Court reasoned that where an officer is found to have violated the Fourth Amendment by making an arrest or conducting a search without the requisite cause or suspicion, the officer is entitled to the defense of qualified immunity if an objectively reasonable officer could have believed that probable cause existed. Anderson is premised on the understanding that the “reasonableness” element of probable cause is different from the “objectively reasonable” standard of qualified immunity. That is because the probable cause determination will often require the drawing of *12 fine legal lines. 5 Recognizing that reality, this Court held in Anderson that given the “difficulty of determining whether particular searches or seizures comport with the Fourth Amendment … law enforcement officers whose judgments in making these difficult determinations are objectively legally reasonable … are entitled to qualified immunity.” Id. at 644 (emphasis added). Thus, in the probable cause context, a police officer might mistakenly violate a citizen's rights without acting unreasonably. The probable cause determination for a search or seizure always requires an officer to decide whether the known facts would warrant a reasonable officer to believe that a crime has been committed or that a search would disclose contraband or material of evidentiary value, Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975), and must be made pursuant to evolving legal doctrine under the Fourth Amendment. Consider, for example, this Court's jurisprudence concerning investigatory stops or arrests of persons based on information provided by anonymous informants. In Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325 (1990), the Court determined that information from an anonymous source would justify an investigatory stop if critical predictive details were corroborated by the police. In Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000), the Court declined to extend White to situations where the anonymous source provided information regarding a man with a gun at a certain location, and police investigation led to an observation of a person fitting the general description at that location. In the wake of J.L. (and this Court's opinion in Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000)), there will no *13 doubt be close cases, depending upon the information received, the observations of the officers and other relevant factors. See, e.g., United States v. Valentine, 232 F.3d 350 (3d Cir. 2000) (stop based on anonymous informant who personally provided information to police). And in some of these cases, an officer will make a stop on information that a court will later declare to be insufficient to satisfy the Fourth Amendment; yet, given the lack of a particularized legal standard, the officer may still have acted in an objectively reasonable manner. No such legal difficulties face the officer who must determine how much force to use in a particular incident, whether in self-defense or in effectuating an arrest. This Court ruled in Graham that police officers act consistently with the Fourth Amendment when their conduct is objectively reasonable -- a nontechnical and deferential constitutional doctrine that reflects well established and commonly held judgments on the limits of police force. 6 This standard provides a margin of error, precludes “Monday morning quarterbacking” by a court, permits the officer a wide range of reasonable responses, and does not require the officer to make finely tuned legal determinations. Thus, once it has been determined that an officer has acted in an excessive fashion, it is not possible to claim that an objectively reasonable officer could have thought these actions to be proper. In many “tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving” situations, reasonable force may comprise a range of options or responses that the officer might employ. Different officers in the identical situation, each behaving reasonably, might elect to use a baton, a chemical agent, a take-down hold, or *14 a different technique; and each might use greater or lesser force, within a reasonable range, in employing the chosen technique. 7Recognition that reasonable force may include a range of responses is consistent with this Court's observation in Graham that “the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application.” 490 U.S. at 396. Understanding that the Fourth Amendment recognizes a range of forcible responses as reasonable also implements this Court's injunction in Graham that there be “allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments.” Id. at 396-97. How wide the allowance or range may be “requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case.” Id. at 396. In some cases, the facts and circumstances may be simple enough that the range of permissible options available to the officer will be quite narrow. In some circumstances no use of force is reasonable if none *15 is required. See Cox v. Treadway, 75 F.3d 230, 234 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 821 (1996); Bauer v. Norris, 713 F.2d 408 (8th Cir. 1983). In others, the difficulties confronting officers making split-second, life and death decisions may raise sufficient problems that the range of responses that should be deemed reasonable may be quite broad. The critical point is that this “zone of protection” in use of force cases is provided as part of the Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard itself. And where, as here, the standard for determining qualified immunity is the same as that for deciding the constitutional question itself, the defense is superfluous. This is not a matter of semantics or linguistic similarity; rather, it is a case of doctrinal identity. In determining whether an officer's use of force was within a range of reasonable options, the jury is also (and necessarily) answering the question whether a reasonable officer “could have believed” his use of force “to be lawful.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. at 638. Once this question is answered, there is no other inquiry that must be resolved in order to impose liability. 8 The existence of such broad protection in the Fourth Amendment itself, moreover, eliminates any fear that officers will be unreasonably chilled from acting in the absence of a separate qualified immunity defense.

Err aff- consensus of experts agree
Pittman, JD candidate, 12
(Nathan R., UNINTENTIONAL LEVELS OF FORCE IN § 1983 EXCESSIVE FORCE CLAIMS William and Mary Law Review William and Mary Law Review May, 2012 William and Mary Law Review 53 Wm. and Mary L. Rev. 2107)
The qualified immunity doctrine has drawn substantial scholarly criticism. Though some scholars have defended some aspects of the immunity, it has been broadly criticized, particularly with regard to those claims that rest on the Fourth Amendment and its reasonableness standard.

Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: La Canada AZ | Judge: Adam Bistagne
Part 1 is Framework

Evaluation of energy policy requires a social context. This requires situating nuclear power in the broader context of society and the economy to understand that traditional cost benefit assessment relies on flawed technological optimism. Glover et al 06
(Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Directs the Urban Studies and Wheaton in Chicago programs, selected to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Emerging Leaders Program for 2011-2013, *2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Head of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (Leigh Glover, Noah Toly, John Byrne, “Energy as a Social Project: Recovering a Discourse”, in “Transforming Power: Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict”, p. 1-32, http://www.ceep.udel.edu/energy/publications/2006_es_energy_as_a_social_project.pdf)

From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury ¶ pollution, and biodiversity loss,¶ 2¶ the origins of many of our least tractable¶ environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy¶ system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also ¶ accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric ¶ light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human¶ beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population—experience evening light¶ by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has ¶ left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects¶ promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 - 373). And there is the ¶ disturbing link between modern energy and war.¶ 3¶ Whether as a mineral whose ¶ control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil,¶ see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of ¶ extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the¶ significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance ¶ of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One¶ might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, ¶ including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of¶ modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing:¶ instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of ¶ euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that ¶ imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.4 One stream of euphoria has sprung from advocates of conventional energy, ¶ perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power ¶ who, early on, promised to invent a “magical fire” (Weinberg, 1972) capable¶ of meeting any level of energy demand inexhaustibly in a manner “too cheap¶ to meter” (Lewis Strauss, cited in the New York Times 1954, 1955). In reply to¶ those who fear catastrophic accidents from the “magical fire” or the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize “inherently safe¶ reactors” (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intentionally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimistic, forecasts can be heard from fossil fuel enthusiasts who, likewise, project¶ more energy, at lower cost, and with little ecological harm (see, e.g., Yergin¶ and Stoppard, 2003). Skeptics of conventional energy, eschewing involvement with dangerously scaled technologies and their ecological consequences, find solace in¶ “sustainable energy alternatives” that constitute a second euphoric stream.¶ Preferring to redirect attention to smaller, and supposedly more democratic,¶ options, “green” energy advocates conceive devices and systems that prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a¶ commitment to ecological balance. Among supporters are those who believe¶ that greening the energy system embodies universal social ideals and, as a¶ result, can overcome current conflicts between energy “haves” and “havenots.”¶ 5¶ In a recent contribution to this perspective, Vaitheeswaran suggests¶ (2003: 327, 291), “today’s nascent energy revolution will truly deliver power¶ to the people” as “micropower meets village power.” Hermann Scheer echoes¶ the idea of an alternative energy-led social transformation: the shift to a¶ “solar global economy... can satisfy the material needs of all mankind and¶ grant us the freedom to guarantee truly universal and equal human rights and¶ to safeguard the world’s cultural diversity” (Scheer, 2002: 34).¶ 6 The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity¶ (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers nuclear weaponry¶ and risks disruption of the planet’s climate is a product of promises pursued¶ without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and¶ ecological record of the regime’s operations. However, the discursive landscape has occasionally included thoughtful exploration of the broader contours of energy-environment-society relations. As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the¶ Machine, 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key¶ source of social and ecological alienation (1934: 196): The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the¶ most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the¶ multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and¶ the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its¶ natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the¶ irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals. By 1961, Mumford despaired that modernity had retrogressed into a lifeharming dead end (1961: 263, 248): ...an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: machine fodder and cannon fodder: surplus values and surplus populations... The dirty crowded houses, the dank airless courts and alleys, the bleak pavements, the sulphurous atmosphere, the over-routinized and dehumanized factory, the drill schools, the second-hand experiences, the starvation of the senses, the remoteness from nature and animal activity—here are the enemies. The living organism demands a life-sustaining environment. Modernity’s formula for two centuries had been to increase energy in order¶ to produce overwhelming economic growth. While diagnosing the inevitable failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity’s¶ supporters would seek to derail present-tense¶ 7¶ evaluations of the era’s social¶ and ecological performance with forecasts of a bountiful future in which,¶ finally, the perennial social conflicts over resources would end. Contrary to¶ traditional notions of democratic governance, Mumford observed that the¶ modern ideal actually issues from a pseudomorph that he named the “democratic-authoritarian bargain” (1964: 6) in which the modern energy regime¶ and capitalist political economy join in a promise to produce “every material¶ advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus one may desire, in¶ quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority” on the¶ condition that society demands only what the regime is capable and willing¶ to offer. An authoritarian energy order thereby constructs an aspirational democracy while facilitating the abstraction of production and consumption¶ from non-economic social values. The premises of the current energy paradigms are in need of critical study¶ in the manner of Mumford’s work if a world measurably different from the¶ present order is to be organized. Interrogating modern energy assumptions,¶ this chapter examines the social projects of both conventional and sustainable energy as a beginning effort in this direction. The critique explores the¶ neglected issue of the political economy of energy, underscores the pattern of¶ democratic failure in the evolution of modern energy, and considers the discursive continuities between the premises of conventional and sustainable¶ energy futures. The Abundant Energy Machine8 Proposals by its stakeholders to fix the modern energy system abound.¶ Advocates envision bigger, more expensive, and more complex machines to¶ spur and sate an endlessly increasing world energy demand. From clean coal¶ to a revived nuclear energy strategy, such developments promise a worldwide¶ movement to a cleaner and more socially benign energy regime that retains¶ its modern ambitions of bigger, more, and better. Proponents even suggest¶ that we might have our cake and eat it too, promoting patterns of energy¶ production, distribution, and consumption consistent with an unconstrained¶ ideology of quantification while also banishing environmental threats and¶ taming social risks that energy critics cite in their challenges to the mainstream. Consistent with a program of ecological modernization, the conventional energy regime’s architects are now exploring new technologies and¶ strategies that offer what are regarded as permanent solutions to our energy¶ troubles without harming our ecological future or disturbing the goal of¶ endless economic growth and its attendant social relations.

Part 2 is The Nuclear Renaissance
We are in the midst of a global “nuclear renaissance”- corporate propaganda markets nuclear power as the only solution to climate change in order to shut down democratic deliberation about alternative energy futures. Wasserman 16
(Harvey, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/29/ny-times-pushes-nukes-while-claiming-renewables-fail-to-fight-climate-change/ , 7-29)

The idea that nuclear power might fight climate change, and that environmentalists might support it, is a recent concoction, a disgraceful, desperate load of utility hype meant to defend the status quo. Fukushima, unsolved waste problems and the plummeting price of renewables have solidified the environmental community’s opposition to nuke power. These reactors are dirty and dangerous. They are not carbon-free and do emit huge quantities of heated water and steam into the ecosphere. The utility industry can’t get private liability insurance for them, and relies on the1957 Price-Anderson Act to protect them from liability in a major catastrophe. The industry continually complains about subsidies to renewable energy but never mentions this government protection program without which all reactors would close. 7. Not just nuke power but the entire centralized fossil/nuke-based grid system is now being undermined by the massive drops in the price of renewable energy, and massive rises in its efficiency and reliability. The critical missing link is battery technology. Because the sun and wind are intermittent, there needs to be energy storage to smooth out supply. Elon Musk‘s billion-dollar Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada and many other industrial ventures indicate major battery breakthroughs in storage is here today. 8. Porter’s NY Times piece correctly says that the massive amounts of cheap, clean renewables flooding the grid in Europe and parts of the U.S. are driving nuclear power plants into bankruptcy. At least a dozen reactor shut downs have been announced in the U.S. since 2012 and many more are on their way. In Japan 52 of the 54 reactors online before the Fukushima disaster are now closed. And, Germany has pledged to shut all its reactors by 2022. But Porter attacks this by complaining that those nukes were supplying base load power that must be otherwise—according to him—shored up with fossil burners. Here’s his key line: “Renewable sources are producing temporary power gluts from Australia to California, driving out other energy sources that are still necessary to maintain a stable supply of power.” But as all serious environmentalists understand, the choice has never been between nukes versus fossil fuels. It’s between centralized fossil/nukes versus decentralized renewables. Porter’s article never mentions the word “battery” or the term “rooftop solar.” But these are the two key parts in the green transition already very much in progress. So here is what the Times obviously can’t bring itself to say: “Cheap solar panels on rooftops are now making the grid obsolete.” The key bridging element of battery back-up capability is on its way. Meanwhile there is absolutely no need for nuclear power plants, which at any rate have long since become far too expensive to operate. Spending billions to prop up dying nuke reactors for “base load” generation is pure corporate theft at the public expense, both in straight financial terms and in the risk of running badly deteriorated reactors deep into the future until they inevitably melt down or blow up. Those billions instead should go to accelerating battery production and distribution, and making it easier, rather than harder, to gain energy independence using the wind and the sun. All this has serious real-world impacts. In Ohio, for example, a well-organized shift to wind and solar was derailed by the Koch-run legislature. Some $2 billion in wind-power investments and a $500 million solar farm were derailed. There are also serious legal barriers now in place to stop homeowners from putting solar shingles and panels on their rooftops. Meanwhile, FirstEnergy strong-armed the Ohio Public Utilities Commission into approving a huge bailout to keep the seriously deteriorated Davis-Besse nuke operating, even though it cannot compete and is losing huge sums of money. Federal regulators have since put that bailout on hold. Arizona and other Koch-owned legislatures have moved to tax solar panels, ban solar shingles and make it illegal to leave the grid without still paying tribute to the utilities who own it. Indeed, throughout the U.S. and much of the western world, corporate-owned governments are doing their best to slow the ability of people to use renewables to rid themselves of the corporate grid. For an environmental movement serious about saving the Earth from climate change, this is a temporary barrier. The Times and its pro-nuke allies in the corporate media will continue to twist reality. But the Solartopian revolution is proceeding ahead of schedule and under budget. A renewable, decentralized energy system is very much in sight. The only question is how long corporate nonsense like this latest NY Times screed can delay this vital transition. Our planet is burning up from fossil fuels and being irradiated by decrepit money-losing reactors that blow up. Blaming renewable energy for all that is like blaming the peace movement for causing wars. The centralized King CONG grid and its obsolete owners are at the core of the problem. So are the corporate media outlets like the New York Times that try to hide that obvious reality.

At the heart of this renaissance is a drive to colonize other countries to sustain our nuclear addiction - Wittman 11

Wittman, Nora “The Scramble for Africa's Nuclear Resources” New African No.507 June 2011

THE CURRENT NUCLEAR POLLUTION in Japan and the reactions of politicians and governments throughout Europe, the USA and Asia, even in the eye of disaster, indicate that they will never stop using nuclear power for military means and domestic energy generation and supply.¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ As Japan was battling to control pollution from its Fukushima nuclear plant, destroyed by the massive earthquake that hit the region on II March, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was firmly pronouncing that a withdrawal from nuclear energy was totally out of question for France and will not happen--80 of domestic energy in France comes from nuclear plants.¶ A few hours later, EU ministers deemed it sufficient to submit European nuclear power reactors to a so-called "stress test", and even then only on a voluntary basis. Apparently, the nuclear industry and their party allies throughout the political spectrum have been for a long time in a tight marriage that is far too beneficial for them to split.¶ Africa is currently the continent where nuclear power plants are least present. Only one such plant is present in South Africa, imposed by the apartheid regime in the 1970s. It is located in Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, yet surrounded by the city's ever-spreading suburbs, and was built by a French company. Like most nuclear power plants, it has experienced serious problems and its reactors have had to be shut down several times, especially since 2005.¶ Of course, the idea is not totally unconceivable that there could have been more severe incidents before, and that in apartheid times the white supremacist regime would not have made it a top priority to inform and protect the surrounding African people. In 2010, 91 members of staff were contaminated with Cobalt-58 dust in an incident that was said to be confined to the plant only.¶ In view of these facts and the recent developments, it should be clearer than ever that Africa must not follow the path to ultimate and lasting nuclear destruction that European, North American and Asian leaders seem to be determined to continue to take. Indeed, Africa may not only have the responsibility to save itself from this fate, but may also ultimately have the power to save the world from some of this otherwise pre-programmed nuclear disaster. How? By refusing to let its vast nuclear resources be exploited.¶ South Africa's only nuclear power plant, In Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, was imposed by the apartheid regime in the 70s¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ The nuclear powers are increasingly experiencing and preparing for problems of supply with the necessary crude nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium. Even though it is said that countries such as the USA, Russia and China have or rather had vast uranium resources themselves, all of these countries are now very eager to identify, secure and exploit mines for nuclear materials throughout Africa.¶ Africa, the continent endowed with the richest natural resources, has vast nuclear materials in its soil. Almost every African country is currently being mined or examined and prepared for nuclear exploitation.¶ According to a recent report updated in February 2011 by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), an environmental activist amalgamation based in Amsterdam, China National Nuclear Group, being that country's biggest nuclear power plant builder, signed a deal with the China-Africa Development Fund, a Chinese state-run institution, in 2010 to examine and exploit uranium resources throughout Africa.¶ French, Canadian, British, Swiss, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Australian and other companies are mining uranium, or have signed contracts to do so very soon with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DRCongo, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Chad, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia and other African countries. …

   
Nuclear power is justified through emergency framing- this creates a nuclear state of exception. Nuclear dangers are deprioritized in favor of remote cataclysms, which systematically warps cost benefit assessment and recreates warming. Kaur 11
(Raminder, A ‘nuclear renaissance’, climate change and the state of exception, THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 22, Issue 2)
Increasingly, nation-states such as China, France, Russia, Britain and India are pro-moting the nuclear option: first, as the main large-scale solution to developing economies, growing populations and increasing demands for a consumer-led lifestyle, and secondly, to tend to environmental concerns of global warming and climate change.1India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, speaking at a conference of atomic scientists in Delhi, for instance, announced a hundredfold increase to470,000 megawatts of energy that could come from Indian nuclear power stations by 2,050. He said, ‘This will sharply reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and will be a major contribution to global efforts to combat climate change, adding that Asia was seeing a huge spurt in ‘nuclear plant building’ for these reasons (Ramesh2009)’. The Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster of March 2011 has, for the time being at least, dented some nation-state’s nuclear power programmes. However, in India, the government has declared that it has commissioned further safety checks whilst continuing its nuclear development as before. Whilst the ‘carbon lobby’, including the fossil-fuels industries, stand to gain by undermining the validity of global warming, it appears that the ‘nuclear lobby’ ben-efits enormously from the growing body of evidence for human-based global warming. This situation has led to a significant nuclear renaissance with the promotion of nuclear power as ‘clean and green energy’. John Ritch, Director General of the World Nuclear Association, goes so far as to describe the need to embrace nuclear power as a ‘global and environmental imperative’, for ‘Humankind cannot conceiv-ably achieve a global clean-energy revolution without a huge expansion of nuclear power’ (Ritch nd). To similar ends, India’s Union Minister of State for Environ-ment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, remarked, ‘It is paradoxical that environmental-ists are against nuclear energy’ (Deshpande 2009). With a subtle sleight of hand,nuclear industries are able to promote themselves as environmentally beneficial whilst continuing business-as-usual at an expansive rate. Such global and national views on climate change are threatening to monopolise the entire environmentalist terrain where issues to do with uranium and tho-rium mining, the ecological costs of nuclear power plant construction, maintenance, operation and decommissioning, the release of water coolant and the transport and storage of radioactive waste are held as subsidiary considerations to the threat of climate change. Basing much of my evidence in India, I note how the conjunction of nuclear power and climate change has lodged itself in the public imagination and is consequently in a powerful position, creating a ‘truth regime’ favoured both by the nuclear lobby and those defenders of climate change who want more energy without restructuration of market-influenced economies or changes in consumerist lifestyle. The urgency of climate change discourses further empowers what I call the ‘nuclear state of exception’ which, in turn, lends credence to the veracity of human-centric global warming.
The nuclear state of exception bleeds into all aspects of society- it provides a model for authoritarian decision making that privileges technocratic experts and excludes the viewpoint of everyday citizens – legitimates oppression. Kaur 11
(Raminder, A ‘nuclear renaissance’, climate change andthe state of exception, THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 22, Issue 2)

Although Giorgio Agamben’s (2005) work on the normalisation of exceptional state practice has been much cited, it would appear that Robert Jungk anticipated some of his main axioms. Jungk outlines how the extraordinary, as it pertains to the state’s possession of nuclear weapons and the development of atomic industries since the mid-1940s, became the ordinary (Jungk 1979: 58). When associated with nuclear weapons, the state operates under the guise of a paradigm of security which promises ‘peace’ in terms of a nuclear deterrence to other countries and also legiti-mates the excesses of state conduct whilst abrogating citizens’ rights in the name of ‘national security’. Jungk adds that, in fact, state authoritarianism applied to all nation-states with nuclear industries: ‘Nuclear power was first used to make weap-ons of total destruction for use against military enemies, but today it even imperils citizens in their own country, because there is no fundamental difference between atoms for peace and atoms for war’ (Jungk 1979: vii). The inevitable spread of tech-nological know-how through a range of international networks and the effects of the US’ ‘atoms for peace’ program in the 1950s led to a greater number of nations constructing institutions for civilian nuclear power, a development that was later realised to enable uranium enrichment for the manufacture of weapons .Because of the indeterminacy between atoms for peace and atoms for war, the nuclear industries began to play a key part in several nations’ security policies, both externally with reference to other states and also internally with reference to objec-tors and suspected anti-national contingents. Jungk notes ‘the important social role of nuclear energy in the decline of the constitutional state into the authoritarian nuclear state’ by focussing on a range of indicators, including a report published by the American National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice in 1977 which suggested that:in view of the ‘high vulnerability of technical civilization’, emergency legislation should be introduced making it possible temporarily to ignore constitutional safeguards without previous congressional debate or consultation with the Supreme Court.(1979: 135) The bio-techno-political mode of governance encapsulates subjects into its folds such that it becomes a ‘technical civilisation’—a civilisation that, although promis-ing favourable aspects of modernity to the populace and development for the coun-try, is also to be accompanied by several risks to human and environmental safety that propel states, including democracies further towards authoritarianism. ‘Big sci-ence’—that is, science that is centralised or at least circumscribed by the state—and the bureaucracies surrounding it play a critical part in the normalisation of the state of exception, and the exercise of even more power over their citizens. Jungk elaborates on the routinisation of nuclear state violence, epistemological, juridical and physical :Such measures will be justified, not as temporary measures made necessary by an exceptional emergency … but by the necessity of providing permanent protection for a perpetually endangered central source of energy that is regarded as indispensable. A nuclear industry means a permanent state of emergency justified by a permanent threat. (1979: 135)This permanent state of emergency with respect to anything nuclear applies to restrictions on citizens’ freedom, the surveillance and criminalisation of critics and campaigners, the justification of the mobilisation of thousands of police men and sometimes military to deal with peaceful demonstrators against nuclear power, and a hegemony on ‘truth-claims’ where the nuclear industries are held as the solution to growing power needs whilst advancing themselves as climate change envi-ronmentalists. In this way, power structures and lifestyles need not be altered where nuclear power becomes, ironically, a powerful mascot of ‘clean and green’ energy. In India, the capitalist modality of the nuclear state was exacerbated by the ratification of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement in 2008, a bilateral accord which enables those countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to provide mate-rial and technology for India’s civilian nuclear operations even though it is nota signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. This has led to an expansionof the nuclear industries in the country where the limited indigenous resources of uranium could then be siphoned into the nuclear weapons industries. The imposition of the nuclear state hand-in-hand with multinational corporations in regions such as Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu (with the Russian nuclear com-pany, Atomstroyexport), Haripur in West Bengal (with the Russian company,Rosatom) or Jaitapur in Maharashtra (with the French company, Areva), without due consultation with residents around the proposed nuclear power plants, has prompted S. P. Udayakumar (2009) to recall an earlier history of colonization describing the contemporary scenario as an instance of ‘nucolonisation(nuclear + colonisation)’.The Indian nuclear state, with its especial mooring in central government, hasconducted environmental enquiries primarily for itself—and this so in only asummary fashion. In a context where the Ministry of Environment and Forestscan override the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report forthe first two nuclear reactors at Koodankulam in 2001, saying that the decisionwas first made in the 1980s before the EIA Notification Act (1994); or where theSupreme Court of India can dismiss a petition against the construction of thesereactors simply by saying: ‘There is no reason as to why this court should sit inappeal over the Governmental decision relating to a policy matter more so, whencrores of rupees having (sic) been invested’ (cited in Goyal 2002), then there is astrong basis upon which to consider the Indian state as a whole as a nuclearisedstate—that is, a state wherein matters relating to nuclear issues are given inordi-nate leeway across the board. The nuclear enclave consisting of scientists, bureau-crats and politicians, is both the exception to and the rule that underpins the rest of state practice. So even though we may be talking about a domain of distinct governmental practice and political technology as encapsulated by the notion of a nuclear state, it is evident that its influence spreads beyond the nuclear domain in a discourse of nuclearisation through state-related stratagems which have become increasingly authoritarian and defence-orientated since the late 1990s. In a nut-shell, discourses about the urgency of climate change, global warming, nuclear power and defence have converged in a draconian and oppressive manner that now parades itself as the necessary norm for the nation. Despite their particularities, machinations of the Indian nuclear state are also nota-ble elsewhere. Joseph Masco elaborates on the ‘national-security state’ in the USA(2006: 14). Tony Hall comments upon the ‘defence-dominated, well-cushioned(nuclear) industry’ in the United Kingdom (1996: 10). And on the recent issue of the construction of more nuclear power stations in Britain, David Ockwell observesthat a public hearing was only undertaken for ‘instrumental reasons (i.e. it was alegal requirement), as demonstrated by a public statement by then prime ministerTony Blair that the consultation ‘won’t affect the policy at all’ (2008: 264). These narratives are familiar across the board where a nuclear renaissance is apparent. But critics continue to dispute the hijacking of environmentalism by the state and argue that if climate change is the problem, then nuclear power is by no means a solution. Moreover, the half-life of radioactive waste cannot be brushed away in a misplacedvindication of the saying, ‘out of sight, out of mind’
Nuclear power reinforces all levels of social division- its centralized, technocratic nature legitimates these views throughout society and corrupts all levels of scientific analysis. Martin et. Al 84
(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

Why was the nuclear option taken? Nuclear power is not an automatic or inevitable development. Technology is not neutral but develops in ways which correspond to social structures. The social structures which favour and in turn are favoured by nuclear power include capitalism, patriarchy, the intellectual division of labour and the state. The connections and reinforcements between these entrenched social structures is the reason why nuclear power is so hard to dislodge. In the early 1950s, nuclear power had not yet been shown to be technologically feasible, much less economically viable. In 1952 the Paley Commission in the US favoured heavy investment in solar technology as the energy option of the future. Despite such options, nuclear power was promoted over solar power. Nuclear power was originally promoted by states rather than corporations or workers. Nuclear power was attractive to governments and state bureaucracies for several reasons. Nuclear power, by virtue of its large size, centralised production of electricity and dependence on experts, was suitable for control by state bureaucracies. Solar home heating, by comparison, did not lend itself to such control. Nuclear power fitted neatly into the existing electricity generation and distribution system. Like coal or oil, it was a way of producing electricity at a central location for distribution through the established grid. Unlike oil, where there are several commercial outlets to chose from, we can only have one distributor's power points in our houses. When that distributor is the state - and most electricity grids are either state-owned or state regulated - the consequence for communities is a reduction of local control over their energy planning. The potential risks of nuclear power - for example from meltdown accidents at nuclear power plants - were too large to be taken by even the largest corporations. US companies only joined nuclear power projects after many subsidies and incentives were offered by the US state, including the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 which limited corporate liability in the event of reactor accidents. The pro-nuclear US Department of Energy estimated that in 1980 the US 'commercial' nuclear-power industry had been subsidised to the tune of $US37,000 million. Anti-nuclear groups have put the figure closer to $US100,000 million. For these reasons, nuclear power has been largely state-developed, owned and promoted. Only in the US do corporations have much of an independent role, and even there the industry is heavily regulated by the state. Most of those countries with the greatest stake in nuclear power - United States, Japan, Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Britain - are the most powerful economically. The state is not a unified entity. It incorporates the elected government, the military, the police, the legal system, state bureaucracies for regulating the economy and providing welfare services, and many other functions. Only some of these parts of the state have been active in promoting nuclear power, notably the energy bureaucracies, parts of the military and some politicians. An important pressure within these areas has come from politically active nuclear scientists and engineers. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power would not have been possible without the mobilisation of scientific expertise for the purposes of the state. Especially since World War Two, an ever increasing fraction of research and development finance has come from the state, and the orientation of science and technology has been increasingly oriented to the requirements of large corporations and the state. This science-state interaction has given rise to the technocrats, among whom the nuclear elites are prominent. Nuclear power simultaneously provides a power base for the nuclear elites while increasing state power. In capitalist societies, the state is structurally tied to corporate expansion and profit making. A key role of governments in capitalist countries is maintaining the conditions necessary for corporate profit-making. Indeed, the state has intervened in education and health, among other things, in order to ensure that capitalism is provided with a continuing work force, that is, healthy workers with the right skills and attitudes. Similarly, the state takes care of many of the other needs of capitalism, particularly subsidising the infrastructure (such as ports and rail lines) of large projects. In a way, large scale 'development' projects, such as nuclear power, can be seen as a test of the state's commitment to key corporations and to securing the conditions necessary for capitalist profitability. Despite the intimate connections between the state and the corporate sector, there is also a particular logic to capitalist investment. Projects which are capital intensive, large scale, centralised and suitable for monopolisation are favoured areas of corporate investment. Thus promotion of energy efficiency, or of decentralised and locally controlled energy sources, would do little for profits and are thus ignored (or undermined) by corporate management. Similarly, there has been little corporate interest in biological pest control because it does not have readily monopolisable sources and cannot be easily oriented to a single market consumer. In other words, profitability of this environmentally sound technology is minimal. Ultimately, investment decisions in a capitalist society reflect this preoccupation with profitability at the expense of social usefulness and environmental harmony. When corporations are confronted with the environmental pollution, concern for profitability dictates that efforts will be made to merely clean up the mess, rather than change the structures responsible for the pollution. Underlying the immediate role of the state and nuclear elites in promoting nuclear power are several deeper factors. One is the hierarchy and division of labour characteristic of modern corporations and state bureaucracies. Workers are kept under control by work organisation - such as the manufacturing division of labour - in which key decisions are made by elites and in which shopfloor participation is minimised. Technologies are often chosen or designed to enforce hierarchical control in the workplace. Nuclear power fits this pattern well. Other technologies besides nuclear power can be assessed according to whether they lend themselves to centralised or decentralised control. For example, many simpler weapons such as the rifle can be used either by soldiers or police on behalf of the state, or by forces opposing the state such as guerrillas. In contrast, nuclear weapons are typical of modern technological weapons: they require training and expertise to use and are generally inaccessible to small groups. Like nuclear weapons, nuclear power as an energy source lends itself to centralised control. In contrast, measures such as bicycle transport, passive solar design, solar heating, wind power or biogas production lend themselves to local community control. An emphasis on nuclear power must not obscure the fact that other energy technologies can also fulfil the same socially destructive role that nuclear power plays. Even the much heralded solar energy has the potential to be incorporated into these structures if it develops in certain ways. For example, one US corporation has proposed a satellite solar power station which would orbit the earth and beam down massive amounts of microwave radiation to be collected by a seven kilometre wide receiver on the earth's surface. Clearly a campaign which effectively does away with nuclear power does not automatically do away with centralised systems of political and economic control. The key distinction between technologies is not whether they are solar, fossil or nuclear, but whether they lend themselves to control by political and economic elites or to control by individuals and local communities. Scientific research on nuclear power also illustrates the effects of this division of labour. The isolation of social control and responsibility and concern in the hands of political elites, together with the structure of the scientific community, act together to produce a system which keeps scientists locked into socially destructive research. Science is not value-free. Politically determined goals, like winning a real-war or cold-war situation, can conveniently smother irksome consciences. At the same time, the intellectual challenges which scientific research presents provide a strong driving force for the commitment of individual scientists. Thus some scientists can work on weapons of mass destruction because the political decisions regarding these weapons are made at a distance, in an apparently legitimate forum. Such scientists may not consider that they have the right or expertise to question the political consequences of their work. It is this intellectual division of labour which focusses scientists' attention and their energies upon research problems which are divorced from their social consequences. Most scientists are ominously silent about the political side of the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly the undermining of civil liberties 'necessary' to safeguard nuclear power. Patriarchy - the collective domination of men over women - and other major social structures such as the state and capitalism mutually reinforce one another. It is important here to differentiate between masculinity, which is socially constructed, and maleness, which has a genetic base. Most men exhibit culturally specific masculine behaviour and this behaviour is often expressed as domination of women and the environment. Within state bureaucracies, corporations and the scientific community, women are discriminated against through job and career structures which concentrate men into the most powerful positions. Commonly, to gain entry to these positions, women themselves are forced to adopt a 'masculine approach'. It is at this level of power that masculine values emerge such as careerism, competitiveness, aggressiveness, the separation of tasks from emotion, and patterns of dominance. These values foster inequalities between people, thereby further concentrating power into the hands of an elite and forming the basis of exploitation of other people and nature. Nuclear weapons for example are a product of aggression and dominance relations as opposed to the more feminine values of nurturing and caring. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine the development of nuclear weapons in a society where feminine values predominated. On the one hand, the state and corporations mobilise patriarchal relations to serve their own domination, for example to split the workforce and impose hierarchical relations between men as well as between men and women. On the other band, groups of men mobilise state and capitalist interests to maintain their domination over women, for example using job seniority rules and the legal system to keep women in lesser occupations or the home. The intellectual division of labour, and the concept of professionalism which is used to justify it, also are associated with deeply rooted masculine values. For example, the way in which the scientific community is structured, particularly the impetus to continually publish ahead of rivals, promotes intellectual aggressiveness and competitiveness. In addition many of the characteristics of modern science can be grouped under the heading of 'masculine rationality'. This rationality sets up a dualism between society and nature, production and reproduction, the intellect and the emotions, and the technical and the political. 1. Nature, which in the traditional metaphor is seen as feminine, is regarded by masculine rationality as merely a resource to be exploited or an enemy to be subjugated by society. 2. Masculine elevation of the realm of production as the most worthwhile area of life reflects the dominant presence men have in this realm. At the same time the realm of reproduction is denigrated and so this area which women have traditionally dominated is denied status. Yet production and reproduction are both essential for a society's survival. The failure of masculine rationality to recognise the value of both production and reproduction rules out the possibility of a harmonious balance between current needs and long-term survival. Not surprisingly, this is the same balance which the existence of nuclear weapons undermines. 3. Masculine rationality also endorses the separation of the intellect and the emotions - the intellect being seen as superior - and the idea of emotional neutrality towards objects of study. When ordinary people become actively concerned about nuclear power, this style of rationality characterises them as emotional and ill-informed in contrast to the experts who it depicts as involved in 'responsible, objective, scientific endeavour'. Thus too scientists are encouraged to remain detached from the social consequences of their work. 4. Masculine rationality also connects with the sharp division between the realm of ends and that of means. This is reflected in turn in the separation of the technical and the political, and of the technical dimensions of a problem from its political ramifications. The separation is visible in the current division of labour. For example, it is necessary to have nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers, plant technicians and construction workers in order to conceive, design and build a nuclear power plant. However, these people are not required to consider the social and political consequences of their work; these 'goal' aspects are 'taken care of' by politicians. The dominant political system makes social responsibility and the determination of ends, which should be everyone's concern, the concern of a specialised few. This type of separation between the technical and the political is especially evident in dominant ways of organising work such as in bureaucracies. Domination of nature is another fundamental factor underlying state promotion of nuclear power. Modern industrialisation, science and technology are based on subjugating the environment, on extracting resources for human requirements. The orientation is one of exploitation for short-term use rather than harmony and understanding. Domination of nature, of women and of workers are all aspects of modern structures which maintain hierarchy and inequality and which serve the interests of elites. Nuclear power is one component of this system. To oppose nuclear power effectively requires addressing the structures in which it is embedded.

This view of nuclear power as a “quick fix” depoliticizes the global economy and energy system perpetuating massive inequality. Maciejewska and Marszalek ’11
(Malgorzata, institute of Sociology and Faculty of Social Sciences at Wroclaw University, and Marcin, Wroclaw University (Poland), “Lack of power or lack of democracy: the case of the projected nuclear power plant in Poland,” Economic and Environmental Studies Vol. 11, No.3 (19/2011), 235-248, Sept. 2011)
The mainstream discourse on nuclear power rarely takes up the question of how the global energy industry is organized. In the modern economy the production of energy around the world, which is supposed to be a kind of public good and to guarantee sustainable development, is planned and arranged under free market conditions. As a part of the global chain of extraction, production and trading, it is subordinated to the neoliberal logic on terms of which the society and economy is governed as a business enterprise with the logic of maximum interest and minimum loss. This imposes on different actors (from the international corporations to individual households) the discipline of competitiveness and profitability, resulting in the growth of existing inequalities as ‘the invisible hand’ of the free market economy legitimizes those subjects which are already in power. The modern global economy is based on irrational production and social inequalities where one can observe the processes of work intensification and the cheapening of labor. The markets are dominated by the unproductive virtual economy (See Peterson, 2002) where the major players are the financial institutions which, by means of sophisticated financial tools, buy and sell virtual products (currencies, stocks, insurances, debts and its derivatives). In effect, the major actors in the capitalist economy are the international investors who have the capability of financial liquidity, and operate with those sophisticated financial tools on the global stock market. Even when they lose those capacities because of indebtedness, the states and international organizations seem often to be willing to repair the damage by transferring the taxes paid by citizens. (This is actually happening now, during the financial crisis, when southern and western European countries are subjected to shock therapy under which governments introduce austerity measures.) The praxis of nuclear power producers and the discourse which legitimizes it is therefore reduced to one goal – increasing financial revenues. The Polish plan to build the atomic power plant seems to be another element of the competitiveness strategy. In the authorities’ mind set it could put Poland into the position of more a competitive, more dynamic economy, as expected by the European Union and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. The welfare of Poland’s or Niger’s society does not fit into that picture. The nuclear establishment does not take into account the most important aspect of sustainable  development: the overall reduction of energy consumption and therefore of energy production. Such a policy could bring a wide range of profits to the societies, the ecosystem, as well as the economy. On the contrary, the increase of power production and power use is one of the core concepts of pro-atomic discourse. This dogmatic belief draws the ideological line indicated at the beginning: the question of energy use and the ideas for solving this problem are seen only as a matter of technological challenges and the amount of financial and material means which have to be invested in them, but not as an effort to re-organize and restructure the modern economy. 

Part 3 is the Advocacy

Plan Text: All countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power. Countries that currently produce power from nuclear reactors will immediately begin phasing out all nuclear power. Lucas 12
Caroline Lucas an British politician, and since 2 September 2016, Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, 2-17-2012, "Why we must phase out nuclear power," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/17/phase-out-nuclear-power MG
The inherent risk in the use of nuclear energy, as well as the related proliferation of nuclear technologies, can and does have disastrous consequences. The only certain way to eliminate this potentially devastating risk is to phase out nuclear power altogether. Some countries appear to have learnt this lesson. In Germany, the government changed course in the aftermath of Fukushima and decided to go ahead with a previously agreed phase out of nuclear power. Many scenarios now foresee Germany sourcing 100 of its power needs from renewables by 2030. Meanwhile Italian citizens voted against plans to go nuclear with a 90 majority. The same is not yet true in Japan. Although only three out of its 54 nuclear reactors are online and generating power, while the Japanese authorities conduct "stress tests", the government hopes to reopen almost all of these and prolong the working life of a number of its ageing reactors by to up to 60 years. The Japanese public have made their opposition clear however. Opinion polls consistently show a strong majority of the population is now against nuclear power. Local grassroots movements opposing nuclear power have been springing up across Japan. Mayors and governors in fear of losing their power tend to follow the majority of their citizens. 

Voting affirmative endorses a social critique of nuclear power. Only instrumental reform to the energy system can effectively spill over to broader systemic problems without being coopted. Martin et. Al, 84
(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

What is a strategy anyway? A strategy links the analysis of an issue with goals and objectives. Having chosen a strategy, it is implemented through appropriate actions. An action is a 'once-off' event such as a rally, march, blockade or lobbying a particular politician. A method, such as lobbying in general, refers to all actions of a certain type. Actions are coordinated together into a campaign. The campaign gives direction to a series of events. Given our analysis in section 1 of the structural forces responsible for the nuclear fuel cycle, the goal of stopping uranium mining must be closely linked to the goal of basic structural change in the state, capitalism, patriarchy and the division of labour. As such it must involve challenges to the structures which underlie nuclear concerns. The broader objectives for an anti-nuclear movement must include encouraging mass participation in decision making rather than elite control, decentralising the distribution of political power into smaller, local groups, and bringing about self-reliance based on environmentally sound technologies. These objectives involve fundamental changes to the way our society is organised at present. In effect, an anti-nuclear strategy must involve both actions aimed at stopping nuclear power and activities which challenge existing structures and help construct viable alternatives. In this context, the success or failure of an individual campaign must be viewed from the perspective of working towards these overall goals and objectives. The actions used by the anti-uranium movement fall into two main categories. Firstly there are actions which aim at convincing or influencing elites, such as lobbying or writing letters to politicians. Secondly are the actions such as rallies and blockades which usually involve more participation from the community. While such actions may be aimed at elites they are also important in educating or giving support to those who are involved. Lobbying. Lobbying is a direct attempt to convince or pressure elite decision-makers. It does nothing to challenge the state, patriarchy or other structures underlying nuclear power, but rather hopes to oppose nuclear power by 'working through the proper channels'. This leaves elite structures unchallenged and intact. Indeed lobbying is a form of political action most suited to powerful interest groups such as corporations and professional bodies. The state is the forum of the powerful, so for these kinds of groups lobbying often is an effective strategy. For small activist groups lobbying is useful only if it appears to be backed up by politically visible mass concern or mass action. In 1983, after the election of a Labor Government, the anti-uranium movement turned strongly to lobbying in an attempt to induce the Labor Caucus to implement the Labor Party platform. This effort was unsuccessful. Participating in environmental inquiries. In making submissions to the Ranger Inquiry, environmental groups made a concerted attempt to ensure that the issue of the Ranger mine was not divorced from the general issue of uranium mining and nuclear power, and that ultimate decisions were determined by the public rather than 'experts'. The Inquiry did in fact analyse the overall dangers of the nuclear industry and concluded that no decision on uranium mining should occur without public debate. These results helped fuel the ensuing widespread public debate on uranium mining in Australia. One reason for involvement in environmental inquiries is to challenge the role of experts in service to vested interests. The Ranger Inquiry commented on the bias of distinguished scientists who testified in favour of uranium mining. The Ranger Inquiry was unusual in making full use of broad terms of reference. Many environmental inquiries have institutional constraints which can make it questionable whether activists should spend much energy in that area. Many government inquiries with severely limited terms of reference offer few opportunities for activists to intervene effectively. There is not only the danger of being 'co-opted' if activists take part, but also the prospect that any structural challenges may be deflected by superficial concessions. Often such inquiries are not genuine and are only set up as window-dressing. For example, the Australian Science and Technology Council inquiry set up in November 1983 to investigate Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle has terms of reference which assume the continuation of uranium mining. Working through the trade union movement. In 1976 anti-uranium groups began a major effort to persuade trade unions and their Congress delegates to adopt and support anti-uranium policies. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress adopted an anti-uranium policy in mid-1977. Following the re-election of the Liberal-National Government in December 1977, anti-uranium groups focussed on persuading unions to implement the ACTU policy. However, the members of a number of unions - including some with anti-uranium policies - continued to work in the uranium industry. Some union leaders chose not to attempt to convince members to avoid or leave the industry, while other leaders supportive of the policies could not persuade members working in the industry or transporting its products. The efforts within the trade union movement have been strong to the extent that they have mobilised rank-and-file action. One of the most valiant efforts to stop uranium mining was by the Waterside Workers Federation - supported by the Seamen's Union and the Transport Workers Union - in refusing to load yellowcake for export from Darwin in late 1981. This direct action - an obvious challenge to the power of corporations and the state - was only called off when deregistration threats from the Liberal-National Government induced the ACTU to back down. Efforts through the trade unions have been least effective when they have depended on action only by union elites. An ACTU policy against uranium mining is not enough: it does not in itself challenge any of the driving forces behind nuclear power. When Bob Hawke was President of the ACTU, the executive showed itself disinclined to mount even a strong publicity campaign against the uranium mining industry. Working through the parliamentary system. Since 1976 a major focus of the anti-nuclear power movement has been the ALP. A massive campaign of publicising and discussing the issue at the party branch level resulted in an anti-uranium platform being adopted in mid-1977. Since that time there has been strong anti-uranium feeling within the party. In late 1977 the focus of the anti-uranium movement became the federal election campaign. During this campaign the anti-uranium movement used the resources of local anti-uranium groups to help the ALP in marginal House of Representatives electorates and for the Australian Democrats in the Senate. Many anti-uranium activists pinned their hopes on a Labor victory. But the Liberal-National coalition won the election, and the anti-uranium campaign appeared to have little impact in marginal electorates. After this defeat, many activists left the movement while a number of local groups effectively ceased to exist. The danger in relying too much on anti-uranium action by a Labor Government was demonstrated in mid-1982 when the Labor anti-uranium platform was watered down on the initiative of party power brokers in spite of continuing support for the platform at the party branch level. The danger was further demonstrated in November 1983 when Labor Caucus, at the initiative of Cabinet, gave the go-ahead for Roxby Downs, potentially the largest uranium mine in the world. In each case the impetus to maintain the anti-uranium policy came from the grassroots of the party, while it was labour elites who pushed pro-mining stances. Any Australian government, whether Labor or not, is strongly tied to the established state apparatus and to the support of capitalism. It is futile to expect the government on its own - whatever its platform may be - to readily oppose aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. This will occur only when there is strong and continual pressure from the grassroots of the party and from the community at large. Grassroots mobilisation. The anti-uranium movement has used a wide variety of methods to inform and involve the community. Commonly used methods include leaflet distribution, articles, talks, discussions, films, petitions, rallies, marches, vigils and street theatre. Major anti-uranium rallies and marches were held each year in most large cities, especially in the peak years of the uranium debate, 1976-1979 and again since 1983. A typical grassroots activity has been the creation of nuclear-free zones, which is mainly a symbolic action which helps raise awareness and encourage local groups to openly oppose nuclear power. This activity has worked closely with the dissemination of information through the media, local groups, the alternative press and schools. In 1983 the people in the Bega Valley Shire voted to declare their area a nuclear-free zone. To counter this popular sentiment, the Shire Council called in nuclear experts in order to argue the case against the nuclear-free zone. In this case the nuclear-free zone campaign provided a channel for exposing and challenging the role of nuclear expertise and elites in promoting nuclear power. Civil disobedience has also been used by the anti-nuclear movement. In the late 1970s, nonviolent direct action was used on several occasions at ports where uranium was being loaded for export. At the Roxby Downs blockade in August 1983, several hundred people gathered to express their opposition and hinder mining operations. Two distinctive features of this protest were the use of nonviolent action and the way in which participants formed themselves into affinity groups. These are a form of political organising which is consciously anti-elitist and aims to democratise all group interactions. Education, rallies, marches, petitions and civil disobedience sometimes do little to challenge the structures underlying nuclear power. For example, the rally outside Parliament House in October 1983 was primarily aimed at putting pressure on the Labor Party at a time when it was considering its uranium policy. Similarly, the 'tent embassy' located on Parliament House lawns aimed to prick the conscience of the ALP. One of the aims of the Roxby Downs blockade was to mobilise pressure to influence the ALP. On the other hand, grassroots mobilisation often provides a potent challenge to nuclear power and the forces behind it. All the lasting successes of Australian anti-uranium campaigns have depended ultimately on grassroots mobilisation, which provides a reservoir of commitment and concern which elite-oriented activities do not. In 1975, the virtue of mining uranium was largely unquestioned among the general public and the labour movement. It was simply unthinkable that a mineral which could be profitably sold would be left in the ground. Yet by 1977 the anti-uranium view had become widely understood and strongly supported. This change in opinion happened largely through the educational and organising efforts of the local anti-uranium groups and of anti-uranium activists within organisations such as trade unions, schools and churches. The resurgence of anti-uranium activity in 1983 owed much to the framework established in the late 1970s. The anti-uranium platform adopted by the ALP in 1977 was the result of organising and education at the party branch level. ALP stands and action against uranium mining have come consistently from the party grassroots, and this in turn has depended on anti-uranium sentiment in the general community. Support for uranium mining within the ALP has always been strongest on the part of party elites. The anti-uranium stands and actions by Australian trade unions have been stronger than in any other country in the world. Building on a tradition of trade union action on social issues, this has come about from persistent grassroots education and organising at the shop floor level. It has been the rank-and-file unionists who have taken the strongest anti-uranium stands, and the trade union elites who have backed away from opposition. When in late 1981 the Seamen's Union refused to load yellowcake in Darwin, it was the rank-and-file workers who took a stand and made the sacrifices. Does grassroots mobilisation then provide the most fruitful avenue for challenging the structures behind nuclear power? Yes, but the choice of methods is not straightforward or automatic. The problem with many grassroots methods used by the anti-uranium movement is that they have not been systematically organised and focussed as part of an overall long-term strategy. Instead, individual groups - and indeed the national movement - has often just looked ahead to the next rally, the next signature drive, or the next ALP Conference. While this approach does have some merit for example in saving an area from irreversible environmental destruction, it is inadequate as an approach to stopping mining or transforming the structures underlying nuclear power. For example the closing of Roxby mine would prevent the destruction of the surrounding ecosystem including mound springs inhabited by forms of aquatic life found nowhere else in the world. If the environment is altered, these unique creatures will be gone forever. However, the closing of Roxby in isolation would do nothing to prevent mining companies from setting up or increasing production in other places. If, on the other hand, existing power structures were challenged, and the closing of Roxby were carried out in conjunction with the closing of all uranium mines and a disbanding of uranium interests, then the safety of these ecosystems would be assured. What needs to be done is to focus on vulnerable points within the structures promoting nuclear power, and to devote efforts in these areas. What are the vulnerable points, then? Before looking at specific vulnerable points, let's examine the nuclear power issue as a whole. Nuclear power is a large-scale vulnerable point in the structures of the state, capitalism and so forth. In promoting nuclear power, and thereby entrenching centralised political and economic power, other consequences result which mobilise people in opposition: environmental effects (especially radioactive waste), the connection with nuclear weapons, threats to Aboriginal land rights, threats to civil liberties, and many others. In organising to oppose these specific threats, people at the same time can challenge the driving forces behind nuclear power. Here are a few of the specific vulnerable points which have been addressed by the anti-uranium movement. Threats to Aborigines. Nuclear power is alleged to be beneficial, but uranium mining is a severe cultural threat to Aborigines, who are already a strongly oppressed group in Australia. The anti-uranium movement and the Aboriginal land rights movements have been strengthened by joint actions, such as speaking tours. Centralised decision-making. Nuclear power has widespread social effects, but promoters of nuclear power claim the decisions must be taken by political and scientific elites. This runs counter to the rhetoric of Western democracies where ordinary people are meant to have a say in political decision-making. By moving in on this embarrassing contradiction, protests which demand a role for the public in decision-making about energy also challenge political elites and the political use of expertise. Capitalism and workers. Nuclear power is alleged to be good for the economy and for workers, but in practice massive state subsidies to the industry are the rule, and few jobs are produced for the capital invested. In challenging nuclear power as an inappropriate direction for economic investment, a challenge is made to the setting of economic priorities by corporations and the state. Capitalism also directs investments only into profitable areas, irrespective of their social benefits. If activists can undermine the profitability of marginal enterprises by delaying tactics or by jeopardising state subsidies, then capitalist investment can be shunted away from socially destructive areas. For example, direct actions against Roxby Downs could in the long run undermine its profitability and cause its closure. Grassroots mobilisation is usually the most effective way to intervene at vulnerable points such as these. A suitable combination of interventions then forms the basis for a strategy against uranium mining. But how can uranium mining actually be stopped? This is a good question. Grassroots mobilisation does not by itself stop uranium mining. The mobilisation must connect with major forces in society. There are several ways this can occur. Uranium mining could be stopped: (1) by direct decision of the government; (2) by the unions acting directly through strikes or bans to prevent uranium mining, export, or construction of nuclear plants; (3) through cost escalations, for example resulting from requirements to ensure safety or environmental protection, (4) by a referendum whose results were adhered to; (5) by legal action on the part of aborigines or anti-uranium forces; (6) by direct action to physically stop mining from proceeding. A critical element necessary to the success of any of these methods is the mobilisation of a large section of the public against uranium mining. Thus for example government action to stop mining would be likely to take place only if there were mass mobilisation on the issue. Similarly 'direct action' could only succeed if popular support were so great that the government refused to use sufficient force to physically overcome the resisters. To give an idea of how grassroots methods could be coordinated into a strategy to stop uranium mining, consider a hypothetical example. Suppose an analysis of the current political situation suggested that direct action by workers and unions gave the most immediate promise for directly stopping uranium mining, while government decision and cost escalations were also likely avenues for stopping mining. A grassroots strategy might include the following: Systematic community organising and education, to provide a basis in popular sympathy and support for direct action by workers. Points to be emphasised would include the right of workers to take direct action on conscience issues as well as work-related issues, and the importance of questioning decisions made solely on the basis of corporate profitability or state encouragement of large-scale economic investment. Development of alternative plans for investment and jobs based on input from workers and communities, and widespread dissemination of the ideas and rationale for the alternative plans. A series of rallies, marches, vigils and civil disobedience, aimed at both mobilising people and illustrating the strength of anti-uranium feeling. These actions would be coordinated towards major points for possible worker intervention, such as trade union conferences or the start of work for new mines. Through consultation with unions, workers and working-class families, the establishment of support groups and funds for workers and unions penalised for direct action against uranium mining. Plans to make parallel challenges to those by workers, such as simultaneous defiance of the Atomic Energy Act by trade unionists and community activists. Black bans of corporations or state instrumentalities by unionists could be coordinated with boycotts organised by community groups. With such a strategy, it is likely that the workers taking action would come under strong attacks from both corporations and the government. Preparation to oppose such attacks would depend on community mobilisation to demonstrate support for the workers in the media, in the streets, through informal communication channels and to the workers themselves. If direct action by workers began to be sustained through community support, it is quite possible that other channels for stopping uranium mining could come into play: the government - especially a Labor government - might back away from confrontation with unions supported by the community, or corporations might decide investment in this controversial area was too risky. Plans would be required to continue the campaign towards these or other avenues for stopping uranium mining. How does grassroots mobilisation provide a challenge to the structures underlying nuclear power? It challenges the division of labour and the role of elites, especially the role of political elites which have a corner on the exercise of social responsibility, by mobilising in a widespread way the social concern of ordinary people and by demonstrating the direct exercise of this concern for example by groups in the workplace. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the division of labour and the role of scientific elites through a challenge to the prestige and credibility of scientists who advocate nuclear power. As the nuclear power issue has been widely debated, it has become obvious to many people that the expertise of pro-nuclear scientists and engineers is tied to vested interests. The nuclear debate has greatly weakened the belief that 'the experts know best'. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the masculine rationality of dominant structures through calling contemporary values and attitudes to nature and to the future into question. Within the antinuclear movement, patriarchy has been challenged as at least some groups have addressed domination by men and developed egalitarian modes of interaction and decision-making. This sometimes has been fostered by nonviolent action training used to prepare for civil disobedience actions. The anti-nuclear movement has inevitably involved questioning the growth of energy use and development of programmes for a 'soft energy future' involving energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and redesign of communities to reduce energy requirements. The challenge to unending energy growth is a direct challenge to the state and capitalism, whose power is tied to traditional economic expansion. Mass mobilisation against uranium also challenges capitalism by bringing under scrutiny the rationale of pursuing profitability at the expense of social responsibility and by direct economic blows to corporate profitability. More fundamentally, nuclear power represents a potential new stage in the entrenchment of centralised political and economic control and of specialist knowledge in the service of elites. By challenging the political and economic rationale for nuclear power, and by making demands for local control over energy decision-making, a direct challenge is made to the power of the state and corporations. It is important to realise that none of these challenges on their own are likely to bring down these structures however much they may weaken them. Sufficiently many blows however over a sustained period could do so. Thus campaigns on the nuclear issue could begin or be part of a process of sustained challenge which could weaken them irreversibly. A grassroots strategy against nuclear power and uranium mining can be seen as a 'non-reformist reform': namely, it can achieve effective change within the system in a way which weakens rather than strengthens dominant structures, or which helps to prevent the entrenchment of new, more powerful structures. Such a strategy does not simply attempt to bypass the 'macro' level of existing structures in the way that some focusses on alternatives do, such as promoting changes in lifestyles only at the level of the individual. Rather such a strategy aims at interactions with existing structures in a way which goes beyond them.

Nuclear phase out solves immediate harms of nuclear power and enables a culture shift towards renewables – Empirics prove. Klein 14
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Print, 2014 EE

As we have already seen, the latest research on renewable energy, most notably by Mark Jacobson’s team at Stanford, shows that a global transition to 100 percent renewable energy-“wind, water and solar”-is both technically and economically feasible “by as early as 2030.” That means lowering greenhouse emissions in line with science-based targets does not have to involve building a global network of new nuclear plants. In fact that could well slow down the transition, since renewable energy is faster and cheaper to roll out than nuclear, critical factors given the tightness of the timeframe. Moreover, says Jacobson, in the near-term nuclear is “not carbon-free, no matter what the advocates tell you. Vast amounts of fossil fuels must be burned to mine, transport and enrich uranium and to build the nuclear plant. And all that dirty power will be released during the 10 to 19 years that it takes to plan and build a nuclear plant. (A wind farm typically takes two to five years .)” He concludes that “if we invest in nuclear versus true renewables, you can bet that the glaciers and polar ice caps will keep melting while we wait, and wait, for the nuclear age to arrive. We will also guarantee a riskier future for us all.” Indeed, renewable installations present dramatically lower risks than either fossil fuels or nuclear energy to those who live and work next to them. As comedian Bill Maher once observed, “You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash.”II. 32 That said, about 12 percent of the world’s power is currently supplied by nuclear energy, much of it coming from reactors that are old and obsolete.33 From a climate perspective, it would certainly be preferable if governments staggered their transitions away from high-risk energy sources like nuclear, prioritizing fossil fuels for cuts because the next decade is so critical for getting us off our current trajectory toward 4-6 degrees Celsius of warming. That would be compatible with a moratorium on new nuclear facilities, a decommissioning of the oldest plants and then a full nuclear phase-out once renewables had decisively displaced fossil fuels. And yet it must also be acknowledged that it was the power of Germany's antinuclear movement that created the conditions for the renewables revolution in the first place (as was the case in Denmark in the 19805), so there might have been no energy transition to debate without that widespread desire to get off nuclear due to its many hazards. Moreover, many German energy experts are convinced that the speed of the transition so far proves that it is possible to phase out both nuclear and fossil fuels simultaneously. A 2012 report by the German National Center for Aerospace, Energy and Transport Research (DLR), for instance, demonstrated that 67 percent of the electricity in all of the EU could come from renewables by 2030, with that number reaching 96 percent by 2050.34 But, clearly, this will become a reality only if the right policies are in place.
Collective action is key – interstate competition means each country will only enforce if the other does. Egenhofer and Behrens 11
Christian Egenhofer and Arno Behrens, Does Europe Need a Comprehensive Energy Policy?, June 2011, http://crawl.prod.proquest.com.s3.amazonaws.com/fpcache/861e5a3be48f4fea18b1b07af738e045.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJF7V7KNV2KKY2NUQandExpires=1473199318andSig
The nuclear meltdown in Fukushima has given renewed momentum to the anti-nuclear power movement across Europe. However, the degree of momentum varies greatly from country to country, and considering the geographically widespread consequences of a nuclear accident, it hardly appears optimal for one country to ban nuclear power while multiple nuclear power plants are still active in neighbouring countries. Even beyond the nuclear power dilemma, the economic and political externalities associated with energy policy are difficult to overstate. The contributions to this Forum look into the benefits expected from a comprehensive common energy policy for Europe and the problems which establishing such a policy would involve. Over recent years, the European Union has progressed at increasing speed towards a common energy policy. After five decades in which EU energy policy has been confined to the narrow fields of coal and nuclear energy, deriving its authority from the treaties on the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and on the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the Lisbon Treaty has finally established an EU energy policy competence. Article 194 creates a legal basis for European energy policy. Energy was one of the few areas in which the EU obtained new competencies, as opposed to a clarification and consolidation. This constitutes a remarkable turnaround compared to a situation in which member states have jealously been guarding their authority over energy. Immediately before and after entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, previously unthinkable progress towards a genuine EU energy policy, i.e. EU-level policy formulation has been made. The events in Fukushima threaten to derail this.  For many years, outside the remit of the ECSC and Euratom, EU policy has been limited to a series of broad horizontal (intergovernmental) policy goals such as promoting the rational use of energy and reducing Europe’s oil-import dependency. Periodic attempts to extend the EU’s jurisdiction in times of real or perceived threats to energy supplies remained unsuccessful. EU policies seldom went beyond a broad consensus on general objectives (e.g. in the case of energy on competitiveness, environment and external relations) and suffered from a lack of effective implementation. Successive attempts by the European Commission and some member states, supported by the European Parliament, to introduce an energy chapter into the EC Treaty (TEC) have consistently failed due to the general resistance of member states to granting further energy competencies to the EU. Although the Maastricht Treaty introduced a new article (Article 3u), which added “measures in the field of energy as legitimate Community activities”, this by no means constituted an EU competence or authority in the field of energy. A number of member states were reluctant to lose their real or perceived autonomy over energy policy due to the differing interests of producer and non-producer countries as well as the different structures of national energy sectors, best exemplified in the organization of network energy industries.1 For the same reason, the creation of a single energy market was originally neither part of the European Commission’s 1995 White Paper on the internal market nor of the Single European Act (SEA), the treaty revision of 1986 that led to the implementation of the internal market. However, this “anomaly” was already revised in 1988 by including energy in the internal market programme.2

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 2 | Opponent: Westwood RM | Judge: Chetan Hertzig
1AC

Part 1 is Framework

Evaluation of energy policy requires a social context. This requires situating nuclear power in the broader context of society and the economy to understand that traditional cost benefit assessment relies on flawed technological optimism. Glover et al 06 Policy fellow at center for energy
(Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Directs the Urban Studies and Wheaton in Chicago programs, selected to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Emerging Leaders Program for 2011-2013, *2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Head of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (Leigh Glover, Noah Toly, John Byrne, “Energy as a Social Project: Recovering a Discourse”, in “Transforming Power: Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict”, p. 1-32, http://www.ceep.udel.edu/energy/publications/2006_es_energy_as_a_social_project.pdf)

From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury ¶ pollution, and biodiversity loss,¶ 2¶ the origins of many of our least tractable¶ environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy¶ system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also ¶ accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric ¶ light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human¶ beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population—experience evening light¶ by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has ¶ left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects¶ promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 - 373). And there is the ¶ disturbing link between modern energy and war.¶ 3¶ Whether as a mineral whose ¶ control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil,¶ see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of ¶ extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the¶ significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance ¶ of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One¶ might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, ¶ including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of¶ modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing:¶ instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of ¶ euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that ¶ imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.4 One stream of euphoria has sprung from advocates of conventional energy, ¶ perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power ¶ who, early on, promised to invent a “magical fire” (Weinberg, 1972) capable¶ of meeting any level of energy demand inexhaustibly in a manner “too cheap¶ to meter” (Lewis Strauss, cited in the New York Times 1954, 1955). In reply to¶ those who fear catastrophic accidents from the “magical fire” or the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize “inherently safe¶ reactors” (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intentionally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimistic, forecasts can be heard from fossil fuel enthusiasts who, likewise, project¶ more energy, at lower cost, and with little ecological harm (see, e.g., Yergin¶ and Stoppard, 2003). Skeptics of conventional energy, eschewing involvement with dangerously scaled technologies and their ecological consequences, find solace in¶ “sustainable energy alternatives” that constitute a second euphoric stream.¶ Preferring to redirect attention to smaller, and supposedly more democratic,¶ options, “green” energy advocates conceive devices and systems that prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a¶ commitment to ecological balance. Among supporters are those who believe¶ that greening the energy system embodies universal social ideals and, as a¶ result, can overcome current conflicts between energy “haves” and “havenots.”¶ 5¶ In a recent contribution to this perspective, Vaitheeswaran suggests¶ (2003: 327, 291), “today’s nascent energy revolution will truly deliver power¶ to the people” as “micropower meets village power.” Hermann Scheer echoes¶ the idea of an alternative energy-led social transformation: the shift to a¶ “solar global economy... can satisfy the material needs of all mankind and¶ grant us the freedom to guarantee truly universal and equal human rights and¶ to safeguard the world’s cultural diversity” (Scheer, 2002: 34).¶ 6 The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity¶ (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers nuclear weaponry¶ and risks disruption of the planet’s climate is a product of promises pursued¶ without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and¶ ecological record of the regime’s operations. However, the discursive landscape has occasionally included thoughtful exploration of the broader contours of energy-environment-society relations. As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the¶ Machine, 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key¶ source of social and ecological alienation (1934: 196): The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the¶ most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the¶ multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and¶ the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its¶ natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the¶ irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals. By 1961, Mumford despaired that modernity had retrogressed into a lifeharming dead end (1961: 263, 248): ...an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: machine fodder and cannon fodder: surplus values and surplus populations... The dirty crowded houses, the dank airless courts and alleys, the bleak pavements, the sulphurous atmosphere, the over-routinized and dehumanized factory, the drill schools, the second-hand experiences, the starvation of the senses, the remoteness from nature and animal activity—here are the enemies. The living organism demands a life-sustaining environment. Modernity’s formula for two centuries had been to increase energy in order¶ to produce overwhelming economic growth. While diagnosing the inevitable failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity’s¶ supporters would seek to derail present-tense¶ 7¶ evaluations of the era’s social¶ and ecological performance with forecasts of a bountiful future in which,¶ finally, the perennial social conflicts over resources would end. Contrary to¶ traditional notions of democratic governance, Mumford observed that the¶ modern ideal actually issues from a pseudomorph that he named the “democratic-authoritarian bargain” (1964: 6) in which the modern energy regime¶ and capitalist political economy join in a promise to produce “every material¶ advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus one may desire, in¶ quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority” on the¶ condition that society demands only what the regime is capable and willing¶ to offer. An authoritarian energy order thereby constructs an aspirational democracy while facilitating the abstraction of production and consumption¶ from non-economic social values. The premises of the current energy paradigms are in need of critical study¶ in the manner of Mumford’s work if a world measurably different from the¶ present order is to be organized. Interrogating modern energy assumptions,¶ this chapter examines the social projects of both conventional and sustainable energy as a beginning effort in this direction. The critique explores the¶ neglected issue of the political economy of energy, underscores the pattern of¶ democratic failure in the evolution of modern energy, and considers the discursive continuities between the premises of conventional and sustainable¶ energy futures. The Abundant Energy Machine8 Proposals by its stakeholders to fix the modern energy system abound.¶ Advocates envision bigger, more expensive, and more complex machines to¶ spur and sate an endlessly increasing world energy demand. From clean coal¶ to a revived nuclear energy strategy, such developments promise a worldwide¶ movement to a cleaner and more socially benign energy regime that retains¶ its modern ambitions of bigger, more, and better. Proponents even suggest¶ that we might have our cake and eat it too, promoting patterns of energy¶ production, distribution, and consumption consistent with an unconstrained¶ ideology of quantification while also banishing environmental threats and¶ taming social risks that energy critics cite in their challenges to the mainstream. Consistent with a program of ecological modernization, the conventional energy regime’s architects are now exploring new technologies and¶ strategies that offer what are regarded as permanent solutions to our energy¶ troubles without harming our ecological future or disturbing the goal of¶ endless economic growth and its attendant social relations.
Thus the standards is minimizing the material conditions of social inequality.
Part 2 is The Nuclear Renaissance
We are in the midst of a global “nuclear renaissance”- corporate propaganda markets nuclear power as the only solution to climate change in order to shut down democratic deliberation about alternative energy futures. Wasserman 16 MA
(Harvey  Harvey Franklin Wasserman is an American journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate for renewable energy.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/29/ny-times-pushes-nukes-while-claiming-renewables-fail-to-fight-climate-change/ , 7-29)

The idea that nuclear power might fight climate change, and that environmentalists might support it, is a recent concoction, a disgraceful, desperate load of utility hype meant to defend the status quo. Fukushima, unsolved waste problems and the plummeting price of renewables have solidified the environmental community’s opposition to nuke power. These reactors are dirty and dangerous. They are not carbon-free and do emit huge quantities of heated water and steam into the ecosphere. The utility industry can’t get private liability insurance for them, and relies on the1957 Price-Anderson Act to protect them from liability in a major catastrophe. The industry continually complains about subsidies to renewable energy but never mentions this government protection program without which all reactors would close. 7. Not just nuke power but the entire centralized fossil/nuke-based grid system is now being undermined by the massive drops in the price of renewable energy, and massive rises in its efficiency and reliability. The critical missing link is battery technology. Because the sun and wind are intermittent, there needs to be energy storage to smooth out supply. Elon Musk‘s billion-dollar Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada and many other industrial ventures indicate major battery breakthroughs in storage is here today. 8. Porter’s NY Times piece correctly says that the massive amounts of cheap, clean renewables flooding the grid in Europe and parts of the U.S. are driving nuclear power plants into bankruptcy. At least a dozen reactor shut downs have been announced in the U.S. since 2012 and many more are on their way. In Japan 52 of the 54 reactors online before the Fukushima disaster are now closed. And, Germany has pledged to shut all its reactors by 2022. But Porter attacks this by complaining that those nukes were supplying base load power that must be otherwise—according to him—shored up with fossil burners. Here’s his key line: “Renewable sources are producing temporary power gluts from Australia to California, driving out other energy sources that are still necessary to maintain a stable supply of power.” But as all serious environmentalists understand, the choice has never been between nukes versus fossil fuels. It’s between centralized fossil/nukes versus decentralized renewables. Porter’s article never mentions the word “battery” or the term “rooftop solar.” But these are the two key parts in the green transition already very much in progress. So here is what the Times obviously can’t bring itself to say: “Cheap solar panels on rooftops are now making the grid obsolete.” The key bridging element of battery back-up capability is on its way. Meanwhile there is absolutely no need for nuclear power plants, which at any rate have long since become far too expensive to operate. Spending billions to prop up dying nuke reactors for “base load” generation is pure corporate theft at the public expense, both in straight financial terms and in the risk of running badly deteriorated reactors deep into the future until they inevitably melt down or blow up. Those billions instead should go to accelerating battery production and distribution, and making it easier, rather than harder, to gain energy independence using the wind and the sun. All this has serious real-world impacts. In Ohio, for example, a well-organized shift to wind and solar was derailed by the Koch-run legislature. Some $2 billion in wind-power investments and a $500 million solar farm were derailed. There are also serious legal barriers now in place to stop homeowners from putting solar shingles and panels on their rooftops. Meanwhile, FirstEnergy strong-armed the Ohio Public Utilities Commission into approving a huge bailout to keep the seriously deteriorated Davis-Besse nuke operating, even though it cannot compete and is losing huge sums of money. Federal regulators have since put that bailout on hold. Arizona and other Koch-owned legislatures have moved to tax solar panels, ban solar shingles and make it illegal to leave the grid without still paying tribute to the utilities who own it. Indeed, throughout the U.S. and much of the western world, corporate-owned governments are doing their best to slow the ability of people to use renewables to rid themselves of the corporate grid. For an environmental movement serious about saving the Earth from climate change, this is a temporary barrier. The Times and its pro-nuke allies in the corporate media will continue to twist reality. But the Solartopian revolution is proceeding ahead of schedule and under budget. A renewable, decentralized energy system is very much in sight. The only question is how long corporate nonsense like this latest NY Times screed can delay this vital transition. Our planet is burning up from fossil fuels and being irradiated by decrepit money-losing reactors that blow up. Blaming renewable energy for all that is like blaming the peace movement for causing wars. The centralized King CONG grid and its obsolete owners are at the core of the problem. So are the corporate media outlets like the New York Times that try to hide that obvious reality.

At the heart of this renaissance is a drive to colonize other countries to sustain our nuclear addiction – Wittman PhD 11

Wittman, Nora Ph.D. African American Studies “The Scramble for Africa's Nuclear Resources” New African No.507 June 2011

THE CURRENT NUCLEAR POLLUTION in Japan and the reactions of politicians and governments throughout Europe, the USA and Asia, even in the eye of disaster, indicate that they will never stop using nuclear power for military means and domestic energy generation and supply.¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ As Japan was battling to control pollution from its Fukushima nuclear plant, destroyed by the massive earthquake that hit the region on II March, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was firmly pronouncing that a withdrawal from nuclear energy was totally out of question for France and will not happen--80 of domestic energy in France comes from nuclear plants.¶ A few hours later, EU ministers deemed it sufficient to submit European nuclear power reactors to a so-called "stress test", and even then only on a voluntary basis. Apparently, the nuclear industry and their party allies throughout the political spectrum have been for a long time in a tight marriage that is far too beneficial for them to split.¶ Africa is currently the continent where nuclear power plants are least present. Only one such plant is present in South Africa, imposed by the apartheid regime in the 1970s. It is located in Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, yet surrounded by the city's ever-spreading suburbs, and was built by a French company. Like most nuclear power plants, it has experienced serious problems and its reactors have had to be shut down several times, especially since 2005.¶ Of course, the idea is not totally unconceivable that there could have been more severe incidents before, and that in apartheid times the white supremacist regime would not have made it a top priority to inform and protect the surrounding African people. In 2010, 91 members of staff were contaminated with Cobalt-58 dust in an incident that was said to be confined to the plant only.¶ In view of these facts and the recent developments, it should be clearer than ever that Africa must not follow the path to ultimate and lasting nuclear destruction that European, North American and Asian leaders seem to be determined to continue to take. Indeed, Africa may not only have the responsibility to save itself from this fate, but may also ultimately have the power to save the world from some of this otherwise pre-programmed nuclear disaster. How? By refusing to let its vast nuclear resources be exploited.¶ South Africa's only nuclear power plant, In Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, was imposed by the apartheid regime in the 70s¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ The nuclear powers are increasingly experiencing and preparing for problems of supply with the necessary crude nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium. Even though it is said that countries such as the USA, Russia and China have or rather had vast uranium resources themselves, all of these countries are now very eager to identify, secure and exploit mines for nuclear materials throughout Africa.¶ Africa, the continent endowed with the richest natural resources, has vast nuclear materials in its soil. Almost every African country is currently being mined or examined and prepared for nuclear exploitation.¶ According to a recent report updated in February 2011 by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), an environmental activist amalgamation based in Amsterdam, China National Nuclear Group, being that country's biggest nuclear power plant builder, signed a deal with the China-Africa Development Fund, a Chinese state-run institution, in 2010 to examine and exploit uranium resources throughout Africa.¶ French, Canadian, British, Swiss, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Australian and other companies are mining uranium, or have signed contracts to do so very soon with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DRCongo, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Chad, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia and other African countries. …

   
Nuclear power is justified through emergency framing- this creates a nuclear state of exception. Nuclear dangers are deprioritized in favor of remote cataclysms, which systematically warps cost benefit assessment and recreates warming. Kaur 11 Phd
(Raminder, A ‘nuclear renaissance’, climate change and the state of exception, THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 22, Issue 2)
Increasingly, nation-states such as China, France, Russia, Britain and India are pro-moting the nuclear option: first, as the main large-scale solution to developing economies, growing populations and increasing demands for a consumer-led lifestyle, and secondly, to tend to environmental concerns of global warming and climate change.1India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, speaking at a conference of atomic scientists in Delhi, for instance, announced a hundredfold increase to470,000 megawatts of energy that could come from Indian nuclear power stations by 2,050. He said, ‘This will sharply reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and will be a major contribution to global efforts to combat climate change, adding that Asia was seeing a huge spurt in ‘nuclear plant building’ for these reasons (Ramesh2009)’. The Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster of March 2011 has, for the time being at least, dented some nation-state’s nuclear power programmes. However, in India, the government has declared that it has commissioned further safety checks whilst continuing its nuclear development as before. Whilst the ‘carbon lobby’, including the fossil-fuels industries, stand to gain by undermining the validity of global warming, it appears that the ‘nuclear lobby’ ben-efits enormously from the growing body of evidence for human-based global warming. This situation has led to a significant nuclear renaissance with the promotion of nuclear power as ‘clean and green energy’. John Ritch, Director General of the World Nuclear Association, goes so far as to describe the need to embrace nuclear power as a ‘global and environmental imperative’, for ‘Humankind cannot conceiv-ably achieve a global clean-energy revolution without a huge expansion of nuclear power’ (Ritch nd). To similar ends, India’s Union Minister of State for Environ-ment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, remarked, ‘It is paradoxical that environmental-ists are against nuclear energy’ (Deshpande 2009). With a subtle sleight of hand,nuclear industries are able to promote themselves as environmentally beneficial whilst continuing business-as-usual at an expansive rate. Such global and national views on climate change are threatening to monopolise the entire environmentalist terrain where issues to do with uranium and tho-rium mining, the ecological costs of nuclear power plant construction, maintenance, operation and decommissioning, the release of water coolant and the transport and storage of radioactive waste are held as subsidiary considerations to the threat of climate change. Basing much of my evidence in India, I note how the conjunction of nuclear power and climate change has lodged itself in the public imagination and is consequently in a powerful position, creating a ‘truth regime’ favoured both by the nuclear lobby and those defenders of climate change who want more energy without restructuration of market-influenced economies or changes in consumerist lifestyle. The urgency of climate change discourses further empowers what I call the ‘nuclear state of exception’ which, in turn, lends credence to the veracity of human-centric global warming.

The nuclear state of exception bleeds into all aspects of society- it provides a model for authoritarian decision making that privileges technocratic experts and excludes the viewpoint of everyday citizens – legitimates oppression. Kaur 11 PhD
(Raminder, A ‘nuclear renaissance’, climate change andthe state of exception, THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 22, Issue 2)

Although Giorgio Agamben’s (2005) work on the normalisation of exceptional state practice has been much cited, it would appear that Robert Jungk anticipated some of his main axioms. Jungk outlines how the extraordinary, as it pertains to the state’s possession of nuclear weapons and the development of atomic industries since the mid-1940s, became the ordinary (Jungk 1979: 58). When associated with nuclear weapons, the state operates under the guise of a paradigm of security which promises ‘peace’ in terms of a nuclear deterrence to other countries and also legiti-mates the excesses of state conduct whilst abrogating citizens’ rights in the name of ‘national security’. Jungk adds that, in fact, state authoritarianism applied to all nation-states with nuclear industries: ‘Nuclear power was first used to make weap-ons of total destruction for use against military enemies, but today it even imperils citizens in their own country, because there is no fundamental difference between atoms for peace and atoms for war’ (Jungk 1979: vii). The inevitable spread of tech-nological know-how through a range of international networks and the effects of the US’ ‘atoms for peace’ program in the 1950s led to a greater number of nations constructing institutions for civilian nuclear power, a development that was later realised to enable uranium enrichment for the manufacture of weapons .Because of the indeterminacy between atoms for peace and atoms for war, the nuclear industries began to play a key part in several nations’ security policies, both externally with reference to other states and also internally with reference to objec-tors and suspected anti-national contingents. Jungk notes ‘the important social role of nuclear energy in the decline of the constitutional state into the authoritarian nuclear state’ by focussing on a range of indicators, including a report published by the American National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice in 1977 which suggested that:in view of the ‘high vulnerability of technical civilization’, emergency legislation should be introduced making it possible temporarily to ignore constitutional safeguards without previous congressional debate or consultation with the Supreme Court.(1979: 135) The bio-techno-political mode of governance encapsulates subjects into its folds such that it becomes a ‘technical civilisation’—a civilisation that, although promis-ing favourable aspects of modernity to the populace and development for the coun-try, is also to be accompanied by several risks to human and environmental safety that propel states, including democracies further towards authoritarianism. ‘Big sci-ence’—that is, science that is centralised or at least circumscribed by the state—and the bureaucracies surrounding it play a critical part in the normalisation of the state of exception, and the exercise of even more power over their citizens. Jungk elaborates on the routinisation of nuclear state violence, epistemological, juridical and physical :Such measures will be justified, not as temporary measures made necessary by an exceptional emergency … but by the necessity of providing permanent protection for a perpetually endangered central source of energy that is regarded as indispensable. A nuclear industry means a permanent state of emergency justified by a permanent threat. (1979: 135)This permanent state of emergency with respect to anything nuclear applies to restrictions on citizens’ freedom, the surveillance and criminalisation of critics and campaigners, the justification of the mobilisation of thousands of police men and sometimes military to deal with peaceful demonstrators against nuclear power, and a hegemony on ‘truth-claims’ where the nuclear industries are held as the solution to growing power needs whilst advancing themselves as climate change envi-ronmentalists. In this way, power structures and lifestyles need not be altered where nuclear power becomes, ironically, a powerful mascot of ‘clean and green’ energy. In India, the capitalist modality of the nuclear state was exacerbated by the ratification of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement in 2008, a bilateral accord which enables those countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to provide mate-rial and technology for India’s civilian nuclear operations even though it is nota signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. This has led to an expansionof the nuclear industries in the country where the limited indigenous resources of uranium could then be siphoned into the nuclear weapons industries. The imposition of the nuclear state hand-in-hand with multinational corporations in regions such as Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu (with the Russian nuclear com-pany, Atomstroyexport), Haripur in West Bengal (with the Russian company,Rosatom) or Jaitapur in Maharashtra (with the French company, Areva), without due consultation with residents around the proposed nuclear power plants, has prompted S. P. Udayakumar (2009) to recall an earlier history of colonization describing the contemporary scenario as an instance of ‘nucolonisation(nuclear + colonisation)’.The Indian nuclear state, with its especial mooring in central government, hasconducted environmental enquiries primarily for itself—and this so in only asummary fashion. In a context where the Ministry of Environment and Forestscan override the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report forthe first two nuclear reactors at Koodankulam in 2001, saying that the decisionwas first made in the 1980s before the EIA Notification Act (1994); or where theSupreme Court of India can dismiss a petition against the construction of thesereactors simply by saying: ‘There is no reason as to why this court should sit inappeal over the Governmental decision relating to a policy matter more so, whencrores of rupees having (sic) been invested’ (cited in Goyal 2002), then there is astrong basis upon which to consider the Indian state as a whole as a nuclearisedstate—that is, a state wherein matters relating to nuclear issues are given inordi-nate leeway across the board. The nuclear enclave consisting of scientists, bureau-crats and politicians, is both the exception to and the rule that underpins the rest of state practice. So even though we may be talking about a domain of distinct governmental practice and political technology as encapsulated by the notion of a nuclear state, it is evident that its influence spreads beyond the nuclear domain in a discourse of nuclearisation through state-related stratagems which have become increasingly authoritarian and defence-orientated since the late 1990s. In a nut-shell, discourses about the urgency of climate change, global warming, nuclear power and defence have converged in a draconian and oppressive manner that now parades itself as the necessary norm for the nation. Despite their particularities, machinations of the Indian nuclear state are also nota-ble elsewhere. Joseph Masco elaborates on the ‘national-security state’ in the USA(2006: 14). Tony Hall comments upon the ‘defence-dominated, well-cushioned(nuclear) industry’ in the United Kingdom (1996: 10). And on the recent issue of the construction of more nuclear power stations in Britain, David Ockwell observesthat a public hearing was only undertaken for ‘instrumental reasons (i.e. it was alegal requirement), as demonstrated by a public statement by then prime ministerTony Blair that the consultation ‘won’t affect the policy at all’ (2008: 264). These narratives are familiar across the board where a nuclear renaissance is apparent. But critics continue to dispute the hijacking of environmentalism by the state and argue that if climate change is the problem, then nuclear power is by no means a solution. Moreover, the half-life of radioactive waste cannot be brushed away in a misplacedvindication of the saying, ‘out of sight, out of mind’

And, Nuclear power is centralized and an arm of state technocrats that profit off of taking away local community control over energy. Martin et. Al 84

(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

Why was the nuclear option taken? Nuclear power is not an automatic or inevitable development. Technology is not neutral but develops in ways which correspond to social structures. The social structures which favour and in turn are favoured by nuclear power include capitalism, patriarchy, the intellectual division of labour and the state. The connections and reinforcements between these entrenched social structures is the reason why nuclear power is so hard to dislodge. In the early 1950s, nuclear power had not yet been shown to be technologically feasible, much less economically viable. In 1952 the Paley Commission in the US favoured heavy investment in solar technology as the energy option of the future. Despite such options, nuclear power was promoted over solar power. Nuclear power was originally promoted by states rather than corporations or workers. Nuclear power was attractive to governments and state bureaucracies for several reasons. Nuclear power, by virtue of its large size, centralised production of electricity and dependence on experts, was suitable for control by state bureaucracies. Solar home heating, by comparison, did not lend itself to such control. Nuclear power fitted neatly into the existing electricity generation and distribution system. Like coal or oil, it was a way of producing electricity at a central location for distribution through the established grid. Unlike oil, where there are several commercial outlets to chose from, we can only have one distributor's power points in our houses. When that distributor is the state - and most electricity grids are either state-owned or state regulated - the consequence for communities is a reduction of local control over their energy planning. The potential risks of nuclear power - for example from meltdown accidents at nuclear power plants - were too large to be taken by even the largest corporations. US companies only joined nuclear power projects after many subsidies and incentives were offered by the US state, including the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 which limited corporate liability in the event of reactor accidents. The pro-nuclear US Department of Energy estimated that in 1980 the US 'commercial' nuclear-power industry had been subsidised to the tune of $US37,000 million. Anti-nuclear groups have put the figure closer to $US100,000 million. For these reasons, nuclear power has been largely state-developed, owned and promoted. Only in the US do corporations have much of an independent role, and even there the industry is heavily regulated by the state. Most of those countries with the greatest stake in nuclear power - United States, Japan, Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Britain - are the most powerful economically. The state is not a unified entity. It incorporates the elected government, the military, the police, the legal system, state bureaucracies for regulating the economy and providing welfare services, and many other functions. Only some of these parts of the state have been active in promoting nuclear power, notably the energy bureaucracies, parts of the military and some politicians. An important pressure within these areas has come from politically active nuclear scientists and engineers. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power would not have been possible without the mobilisation of scientific expertise for the purposes of the state. Especially since World War Two, an ever increasing fraction of research and development finance has come from the state, and the orientation of science and technology has been increasingly oriented to the requirements of large corporations and the state. This science-state interaction has given rise to the technocrats, among whom the nuclear elites are prominent. Nuclear power simultaneously provides a power base for the nuclear elites while increasing state power. In capitalist societies, the state is structurally tied to corporate expansion and profit making. A key role of governments in capitalist countries is maintaining the conditions necessary for corporate profit-making. Indeed, the state has intervened in education and health, among other things, in order to ensure that capitalism is provided with a continuing work force, that is, healthy workers with the right skills and attitudes. Similarly, the state takes care of many of the other needs of capitalism, particularly subsidising the infrastructure (such as ports and rail lines) of large projects. In a way, large scale 'development' projects, such as nuclear power, can be seen as a test of the state's commitment to key corporations and to securing the conditions necessary for capitalist profitability. Despite the intimate connections between the state and the corporate sector, there is also a particular logic to capitalist investment. Projects which are capital intensive, large scale, centralised and suitable for monopolisation are favoured areas of corporate investment. Thus promotion of energy efficiency, or of decentralised and locally controlled energy sources, would do little for profits and are thus ignored (or undermined) by corporate management. Similarly, there has been little corporate interest in biological pest control because it does not have readily monopolisable sources and cannot be easily oriented to a single market consumer. In other words, profitability of this environmentally sound technology is minimal. Ultimately, investment decisions in a capitalist society reflect this preoccupation with profitability at the expense of social usefulness and environmental harmony. When corporations are confronted with the environmental pollution, concern for profitability dictates that efforts will be made to merely clean up the mess, rather than change the structures responsible for the pollution. Underlying the immediate role of the state and nuclear elites in promoting nuclear power are several deeper factors. One is the hierarchy and division of labour characteristic of modern corporations and state bureaucracies. Workers are kept under control by work organisation - such as the manufacturing division of labour - in which key decisions are made by elites and in which shopfloor participation is minimised. Technologies are often chosen or designed to enforce hierarchical control in the workplace. Nuclear power fits this pattern well. Other technologies besides nuclear power can be assessed according to whether they lend themselves to centralised or decentralised control. For example, many simpler weapons such as the rifle can be used either by soldiers or police on behalf of the state, or by forces opposing the state such as guerrillas. In contrast, nuclear weapons are typical of modern technological weapons: they require training and expertise to use and are generally inaccessible to small groups. Like nuclear weapons, nuclear power as an energy source lends itself to centralised control. In contrast, measures such as bicycle transport, passive solar design, solar heating, wind power or biogas production lend themselves to local community control. An emphasis on nuclear power must not obscure the fact that other energy technologies can also fulfil the same socially destructive role that nuclear power plays. Even the much heralded solar energy has the potential to be incorporated into these structures if it develops in certain ways. For example, one US corporation has proposed a satellite solar power station which would orbit the earth and beam down massive amounts of microwave radiation to be collected by a seven kilometre wide receiver on the earth's surface. Clearly a campaign which effectively does away with nuclear power does not automatically do away with centralised systems of political and economic control. The key distinction between technologies is not whether they are solar, fossil or nuclear, but whether they lend themselves to control by political and economic elites or to control by individuals and local communities. Scientific research on nuclear power also illustrates the effects of this division of labour. The isolation of social control and responsibility and concern in the hands of political elites, together with the structure of the scientific community, act together to produce a system which keeps scientists locked into socially destructive research. Science is not value-free. Politically determined goals, like winning a real-war or cold-war situation, can conveniently smother irksome consciences. At the same time, the intellectual challenges which scientific research presents provide a strong driving force for the commitment of individual scientists. Thus some scientists can work on weapons of mass destruction because the political decisions regarding these weapons are made at a distance, in an apparently legitimate forum. Such scientists may not consider that they have the right or expertise to question the political consequences of their work. It is this intellectual division of labour which focusses scientists' attention and their energies upon research problems which are divorced from their social consequences. Most scientists are ominously silent about the political side of the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly the undermining of civil liberties 'necessary' to safeguard nuclear power. Patriarchy - the collective domination of men over women - and other major social structures such as the state and capitalism mutually reinforce one another. It is important here to differentiate between masculinity, which is socially constructed, and maleness, which has a genetic base. Most men exhibit culturally specific masculine behaviour and this behaviour is often expressed as domination of women and the environment. Within state bureaucracies, corporations and the scientific community, women are discriminated against through job and career structures which concentrate men into the most powerful positions. Commonly, to gain entry to these positions, women themselves are forced to adopt a 'masculine approach'. It is at this level of power that masculine values emerge such as careerism, competitiveness, aggressiveness, the separation of tasks from emotion, and patterns of dominance. These values foster inequalities between people, thereby further concentrating power into the hands of an elite and forming the basis of exploitation of other people and nature. Nuclear weapons for example are a product of aggression and dominance relations as opposed to the more feminine values of nurturing and caring. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine the development of nuclear weapons in a society where feminine values predominated. On the one hand, the state and corporations mobilise patriarchal relations to serve their own domination, for example to split the workforce and impose hierarchical relations between men as well as between men and women. On the other band, groups of men mobilise state and capitalist interests to maintain their domination over women, for example using job seniority rules and the legal system to keep women in lesser occupations or the home. The intellectual division of labour, and the concept of professionalism which is used to justify it, also are associated with deeply rooted masculine values. For example, the way in which the scientific community is structured, particularly the impetus to continually publish ahead of rivals, promotes intellectual aggressiveness and competitiveness. In addition many of the characteristics of modern science can be grouped under the heading of 'masculine rationality'. This rationality sets up a dualism between society and nature, production and reproduction, the intellect and the emotions, and the technical and the political. 1. Nature, which in the traditional metaphor is seen as feminine, is regarded by masculine rationality as merely a resource to be exploited or an enemy to be subjugated by society. 2. Masculine elevation of the realm of production as the most worthwhile area of life reflects the dominant presence men have in this realm. At the same time the realm of reproduction is denigrated and so this area which women have traditionally dominated is denied status. Yet production and reproduction are both essential for a society's survival. The failure of masculine rationality to recognise the value of both production and reproduction rules out the possibility of a harmonious balance between current needs and long-term survival. Not surprisingly, this is the same balance which the existence of nuclear weapons undermines. 3. Masculine rationality also endorses the separation of the intellect and the emotions - the intellect being seen as superior - and the idea of emotional neutrality towards objects of study. When ordinary people become actively concerned about nuclear power, this style of rationality characterises them as emotional and ill-informed in contrast to the experts who it depicts as involved in 'responsible, objective, scientific endeavour'. Thus too scientists are encouraged to remain detached from the social consequences of their work. 4. Masculine rationality also connects with the sharp division between the realm of ends and that of means. This is reflected in turn in the separation of the technical and the political, and of the technical dimensions of a problem from its political ramifications. The separation is visible in the current division of labour. For example, it is necessary to have nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers, plant technicians and construction workers in order to conceive, design and build a nuclear power plant. However, these people are not required to consider the social and political consequences of their work; these 'goal' aspects are 'taken care of' by politicians. The dominant political system makes social responsibility and the determination of ends, which should be everyone's concern, the concern of a specialised few. This type of separation between the technical and the political is especially evident in dominant ways of organising work such as in bureaucracies. Domination of nature is another fundamental factor underlying state promotion of nuclear power. Modern industrialisation, science and technology are based on subjugating the environment, on extracting resources for human requirements. The orientation is one of exploitation for short-term use rather than harmony and understanding. Domination of nature, of women and of workers are all aspects of modern structures which maintain hierarchy and inequality and which serve the interests of elites. Nuclear power is one component of this system. To oppose nuclear power effectively requires addressing the structures in which it is embedded.

This reinforces all level of social division and perpetuates inequality. Martin et. Al 84

(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

Why was the nuclear option taken? Nuclear power is not an automatic or inevitable development. Technology is not neutral but develops in ways which correspond to social structures. The social structures which favour and in turn are favoured by nuclear power include capitalism, patriarchy, the intellectual division of labour and the state. The connections and reinforcements between these entrenched social structures is the reason why nuclear power is so hard to dislodge. In the early 1950s, nuclear power had not yet been shown to be technologically feasible, much less economically viable. In 1952 the Paley Commission in the US favoured heavy investment in solar technology as the energy option of the future. Despite such options, nuclear power was promoted over solar power. Nuclear power was originally promoted by states rather than corporations or workers. Nuclear power was attractive to governments and state bureaucracies for several reasons. Nuclear power, by virtue of its large size, centralised production of electricity and dependence on experts, was suitable for control by state bureaucracies. Solar home heating, by comparison, did not lend itself to such control. Nuclear power fitted neatly into the existing electricity generation and distribution system. Like coal or oil, it was a way of producing electricity at a central location for distribution through the established grid. Unlike oil, where there are several commercial outlets to chose from, we can only have one distributor's power points in our houses. When that distributor is the state - and most electricity grids are either state-owned or state regulated - the consequence for communities is a reduction of local control over their energy planning. The potential risks of nuclear power - for example from meltdown accidents at nuclear power plants - were too large to be taken by even the largest corporations. US companies only joined nuclear power projects after many subsidies and incentives were offered by the US state, including the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 which limited corporate liability in the event of reactor accidents. The pro-nuclear US Department of Energy estimated that in 1980 the US 'commercial' nuclear-power industry had been subsidised to the tune of $US37,000 million. Anti-nuclear groups have put the figure closer to $US100,000 million. For these reasons, nuclear power has been largely state-developed, owned and promoted. Only in the US do corporations have much of an independent role, and even there the industry is heavily regulated by the state. Most of those countries with the greatest stake in nuclear power - United States, Japan, Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Britain - are the most powerful economically. The state is not a unified entity. It incorporates the elected government, the military, the police, the legal system, state bureaucracies for regulating the economy and providing welfare services, and many other functions. Only some of these parts of the state have been active in promoting nuclear power, notably the energy bureaucracies, parts of the military and some politicians. An important pressure within these areas has come from politically active nuclear scientists and engineers. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power would not have been possible without the mobilisation of scientific expertise for the purposes of the state. Especially since World War Two, an ever increasing fraction of research and development finance has come from the state, and the orientation of science and technology has been increasingly oriented to the requirements of large corporations and the state. This science-state interaction has given rise to the technocrats, among whom the nuclear elites are prominent. Nuclear power simultaneously provides a power base for the nuclear elites while increasing state power. In capitalist societies, the state is structurally tied to corporate expansion and profit making. A key role of governments in capitalist countries is maintaining the conditions necessary for corporate profit-making. Indeed, the state has intervened in education and health, among other things, in order to ensure that capitalism is provided with a continuing work force, that is, healthy workers with the right skills and attitudes. Similarly, the state takes care of many of the other needs of capitalism, particularly subsidising the infrastructure (such as ports and rail lines) of large projects. In a way, large scale 'development' projects, such as nuclear power, can be seen as a test of the state's commitment to key corporations and to securing the conditions necessary for capitalist profitability. Despite the intimate connections between the state and the corporate sector, there is also a particular logic to capitalist investment. Projects which are capital intensive, large scale, centralised and suitable for monopolisation are favoured areas of corporate investment. Thus promotion of energy efficiency, or of decentralised and locally controlled energy sources, would do little for profits and are thus ignored (or undermined) by corporate management. Similarly, there has been little corporate interest in biological pest control because it does not have readily monopolisable sources and cannot be easily oriented to a single market consumer. In other words, profitability of this environmentally sound technology is minimal. Ultimately, investment decisions in a capitalist society reflect this preoccupation with profitability at the expense of social usefulness and environmental harmony. When corporations are confronted with the environmental pollution, concern for profitability dictates that efforts will be made to merely clean up the mess, rather than change the structures responsible for the pollution. Underlying the immediate role of the state and nuclear elites in promoting nuclear power are several deeper factors. One is the hierarchy and division of labour characteristic of modern corporations and state bureaucracies. Workers are kept under control by work organisation - such as the manufacturing division of labour - in which key decisions are made by elites and in which shopfloor participation is minimised. Technologies are often chosen or designed to enforce hierarchical control in the workplace. Nuclear power fits this pattern well. Other technologies besides nuclear power can be assessed according to whether they lend themselves to centralised or decentralised control. For example, many simpler weapons such as the rifle can be used either by soldiers or police on behalf of the state, or by forces opposing the state such as guerrillas. In contrast, nuclear weapons are typical of modern technological weapons: they require training and expertise to use and are generally inaccessible to small groups. Like nuclear weapons, nuclear power as an energy source lends itself to centralised control. In contrast, measures such as bicycle transport, passive solar design, solar heating, wind power or biogas production lend themselves to local community control. An emphasis on nuclear power must not obscure the fact that other energy technologies can also fulfil the same socially destructive role that nuclear power plays. Even the much heralded solar energy has the potential to be incorporated into these structures if it develops in certain ways. For example, one US corporation has proposed a satellite solar power station which would orbit the earth and beam down massive amounts of microwave radiation to be collected by a seven kilometre wide receiver on the earth's surface. Clearly a campaign which effectively does away with nuclear power does not automatically do away with centralised systems of political and economic control. The key distinction between technologies is not whether they are solar, fossil or nuclear, but whether they lend themselves to control by political and economic elites or to control by individuals and local communities. Scientific research on nuclear power also illustrates the effects of this division of labour. The isolation of social control and responsibility and concern in the hands of political elites, together with the structure of the scientific community, act together to produce a system which keeps scientists locked into socially destructive research. Science is not value-free. Politically determined goals, like winning a real-war or cold-war situation, can conveniently smother irksome consciences. At the same time, the intellectual challenges which scientific research presents provide a strong driving force for the commitment of individual scientists. Thus some scientists can work on weapons of mass destruction because the political decisions regarding these weapons are made at a distance, in an apparently legitimate forum. Such scientists may not consider that they have the right or expertise to question the political consequences of their work. It is this intellectual division of labour which focusses scientists' attention and their energies upon research problems which are divorced from their social consequences. Most scientists are ominously silent about the political side of the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly the undermining of civil liberties 'necessary' to safeguard nuclear power. Patriarchy - the collective domination of men over women - and other major social structures such as the state and capitalism mutually reinforce one another. It is important here to differentiate between masculinity, which is socially constructed, and maleness, which has a genetic base. Most men exhibit culturally specific masculine behaviour and this behaviour is often expressed as domination of women and the environment. Within state bureaucracies, corporations and the scientific community, women are discriminated against through job and career structures which concentrate men into the most powerful positions. Commonly, to gain entry to these positions, women themselves are forced to adopt a 'masculine approach'. It is at this level of power that masculine values emerge such as careerism, competitiveness, aggressiveness, the separation of tasks from emotion, and patterns of dominance. These values foster inequalities between people, thereby further concentrating power into the hands of an elite and forming the basis of exploitation of other people and nature. Nuclear weapons for example are a product of aggression and dominance relations as opposed to the more feminine values of nurturing and caring. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine the development of nuclear weapons in a society where feminine values predominated. On the one hand, the state and corporations mobilise patriarchal relations to serve their own domination, for example to split the workforce and impose hierarchical relations between men as well as between men and women. On the other band, groups of men mobilise state and capitalist interests to maintain their domination over women, for example using job seniority rules and the legal system to keep women in lesser occupations or the home. The intellectual division of labour, and the concept of professionalism which is used to justify it, also are associated with deeply rooted masculine values. For example, the way in which the scientific community is structured, particularly the impetus to continually publish ahead of rivals, promotes intellectual aggressiveness and competitiveness. In addition many of the characteristics of modern science can be grouped under the heading of 'masculine rationality'. This rationality sets up a dualism between society and nature, production and reproduction, the intellect and the emotions, and the technical and the political. 1. Nature, which in the traditional metaphor is seen as feminine, is regarded by masculine rationality as merely a resource to be exploited or an enemy to be subjugated by society. 2. Masculine elevation of the realm of production as the most worthwhile area of life reflects the dominant presence men have in this realm. At the same time the realm of reproduction is denigrated and so this area which women have traditionally dominated is denied status. Yet production and reproduction are both essential for a society's survival. The failure of masculine rationality to recognise the value of both production and reproduction rules out the possibility of a harmonious balance between current needs and long-term survival. Not surprisingly, this is the same balance which the existence of nuclear weapons undermines. 3. Masculine rationality also endorses the separation of the intellect and the emotions - the intellect being seen as superior - and the idea of emotional neutrality towards objects of study. When ordinary people become actively concerned about nuclear power, this style of rationality characterises them as emotional and ill-informed in contrast to the experts who it depicts as involved in 'responsible, objective, scientific endeavour'. Thus too scientists are encouraged to remain detached from the social consequences of their work. 4. Masculine rationality also connects with the sharp division between the realm of ends and that of means. This is reflected in turn in the separation of the technical and the political, and of the technical dimensions of a problem from its political ramifications. The separation is visible in the current division of labour. For example, it is necessary to have nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers, plant technicians and construction workers in order to conceive, design and build a nuclear power plant. However, these people are not required to consider the social and political consequences of their work; these 'goal' aspects are 'taken care of' by politicians. The dominant political system makes social responsibility and the determination of ends, which should be everyone's concern, the concern of a specialised few. This type of separation between the technical and the political is especially evident in dominant ways of organising work such as in bureaucracies. Domination of nature is another fundamental factor underlying state promotion of nuclear power. Modern industrialisation, science and technology are based on subjugating the environment, on extracting resources for human requirements. The orientation is one of exploitation for short-term use rather than harmony and understanding. Domination of nature, of women and of workers are all aspects of modern structures which maintain hierarchy and inequality and which serve the interests of elites. Nuclear power is one component of this system. To oppose nuclear power effectively requires addressing the structures in which it is embedded.

This view of nuclear power as a “quick fix” depoliticizes the global economy and energy system perpetuating massive inequality. Maciejewska and Marszalek ’11 Professor at Wroclaw Unitersity
(Malgorzata, institute of Sociology and Faculty of Social Sciences at Wroclaw University, and Marcin, Wroclaw University (Poland), “Lack of power or lack of democracy: the case of the projected nuclear power plant in Poland,” Economic and Environmental Studies Vol. 11, No.3 (19/2011), 235-248, Sept. 2011)
The mainstream discourse on nuclear power rarely takes up the question of how the global energy industry is organized. In the modern economy the production of energy around the world, which is supposed to be a kind of public good and to guarantee sustainable development, is planned and arranged under free market conditions. As a part of the global chain of extraction, production and trading, it is subordinated to the neoliberal logic on terms of which the society and economy is governed as a business enterprise with the logic of maximum interest and minimum loss. This imposes on different actors (from the international corporations to individual households) the discipline of competitiveness and profitability, resulting in the growth of existing inequalities as ‘the invisible hand’ of the free market economy legitimizes those subjects which are already in power. The modern global economy is based on irrational production and social inequalities where one can observe the processes of work intensification and the cheapening of labor. The markets are dominated by the unproductive virtual economy (See Peterson, 2002) where the major players are the financial institutions which, by means of sophisticated financial tools, buy and sell virtual products (currencies, stocks, insurances, debts and its derivatives). In effect, the major actors in the capitalist economy are the international investors who have the capability of financial liquidity, and operate with those sophisticated financial tools on the global stock market. Even when they lose those capacities because of indebtedness, the states and international organizations seem often to be willing to repair the damage by transferring the taxes paid by citizens. (This is actually happening now, during the financial crisis, when southern and western European countries are subjected to shock therapy under which governments introduce austerity measures.) The praxis of nuclear power producers and the discourse which legitimizes it is therefore reduced to one goal – increasing financial revenues. The Polish plan to build the atomic power plant seems to be another element of the competitiveness strategy. In the authorities’ mind set it could put Poland into the position of more a competitive, more dynamic economy, as expected by the European Union and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. The welfare of Poland’s or Niger’s society does not fit into that picture. The nuclear establishment does not take into account the most important aspect of sustainable  development: the overall reduction of energy consumption and therefore of energy production. Such a policy could bring a wide range of profits to the societies, the ecosystem, as well as the economy. On the contrary, the increase of power production and power use is one of the core concepts of pro-atomic discourse. This dogmatic belief draws the ideological line indicated at the beginning: the question of energy use and the ideas for solving this problem are seen only as a matter of technological challenges and the amount of financial and material means which have to be invested in them, but not as an effort to re-organize and restructure the modern economy. 

Part 3 is the Advocacy

Plan Text: All countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power. Countries that currently produce power from nuclear reactors will immediately begin phasing out all nuclear power. Lucas 12 Leader of the Green party of England, Wales
Caroline Lucas an British politician, and since 2 September 2016, Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, 2-17-2012, "Why we must phase out nuclear power," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/17/phase-out-nuclear-power MG
The inherent risk in the use of nuclear energy, as well as the related proliferation of nuclear technologies, can and does have disastrous consequences. The only certain way to eliminate this potentially devastating risk is to phase out nuclear power altogether. Some countries appear to have learnt this lesson. In Germany, the government changed course in the aftermath of Fukushima and decided to go ahead with a previously agreed phase out of nuclear power. Many scenarios now foresee Germany sourcing 100 of its power needs from renewables by 2030. Meanwhile Italian citizens voted against plans to go nuclear with a 90 majority. The same is not yet true in Japan. Although only three out of its 54 nuclear reactors are online and generating power, while the Japanese authorities conduct "stress tests", the government hopes to reopen almost all of these and prolong the working life of a number of its ageing reactors by to up to 60 years. The Japanese public have made their opposition clear however. Opinion polls consistently show a strong majority of the population is now against nuclear power. Local grassroots movements opposing nuclear power have been springing up across Japan. Mayors and governors in fear of losing their power tend to follow the majority of their citizens. 

Voting affirmative endorses a social critique of nuclear power. Only instrumental reform to the energy system can effectively spill over to broader systemic problems without being coopted. Martin et. Al, 84
(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

What is a strategy anyway? A strategy links the analysis of an issue with goals and objectives. Having chosen a strategy, it is implemented through appropriate actions. An action is a 'once-off' event such as a rally, march, blockade or lobbying a particular politician. A method, such as lobbying in general, refers to all actions of a certain type. Actions are coordinated together into a campaign. The campaign gives direction to a series of events. Given our analysis in section 1 of the structural forces responsible for the nuclear fuel cycle, the goal of stopping uranium mining must be closely linked to the goal of basic structural change in the state, capitalism, patriarchy and the division of labour. As such it must involve challenges to the structures which underlie nuclear concerns. The broader objectives for an anti-nuclear movement must include encouraging mass participation in decision making rather than elite control, decentralising the distribution of political power into smaller, local groups, and bringing about self-reliance based on environmentally sound technologies. These objectives involve fundamental changes to the way our society is organised at present. In effect, an anti-nuclear strategy must involve both actions aimed at stopping nuclear power and activities which challenge existing structures and help construct viable alternatives. In this context, the success or failure of an individual campaign must be viewed from the perspective of working towards these overall goals and objectives. The actions used by the anti-uranium movement fall into two main categories. Firstly there are actions which aim at convincing or influencing elites, such as lobbying or writing letters to politicians. Secondly are the actions such as rallies and blockades which usually involve more participation from the community. While such actions may be aimed at elites they are also important in educating or giving support to those who are involved. Lobbying. Lobbying is a direct attempt to convince or pressure elite decision-makers. It does nothing to challenge the state, patriarchy or other structures underlying nuclear power, but rather hopes to oppose nuclear power by 'working through the proper channels'. This leaves elite structures unchallenged and intact. Indeed lobbying is a form of political action most suited to powerful interest groups such as corporations and professional bodies. The state is the forum of the powerful, so for these kinds of groups lobbying often is an effective strategy. For small activist groups lobbying is useful only if it appears to be backed up by politically visible mass concern or mass action. In 1983, after the election of a Labor Government, the anti-uranium movement turned strongly to lobbying in an attempt to induce the Labor Caucus to implement the Labor Party platform. This effort was unsuccessful. Participating in environmental inquiries. In making submissions to the Ranger Inquiry, environmental groups made a concerted attempt to ensure that the issue of the Ranger mine was not divorced from the general issue of uranium mining and nuclear power, and that ultimate decisions were determined by the public rather than 'experts'. The Inquiry did in fact analyse the overall dangers of the nuclear industry and concluded that no decision on uranium mining should occur without public debate. These results helped fuel the ensuing widespread public debate on uranium mining in Australia. One reason for involvement in environmental inquiries is to challenge the role of experts in service to vested interests. The Ranger Inquiry commented on the bias of distinguished scientists who testified in favour of uranium mining. The Ranger Inquiry was unusual in making full use of broad terms of reference. Many environmental inquiries have institutional constraints which can make it questionable whether activists should spend much energy in that area. Many government inquiries with severely limited terms of reference offer few opportunities for activists to intervene effectively. There is not only the danger of being 'co-opted' if activists take part, but also the prospect that any structural challenges may be deflected by superficial concessions. Often such inquiries are not genuine and are only set up as window-dressing. For example, the Australian Science and Technology Council inquiry set up in November 1983 to investigate Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle has terms of reference which assume the continuation of uranium mining. Working through the trade union movement. In 1976 anti-uranium groups began a major effort to persuade trade unions and their Congress delegates to adopt and support anti-uranium policies. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress adopted an anti-uranium policy in mid-1977. Following the re-election of the Liberal-National Government in December 1977, anti-uranium groups focussed on persuading unions to implement the ACTU policy. However, the members of a number of unions - including some with anti-uranium policies - continued to work in the uranium industry. Some union leaders chose not to attempt to convince members to avoid or leave the industry, while other leaders supportive of the policies could not persuade members working in the industry or transporting its products. The efforts within the trade union movement have been strong to the extent that they have mobilised rank-and-file action. One of the most valiant efforts to stop uranium mining was by the Waterside Workers Federation - supported by the Seamen's Union and the Transport Workers Union - in refusing to load yellowcake for export from Darwin in late 1981. This direct action - an obvious challenge to the power of corporations and the state - was only called off when deregistration threats from the Liberal-National Government induced the ACTU to back down. Efforts through the trade unions have been least effective when they have depended on action only by union elites. An ACTU policy against uranium mining is not enough: it does not in itself challenge any of the driving forces behind nuclear power. When Bob Hawke was President of the ACTU, the executive showed itself disinclined to mount even a strong publicity campaign against the uranium mining industry. Working through the parliamentary system. Since 1976 a major focus of the anti-nuclear power movement has been the ALP. A massive campaign of publicising and discussing the issue at the party branch level resulted in an anti-uranium platform being adopted in mid-1977. Since that time there has been strong anti-uranium feeling within the party. In late 1977 the focus of the anti-uranium movement became the federal election campaign. During this campaign the anti-uranium movement used the resources of local anti-uranium groups to help the ALP in marginal House of Representatives electorates and for the Australian Democrats in the Senate. Many anti-uranium activists pinned their hopes on a Labor victory. But the Liberal-National coalition won the election, and the anti-uranium campaign appeared to have little impact in marginal electorates. After this defeat, many activists left the movement while a number of local groups effectively ceased to exist. The danger in relying too much on anti-uranium action by a Labor Government was demonstrated in mid-1982 when the Labor anti-uranium platform was watered down on the initiative of party power brokers in spite of continuing support for the platform at the party branch level. The danger was further demonstrated in November 1983 when Labor Caucus, at the initiative of Cabinet, gave the go-ahead for Roxby Downs, potentially the largest uranium mine in the world. In each case the impetus to maintain the anti-uranium policy came from the grassroots of the party, while it was labour elites who pushed pro-mining stances. Any Australian government, whether Labor or not, is strongly tied to the established state apparatus and to the support of capitalism. It is futile to expect the government on its own - whatever its platform may be - to readily oppose aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. This will occur only when there is strong and continual pressure from the grassroots of the party and from the community at large. Grassroots mobilisation. The anti-uranium movement has used a wide variety of methods to inform and involve the community. Commonly used methods include leaflet distribution, articles, talks, discussions, films, petitions, rallies, marches, vigils and street theatre. Major anti-uranium rallies and marches were held each year in most large cities, especially in the peak years of the uranium debate, 1976-1979 and again since 1983. A typical grassroots activity has been the creation of nuclear-free zones, which is mainly a symbolic action which helps raise awareness and encourage local groups to openly oppose nuclear power. This activity has worked closely with the dissemination of information through the media, local groups, the alternative press and schools. In 1983 the people in the Bega Valley Shire voted to declare their area a nuclear-free zone. To counter this popular sentiment, the Shire Council called in nuclear experts in order to argue the case against the nuclear-free zone. In this case the nuclear-free zone campaign provided a channel for exposing and challenging the role of nuclear expertise and elites in promoting nuclear power. Civil disobedience has also been used by the anti-nuclear movement. In the late 1970s, nonviolent direct action was used on several occasions at ports where uranium was being loaded for export. At the Roxby Downs blockade in August 1983, several hundred people gathered to express their opposition and hinder mining operations. Two distinctive features of this protest were the use of nonviolent action and the way in which participants formed themselves into affinity groups. These are a form of political organising which is consciously anti-elitist and aims to democratise all group interactions. Education, rallies, marches, petitions and civil disobedience sometimes do little to challenge the structures underlying nuclear power. For example, the rally outside Parliament House in October 1983 was primarily aimed at putting pressure on the Labor Party at a time when it was considering its uranium policy. Similarly, the 'tent embassy' located on Parliament House lawns aimed to prick the conscience of the ALP. One of the aims of the Roxby Downs blockade was to mobilise pressure to influence the ALP. On the other hand, grassroots mobilisation often provides a potent challenge to nuclear power and the forces behind it. All the lasting successes of Australian anti-uranium campaigns have depended ultimately on grassroots mobilisation, which provides a reservoir of commitment and concern which elite-oriented activities do not. In 1975, the virtue of mining uranium was largely unquestioned among the general public and the labour movement. It was simply unthinkable that a mineral which could be profitably sold would be left in the ground. Yet by 1977 the anti-uranium view had become widely understood and strongly supported. This change in opinion happened largely through the educational and organising efforts of the local anti-uranium groups and of anti-uranium activists within organisations such as trade unions, schools and churches. The resurgence of anti-uranium activity in 1983 owed much to the framework established in the late 1970s. The anti-uranium platform adopted by the ALP in 1977 was the result of organising and education at the party branch level. ALP stands and action against uranium mining have come consistently from the party grassroots, and this in turn has depended on anti-uranium sentiment in the general community. Support for uranium mining within the ALP has always been strongest on the part of party elites. The anti-uranium stands and actions by Australian trade unions have been stronger than in any other country in the world. Building on a tradition of trade union action on social issues, this has come about from persistent grassroots education and organising at the shop floor level. It has been the rank-and-file unionists who have taken the strongest anti-uranium stands, and the trade union elites who have backed away from opposition. When in late 1981 the Seamen's Union refused to load yellowcake in Darwin, it was the rank-and-file workers who took a stand and made the sacrifices. Does grassroots mobilisation then provide the most fruitful avenue for challenging the structures behind nuclear power? Yes, but the choice of methods is not straightforward or automatic. The problem with many grassroots methods used by the anti-uranium movement is that they have not been systematically organised and focussed as part of an overall long-term strategy. Instead, individual groups - and indeed the national movement - has often just looked ahead to the next rally, the next signature drive, or the next ALP Conference. While this approach does have some merit for example in saving an area from irreversible environmental destruction, it is inadequate as an approach to stopping mining or transforming the structures underlying nuclear power. For example the closing of Roxby mine would prevent the destruction of the surrounding ecosystem including mound springs inhabited by forms of aquatic life found nowhere else in the world. If the environment is altered, these unique creatures will be gone forever. However, the closing of Roxby in isolation would do nothing to prevent mining companies from setting up or increasing production in other places. If, on the other hand, existing power structures were challenged, and the closing of Roxby were carried out in conjunction with the closing of all uranium mines and a disbanding of uranium interests, then the safety of these ecosystems would be assured. What needs to be done is to focus on vulnerable points within the structures promoting nuclear power, and to devote efforts in these areas. What are the vulnerable points, then? Before looking at specific vulnerable points, let's examine the nuclear power issue as a whole. Nuclear power is a large-scale vulnerable point in the structures of the state, capitalism and so forth. In promoting nuclear power, and thereby entrenching centralised political and economic power, other consequences result which mobilise people in opposition: environmental effects (especially radioactive waste), the connection with nuclear weapons, threats to Aboriginal land rights, threats to civil liberties, and many others. In organising to oppose these specific threats, people at the same time can challenge the driving forces behind nuclear power. Here are a few of the specific vulnerable points which have been addressed by the anti-uranium movement. Threats to Aborigines. Nuclear power is alleged to be beneficial, but uranium mining is a severe cultural threat to Aborigines, who are already a strongly oppressed group in Australia. The anti-uranium movement and the Aboriginal land rights movements have been strengthened by joint actions, such as speaking tours. Centralised decision-making. Nuclear power has widespread social effects, but promoters of nuclear power claim the decisions must be taken by political and scientific elites. This runs counter to the rhetoric of Western democracies where ordinary people are meant to have a say in political decision-making. By moving in on this embarrassing contradiction, protests which demand a role for the public in decision-making about energy also challenge political elites and the political use of expertise. Capitalism and workers. Nuclear power is alleged to be good for the economy and for workers, but in practice massive state subsidies to the industry are the rule, and few jobs are produced for the capital invested. In challenging nuclear power as an inappropriate direction for economic investment, a challenge is made to the setting of economic priorities by corporations and the state. Capitalism also directs investments only into profitable areas, irrespective of their social benefits. If activists can undermine the profitability of marginal enterprises by delaying tactics or by jeopardising state subsidies, then capitalist investment can be shunted away from socially destructive areas. For example, direct actions against Roxby Downs could in the long run undermine its profitability and cause its closure. Grassroots mobilisation is usually the most effective way to intervene at vulnerable points such as these. A suitable combination of interventions then forms the basis for a strategy against uranium mining. But how can uranium mining actually be stopped? This is a good question. Grassroots mobilisation does not by itself stop uranium mining. The mobilisation must connect with major forces in society. There are several ways this can occur. Uranium mining could be stopped: (1) by direct decision of the government; (2) by the unions acting directly through strikes or bans to prevent uranium mining, export, or construction of nuclear plants; (3) through cost escalations, for example resulting from requirements to ensure safety or environmental protection, (4) by a referendum whose results were adhered to; (5) by legal action on the part of aborigines or anti-uranium forces; (6) by direct action to physically stop mining from proceeding. A critical element necessary to the success of any of these methods is the mobilisation of a large section of the public against uranium mining. Thus for example government action to stop mining would be likely to take place only if there were mass mobilisation on the issue. Similarly 'direct action' could only succeed if popular support were so great that the government refused to use sufficient force to physically overcome the resisters. To give an idea of how grassroots methods could be coordinated into a strategy to stop uranium mining, consider a hypothetical example. Suppose an analysis of the current political situation suggested that direct action by workers and unions gave the most immediate promise for directly stopping uranium mining, while government decision and cost escalations were also likely avenues for stopping mining. A grassroots strategy might include the following: Systematic community organising and education, to provide a basis in popular sympathy and support for direct action by workers. Points to be emphasised would include the right of workers to take direct action on conscience issues as well as work-related issues, and the importance of questioning decisions made solely on the basis of corporate profitability or state encouragement of large-scale economic investment. Development of alternative plans for investment and jobs based on input from workers and communities, and widespread dissemination of the ideas and rationale for the alternative plans. A series of rallies, marches, vigils and civil disobedience, aimed at both mobilising people and illustrating the strength of anti-uranium feeling. These actions would be coordinated towards major points for possible worker intervention, such as trade union conferences or the start of work for new mines. Through consultation with unions, workers and working-class families, the establishment of support groups and funds for workers and unions penalised for direct action against uranium mining. Plans to make parallel challenges to those by workers, such as simultaneous defiance of the Atomic Energy Act by trade unionists and community activists. Black bans of corporations or state instrumentalities by unionists could be coordinated with boycotts organised by community groups. With such a strategy, it is likely that the workers taking action would come under strong attacks from both corporations and the government. Preparation to oppose such attacks would depend on community mobilisation to demonstrate support for the workers in the media, in the streets, through informal communication channels and to the workers themselves. If direct action by workers began to be sustained through community support, it is quite possible that other channels for stopping uranium mining could come into play: the government - especially a Labor government - might back away from confrontation with unions supported by the community, or corporations might decide investment in this controversial area was too risky. Plans would be required to continue the campaign towards these or other avenues for stopping uranium mining. How does grassroots mobilisation provide a challenge to the structures underlying nuclear power? It challenges the division of labour and the role of elites, especially the role of political elites which have a corner on the exercise of social responsibility, by mobilising in a widespread way the social concern of ordinary people and by demonstrating the direct exercise of this concern for example by groups in the workplace. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the division of labour and the role of scientific elites through a challenge to the prestige and credibility of scientists who advocate nuclear power. As the nuclear power issue has been widely debated, it has become obvious to many people that the expertise of pro-nuclear scientists and engineers is tied to vested interests. The nuclear debate has greatly weakened the belief that 'the experts know best'. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the masculine rationality of dominant structures through calling contemporary values and attitudes to nature and to the future into question. Within the antinuclear movement, patriarchy has been challenged as at least some groups have addressed domination by men and developed egalitarian modes of interaction and decision-making. This sometimes has been fostered by nonviolent action training used to prepare for civil disobedience actions. The anti-nuclear movement has inevitably involved questioning the growth of energy use and development of programmes for a 'soft energy future' involving energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and redesign of communities to reduce energy requirements. The challenge to unending energy growth is a direct challenge to the state and capitalism, whose power is tied to traditional economic expansion. Mass mobilisation against uranium also challenges capitalism by bringing under scrutiny the rationale of pursuing profitability at the expense of social responsibility and by direct economic blows to corporate profitability. More fundamentally, nuclear power represents a potential new stage in the entrenchment of centralised political and economic control and of specialist knowledge in the service of elites. By challenging the political and economic rationale for nuclear power, and by making demands for local control over energy decision-making, a direct challenge is made to the power of the state and corporations. It is important to realise that none of these challenges on their own are likely to bring down these structures however much they may weaken them. Sufficiently many blows however over a sustained period could do so. Thus campaigns on the nuclear issue could begin or be part of a process of sustained challenge which could weaken them irreversibly. A grassroots strategy against nuclear power and uranium mining can be seen as a 'non-reformist reform': namely, it can achieve effective change within the system in a way which weakens rather than strengthens dominant structures, or which helps to prevent the entrenchment of new, more powerful structures. Such a strategy does not simply attempt to bypass the 'macro' level of existing structures in the way that some focusses on alternatives do, such as promoting changes in lifestyles only at the level of the individual. Rather such a strategy aims at interactions with existing structures in a way which goes beyond them.

Rejecting nuclear power opens up the potential for a more decentralized grid – it also makes renewables more effective because they no longer get blocked by the nuclear industry. Lydersen ‘15
Kari Lydersen writes for publications including The Washington Post, In These Times, Punk Planet and LiP magazine and is a youth journalism instructor based in Chicago. “Why the nuclear industry targets renewables instead of gas.” Midwest Energy News. 02/06/2015. http://midwestenergynews.com/2015/02/06/why-the-nuclear-industry-targets-renewables-instead-of-gas/ JJN
Why attack renewables? The advent of horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) about a decade ago provided an abundant fuel for natural gas plants which can quickly ratchet up and down to match demand. Cheap natural gas has driven the closing of scores of coal plants nationwide, and has had a major impact on the nuclear industry. So why isn’t the nuclear industry trying to curb the influence of natural gas? Energy experts point to straightforward political and business reasons and the complicated structure of the auctions where energy is sold. “The fact of the matter is natural gas and wind power both compete with Exelon’s nuclear generation,” said Environmental Law and Policy Center director Howard Learner. “Exelon can’t do anything about the market price for natural gas, so Exelon is training its fire on trying to stop and hold off wind power and solar energy development.” Some companies that own nuclear generation are also heavily invested in natural gas. Nuclear makes up 81 percent of Exelon’s generation and 54 percent of its capacity, while natural gas makes up 10 percent of its generation and 22 percent of its capacity. Wind and solar make up 1.9 and 0.3 percent of Exelon’s generation, respectively. “One thing to understand about the nuclear industry is that nuclear is also the coal and natural gas industry,” said Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which published the September 2014 report “Killing the Competition” about nuclear attacks on renewables. “Wind and efficiency are just boutique elements of their portfolios.” Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Thomas Kauffman said that the institute does not take a position on renewable energy subsidies and that it, “supports the Obama administration’s all-of-the-above energy strategy.” He declined to answer further questions and said that groups weighing in about recent developments have “a history of opposing nuclear power.” Colafella and Young of FirstEnergy said “we believe that a diverse mix of generating assets, including renewables, is needed to keep power flowing reliably and affordably.” “Low market prices – which are largely driven by low-cost natural gas, not renewables – are putting pressure on baseload generating plants that reliably deliver power to our customers around the clock,” they added. But, they reiterated they expect prices to rise, reviving the nuclear plants’ profits. Auction action Nuclear energy and wind power are both known as “price-takers” in the regional auctions where generators sell their energy. In these auctions, all sellers get the same price for energy sold at a given time. They are all paid the price of the most expensive bid that is accepted into the auction to meet demand. Nuclear plants and wind turbines both generate energy very cheaply, even though the overall costs of maintaining and running a nuclear plant are high. Before the fracking revolution, natural gas-fired power was typically much more expensive than other sources, so nuclear and coal generators would enjoy getting paid at the same rate as natural gas. These days natural gas-fired power is cheap, but wind is even cheaper. So a lot of wind on the market not only edges out other energy sources in the auction, it also can lower the price that all players are paid for their energy. The nuclear industry is striking back at wind in a specific type of market known as capacity, where energy providers are essentially paid for promising to be ready to provide energy at peak times. The PJM regional market has adopted changes that greatly increase the capacity payments that Exelon’s nuclear plants will receive, while making it extremely difficult for wind and solar to benefit from these payments. Exelon lobbied hard for the changes, which must still be approved by federal regulators. Paradigm shift Nuclear companies also appear to oppose the proliferation of distributed solar and other renewable generation for the same reasons that apparently motivate utility companies like We Energies in Wisconsin. Even if renewables make up only a small amount of generation, they represent a shift to a more decentralized energy system, less reliant on big baseload coal or nuclear power plants. While Exelon’s unregulated generation arm runs the nuclear plants in Illinois, Exelon is also a regulated utility in the process of acquiring Washington D.C.-area Pepco Holdings, which would make it the country’s largest utility. “It goes back to the concept of maintaining the old model of utilities as long as possible because you have control, as opposed to something out of their control like solar panels on rooftops,” said Dave Kraft, director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service. Ongoing improvements to the grid, including new transmission and increased grid storage, also pose a challenge to centralized power. When it gets easier to move electricity around or to store it on the grid, energy generated by the sun and wind can be better used when and where it is needed. Scared by solar? Exelon runs a 10 MW solar farm on Chicago’s South Side. But critics say this does not make the company a friend of solar. In different jurisdictions Exelon has argued that people with solar panels should not be paid the retail rate for energy they send back to the grid. This same position has been taken by utilities around the country looking to curb distributed solar generation; in most cases it has met with strong opposition from both the public and regulators. Exelon’s stance on solar has stoked resistance to the company’s proposed merger with Pepco. Exelon spokesman Paul Adams said, “As technology continues to evolve, it is important that we maintain a reliable, secure and universally available electric grid and ensure that energy policies do not permit shifting the costs of maintaining the grid from some customers to others, creating energy ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’” This is the same argument that We Energies has made in its highly controversial rate case in Wisconsin. Makhijani called Exelon’s point disingenuous, especially since the changes Exelon pushed in the capacity market will likely increase Illinois customers’ rates 11 percent or more. “It’s crocodile tears, the crocodile feeling very sorry for this deer it just caught,” Makhijani said. “Suddenly there’s this huge concern for the poor.” Louisiana-based Entergy has also promoted policies that pay low rates to customers with solar panels for the energy they send back to the grid. Entergy has nuclear plants that sell their power on the open market as well as regulated nuclear plants where the company is guaranteed to recoup its costs from ratepayers. Fighting over subsidies Nuclear proponents have long depicted tax breaks for wind and other renewables as unfair and a threat to reliability. In 2012 Exelon was expelled from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and its board, because of Exelon’s aggressive lobbying to end the federal Production Tax Credit which provided tax breaks crucial for wind development. “It was simply a fact that they no longer supported the aims” of promoting wind power, said AWEA spokesman Peter Kelley. “They were marshaling allies, teaming up with anti-wind organizations that have always been against wind energy.” Kelley said that cheap natural gas prices have had a much more profound impact than wind on the viability of nuclear plants. “You have to ignore the real reasons and exaggerate a few outlier moments when wind had any impact on their business at all,” to be convinced by Exelon’s arguments, Kelley said. “They’re ignoring the real reasons and blaming wind because they may think it’s politically expedient.” Adams said the Exelon “believes the transition to clean energy should be left to the free market, rather than through the government picking technology winners and losers through tax subsidies. We believe that the wind PTC has served its purpose and oppose its reinstatement.” Exelon had argued that the Production Tax Credit was causing a phenomenon known as “negative pricing” when power from its nuclear plants could not be delivered where it was wanted. In March 2014 AWEA released a study criticizing Exelon for what it called exaggerations and distortions on that issue. AWEA said negative pricing was rare, was caused more by congestion on power lines and other factors than by wind, and had nothing to do directly with the tax credit. Critics point out that the nuclear industry was built on government subsidies and continues to be heavily subsidized. A 2011 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists describes a host of past and ongoing nuclear subsidies related to construction, operation, insurance, waste management and uranium mining. “It’s the throwing stones from glass houses problem,” said Makhijani. “They have more glass in their house than any other industry.” Clean power plans Nuclear plants could benefit substantially from the clean power plans that states are developing in keeping with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s rules on reducing carbon emissions from power plants. Much depends on how the final EPA rules play out and how states decide to achieve their required reductions. The Nuclear Energy Institute wrote a letter in December to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy asking the EPA to treat avoided carbon emissions from existing nuclear plants the same way that reduced emissions are treated. And it noted that the EPA’s calculations show that per ton of carbon avoided, nuclear plants are cheaper than creating new sources of renewable energy. “Renewable energy, nuclear energy and hydro receive vastly different treatment under the proposed EPA rule, but nuclear energy does not receive appropriate credit,” says the letter. Environmentalists say that rewarding existing nuclear plants for their zero-carbon power is not in the spirit of the EPA rules. “Exelon has talked about redefining clean energy to include nuclear plants that produce large amounts of highly radioactive waste,” said Learner. “That too-clever definition is simply not credible with the public. To redefine clean energy to include nuclear power really doesn’t pass the straight-face test.” 

Nuclear and renewables directly trade off – nuclear caps progress on renewables. Main 15 JD
Ivy Main JD 11/12/15 Sierra Club, Power for the People VA: The Virginia Energy Blog, Ivy Main Freelance “Nuking clean energy: how nuclear power makes wind and solar harder”

Dominion Resources CEO Tom Farrell is famously bullish on nuclear energy as a clean solution in a carbon-constrained economy, but he’s got it wrong. Nuclear is a barrier to a clean-energy future, not a piece of it. That’s only partly because new nuclear is so expensive that there’s little room left in a utility budget to build wind and solar. A more fundamental problem is that when nuclear is part of the energy mix, high levels of wind and solar become harder to achieve.¶ To understand why, consider the typical demand curve for electricity in the Mid-Atlantic, including Virginia. Demand can be almost twice as high at 5 p.m. as it is at 5 a.m., especially on a hot summer day with air conditioners running. The supply of electricity delivered by the grid at any moment has to exactly match the demand: no more and no less. More than any other kind of generating plant, though, the standard nuclear reactor is inflexible in its output. It generates the same amount of electricity day in and day out. This means nuclear can’t be used to supply more than the minimum demand level, known as baseload. In the absence of energy storage, other fuel sources that can be ramped up or down as needed have to fill in above baseload.¶ Wind and solar have the opposite problem: instead of producing the same amount of electricity 24/7, their output varies with the weather and time of day. If you build a lot of wind turbines and want to use all the electricity they generate (much of it at night), some of it will compete to supply the baseload. Although solar panels produce during daylight when demand is higher, if you build enough solar you will eventually have to cut back on your baseload sources, too.¶ With enough energy storage, of course, baseload generating sources can be made flexible, and wind and solar made firm. Storage adds to cost and environmental footprint, though, so it is not a panacea. That said, Virginia is lucky enough to have one of the largest pumped storage facilities in the country, located in Bath County. Currently Dominion uses its 1,800 MW share of the facility as a relatively low-cost way to meet some peak demand with baseload sources like coal and nuclear, but it could as easily be used to store electricity from wind and solar, at the same added cost.¶ Without a lot of storage, it’s much harder to keep wind and solar from competing with nuclear or other baseload sources. You could curtail production of your wind turbines or solar panels, but since these have no fuel cost, you’d be throwing away free energy. Once you’ve built wind farms and solar projects, it makes no sense not to use all the electricity they can produce.¶ But if nuclear hogs the baseload, by definition there will be times when there is no load left for other sources to meet. Those times will often be at night, when wind turbines produce the most electricity.¶ The problem of nuclear competing with wind and solar has gotten little or no attention in the U.S., where renewables still make up only a small fraction of most states’ energy mixes. However, at an October 27 workshop about Germany’s experience with large-scale integration of renewable energy into the grid, sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy, Patrick Graichen of the German firm Agora Energiewende pointed to this problem in explaining why his organization is not sorry the country is closing nuclear plants at the same time it pursues ambitious renewable energy targets. Nuclear, he said, just makes it harder.¶ How big a problem is this likely to be in the U.S.? Certainly there is not enough nuclear in the PJM Interconnection grid as a whole to hog all the baseload in the region, and PJM has concluded it can already integrate up to 30 renewable energy without affecting reliability. But the interplay of nuclear and renewables is already shaping utility strategies. Dominion Virginia Power is on a campaign to build out enough generation in Virginia to eliminate its imports of electricity from out of state. And in Virginia, nuclear makes up nearly 40 of Dominion’s generation portfolio.¶ Now Dominion wants to add a third nuclear reactor at its North Anna site, to bring the number of its reactors in Virginia to five. If the company also succeeds in extending the life of its existing reactors, the combination would leave precious little room for any other energy resource that produces power when demand is low.¶ That affects coal, which is primarily a baseload resource. It would also impact combined-cycle natural gas plants, which are more flexible than coal or nuclear but still run most efficiently as baseload. But the greatest impact is on our potential for renewables.¶ This desire to keep high levels of nuclear in its mix explains Dominion’s lack of interest in land-based wind power, which produces mostly at night and therefore competes with nuclear as a baseload source. Dominion’s latest Integrated Resource Plan pretty much dismisses wind, assigning it a low value and a strangely high price tag in an effort to make it look like an unappealing option.¶ Dominion shows more interest in solar as a daytime source that fills in some of the demand curve above baseload. But given Dominion’s commitment to nuclear, its appetite for Virginia solar is likely to be limited. Already it insists that every bit of solar must be backed up with new natural gas combustion turbines, which are highly flexible but less efficient, more expensive and more polluting than combined-cycle gas, and add both cost and fuel-price risk.

Tournament: St Marks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Lynbrook SZ | Judge: Chris Castillo
Framework 

The resolution is a question of state obligations since the state alone has the power to prohibit nuclear power – prefer actor specific obligations since they differ – police have a duty to arrest criminals but civilians don’t.

This is different from individual morality – the state doesn’t have an intent since policymakers pass laws for different reasons, and doesn’t have the reflexive capacity of individuals so it can’t be valued intrinsically.  Policymakers have to use util. Goodin
Robert Goodin 90, professor of philosophy at the Australian National University college of arts and social sciences, “The Utilitarian Response,” pgs 141-142

My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more probable for them than private individuals. Before proceeding with the large argument, I must therefore say what it is that makes it so special about public officials and their situations that make it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism. Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices – public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices, but that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus – assuming they want to use it at all – to choose general rules or conduct.

So the standard is minimizing suffering

First, we should preserve our future ability to find moral truths.  Bostrom 12
Nick Bostrom, Existential Risk Prevention as a Global Priority, 2012.  NS

These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk. Let me elaborate. Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know—at least not in concrete detail—what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving—and ideally improving—our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value.

Second, Role-playing as the government is key to real world education—3 unique reasons. Joyner 99
Joyner 99 (Christopher, Professor of International Law in the Government Department at Georgetown University, “TEACHING INTERNATIONAL LAW: VIEWS FROM AN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS POLITICAL SCIENTIST,” ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law, Spring, lexis)
Use of the debate can be an effective pedagogical tool for education in the social sciences. Debates, like other role-playing simulations, help students understand different perspectives on a policy issue by adopting a perspective as their own. But, unlike other simulation games, debates do not require that a student participate directly in order to realize the benefit of the game. Instead of developing policy alternatives and experiencing the consequences of different choices in a traditional role-playing game, debates present the alternatives and consequences in a formal, rhetorical fashion before a judgmental audience. Having the class audience serve as jury helps each student develop a well-thought-out opinion on the issue by providing contrasting facts and views and enabling audience members to pose challenges to each debating team. These debates ask undergraduate students to examine the international legal implications of various United States foreign policy actions. Their chief tasks are to assess the aims of the policy in question, determine their relevance to United States national interests, ascertain what legal principles are involved, and conclude how the United States policy in question squares with relevant principles of international law. Debate questions are formulated as resolutions, along the lines of: "Resolved: The United States should deny most-favored-nation status to China on human rights grounds;" or "Resolved: The United States should resort to military force to ensure inspection of Iraq's possible nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities;" or "Resolved: The United States' invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a lawful use of force;" or "Resolved: The United States should kill Saddam Hussein." In addressing both sides of these legal propositions, the student debaters must consult the vast literature of international law, especially the nearly 100 professional law-school-sponsored international law journals now being published in the United States. This literature furnishes an incredibly rich body of legal analysis that often treats topics affecting United States foreign policy, as well as other more esoteric international legal subjects. Although most of these journals are accessible in good law schools, they are largely unknown to the political science community specializing in international relations, much less to the average undergraduate. *386 By assessing the role of international law in United States foreign policy- making, students realize that United States actions do not always measure up to international legal expectations; that at times, international legal strictures get compromised for the sake of perceived national interests, and that concepts and principles of international law, like domestic law, can be interpreted and twisted in order to justify United States policy in various international circumstances. In this way, the debate format gives students the benefits ascribed to simulations and other action learning techniques, in that it makes them become actively engaged with their subjects, and not be mere passive consumers. Rather than spectators, students become legal advocates, observing, reacting to, and structuring political and legal perceptions to fit the merits of their case. The debate exercises carry several specific educational objectives. First, students on each team must work together to refine a cogent argument that compellingly asserts their legal position on a foreign policy issue confronting the United States. In this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal dilemmas faced by policy makers. Second, as they work with other members of their team, they realize the complexities of applying and implementing international law, and the difficulty of bridging the gaps between United States policy and international legal principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting the latter. Finally, research for the debates forces students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign policy agenda and the role that international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. 8 The debate thus becomes an excellent vehicle for pushing students beyond stale arguments over principles into the real world of policy analysis, political critique, and legal defense.

Plan
Plan Text: Countries ought to prohibit the production of Russian state owned nuclear power. Blomme 15
Brian Blomme (Climate and energy communications manager for Greenpeace International), Count on the nuclear industry to have strange things happen, 7/7/15, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/Rosatom-Finnish-nuclear-project/blog/53456/ VC
There's more. Mikhail Zhukov heads up Inteco, which used to be owned by the richest woman in Russia, Yelena Baturina. She happens to be married to Yuri Lužkov, the former mayor of Moscow. Baturina sold Inteco to 50 state-owned Sberbank and to billionaire Mihail Shishkanov. Sberbank is an essential financier of Rosatom. Given these unsettling findings, Greenpeace warned the Finnish government to carefully examine the license application by Fennovoima to ensure it meets ownership criteria and is in best interests of the country. But the concerns are bigger than Finland. As our Finnish program manager, Sini Harkki, said: "This game that Fennovoima and Rosatom appear to be playing should be a concern to any country that is in discussions with Rosatom regarding building nuclear reactors. If the state corporation is ready to play a game with something as simple as ownership rules, what else will it play games with in building a dangerous reactor?" Rosatom is actively pursuing nuclear contracts around the world. And this warning is something many other countries should heed. In October 2014, Greenpeace released a report on the problems with Rosatom and the Russian nuclear industry. This ownership game appears to be consistent with the kinds of problems that plague Rosatom and should be required reading for politicians in any country thinking of cutting a deal with Rosatom. Fennovoima and Rosatom looked for years for investors. Yet it only took a few days to expose what appears to be a hoax, and a front for Russian capital. That's not the end of nuclear problems in Finland. The country is suffering through a protracted mess with Areva, the French nuclear company, over the building the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant. The project is years late and billions over budget with no end to the problems in sight. With lessons like those from Rosatom and Areva's Finnish nuclear projects, it is no wonder that in Finland the public majority is against nuclear. In spite of the people's will, Finland's current energy strategy relies on nuclear. But with ample renewable resources to be developed and the usual mess with nuclear projects, it is time to reconsider that strategy, listen to the will of the Finnish citizens, and move into the nuclear-free clean-energy future.

Rosatom’s nuclear empire is on the rise now. Kraev 16
Kamen Kraev. June 28, 2016. “Russia’s nuclear energy expansion – a geopolitical footprint?” http://www.neweasterneurope.eu/articles-and-commentary/2040-russia-s-nuclear-energy-expansion-a-geopolitical-footprint LM
The background Russia has currently 35 nuclear reactor units in commercial operation, generating roughly 25 gigawatts (GW) of power annually. This covered about 19 per cent of Russia’s total electricity production in 2015, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The bulk of Russia’s reactor fleet in operation has been commissioned in the 1970s and 1980s and has already been through lifetime extensions beyond the initial 30 years of service. Russia’s traditional market for nuclear technologies and nuclear fuel has been in Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia (at the time Czechoslovakia) have all built and commissioned a number of Soviet-designed pressurised water reactors of the VVER type while they were virtual satellites of the Soviet Union (USSR). Ukraine remains the second largest operator of Russian-designed rectors in the world with its fleet of 15 VVERs. Poland, Romania, and ex-Yugoslavia were the only “non-Western” European countries during the Cold War which did not use Russian reactor technology for power generation. Beyond Europe, Russian-designed nuclear reactors are being operated in India, Iran, and China. Nuclear ambitions Over the past decade state-owned nuclear corporation Rosatom and its network of subsidiaries have made direct or indirect commitments to build nuclear power plants in a number of countries around the world. As stated by a Rosatom official in a recent interview, Russia has signed intergovernmental agreements for the possible construction of 36 nuclear reactors overseas and is holding “active and consistent” tendering negotiations about 21 others. It is apparent that Russia seems to be looking away from Europe and its traditional markets in search of new business opportunities for its nuclear industry. During the Russia – ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summit held on 19 and 20 May in Sochi, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin said his country is ready to provide a Generation III nuclear reactor technology to countries in Southeast Asia. Another Rosatom official called for Africa to invest in nuclear energy during an annual energy forum in Johannesburg in February 2016.

Rosatom is terrible – safety issues, environmental degradation, prolif, and massive corruption. Ulrich et al. 14
 Kendra Ulrich, Jehki Harkonen and Brian Blomme, ROSATOM RISKS: EXPOSING THE TROUBLED HISTORY OF RUSSIA’S STATE NUCLEAR CORPORATION, October 2014, http://www.greenpeace.org/hungary/PageFiles/636986/rosatom_risks.pdf VC
As a Russian state-backed entity that oversees almost every aspect of Russia’s civil and military nuclear programmes, Rosatom is one of the largest nuclear vendors in the global market. Yet problems are rampant, due to its very size and the scale of its operations, its entrenchment within the Russian government and the revolving door between government officials and Rosatom top management, and the lack of truly independent oversight over the company. One of Rosatom’s predecessor entities oversaw the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Although the corporation now says that it has learned from the catastrophe, its more recent safety record exposes that little has changed in terms of its safety culture – both within Russia and in other countries to which it exports nuclear technology. Plagued with safety violations and accidents, lacking an adequate skilled workforce, using the equivalent of low-skilled, forced labour on reactor sites, and having an absence of adequate quality controls, Rosatom’s reactors pose an unacceptable risk to the public both within Russia and abroad. The pervasive corruption within the company that has come to light in recent years not only reveals the inordinate potential for the siphoning of public funds – some of which were intended to promote nuclear safety – into wealthy private accounts, but also casts serious doubts on the ability of the Russian government to ensure such gross violations do not occur again. Rosatom has enormous ambitions to expand its nuclear programme globally. Fuelled by Russian federal money and income from oil and gas exports, the state corporation aims to vastly expand its global nuclear fleet via its “Build-Own-Operate” model. This ambition seems less focused on investing in smart economic ventures than on other potentially motivating factors. Yet, even with the funding of the Russian government behind Rosatom, analysts have still raised significant doubts as to whether it is possible for any one operator to adequately finance so many nuclear projects – as the financial burden would be enormous if not impossible to bear. Rosatom’s claims are inflated but their ambition remains unchecked. Further, both within Russia and in other countries, Rosatom’s nuclear construction projects have not only been characterised by a lack of proper quality control and safety concerns, but also by delays and cost overruns – like the nuclear industry everywhere else. In cases where investors have put in their own funds, rather than leaving financing up to Rosatom, potential customers are either waiting for energy they thought they would have years earlier, or are left with an enormously growing expense. Alternatively, as in the case of Bulgaria, they end up terminating the project after realising that the bill had more than doubled.239 Finally, Rosatom’s spent-fuel reprocessing leads to large-scale releases of radioactivity into the environment and increased health risks to the general population, as well as to a major risk of accidents and to an even greater spread of contamination. The proposal to take back spent-fuel waste from reactors supplied by Rosatom but operated overseas not only fails to remove the risk at a reactor site – since spent fuel must be cooled onsite prior to transport – but significantly increases the risks to the public, including during transportation. At the same time, Russia’s fast-breeder programme – used to justify continued reprocessing and plutonium stockpiling – experiences significant delays and other problems, as has happened with other countries that have attempted to develop such reactors. The one result has been a greater risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, as stockpiles of weapons-usable plutonium have continued to increase in Russia. The on-going geopolitical crisis in Ukraine has highlighted the vulnerability of the nuclear industry to political developments. One major current problem arising from recent developments is that Rosatom could be prevented from transporting nuclear fuel through Ukraine. Rosatom presents major concerns as a business partner in every respect. From a financial, safety, political and security perspective, the company’s nuclear expansion ambitions both within Russia and abroad pose unnecessary and unacceptable risks to communities and potential customers alike. 

Accidents cause mass death and huge financial costs. Sovacool 08
Sovacool, Benjamin K. director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at the Department of Business Technology and Development and a professor of social sciences at Aarhus University. , and Christopher Cooper. "Nuclear nonsense: Why nuclear power is no answer to climate change and the world's post-Kyoto energy challenges." Wm. and Mary Envtl. L. and Pol'y Rev. 33 (2008): 1.

While the Chair of the Public Information Committee of the¶ American Nuclear Society has publicly stated that "the industry has¶ proven itself to be the safest major source of electricity in the Western¶ world,"" 9 the history of nuclear power proves otherwise. The safety record¶ of nuclear plants is lackluster at best. For one salient example, consider¶ that Ukraine still has a Ministry of Emergency, some twenty-two years¶ after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster warranted its creation."' No less¶ than seventy-six nuclear accidents, defined as incidents that either resulted¶ in the loss of human life or more than $50,000 of property damage,¶ totaling more than $19 billion in damages have occurred worldwide from¶ 1947 to 2008."' See Table B.¶ One survey of major energy accidents from 1907 to 2007 found that¶ nuclear plants ranked first in economic cost among all energy accidents,¶ accounting for 41 of all accident related property damage, or $16.6 billion¶ in property loss, even though nuclear power plants did not even begin¶ commercial operation until the 1950s. 442 These numbers translate to more¶ than one incident and $332 million in damages every year for the past¶ three decades. Forty-three accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl¶ disaster in 1986, and almost two-thirds of all nuclear accidents have occurred¶ in the U.S., refuting the notion that severe accidents are relegated¶ to the past or to countries without America's modern technologies or industry oversight." 3 Even the most conservative estimates find that¶ nuclear power accidents have killed 4100 people,' or more people than¶ have died in commercial U.S. airline accidents since 1982."' "Nuclear¶ power accidents have involved meltdowns, explosions, fires, and loss of¶ coolant, and have occurred during both normal operation and extreme,¶ emergency conditions such as droughts and earthquakes."4 6 One index¶ of nuclear power accidents that included costs beyond death and property¶ damage-such as injuring and irradiating workers and malfunctions that¶ did not result in shutdowns or leaks--documented 956 incidents from 1942¶ to 2007." 7¶ Using some of the most advanced probabilistic risk assessment¶ tools available, an interdisciplinary team at MIT identified possible reactor¶ failures in the U.S. and predicted that the best estimate of core damage¶ frequency was around one every 10,000 reactor years." 8 In terms of the¶ expected growth scenario for nuclear power from 2005 to 2055, the MIT¶ team estimated that at least four serious core damage accidents will occur¶ and concluded that "both the historical and the PRA probabilistic risk¶ assessment data show an unacceptable accident frequency."" 9 Further,¶ "tihe potential impact on the public from safety or waste management¶ failure... make it impossible today to make a credible case for the immediate¶ expanded use of nuclear power."4 51¶ Another assessment conducted by the CEA in France tried to associate¶ nuclear plant design with human error such that technical innovation¶ could help eliminate the risk of human-induced accidents.45' Two types¶ of mistakes were deemed the most egregious: errors committed during field operations, such as maintenance and testing, that can cause an¶ accident, and human errors made during small accidents that cascade to¶ complete failure.452 There may be no feasible way to "design around" these¶ risks. For example, when another group of CEA researchers examined¶ the safety performance of advanced French Pressurized Water Reactors,¶ they concluded that human factors would contribute to about one-fourth¶ (twenty-three percent) of the likelihood of a major accident.453¶ Consider that the two most significant nuclear power accidents,¶ Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, were human caused and then exacerbated¶ by more human mistakes.

US Heg
Russia and the US are breaking off ties in nuclear energy, each trying to prove their dominance and get an edge over the other. Kelly 10/5
Lidia Kelly. “Russia suspends nuclear agreement, ends uranium research pact with United States.” Reuters. October 5, 2016. http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN12521J JJN
Russia further curtailed its cooperation with the United States in nuclear energy on Wednesday, suspending a research agreement and terminating one on uranium conversion, two days after the Kremlin shelved a plutonium pact with Washington. The Russian government said that as counter-measures to the U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine, it was putting aside a nuclear and energy-related research pact with the United States. It also said it was terminating for the same reasons an agreement between its nuclear corporation Rosatom and the U.S. Department of Energy on feasibility studies into conversion of Russian research reactors to low-enriched uranium. On Monday, President Vladimir Putin suspended a treaty with Washington on cleaning up weapons grade plutonium, signaling he is willing to use nuclear disarmament as a new bargaining chip in disputes with the United States over Ukraine and Syria. "The regular renewal of sanctions against Russia, which include the suspension of Russian-American cooperation in the field of nuclear energy demands the adoption of countermeasures against the U.S. side," the Russian government said on its website. In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the United States had not received an official notification from Russia although he had seen media reports of the suspension of the research agreement. "If they're accurate, we would regret the Russian decision to unilaterally suspend cooperation on what we believe is a very important issue that's in the interest of both of our countries," spokesman Mark Toner said at a daily news briefing. "UNFRIENDLY ACTS" The Russian Foreign Ministry said the decisions were taken in response to "unfriendly acts" by Washington. They came two days after Washington said it was suspending talks with Russia on trying to end the violence in Syria. The agreement on co-operation in nuclear and energy-related scientific research, signed in 2013, provided the legal framework necessary to expand work between U.S. and Russian nuclear research laboratories and institutes in nuclear technology and nonproliferation, among others. The uranium agreement, signed in 2010, provided for feasibility studies into the conversion of six Russian research reactors from dangerous highly enriched uranium to more secure low enriched uranium. "We can no longer trust Washington in such a sensitive area as the modernization and security of Russian nuclear facilities," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. It said that should Russia decide on the feasibility of the conversion of any research reactors to low-enriched uranium, it will carry the work itself. But it warned the conversion may not be "an end in itself." "In some cases, including in the production of medical isotopes, highly enriched uranium is the most effective and renouncing its would be technically and economically inexpedient," the ministry said. The West imposed economic sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in 2014, followed by a pro-Russian insurrection in the east of the country. The breakdown of a ceasefire in Syria, where Russia backs government forces and the West supports rebel groups, has added to tensions.
US and Russia fight for influence in the Middle East is highly unstable with power capable of flipping for either side. Klapper 9/8
BRADLEY KLAPPER - Associated Press. “Russian Mideast push could hurt US influence, if talks occur.” US News. September 8, 2016. http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-09-08/russian-mideast-push-could-hurt-us-influence-if-talks-occur JJN
WASHINGTON (AP) — American influence over the Middle East could slip a notch after Israel and the Palestinians agreed in principle to Russian-organized talks in Moscow. That is, if the negotiations ever happen. Russia has clamored unsuccessfully for years to host such a gathering and the Russian Foreign Ministry's announcement on Thursday included no date or agenda for the future get-together. Making the meeting even more uncertain: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' demands that Israel first halt all settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, and release about two dozen Palestinian prisoners. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the preconditions. If the meeting occurs, it would surely rattle the region's tumultuous ground further. The United States has maintained a stranglehold over all Mideast peace processes since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, seen by Israelis and Palestinians alike as the indispensable mediator and only power that could guarantee a two-state solution. But the Obama administration doesn't appear to enjoy that recognition any longer. The degradation of America's standing coincides with its difficulty projecting its vision across the Middle East. On Syria, Washington has pleaded with Russia for a ceasefire even as Moscow advances the position of the Russian-backed government over U.S.-supported rebels. In the war against the Islamic State, the U.S. has been unable to secure a quick victory and is challenged by fighting among allies such as Turkey and the Kurds. In Yemen, the U.S. has lost hope of ally Saudi Arabia pushing Iranian-backed Houthis out of the capital by force. State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Thursday rejected the notion that the U.S. is losing primacy in the region. But he appeared skeptical that it was the right time for such a meeting in Moscovow. "We need to make sure that any face-to-face talks have the right climate in which to succeed in," Toner told reporters. He specifically cited Israel's ongoing settlement activity and Palestinian glorification of violence as hindrances to a peace settlement. Abbas has been fishing for the last couple of years for an alternative peace process, frustrated with President Barack Obama's inability to make any progress on a peace deal. He has welcomed a new French initiative that foresees a separate Israeli-Palestinian peace conference before year-end, but involving more global powers like last year's Iran nuclear diplomacy. He also wants U.N. Security Council action. Netanyahu, too, is making a statement by tentatively accepting the overture from Russia, which has traditionally pitted itself as the strongest advocate of the Palestinians among the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators. Washington is Israel's champion. The United Nations and European Union are somewhere in between. Netanyahu, whose relationship with Obama has always been frosty, is fearful the U.S. president may try to initiate a new process in his last days in office, or seek to use his remaining clout to wring Israeli concessions, Western officials with knowledge of the private diplomatic discussions say. As a result, Netanyahu has been trying to beat back any new American initiative he might see as threatening by starting a separate process first, according to the officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity. He has discussed a new track with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and floated different ideas to European leaders. None of these endeavors has been clearly defined. Netanyahu "likes the idea of a counter-initiative," said David Makovsky at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, while Russian President Vladimir Putin gets another opportunity to "poke the U.S. in the eye." The Palestinians seek to establish an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Netanyahu refuses to accept Israel's pre-1967 lines as a basis for border talks. There have been no meaningful Israeli-Palestinian talks since Netanyahu took office in 2009. The last round broke down in 2014 after months of fruitless, primarily indirect negotiations brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry. If a Moscow meeting takes place, the chances for substantial progress would seem slim. And that also may explain why American officials are tempering their comments. Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations, questioned whether Putin's peacemaking offer was serious. Nevertheless, he said in a recent opinion piece, the U.S. should let the Russian leader try. "Putin would almost certainly fail, tarnishing his vaunted image and likely angering Israelis and Palestinians," Miller wrote. But he said if Russia can "insert itself in the middle of the game, it would only reinforce the impression that Moscow is a key player and has exploited successfully the vacuum the Obama administration has created through what its critics charge is an abdication of leadership."

Rosatom acts in favor of increasing Russian influence over the Middle East. Eran et al 15
ODED ERAN - senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, served as director of INSS. YOEL GUZANSKY - a doctoral candidate in Internetional Relations. ZVI MAGEN - former deputy head of Nativ, Israeli ambassador to Ukraine in 1993, ambassador to Russia in 1998. “Analysis: Russian nuclear diplomacy in the Middle East.” The Jerusalem Post - This article originally appeared in INSS Insight No. 782. December 30, 2015. http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Analysis-Russian-Nuclear-Diplomacy-in-the-Middle-East-438838 JJN
During a visit to Egypt by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2015, Egypt and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in building the first nuclear power station in El Dabaa in northwestern Egypt. On November 19, 2014, the two countries signed an agreement that Russia would build four nuclear power plants in Egypt with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts each. Indeed, the discovery of a substantial reservoir of natural gas in Egypt’s economic waters will diminish the incentive to switch to nuclear energy production, as will the improved relations between Washington and Cairo; recently a rapprochement between the two countries occurred, with the removal of some of the American restrictions on arms sales that had been imposed on the regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. However, after the agreement with Russia was signed, Sisi declared in a speech recorded on Egyptian television that, “This was a long dream for Egypt, to have a peaceful nuclear program to produce electricity. This dream was there for many years and today, God willing, we are taking the first step to make it happen.” The main stumbling block in the way of the project is the question of financing. Egypt’s economic situation does not enable it to carry out a venture of this size, and it is doubtful that Saudi Arabia, which economically supports the Sisi regime, can finance this ambitious project, given the considerable budgetary pressures it is experiencing due to the drop in oil prices. Sisi declared that Egypt would repay the loan by selling the electricity produced by the reactors after they begin operating in 2022. Moscow is supposed to lend Egypt the money needed to build the reactors as part of a comprehensive agreement, which includes the supply of fuel for the reactors, maintenance, training, and repairs. Against this background, and in addition to Russia’s efforts to end the war in Syria, it is imperative to look at the other Russian diplomatic track in the Middle East – plans to build civilian nuclear reactors. Russia is not a new player in the civilian nuclear market in the Middle East, but the desire of Moscow and countries in the region to cooperate in this sphere clearly has become more acute, as reflected in growing Russian involvement in the sale of nuclear know-how and facilities in the region. This mode of action fits in with the overall Russian efforts to rehabilitate and strengthen its ties with countries in the region, following the freeze in relations during the “Arab Spring.” This effort is intended to serve Russia’s array of objectives in the region as well as in the global theater as they pertain to its rivalry with the United States. Russia’s military intervention in Syria is conducted within the framework of a coalition with President Bashar Assad’s army and Iran and its satellites, as part of its efforts to preempt the West in establishing diplomatic and economic cooperation with Iran. Russia’s actions in Syria are designed to combat Islamic terrorism, especially the Islamic State, in order to reduce the threat of extremist Islamic groups that are attempting to expand their influence within Russia’s territory. Russia’s major objective, however, is within the international sphere, and this includes influencing the future of Syria and taking a leading role in shaping the region. Indeed, Russia is interested in engaging in dialogue with the West, inter alia by obtaining bargaining chips for promoting a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East (Syria first) and eastern Europe. For Egypt, and for other countries as well, the Russian nuclear option is attractive because it does not present the demands and restrictions that are attached to the nuclear cooperation with the West. Relations between the United States and several of its traditional allies in the region have soured in the past five years; it appears that these allies are signaling to the American administration that they have other options, including nuclear ones. Egypt’s desire to develop a nuclear program is also linked to its determination to find long-term solutions for growing energy needs, such as building a civilian nuclear capacity like the one Iran is building, following its nuclear agreement with the major powers. Nuclear cooperation with these countries is a vital interest for Russia, which seeks to use this cooperation to overcome its budgetary distress, which has been aggravated by plunging oil prices. Russia also may fear that the nuclear agreement signed between the major powers and Iran is liable to open up Iran for competition with other western players with relevant capabilities and drive Russia out of the Iranian market. Turning to alternative markets could be one of the Russian responses to the new conditions that are liable to emerge in the region with the ratification of the agreement with Iran. Russia is therefore increasing its cooperation in this area not only with Egypt, but also with Iran.
Every nuclear reactor that goes up further sinks US influence in the region. Stratfor 15
Stratfor provides global awareness and guidance to individuals, governments and businesses around the world, We use a unique, intel-based approach to analyze world affairs. “Russia: Exporting Influence, One Nuclear Reactor at a Time.” Stratfor. October 7, 2015. https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/russia-exporting-influence-one-nuclear-reactor-time JJN
Russia's Nuclear Ambitions Rosatom's stated, if not intangible, goals in 2010 have gained traction over the past several years. At the end of 2013, Rosatom's foreign orders totaled $74 billion. In September 2015, Rosatom estimated the value of export orders reached $300 billion with 30 plants in 12 counties. In addition, Russia has memorandums of cooperation and deals at various stages of negotiation across the globe. From South Africa to Argentina to Vietnam to Hungary to Saudi Arabia, there appears to be no region where Russia does not seek to send its nuclear exports. Russia is no novice when it comes to using energy exports for political gain — see Russian natural gas exports to Europe. But as the game of pipelines continues in Europe, Russia is in a bitter standoff with the United States. In Russia's political chess strategy, numerous pieces are currently in motion. Economic pressure to lift sanctions seems to be hastening de-escalation in the Ukraine conflict. Meanwhile, Moscow is strengthening its presence in Syria through its more aggressive military stance. With hydrocarbon exports vulnerable, especially at times of low oil prices, exporting nuclear technology can provide Russia with another means of exerting influence. Nuclear power may never become as important as hydrocarbons, but it does provide a measure of political insurance as Russia attempts to maintain its global heft. Russia's nuclear sector did not face the same cutbacks that other energy sectors did because of sanctions. And throughout 2014 and 2015, Rosatom blazed a path toward several agreements favorable to expanding its nuclear power interests. Many of these areas of possible expansion are in geopolitically important countries, from Moscow's perspective. Middle East: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran In March 2015, the Jordanian government signed a $10 billion agreement that will allow Russia to build two nuclear reactors in the country by 2022. Unlike Syria, Jordan cannot provide Russia with a Mediterranean port. Still, a solid relationship with Jordan through nuclear power cooperation helps Russia keep a foothold in the Levant, regardless of the outcome of the Syrian civil war. Furthermore, as the world anticipates Iran's return to the global community once Western sanctions are lifted, the region is also preparing for the continued development of Tehran's civilian nuclear program. Russia consequently signed a framework deal in June 2015 with Saudi Arabia, Tehran's regional rival. Riyadh is eager to grow its nuclear sector, which is now only in the early stages, to 16 reactors over the course of the next 20 years. And Russia, naturally, is more than willing to help meet this goal. Yet despite emerging cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Russia also wants to maintain a presence in Iran. Iran signed a construction contract with Russia to expand its Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in 2014, and Moscow will not eliminate nuclear cooperation it has already established. Iran, however, could become the first battleground between China and Russia in terms of nuclear exports because Beijing has agreed to construct two plants in the southern Iran. Europe: Hungary and Finland One of Moscow's geopolitical imperatives is to have clout in Eastern Europe to ensure the security of the Russian core, a strategy especially evident during the Cold War. Hungary, once behind the Iron Curtain, is now part of the European Union. But growing anti-European sentiment in the country could provide Russia the opportunity to gain a better foothold there. Rosatom was selected to expand Hungary's Paks Nuclear Power Plant facility despite European objections. Finland, on Russia's northern border, also ignored EU objections and agreed to have Rosatom come in to build a nuclear power plant in the north. Given last year's rumblings about Sweden and Finland possibly joining NATO and how close Finland's borders are to St. Petersburg, Russia will remain vigilant in maintaining its influence in Helsinki. Rest of the World Moscow's nuclear export campaign has also touched the rest of the world. South Africa has a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Russia. Rosatom is believed to be one of the leading candidates, along with China, to build a new nuclear plant in the country, which has seen recent blackouts due to insufficient power. Elsewhere on the African continent, Ghana and Nigeria are also potential sites for future Russian-built nuclear power plants. Russia's push east for energy exports is not limited to hydrocarbons to China. Rather, several Southeast Asian countries — Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar and Indonesia — have signed either agreements for construction of plants or at least memorandums of cooperation for nuclear power. Finally, the export of nuclear power facilities follows Russia's broader plan of investing in Latin America. Moscow could potentially cooperate with countries for the mutual goal of countering U.S. influence in the region. Still, Russia and China could compete directly to bring nuclear power to the continent, undermining that goal. Russia's Secret Weapon Plans and ambitions are all well and good, but as Russia moves from the planning stages into actual construction and operation, we will see the true success of the scheme. Russia's economic downturn has made Western experts skeptical of Moscow's ability to finance all of these contracts. But Russia has beaten out Western firms because of more attractive financing in the past. U.S.-based firms have been further disadvantaged by the suspension of the Export-Import Bank's charter on June 30. While reinstating the Export-Import bank could come to a vote later this month, Russia's financial flexibility should continue to give it an edge. Some countries such as China and Iran pay for Russian power plants directly. Others such as Belarus, Bangladesh and Hungary depend on favorable loans. Jordan brought in Chinese banks to finance roughly 30 percent of its project in addition to the Rosatom's 35 percent share, and India has certainly benefited from Russian finance. High initial capital requirements are often a deterrent to adopting nuclear power, but Rosatom and its subsidiaries claim to have brought down development costs substantially. Requirements of a nuclear facility are site specific, meaning that each facility is unique. Repetitive production could drive down cost and while Rosatom does not exactly construct identical nuclear power plants, they do claim that the use of 3-D smart models has significantly increased speed of work, driving down their initial costs. Ultimately, it is a new business model that gives Russia the edge, one in which Russia builds, owns and operates the facility, as well as provides training and education. This alone could see Rosatom winning more bids, especially in countries with no previous nuclear experience. Turkey, poised to be an important transit state for Russian natural gas, will serve as a proving ground for the build, own, operate model. The geopolitical implications are obvious, as the model gives Russia a more permanent foothold in the country than just building the facility or importing the material would. Russia's desire for a global nuclear presence, however, will have to overcome several hurdles. Russian firms will continue to compete with Western ones in the near future, as well as Chinese producers in the coming years. South Africa is also an example of a country in which the build, own, operate model could fail, the big question being who will pay. While the Russian model may be attractive for Pretoria, which is not able to independently provide the capital for such facilities up front, it still requires the potential for a return on investment for Rosatom. South Africa has a poor track record of having consumers pay and that could prove a sticking point for its Russian partnership. Russia's own financial situation, while it has not yet hurt Rosatom, could eventually limit Moscow's ability to offer attractive financing options. But even with these obstacles, much like natural gas before it, nuclear power is only poised to augment Russia's global influence.
US leadership in the Middle East solidifies international peace – loss of influence causes war across the globe – leads to extinction. Bresler 15
Robert J. Bresler, Obama-led US withdrawal has destabilized the world, 6/24/15, http://lancasteronline.com/opinion/columnists/obama-led-us-withdrawal-has-destabilized-the-world/article_1c73c828-19d4-11e5-ab00-d32898937e9a.html VC
American leadership need not mean involvement in endless wars. Past history gives us examples. The Marshall Plan allowed worn-torn allied governments to provide their people with political stability and economic development. NATO was an effort to build Western European unity, end the quarrels that had produced two world wars, and deter Soviet aggression. The United Nations, disappointing in many ways, was a vehicle for broad international efforts against disease, illiteracy and regional wars. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs were designed to facilitate international trade, prevent currency wars and assist in economic development. These initiatives prevented another great power war, achieved a large degree of European reconciliation, and eased the transition for post-colonial countries in Africa and Asia. None would have happened without strong and persistent American leadership. The U.S. negotiated a series of defense treaties with more than 35 nations, designed to deter aggression, that also eased their burden of self-defense and allowed them to place more resources into the reconstruction of their economies. In the Middle East, the Arab States and Israel saw the U.S. as an honest broker, assisting in the negotiation of peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan. During the Obama administration there has been a steady American retreat from world leadership. NATO is far less effective. Allies such as Israel, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, the Baltic States and Iraq are no longer confident of American support. Hence, China, Russia and Iran are asserting hegemonic claims. The world is now torn by devolution and fractionalization. The forces of global and regional cooperation are in disrepair. The United Nations stands helpless against Russian aggression, civil war in Syria and Libya and atrocities by the Islamic State across the Middle East and North Africa; the European Union is facing possible revolts and threats of secession by the United Kingdom and Greece and waning allegiance in much of Europe; and NATO offers Ukraine no more than its good wishes as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military swallows the country bit by bit. Our allies are far from steadfast. Their governments are weaker, and vivid world leaders are hard to find among them. Putin, the insane leaders of the Islamic State and the Iranian mullahs have put fear in the hearts of our allies. Why are these second- and third-rate powers able to intimidate their neighbors far more effectively than did the far more powerful Soviet Union? Our democratic allies in Europe, lacking a clear sense of direction, are ruled by unstable coalitions. Even Germany, perhaps the strongest of our European allies, refuses to confront Putin in his efforts to destabilize Ukraine. When the Obama administration made concession after concession to the Iranians over its nuclear program, our negotiating partners in Europe lost any interest in taking serious steps to keep Iran out of the nuclear club. In the Middle East tribalism and religious fanaticism have left Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen virtually ungovernable. Iraq, left to its won devices by Obama’s withdrawal after American troops sacrificed so much to establish a nascent democracy, is now falling apart. In Egypt, a military regime is trying to forcibly contain the boiling pot that is the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf States, feeling abandoned by Obama’s rush to a nuclear agreement with Iran, are sensing the quicksand beneath their feet. Warlordism and radical Islam plague the economically depressed countries of sub-Saharan Africa. A combination of devolution and chaos becomes normal state of affairs absent a strong centripetal leadership. In the last half of the 20th century, America provided that force with persuasion, assistance, assurance and trust. As the Obama administration allows the U.S. to slip into the shadows world politics, the danger of war increases.
Belarus/Lithuania
Belarus-Lithuania relations rocky now – time is running out before Lithuania lashes out against the Russian built power plant. Sputnik 8/29
Sputnik News, Belarus's Russian-Built Nuclear Reactor Driving Lithuanian Officials Insane, 8/29/16, https://sputniknews.com/europe/20160829/1044745037/belarus-lithuania-nuclear-plant-conflict.html VC
Hinting that physical security and environmental concerns aren't really the central issues on her mind, Grybauskaite noted in a separate interview that the Belarusian NPP "is one of the tools which could be use used in an unconventional method against the Baltic countries." Instead of clarifying what she meant, the president vowed instead to discuss the issue in meetings with Baltic leaders, and with US Vice President Joe Biden, who visited the region last Tuesday. Vytautas Landsbergis, the veteran Lithuanian politician who became Lithuania's first head of state after the country declared its independence from the USSR, is no less hostile to the Belarusians' efforts, recently suggesting that the Belarusian NPP's construction amounts to "nuclear terrorism." Emphasizing that the European Union "and perhaps even NATO" must reach "a clear and tough position" against the plant, the MEP also hinted the real reason for Vilnius's concerns, saying that the Belarusian project harms Lithuania's prospects for economic development. Since Ignalina's closure, Vilnius has been looking for investors for the creation a new plant (called the Visaginas NPP), to be built using non-Russian technology and contractors. That project has since been described as frozen, if not dead. In 2011, Vilnius reached an agreement with Japan's Hitachi corporation to be a strategic investor in the plant; a year later, the project failed to garner the necessary support in a non-binding referendum, and has been deemed economically non-viable. Accordingly, as a commentary in Russia's Vzglyad online newspaper recently explained, Vilnius officials' hysterical commentary about safety and environmental concerns, along with their threats to bring Brussels and even NATO into the debate about the Belarusian NPP's construction, really appears to be a cover for their own failed NPP venture. Meanwhile, neither the International Atomic Energy Agency, nor the UN agency charged with observing trans-border environmental impact assessments, have supported Lithuania's claims. Accordingly, independent journalist Evgeny Radugin suggested that this combination of factors has to driven Lithuanian leaders into a panic. Earlier this month, the country's foreign minister, Linas Linkevicius, warned that Belarus "would not have the required trust, and should not hope for the sale of electricity from their unsafe nuclear power plant," presumably to Lithuania. "However, the realization of this goal is problematic," the journalist noted. "The Belarusian NPP will obviously go into operation before Visaginas." Russia has even offered Minsk the option of bringing the plant online earlier than planned. What's more, Radugin noted, the Lithuanian plant, if it's ever built, will not be able to compete with the Belarusian plant's prices for electricity. The Russian plant being built in Belarus features Generation 'Three Plus' power units. "Such stations are already operating around the world and have proven to be reliable and cost-effective." For this reason, Vilnius is attempting to act independently, introducing draft laws meant to prohibit Lithuania from purchasing Belarusian electricity, or allowing its transit through Lithuanian territory. Unfortunately, Radugin noted, having been outmaneuvered by Minsk and Moscow, all that's left for Lithuanian officials is "to engage in hysterics toward Russia and its partners."

Belarus is a critical country in Russia’s plans – they’re a key security asset in Eastern Europe. Lacroix 16.
Rejeanne Lacroix, Belarus’ Balancing Act, 7/28/16, http://natoassociation.ca/belarus-balancing-act/ VC
Belarus is an example of a state developing its geopolitical distinctiveness into a position as an important regional contributor. It occupies a discernible midpoint between ongoing fears of Russian aggression and NATO’s expanded involvement in Eastern Europe. Though small and relatively underdeveloped, Belarus’ unique history, strategic location and political leanings make it an indispensable component in the European security framework. Greater attention should be devoted to messages emerging out of Minsk as they offer a unique perspective on the concerns of Russian aggression. Closer examination of these memos reveals how a small state can relatively engage in both sides of a dispute and in doing so, increase their political capital. A simple glance at a map of Central and Eastern Europe reveals that Belarus is bordered by NATO members (Poland, Lithuania and Latvia), a conflict hotspot (Ukraine) and the main aggressor to European insecurity (Russia). Anyone with a keen interest geopolitics understands that such a strategic location offers both opportunity and danger. Official statements from the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs assert that the state does not feel threatened by NATO expansion or the establishment of the Eastern Partnership. In a step further, Minsk reaffirmed that it is willing to engage with the military partnership and hopes to act as a mediator. There is a clear understanding in Belarus that an intensification of conflict between Western powers and Russia is detrimental to its own stability. On the other hand, Belarus is vital to Russia’s national security strategy on its Western frontiers. Shared histories, Russian installations on Belarusian territory and the 1996 Union State agreement to harmonize relations between the two former Soviet states translates into a close relationship that Russia cannot bear to lose. Consequently, it is indisputable that the Belarusian military is inherently linked to the Russian Armed Forces. Belarus’ location and the nearby Kaliningrad Oblast extend Russian reach closer to their NATO adversaries and Europe in general. Russian military bases and radar systems in Belarus are even more important now to their security strategy as Western forces rotate in and out of the region as part of the Eastern Flank. As Belarus is a member of the Russian-organized Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), it represents the proximity of Eurasian security to European concerns as well. Dividing lines between the two adversaries have thus been blurred but this obscurity offers Belarus the prospect to shift relations in their favour. The political games between West and East extend into the economic realm as well. Belarus continues to seek and negotiate a normalization of relations with the European Union. When the EU lifted most sanctions on the post-Soviet republic in early 2016, President Alexander Lukashenko ordered that the regularization of banking and investment procedures with the supranational organization take precedence. A rapprochement between the two would result in a partnership agreement and a subsequent trade deal. Belarus is an important exporter of a variety of agricultural goods, machinery and other finished industrial products therefore their entrance into European markets would result in enhanced domestic economic stability. European Union member states, such as Slovakia, have offered their support in favor of the Belarusian lobby while Germany urges greater cooperation between Belarus and Europe. Nevertheless, full membership in the EU is a seemingly impractical pursuit. The democratization process inherent in the Copenhagen Criteria does not align with Lukashenko’s political principles. Besides this obstacle, it is apparent that Belarus is open to courting Western interests just as the West has its attention on a possible new market.

Increased Belarus-Lithuania tensions and Russian owned reactor completion both independently causes conflict and Russian annexation of Belarus – risks escalation into full scale war. Rekeda 16
Sergey Rekeda (Writer for Eurasian Chronicle), Lithuania Starts Nuclear Information War against Belarus, 8/1/16, http://russiancouncil.ru/en/blogs/eurasian-chronicle/?id_4=2627 VC
Lithuania sees the Ostrovets NPP primarily as a geopolitical rather than an environmental threat. Had this not been the case, why isn’t Vilnius worried about the critical safety situation at Ukrainian NPPs? Accordingly, the consequences of the Lithuanian struggle against the Ostrovets NPP could be geopolitical, rather than environmental. Of course, one could envision a positive scenario when the attacks on the power plant cease simultaneously with the parliamentary elections in Belarus and Lithuania this autumn. Implementation of the Ostrovets project will be depoliticised as much as possible and, after Grybauskaitė steps down as President, Lithuania and other Baltic states could become interested in the power produced at the Ostrovets NPP (thus far, the Lithuanian leadership is seeking to organise a “regional boycott” of the project). Yet the negative scenario is more likely. Lithuania will increasingly politicise the Belorusian nuclear plant construction. Vilnius will traditionally try to deliver a blow against Russia by calling the construction unsafe and Rosatom incompetent, and dubbing the project another of the “Kremlin’s tentacles” squeezing Europe. In the very near future, we might expect “expert reports” explaining that the Ostrovets NPP is intended to play a role in the “impending Russian annexation of Belarus.” There could be options, but the main goal will be to blame Moscow for its attempts to use the NPP to embroil Belarus in confrontation with the West, although the picture we see so far is the direct opposite. But, in its attempts to “teach a lesson” to Russia, Lithuania will inevitably tread on Belarus’ toes. The thing is that, today, the Ostrovets NPP is one of Minsk’s top priority economic projects. And Minsk is unlikely to look kindly at the attempts to interfere with its implementation. Moreover, the Belarus leadership has enough instruments to retaliate against Vilnius, up to and including re-routing its transit shipments from Klaipeda to Russian ports. Lithuanian attacks on the Ostrovets NPP could result in failure of the “engagement policy” the European Union has been attempting to pursue over recent years toward Belarus; these attacks could also lead to Lithuania losing another regional partner (following Poland and Russia) and incurring economic losses owing to Minsk’s retaliation. The Baltic politicians will hardly succeed in pulling the plug on the Ostrovets project. As paradoxical as it sounds, the Republic of Lithuania itself might suffer the greatest losses in this story.

Conflict in the Baltics goes nuclear before NATO even gets involved and spills over into the rest of Europe. Goldmanis 16
Maris Goldmanis (Master’s Degree in History, currently getting PhD, Russian Invasion in the Baltic States: Nightmare or Reality? 7/09/16, https://latvianhistory.com/2016/07/09/russian-invasion-in-the-baltic-states-nightmare-or-reality/ VC
There are two possible scenarios for invasion. First: full-scale invasion. Second: limited, non-direct like it’s happening in Eastern Ukraine. Full scale invasion would require much use of land, sea and air force. The main Russian objectives would be securing control over the air and blockade the Baltic Sea. Kaliningrad region would be used to blockade the land route trough Suwalki, Poland to Vilnius and Riga. Russia would not necessarily need to assault Suwalki itself, but rather secure control over Lithuanian towns of Kybartai, Marijumpole, Kalvarija and Druskinskai. First cities to fall would be Narva, Tartu, Balvi, Kārsava, Rēzekne, Krāslava and Daugavpils. Since Vilnius is close to Belarusian border it would be first Baltic capital to be attacked. The question of further advance will determined in the skies over Baltic, in the sea and the Suwalki gap zone. If Russia manages to secure access points to Baltic States it has chance to overrun the NATO forces trapped in encirclement. NATO forces in every way has technical and numeric advantage over Russia and using it NATO would eventually break the blockade and force Russia to retreat. So NATO objective is to prevent the Baltic blockade and cut off Russia from Kaliningrad. Air, Naval and tactical superiority is in need. A logical question then arises what about nuclear weapons? First no country has ever had experience of using nuclear weapon against country that also have them. However, the common sense and most military doctrines is to use nuclear weapons after the warring country has exceeded all conventional means. Their forces are defeated and are on rout and country is on breakdown. That is one of the actions Russia would possibly choose. However, Russia has far-fetched doctrine of using nuclear detonation to prevent NATO for acting further. A scenario in mind that Russia would use tactical nuke against military unit or city and then in fear of nuclear war would try to impose ceasefire advantageous for them. However, such strategy is a gamble. One country might possibly not respond and seek solution while other fires tactical nuke in response, creating response after response leading to ultimate nuclear annihilation. So using or not using nuclear weapons it’s a question of common sense. Second scenario is limited invasion like the one that takes place in Ukraine. Russia could try to form Russian peoples republics in Narva, Daugavpils and Rēzekne and try to instigate revolts in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. Same as in Ukraine Russia has large Russian speaking population to use for their goals, many of them including some Latvians would support pro-Russian revolt. Russia might still try to blockade Baltic sea and Suwalki gap, but it will refrain from taking all countries completely. Border areas would fall for Russian control and there Russia would try to create environment for frozen conflict that would bleed out three Baltic States and NATO trying to help them. Such scenario may avoid discussion of using nuclear weapons, however, Russia would have hard time to prove that there are no Russian troops in Latgale. The Consequences In both case of full and limited invasion Russia would fall under tougher sanctions and isolation. Russian populace at first would support the invasion., however basing on military success or failures it would change drastically. Victory if such is possible would lead to Russia as totalitarian fortress in opposition against western block for times to come. Defeat would cause an unpredictable series of events, like state breakdown, civil war and foreign intervention. Limited frozen conflict in Baltic states will lead to same Russian totalitarianism and isolation only to hope find agreement over the conflict. Failure and loss of national prestige will leave its regime vulnerable. For Baltic States its means great loses of lives, destruction of infrastructure and economical breakdown. In some ways the limited invasion and frozen conflict would be more crucial as it would be a constant bleed out. For the world it would mean the danger of WW3. Not to mention fear of use of nuclear weapon, the conflict might spread to Poland, Caucasus, Moldovo everywhere where NATO and Russian troops might encounter each other. This would be major political and economical disruption for EU countries and US and UK that are already plagued by social disturbances. By all means such conflict would be highly disadvantageous for both sides.

Belarusian annexation leads to Russia cutting the Baltic States off from the rest of Western Europe – causes conflict with NATO. Goldmanis 16
Maris Goldmanis (Master’s Degree in History, currently getting PhD, Russian Invasion in the Baltic States: Nightmare or Reality? 7/09/16, https://latvianhistory.com/2016/07/09/russian-invasion-in-the-baltic-states-nightmare-or-reality/ VC
Another point of argument is Belarus. Belarus is one of the most loyal allied states to Russia, not to mention Armenia. It has force of 62,000 active men and woman, sizable tank and air force. Whats more to add to importance is that Belarus hosts Russian troops and probably will host more as answer to NATO buildup. While Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko officially seeks a partnership with EU countries he has stated many times that in case of Russian conflict with NATO Belarus will side with Russia and take direct part. That means Belarusian army is a threat to Latvian eastern region of Latgale and to Lithuania particularly to Lazdijai and Druskinkai municipalities along the Polish border that have Belarusian border on the east and Russian border on the east. Presumably both forces could attempt to take the region to cut off Baltic States from Poland and Western Europe. So far there has been insignificant opposition towards Russian military presence among Belarusian society. That could change if economic difficulties deepen for Belarus. Two nearby Scandinavian countries Sweden and Finland with sizable military, but are not NATO members are concerned over worsening security issues in the region. There are many in both countries who advice to join NATO or at least expand the cooperation with NATO. Sweden that has maintained long history of neutrality and now it as the crossroads. Russia knows this and ha begun campaign of intimidation against Sweden to weaken their will to join NATO. Finland has very long border with Russia and historical policy of keeping neutrality with Russia, however that may change at some point and how Finland would react to the assault against ethnically close Estonia? So involvement of these two countries remains a question. Russia’s reasons for invasion. For and against. Baltic States provides almost no valuable natural resources for Russia to plunder. Financial gains might be the worth, however Russia already gains from Baltic States by trade, transit and gas supplies. Baltic States are trying to shake off reliance on Russian energy export, most successful in this matter is Lithuania. That’s way as same in Ukraine, Russia’s goal is to prevent Baltic States independence on energy sources and that can be done by multiple means. One of the main reason for invasions are political and emotional. Baltic States was possession of Russian Empire and was under Soviet occupation for most of XX century. Moscow highly regarded the European cultured territory and invested much in their industrialization and militarization. Now what is left is mostly empty carcasses of abandoned factories and war bases but what was left as inheritance was large numbers of Russian speaking immigrants in Latvia and Estonia. Both countries in early nighties did crucial and disputable actions to deny citizenship for most of these people creating a massive disappointment towards Latvian and Estonian ethnic population. The creation of large non-citizen community had political reason – Latvian national parties feared that Russian speaking voters could elect anti-western political force that would disrupt Latvian and Estonian path to NATO and US. In last 20 years the naturalization laws have allowed non citizens to obtain citizenship and indeed most of them vote for parties supporting Russia. While still significant size of non citizens remain and they are material for Russian special foreign policy to support Russian speakers outside Russia.

Russia-NATO war due to Baltic annexation is the most likely scenario for extinction – it spirals out of control and no one knows what’s going on. Thompson 16
Loren B. Thompson (Chief Operating Officer of the non-profit Lexington Institute and Chief Executive Officer of Source Associates, a for-profit consultancy. Prior to holding his present positions, he was Deputy Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and taught graduate-level courses in strategy, technology and media affairs at Georgetown. He has also taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government), Why The Baltic States Are Where Nuclear War Is Most Likely To Begin, 7/20/16, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-the-baltic-states-are-where-nuclear-war-most-likely-17044?page=2 VC
However, the possibility of nuclear war between America and Russia not only still exists, but is probably growing.  And the place where it is most likely to begin is in a future military confrontation over three small Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  Since those nations and several other Eastern European states joined NATO in 2004, the United States has been committed to defending their freedom and territorial integrity under Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty. Because NATO from its inception was aimed at containing the expansion of a nuclear country -- Russia -- a vital part of the U.S. security commitment to Europe consists of Washington's willingness to use its nuclear arsenal in defense of allies. The formal name for that strategy is "extended deterrence," and since 2004 it has included the Baltic states. Simply stated, the United States seeks to deter aggression or blackmail against NATO allies from a nuclear-armed Russia by threatening to use atomic weapons. The Obama Administration's 2010 Nuclear Posture Review confirmed that extended deterrence remains a pillar of U.S. global strategy. Although the credibility of extended deterrence ultimately resides in the U.S. strategic "triad" of long-range bombers and missiles, the posture review explicitly stated that the U.S. would preserve the ability to deploy nuclear weapons with suitably equipped tactical fighters in places like Europe. According to Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. currently deploys about 200 B61 nuclear gravity bombs in Europe for use by American or allied forces in a future East-West war. The weapons are receiving life-extension modifications that will allow their use for decades to come, first on F-16 fighters and later on the stealthy F-35 fighter. Russia also deploys a sizable number of so-called "non-strategic" nuclear weapons in the European theater, although like the U.S. it does not disclose numbers or locations. While nuclear weapons could potentially be used in any number of future warfighting scenarios, there are multiple reasons to suspect that the greatest danger exists with regard to the three Baltic states. Here are eight of those reasons. First, both Washington and Moscow assign high strategic significance to the future disposition of the Baltic states. From Moscow's perspective, the three states are located close to the centers of Russian political and military power, and therefore are a potential base for devastating attacks. For instance, the distance between Lithuania's capital of Vilnius and Moscow is less than 500 miles -- a short trip for a supersonic aircraft. From Washington's perspective, failure to protect the Baltic states from Russian aggression could lead to the unraveling of America's most important alliance. Second, Washington has been very public about it commitment to the Baltic states. For instance, in 2014 President Obama stated during a visit to Estonia that defense of the three countries' capitals was "just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London." That is an extraordinary assertion considering that the population of metropolitan London (about 8 million) is greater than that of all three Baltic states combined (about 6 million), and that the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea is so close to the Russian heartland. Third, there is a disconnect between the rhetoric that Washington applies to Baltic security and the tactical situation that would likely obtain in a future war. Russia has massive local superiority in every form of military force, and the topography of the three states presents few obstacles to being quickly overrun. The RAND Corporation reported earlier this year that in a series of war games, Russian forces were always able to overcome indigenous defenders and reach Baltic capitals within a few days. The forces of other NATO nations had little time to respond. Fourth, for all of its talk about reinforcing NATO at the recent alliance summit ("we will defend every ally" President Obama said), there is scant evidence the U.S. is willing to make the kind of commitment of conventional forces needed to blunt a Russian invasion in the Baltic region. The proposed placement of NATO-led battalions in each state totaling about 1,000 soldiers each is widely described as a "tripwire" defense, meaning it might trigger a bigger alliance response but would not be able to prevent Moscow from reaching its military objectives quickly. Fifth, any counter-attack by NATO in the Baltics could easily be misconstrued by Moscow as a threat to its core interests, in part because some strikes against attacking forces would occur on Russian territory, and in part because Russia's fragile reconnaissance system would quickly be overwhelmed by the fog of war. Anthony Barrett of the RAND Corporation has recently produced a worrisome analysis detailing how an East-West conventional conflict along the Russian periphery could escalate to nuclear-weapons use through miscues or misjudgments. Sixth, both sides in any such conflict would have military doctrine potentially justifying the use of nuclear weapons to prevent defeat. In the case of Russia, it has stated repeatedly that it needs non-strategic nuclear weapons to cope with the superiority of NATO conventional forces, that it would use such weapons in order to protect its core assets and values, and even that nuclear weapons might sometimes be useful tools for de-escalating a conflict. Successive U.S. administrations have stressed that nuclear weapons underpin alliance commitments. Seventh, both sides have non-strategic nuclear weapons in theater ready for quick use if tactical circumstances dictate. For example, Hans Kristensen noted the presence of several nuclear-capable military systems in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad located between Lithuania and Poland. Although the Russians have not disclosed whether nuclear warheads are also located in the district, there is little doubt that hundreds could quickly be deployed to areas around the Baltic states in an escalating conflict. Nuclear-capable NATO jets could reach the area within hours. Eighth, new technologies are gradually being incorporated into forces on both sides that could accelerate the pace and confusion of a local conflict. For instance, the F-35 fighter that will replace F-16s in the tactical nuclear role cannot be tracked by Russian radar. The integrated air defenses that Russia has deployed in Kaliningrad and elsewhere on its territory could severely impede NATO use of local air space in support of ground forces, and Russian electronic-warfare capabilities could impede coordination of ground maneuvers. The bottom line is that all the ingredients are present in the eastern Baltic area for an East-West conflict escalating to nuclear weapons use. Neither side understands what actions might provoke nuclear use by the other, and once war began both sides would likely have a tenuous grasp of what was happening. The high stakes assigned to the outcome of such a conflict and the ready availability of "non-strategic" nuclear weapons in a context where either side might view their use as strategic in consequences is a prescription for catastrophe.

Tournament: St Marks | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Marlborough GK | Judge: Panel
Framework 

The resolution is a question of state obligations since the state alone has the power to prohibit nuclear power – prefer actor specific obligations since they differ – police have a duty to arrest criminals but civilians don’t.

This is different from individual morality – the state doesn’t have an intent since policymakers pass laws for different reasons, and doesn’t have the reflexive capacity of individuals so it can’t be valued intrinsically.  Policymakers have to use util. Goodin
Robert Goodin 90, professor of philosophy at the Australian National University college of arts and social sciences, “The Utilitarian Response,” pgs 141-142

My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more probable for them than private individuals. Before proceeding with the large argument, I must therefore say what it is that makes it so special about public officials and their situations that make it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism. Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices – public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices, but that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus – assuming they want to use it at all – to choose general rules or conduct.

So the standard is minimizing suffering
Role-playing as the government is key to real world education—3 unique reasons. Joyner 99
Joyner 99 (Christopher, Professor of International Law in the Government Department at Georgetown University, “TEACHING INTERNATIONAL LAW: VIEWS FROM AN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS POLITICAL SCIENTIST,” ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law, Spring, lexis)
Use of the debate can be an effective pedagogical tool for education in the social sciences. Debates, like other role-playing simulations, help students understand different perspectives on a policy issue by adopting a perspective as their own. But, unlike other simulation games, debates do not require that a student participate directly in order to realize the benefit of the game. Instead of developing policy alternatives and experiencing the consequences of different choices in a traditional role-playing game, debates present the alternatives and consequences in a formal, rhetorical fashion before a judgmental audience. Having the class audience serve as jury helps each student develop a well-thought-out opinion on the issue by providing contrasting facts and views and enabling audience members to pose challenges to each debating team. These debates ask undergraduate students to examine the international legal implications of various United States foreign policy actions. Their chief tasks are to assess the aims of the policy in question, determine their relevance to United States national interests, ascertain what legal principles are involved, and conclude how the United States policy in question squares with relevant principles of international law. Debate questions are formulated as resolutions, along the lines of: "Resolved: The United States should deny most-favored-nation status to China on human rights grounds;" or "Resolved: The United States should resort to military force to ensure inspection of Iraq's possible nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities;" or "Resolved: The United States' invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a lawful use of force;" or "Resolved: The United States should kill Saddam Hussein." In addressing both sides of these legal propositions, the student debaters must consult the vast literature of international law, especially the nearly 100 professional law-school-sponsored international law journals now being published in the United States. This literature furnishes an incredibly rich body of legal analysis that often treats topics affecting United States foreign policy, as well as other more esoteric international legal subjects. Although most of these journals are accessible in good law schools, they are largely unknown to the political science community specializing in international relations, much less to the average undergraduate. *386 By assessing the role of international law in United States foreign policy- making, students realize that United States actions do not always measure up to international legal expectations; that at times, international legal strictures get compromised for the sake of perceived national interests, and that concepts and principles of international law, like domestic law, can be interpreted and twisted in order to justify United States policy in various international circumstances. In this way, the debate format gives students the benefits ascribed to simulations and other action learning techniques, in that it makes them become actively engaged with their subjects, and not be mere passive consumers. Rather than spectators, students become legal advocates, observing, reacting to, and structuring political and legal perceptions to fit the merits of their case. The debate exercises carry several specific educational objectives. First, students on each team must work together to refine a cogent argument that compellingly asserts their legal position on a foreign policy issue confronting the United States. In this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal dilemmas faced by policy makers. Second, as they work with other members of their team, they realize the complexities of applying and implementing international law, and the difficulty of bridging the gaps between United States policy and international legal principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting the latter. Finally, research for the debates forces students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign policy agenda and the role that international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. 8 The debate thus becomes an excellent vehicle for pushing students beyond stale arguments over principles into the real world of policy analysis, political critique, and legal defense.

Plan
Plan Text: Countries ought to prohibit the production of Russian state owned nuclear power. Blomme 15
Brian Blomme (Climate and energy communications manager for Greenpeace International), Count on the nuclear industry to have strange things happen, 7/7/15, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/Rosatom-Finnish-nuclear-project/blog/53456/ VC
There's more. Mikhail Zhukov heads up Inteco, which used to be owned by the richest woman in Russia, Yelena Baturina. She happens to be married to Yuri Lužkov, the former mayor of Moscow. Baturina sold Inteco to 50 state-owned Sberbank and to billionaire Mihail Shishkanov. Sberbank is an essential financier of Rosatom. Given these unsettling findings, Greenpeace warned the Finnish government to carefully examine the license application by Fennovoima to ensure it meets ownership criteria and is in best interests of the country. But the concerns are bigger than Finland. As our Finnish program manager, Sini Harkki, said: "This game that Fennovoima and Rosatom appear to be playing should be a concern to any country that is in discussions with Rosatom regarding building nuclear reactors. If the state corporation is ready to play a game with something as simple as ownership rules, what else will it play games with in building a dangerous reactor?" Rosatom is actively pursuing nuclear contracts around the world. And this warning is something many other countries should heed. In October 2014, Greenpeace released a report on the problems with Rosatom and the Russian nuclear industry. This ownership game appears to be consistent with the kinds of problems that plague Rosatom and should be required reading for politicians in any country thinking of cutting a deal with Rosatom. Fennovoima and Rosatom looked for years for investors. Yet it only took a few days to expose what appears to be a hoax, and a front for Russian capital. That's not the end of nuclear problems in Finland. The country is suffering through a protracted mess with Areva, the French nuclear company, over the building the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant. The project is years late and billions over budget with no end to the problems in sight. With lessons like those from Rosatom and Areva's Finnish nuclear projects, it is no wonder that in Finland the public majority is against nuclear. In spite of the people's will, Finland's current energy strategy relies on nuclear. But with ample renewable resources to be developed and the usual mess with nuclear projects, it is time to reconsider that strategy, listen to the will of the Finnish citizens, and move into the nuclear-free clean-energy future.

Rosatom’s nuclear empire is on the rise now. Kraev 16
Kamen Kraev. June 28, 2016. “Russia’s nuclear energy expansion – a geopolitical footprint?” http://www.neweasterneurope.eu/articles-and-commentary/2040-russia-s-nuclear-energy-expansion-a-geopolitical-footprint LM
The background Russia has currently 35 nuclear reactor units in commercial operation, generating roughly 25 gigawatts (GW) of power annually. This covered about 19 per cent of Russia’s total electricity production in 2015, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The bulk of Russia’s reactor fleet in operation has been commissioned in the 1970s and 1980s and has already been through lifetime extensions beyond the initial 30 years of service. Russia’s traditional market for nuclear technologies and nuclear fuel has been in Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia (at the time Czechoslovakia) have all built and commissioned a number of Soviet-designed pressurised water reactors of the VVER type while they were virtual satellites of the Soviet Union (USSR). Ukraine remains the second largest operator of Russian-designed rectors in the world with its fleet of 15 VVERs. Poland, Romania, and ex-Yugoslavia were the only “non-Western” European countries during the Cold War which did not use Russian reactor technology for power generation. Beyond Europe, Russian-designed nuclear reactors are being operated in India, Iran, and China. Nuclear ambitions Over the past decade state-owned nuclear corporation Rosatom and its network of subsidiaries have made direct or indirect commitments to build nuclear power plants in a number of countries around the world. As stated by a Rosatom official in a recent interview, Russia has signed intergovernmental agreements for the possible construction of 36 nuclear reactors overseas and is holding “active and consistent” tendering negotiations about 21 others. It is apparent that Russia seems to be looking away from Europe and its traditional markets in search of new business opportunities for its nuclear industry. During the Russia – ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summit held on 19 and 20 May in Sochi, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin said his country is ready to provide a Generation III nuclear reactor technology to countries in Southeast Asia. Another Rosatom official called for Africa to invest in nuclear energy during an annual energy forum in Johannesburg in February 2016.

Rosatom is terrible – safety issues, environmental degradation, prolif, and massive corruption. Ulrich et al. 14
 Kendra Ulrich, Jehki Harkonen and Brian Blomme, ROSATOM RISKS: EXPOSING THE TROUBLED HISTORY OF RUSSIA’S STATE NUCLEAR CORPORATION, October 2014, http://www.greenpeace.org/hungary/PageFiles/636986/rosatom_risks.pdf VC
As a Russian state-backed entity that oversees almost every aspect of Russia’s civil and military nuclear programmes, Rosatom is one of the largest nuclear vendors in the global market. Yet problems are rampant, due to its very size and the scale of its operations, its entrenchment within the Russian government and the revolving door between government officials and Rosatom top management, and the lack of truly independent oversight over the company. One of Rosatom’s predecessor entities oversaw the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Although the corporation now says that it has learned from the catastrophe, its more recent safety record exposes that little has changed in terms of its safety culture – both within Russia and in other countries to which it exports nuclear technology. Plagued with safety violations and accidents, lacking an adequate skilled workforce, using the equivalent of low-skilled, forced labour on reactor sites, and having an absence of adequate quality controls, Rosatom’s reactors pose an unacceptable risk to the public both within Russia and abroad. The pervasive corruption within the company that has come to light in recent years not only reveals the inordinate potential for the siphoning of public funds – some of which were intended to promote nuclear safety – into wealthy private accounts, but also casts serious doubts on the ability of the Russian government to ensure such gross violations do not occur again. Rosatom has enormous ambitions to expand its nuclear programme globally. Fuelled by Russian federal money and income from oil and gas exports, the state corporation aims to vastly expand its global nuclear fleet via its “Build-Own-Operate” model. This ambition seems less focused on investing in smart economic ventures than on other potentially motivating factors. Yet, even with the funding of the Russian government behind Rosatom, analysts have still raised significant doubts as to whether it is possible for any one operator to adequately finance so many nuclear projects – as the financial burden would be enormous if not impossible to bear. Rosatom’s claims are inflated but their ambition remains unchecked. Further, both within Russia and in other countries, Rosatom’s nuclear construction projects have not only been characterised by a lack of proper quality control and safety concerns, but also by delays and cost overruns – like the nuclear industry everywhere else. In cases where investors have put in their own funds, rather than leaving financing up to Rosatom, potential customers are either waiting for energy they thought they would have years earlier, or are left with an enormously growing expense. Alternatively, as in the case of Bulgaria, they end up terminating the project after realising that the bill had more than doubled.239 Finally, Rosatom’s spent-fuel reprocessing leads to large-scale releases of radioactivity into the environment and increased health risks to the general population, as well as to a major risk of accidents and to an even greater spread of contamination. The proposal to take back spent-fuel waste from reactors supplied by Rosatom but operated overseas not only fails to remove the risk at a reactor site – since spent fuel must be cooled onsite prior to transport – but significantly increases the risks to the public, including during transportation. At the same time, Russia’s fast-breeder programme – used to justify continued reprocessing and plutonium stockpiling – experiences significant delays and other problems, as has happened with other countries that have attempted to develop such reactors. The one result has been a greater risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, as stockpiles of weapons-usable plutonium have continued to increase in Russia. The on-going geopolitical crisis in Ukraine has highlighted the vulnerability of the nuclear industry to political developments. One major current problem arising from recent developments is that Rosatom could be prevented from transporting nuclear fuel through Ukraine. Rosatom presents major concerns as a business partner in every respect. From a financial, safety, political and security perspective, the company’s nuclear expansion ambitions both within Russia and abroad pose unnecessary and unacceptable risks to communities and potential customers alike. 

Accidents cause mass death and huge financial costs. Sovacool 08
Sovacool, Benjamin K. director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at the Department of Business Technology and Development and a professor of social sciences at Aarhus University. , and Christopher Cooper. "Nuclear nonsense: Why nuclear power is no answer to climate change and the world's post-Kyoto energy challenges." Wm. and Mary Envtl. L. and Pol'y Rev. 33 (2008): 1.

While the Chair of the Public Information Committee of the¶ American Nuclear Society has publicly stated that "the industry has¶ proven itself to be the safest major source of electricity in the Western¶ world,"" 9 the history of nuclear power proves otherwise. The safety record¶ of nuclear plants is lackluster at best. For one salient example, consider¶ that Ukraine still has a Ministry of Emergency, some twenty-two years¶ after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster warranted its creation."' No less¶ than seventy-six nuclear accidents, defined as incidents that either resulted¶ in the loss of human life or more than $50,000 of property damage,¶ totaling more than $19 billion in damages have occurred worldwide from¶ 1947 to 2008."' See Table B.¶ One survey of major energy accidents from 1907 to 2007 found that¶ nuclear plants ranked first in economic cost among all energy accidents,¶ accounting for 41 of all accident related property damage, or $16.6 billion¶ in property loss, even though nuclear power plants did not even begin¶ commercial operation until the 1950s. 442 These numbers translate to more¶ than one incident and $332 million in damages every year for the past¶ three decades. Forty-three accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl¶ disaster in 1986, and almost two-thirds of all nuclear accidents have occurred¶ in the U.S., refuting the notion that severe accidents are relegated¶ to the past or to countries without America's modern technologies or industry oversight." 3 Even the most conservative estimates find that¶ nuclear power accidents have killed 4100 people,' or more people than¶ have died in commercial U.S. airline accidents since 1982."' "Nuclear¶ power accidents have involved meltdowns, explosions, fires, and loss of¶ coolant, and have occurred during both normal operation and extreme,¶ emergency conditions such as droughts and earthquakes."4 6 One index¶ of nuclear power accidents that included costs beyond death and property¶ damage-such as injuring and irradiating workers and malfunctions that¶ did not result in shutdowns or leaks--documented 956 incidents from 1942¶ to 2007." 7¶ Using some of the most advanced probabilistic risk assessment¶ tools available, an interdisciplinary team at MIT identified possible reactor¶ failures in the U.S. and predicted that the best estimate of core damage¶ frequency was around one every 10,000 reactor years." 8 In terms of the¶ expected growth scenario for nuclear power from 2005 to 2055, the MIT¶ team estimated that at least four serious core damage accidents will occur¶ and concluded that "both the historical and the PRA probabilistic risk¶ assessment data show an unacceptable accident frequency."" 9 Further,¶ "tihe potential impact on the public from safety or waste management¶ failure... make it impossible today to make a credible case for the immediate¶ expanded use of nuclear power."4 51¶ Another assessment conducted by the CEA in France tried to associate¶ nuclear plant design with human error such that technical innovation¶ could help eliminate the risk of human-induced accidents.45' Two types¶ of mistakes were deemed the most egregious: errors committed during field operations, such as maintenance and testing, that can cause an¶ accident, and human errors made during small accidents that cascade to¶ complete failure.452 There may be no feasible way to "design around" these¶ risks. For example, when another group of CEA researchers examined¶ the safety performance of advanced French Pressurized Water Reactors,¶ they concluded that human factors would contribute to about one-fourth¶ (twenty-three percent) of the likelihood of a major accident.453¶ Consider that the two most significant nuclear power accidents,¶ Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, were human caused and then exacerbated¶ by more human mistakes.

Russian Imperialism

Rosatom is expanding presence in Africa and is taking advantage of countries to further business oppurtunities. Macharia 16.
James Macharia (writer for Reuters Africa), Russia's Rosatom seeks cooperation agreements for African nuclear expansion, 5/19/16, http://af.reuters.com/article/investingNews/idAFKCN0YA1CH?pageNumber=2andvirtualBrandChannel=0 VC

APE TOWN (Reuters) - Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom plans to sign cooperation agreements with Kenya, Uganda and Zambia to lay the groundwork for an expanded presence in Sub-Saharan Africa beyond its planned bid to build nuclear power plants in South Africa. Rosatom has voiced confidence in its ability to see off competition from China, France and South Korea in a planned South African tender to build a 9,600 megawatts (MW) nuclear power fleet in the continent's most industrialised country. It sees scope, however, for more deals across the region, from the building of plants to supplying reactor fuel. The mooted framework cooperation agreements, adding to those already made with Nigeria and Ghana, would set out how the parties will cooperate on peaceful uses of nuclear science in the medical, agricultural and energy fields, among others. This is the first step towards closer ties with Africa and closer cooperation with a view, of course, to some day building nuclear power plants," Victor Polikarpov, Rosatom’s regional vice-president for Sub-Saharan Africa, said on Thursday. "We want South Africa to become our springboard for the rest of Africa. We want to create a nuclear cluster, a group of companies here that can operate with us in Africa." President Jacob Zuma's government was checking the financial and commercial impact of its nuclear ambitions before it issues a tender. South Africa's 1,800 MW Koeberg station near Cape Town is the continent's only commercial nuclear power plant at present, though Rosatom is building a nuclear plant in Egypt that is expected to be completed by 2022. Meanwhile, South Africa's nuclear energy corporation Necsa is being encouraged by government to revive nuclear enrichment and conversion facilities to reduce dependence on imported reactor fuels. South Africa has some of the world's largest uranium deposits and the proposed nuclear fleet is likely to use 465 metric tonnes of enriched uranium a year by 2030, officials say. Rosatom's Polikarpov, however, said it might not be viable for South Africa to restart enrichment facilities dismantled before white minority rule ended in 1994. "Another solution is just to have fuel supplied from Russia. We can guarantee supply of fuel non-stop for the duration of operation of all power plants," he said. Nigeria, however, looks a more distant prospect as its economy contracts amid the global plunge in oil prices. "Given the extremely bad economic situation in Nigeria today, it might take a bit longer. But the government and the new president are still determined to go nuclear," Polikarpov said.

Rosatom creates a monopoly on energy that is worse than Gazprom’s, and makes countries that don’t need nuclear power dependent on Russia – lack of other resources means Russia functionally controls them. Sharkov 15
Damien Sharkov (Reporter for Newsweek Europe based in London), NUCLEAR POWER IS RUSSIA'S NEW WEAPON OF CHOICE, 4/28/15, http://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/01/nuclear-power-russias-new-weapon-choice-326198.html VC

Russia is using cut-price nuclear energy deals as leverage to influence EU states and shore up long-term alliances in the Middle and Far East, according to energy analysts. Analysis of recent deals secured by Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom reveals a costly drive by Moscow to lock countries including Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Argentina into arrangements that will mean they rely on a supply of nuclear fuel from Russia for decades. Russia recently agreed a €10 billion loan deal to expand and supply Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant, one of several ongoing nuclear energy projects Russia has its sights on in Eastern Europe. Besides the 10-year Hungarian deal, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Ukraine rely on Russian nuclear fuel to function. These five countries with a collective population of 80 million are reliant on Russian nuclear co-operation for some 42 of their electricity supply. Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week Lili Bayer, Eurasia analyst for global intelligence firm Stratfor, argues that the Hungarian plant is one example of Russia’s distinct strategy to maintain energy dependence in Europe on Russia. “This is both a commercial and political strategy,” Bayer says. “Russia is really pushing for projects like the one in Hungary because they will be providing 80 of the financing and it gives the Kremlin long-term leverage until Hungary pays the money back.” According to Bayer, lucrative deals such as the one in Hungary show that Russia is willing to spend big to retain its monopoly in the former Soviet-bloc though Russia's economic crisis will make this strategy more difficult. Russia used to supply these plants with fuel exclusively but now Western companies such as Westinghouse have developed fuel compatible for the Soviet-style reactors. Petr Topychkanov, analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow, says Rosatom is also developing nuclear projects outside Europe in the Near and Far East to similar political ends. Elsewhere Rosatom subsidiaries are currently developing nuclear projects in India, Iran, Bangladesh, Turkey and Jordan, while also currently bidding to build plants in Egypt and Vietnam. A deal to build a new plant in Argentina was agreed at the end of April. “For this purpose Russia is ready to offer very lucrative conditions for contracts including financial support,” says Topychkanov. “Moscow understands that if relations break down and Russia decides to stop supply, it is extremely difficult to find alternative sources for host countries. It believes it has a good chance to have predictable relations with that country if it is the one providing them with nuclear fuel,” he says. “This is a part of Rosatom’s big strategy and of course this big strategy is supported by the Russian government,” Topychkanov adds. Nuclear expert John Large says he sees alarming parallels between European over-dependence on Russian gas and Russian nuclear fuel. “Gazprom cutting Ukraine’s energy just goes to show you that there is a political need for fuel diversity away from Russia,” Large says. “If Putin had the valve on nuclear fuel as well, although the effect would be slightly longer term, it can get incredibly uncomfortable.”

2 Impacts

1. This energy dependency gives Russia colonialist power – destroys countries pursuits of liberal democracy. Balockaite 12
   RASA BALOČKAITĖ. 2012. “RUSSIAN ENERGY IMPERIALISM: THE WORLD MAPPED ALONG THE GAS PIPELINES.” http://eltalpykla.vdu.lt:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/31679/2335-7185_2012_V_12.PG_85_96.pdf?sequence=1

Keith Smith in his book “Russian Energy Politics in the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine: A New Stealth Imperialism?”17 argues that Russia is using its energy resources as the means of control in the foreign politics. Trying to maintain the sphere of influence over its former satellite states, Russia is interested in energy dependency of these countries. The energy dependency prevents, according to the author, normal development of free markets and liberal democracies in CEE. The author openly calls it Russian neo-colonial politics, or energy imperialism, in former socialist states in Central and Eastern Europe. In his later book, “European Energy Security: Divide and Dominate. Center for Strategic and International Studies”18, Keith Smith makes a step further – he argues that Russia’s energy imperialism has expended far beyond the limits of former Soviet Block. Now, he says, even EU is strongly dependant on Russia on energy supply, and EU leaders are inclined to the political compromises. According to K. Smith, Russia, due to aggressive energy politics, has more power than “Brussels, Berlin and Paris” altogether.

2. Russian colonialism is gendered and ROOTED in patriarchal conceptions of the colonized – Ukrainian colonization proves this results in massive oppression and rights abuses. Lutsyshyna 06
“Postcolonial Herstory: The Novels of Assia Djebar¶ (Algeria) and Oksana Zabuzhko (Ukraine): A¶ Comparative Analysis,” Oksana Lutsyshyna, University of South Florida, 2006.
The equating of a colonized land with a woman is very characteristic for¶ European colonial discourse. This discourse shows itself in many domains, from art to¶ science: for instance, the long tradition of European painting depicted the continents of¶ Asia, Africa and America as women “available for plunder, possession, discovery and¶ conquest” (Loomba 151). America, discovered by Vespucci, was presented as a beautiful¶ naked woman (ibid.). Female bodies “symbolized conquered land” (Loomba 152), full¶ of treasures and rich splendor. According to the gendered vision of colonial projects, the¶ colonizer was bestowed with maleness, and the colonized - with femaleness. In 1899 a¶ Dutch journalist Charles Boissevain even “proclaimed …that…the Occident and the¶ Orient belong…together as man and woman” (Gouda and Clancy-Smith, “Introduction”¶ 7). Yaël Simpson Fletcher mentions that “France was often portrayed as a powerful¶ masculine figure, despite its traditionally female representations” (194), - and Algeria, of¶ course, was its female counterpart, as well as its “Other.” The Algerian woman was¶ exoticized, as was the whole “Orient” constructed by the Europeans as a place of “dirt,¶ smell, and disease” as well as the tantalizing “obscure mystery” (Fletcher 201). For¶ example, the Casbah, the Arab quarter of Algiers, was often depicted by European¶ travelers as a dangerous, though attractive place, a “fantastic network of tortuous streets”¶ full of available prostitutes and a certain “Oriental” mystique (Fletcher 201-202).¶ The “women question” was always at the center of European colonial discourse.¶ Both societies, the colonizers and the colonized, “came to evaluate each other’s cultural¶ worth in terms of the female question” (Clancy Smith, “Islam, Gender, and Identities in¶ the Making of French Algeria” 156). The fact that Islamic law regulated marriage and allowed men to have more than one wife was perceived by the French as characteristic of¶ a “barbaric,” uncivilized society, and as a justification of the colonial “mission¶ civilisatrice.” Those Alge”rians who practiced polygamy, for example, were discouraged¶ from obtaining French citizenship, which was reserved for the more dignified, less¶ “savage” individuals (Bowlan 110). A Muslim practice, polygamy was viewed as¶ incompatible with French customs and French “civilization” (Lorcin 63). However, the¶ “liberation” of women was done only in talk, and not in reality. As Patricia Lorcin¶ contends, “though a lot of indignation was expressed by the French officials over the¶ condition of women and polygamy in particular, no action was ever taken to prevent such¶ practices. This “indignation was used as a moral stick with which to beat Islam and the¶ Arabs” (66). allowed men to have more than one wife was perceived by the French as characteristic of¶ a “barbaric,” uncivilized society, and as a justification of the colonial “mission¶ civilisatrice.” Those Algerians who practiced polygamy, for example, were discouraged¶ from obtaining French citizenship, which was reserved for the more dignified, less¶ “savage” individuals (Bowlan 110). A Muslim practice, polygamy was viewed as¶ incompatible with French customs and French “civilization” (Lorcin 63). However, the¶ “liberation” of women was done only in talk, and not in reality. As Patricia Lorcin¶ contends, “though a lot of indignation was expressed by the French officials over the¶ condition of women and polygamy in particular, no action was ever taken to prevent such¶ practices. This “indignation was used as a moral stick with which to beat Islam and the¶ Arabs” (66). Algerian women were regarded by the colonial discourse as oppressed by¶ Islamic law. However, the condition of women in France was also far from ideal.¶ According to the Napoleonic Code, the French civil law code, women were “destined to¶ be men’s property, to obey them, and to procreate on their behalf” (Bell and Offen 37).¶ Women had no property of their own: “A wife…cannot give, convey, mortgage, or¶ acquire property…without her husband joining in the instrument or giving his written¶ consent” (“The Napoleonic Code” 39). Thus, the calls to liberate Algerian women and to¶ reform the imperfect system of civil laws and domestic customs came in the context of a¶ situation in which French women were also lacking many basic rights, such as divorce,¶ the right to possess property and to file paternity suits. Obviously, the issue of freeing¶ women was but a pretext for justifying the colonial enterprise, but not at all its goal.¶ While Algerian men were constructed as “aggressive,” but also “weak, lazy, and insincere” (Fletcher 207) and ove rall inferior to French men and their masculinity, the¶ Algerian women were seen as exotic, passive, and helpless, in need of the Europeans to¶ “liberate” them. In a broader context, they represented Algeria itself, a land that the¶ French intended to “civilize.” As Helen Carr states,¶ In the language of colonialism, non-Europeans occupy the same symbolic space¶ as women. Both are seen as part of nature, not culture, and with the same¶ ambivalence: either they are ripe for government, passive, child- like,¶ unsophisticated, needing leadership and guidance…or… they are outside society,¶ dangerous, treacherous, emotional, inconstant, wild,…sexually¶ aberrant,…disruptive,…evil. (Carr, qtd. in Loomba 159-160)¶ A woman and a country (Algeria) thus became one – a sexual object to be, paradoxically,¶ “tamed,” penetrated, “civilized” and liberated at the same time.¶ Ukraine and its colonial status were symbolically embodied in literary images of¶ girls seduced by the colonizers. This topic was extensively covered by the greatest¶ Ukrainian poet of the 19th century, Taras Shevchenko. Taras Shevchenko is considered¶ by many to be one of the “founding fathers” of the Ukrainian nation. As his¶ contemporary Borys Hrinchenko contends, “We are sure that Ukrainian literature will¶ have many more writers whose talent will equal that of Shevchenko’s, but nobody will¶ equal him in terms of his dedication to the cause of national renaissance” (qtd. in¶ Zabuzhko, Shevchenko’s Myth of Ukraine: an Attempt of Philosophical Analysis 11).¶ Shevchenko, born a serf, was bought out of serfdom by several influential Russian¶ painters in 1838. He was imprisoned and then exiled in 1847 for his patriotic poems¶ about Ukraine and satirical ones about the Russian Tsars. Shevchenko, whom critics have¶ called “an ethical genius” capable of understanding tragedies of national scale¶ (Zabuzhko, “A Woman-Author in a Colonial Culture” 167), wrote a poem “Kateryna,” the heroine of which fell in love with a Russian who got her pregnant and ran off without¶ marrying her, leaving the girl at the mercy of a very patriarchal Ukrainian village¶ community. Kateryna became a widely used metaphor for all Ukraine, seduced and¶ deceived by Russia. Oksana Zabuzhko states that it was in the 19th century that the¶ phenomenon described by Taras Shevchenko (Ukrainian girls’ being “picked up” and¶ then left behind) became especially widespread. Ukraine’s colonial status meant that the¶ women of the colonized country were available and submissive, and this state of affairs¶ resembles the situation of French colonial politics in Algeria.¶ During the Soviet period, the “gendering” of Ukraine, though still present, took a¶ different form. Oksana Zabuzhko, when analyzing the gender structure of the former¶ Soviet Union, suggests that “gender,” under the totalitarian regime, “stopped being an¶ individual characteristic: …it was the whole country that became a Woman -- a classical¶ sexual object, prone to passive eroticism, lying readily under the … Supreme Power,¶ which kept the country subjugated thanks to the constant erection of its military organs”¶ (“Woman Author in Colonial Culture” 159). The citizens of the country, men or women,¶ were “stripped” of any sexual characteristics in the puritanical atmosphere of the Soviet¶ state, and became no more than “bacterial flora in the …open uterus of the country”¶ (“Woman Author in Colonial Culture” 160). Women (whether Russian, Ukrainian, or of¶ any other Soviet nation), with rare exceptions 2, were no longer “sexual” objects, but¶ “muscle strength,” as were men (159). When analyzing Zabuzhko’s novel Field Work in¶ Ukrainian Sex, in which she depicts relations between the sexes in the (post)totalitarian¶ environment, Madina Tlostanova states: “Zabuzhko emphasizes the …castrating role of the empire, the fact that the empire strips the individuals of their femaleness and¶ maleness, producing a kind of “subhumans”, like Oksana’s father; sadists, like her lover;¶ and frigid women, “black window panes deflecting all light”, like Oksana’s mother,¶ women without any erotic drive” (Tlostanova 181).

Belarus/Lithuania
Belarus-Lithuania relations rocky now – time is running out before Lithuania lashes out against the Russian built power plant. Sputnik 8/29
Sputnik News, Belarus's Russian-Built Nuclear Reactor Driving Lithuanian Officials Insane, 8/29/16, https://sputniknews.com/europe/20160829/1044745037/belarus-lithuania-nuclear-plant-conflict.html VC
Hinting that physical security and environmental concerns aren't really the central issues on her mind, Grybauskaite noted in a separate interview that the Belarusian NPP "is one of the tools which could be use used in an unconventional method against the Baltic countries." Instead of clarifying what she meant, the president vowed instead to discuss the issue in meetings with Baltic leaders, and with US Vice President Joe Biden, who visited the region last Tuesday. Vytautas Landsbergis, the veteran Lithuanian politician who became Lithuania's first head of state after the country declared its independence from the USSR, is no less hostile to the Belarusians' efforts, recently suggesting that the Belarusian NPP's construction amounts to "nuclear terrorism." Emphasizing that the European Union "and perhaps even NATO" must reach "a clear and tough position" against the plant, the MEP also hinted the real reason for Vilnius's concerns, saying that the Belarusian project harms Lithuania's prospects for economic development. Since Ignalina's closure, Vilnius has been looking for investors for the creation a new plant (called the Visaginas NPP), to be built using non-Russian technology and contractors. That project has since been described as frozen, if not dead. In 2011, Vilnius reached an agreement with Japan's Hitachi corporation to be a strategic investor in the plant; a year later, the project failed to garner the necessary support in a non-binding referendum, and has been deemed economically non-viable. Accordingly, as a commentary in Russia's Vzglyad online newspaper recently explained, Vilnius officials' hysterical commentary about safety and environmental concerns, along with their threats to bring Brussels and even NATO into the debate about the Belarusian NPP's construction, really appears to be a cover for their own failed NPP venture. Meanwhile, neither the International Atomic Energy Agency, nor the UN agency charged with observing trans-border environmental impact assessments, have supported Lithuania's claims. Accordingly, independent journalist Evgeny Radugin suggested that this combination of factors has to driven Lithuanian leaders into a panic. Earlier this month, the country's foreign minister, Linas Linkevicius, warned that Belarus "would not have the required trust, and should not hope for the sale of electricity from their unsafe nuclear power plant," presumably to Lithuania. "However, the realization of this goal is problematic," the journalist noted. "The Belarusian NPP will obviously go into operation before Visaginas." Russia has even offered Minsk the option of bringing the plant online earlier than planned. What's more, Radugin noted, the Lithuanian plant, if it's ever built, will not be able to compete with the Belarusian plant's prices for electricity. The Russian plant being built in Belarus features Generation 'Three Plus' power units. "Such stations are already operating around the world and have proven to be reliable and cost-effective." For this reason, Vilnius is attempting to act independently, introducing draft laws meant to prohibit Lithuania from purchasing Belarusian electricity, or allowing its transit through Lithuanian territory. Unfortunately, Radugin noted, having been outmaneuvered by Minsk and Moscow, all that's left for Lithuanian officials is "to engage in hysterics toward Russia and its partners."

Belarus is a critical country in Russia’s plans – they’re a key security asset in Eastern Europe. Lacroix 16.
Rejeanne Lacroix, Belarus’ Balancing Act, 7/28/16, http://natoassociation.ca/belarus-balancing-act/ VC
Belarus is an example of a state developing its geopolitical distinctiveness into a position as an important regional contributor. It occupies a discernible midpoint between ongoing fears of Russian aggression and NATO’s expanded involvement in Eastern Europe. Though small and relatively underdeveloped, Belarus’ unique history, strategic location and political leanings make it an indispensable component in the European security framework. Greater attention should be devoted to messages emerging out of Minsk as they offer a unique perspective on the concerns of Russian aggression. Closer examination of these memos reveals how a small state can relatively engage in both sides of a dispute and in doing so, increase their political capital. A simple glance at a map of Central and Eastern Europe reveals that Belarus is bordered by NATO members (Poland, Lithuania and Latvia), a conflict hotspot (Ukraine) and the main aggressor to European insecurity (Russia). Anyone with a keen interest geopolitics understands that such a strategic location offers both opportunity and danger. Official statements from the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs assert that the state does not feel threatened by NATO expansion or the establishment of the Eastern Partnership. In a step further, Minsk reaffirmed that it is willing to engage with the military partnership and hopes to act as a mediator. There is a clear understanding in Belarus that an intensification of conflict between Western powers and Russia is detrimental to its own stability. On the other hand, Belarus is vital to Russia’s national security strategy on its Western frontiers. Shared histories, Russian installations on Belarusian territory and the 1996 Union State agreement to harmonize relations between the two former Soviet states translates into a close relationship that Russia cannot bear to lose. Consequently, it is indisputable that the Belarusian military is inherently linked to the Russian Armed Forces. Belarus’ location and the nearby Kaliningrad Oblast extend Russian reach closer to their NATO adversaries and Europe in general. Russian military bases and radar systems in Belarus are even more important now to their security strategy as Western forces rotate in and out of the region as part of the Eastern Flank. As Belarus is a member of the Russian-organized Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), it represents the proximity of Eurasian security to European concerns as well. Dividing lines between the two adversaries have thus been blurred but this obscurity offers Belarus the prospect to shift relations in their favour. The political games between West and East extend into the economic realm as well. Belarus continues to seek and negotiate a normalization of relations with the European Union. When the EU lifted most sanctions on the post-Soviet republic in early 2016, President Alexander Lukashenko ordered that the regularization of banking and investment procedures with the supranational organization take precedence. A rapprochement between the two would result in a partnership agreement and a subsequent trade deal. Belarus is an important exporter of a variety of agricultural goods, machinery and other finished industrial products therefore their entrance into European markets would result in enhanced domestic economic stability. European Union member states, such as Slovakia, have offered their support in favor of the Belarusian lobby while Germany urges greater cooperation between Belarus and Europe. Nevertheless, full membership in the EU is a seemingly impractical pursuit. The democratization process inherent in the Copenhagen Criteria does not align with Lukashenko’s political principles. Besides this obstacle, it is apparent that Belarus is open to courting Western interests just as the West has its attention on a possible new market.

Increased Belarus-Lithuania tensions and Russian owned reactor completion both independently causes conflict and Russian annexation of Belarus – risks escalation into full scale war. Rekeda 16
Sergey Rekeda (Writer for Eurasian Chronicle), Lithuania Starts Nuclear Information War against Belarus, 8/1/16, http://russiancouncil.ru/en/blogs/eurasian-chronicle/?id_4=2627 VC
Lithuania sees the Ostrovets NPP primarily as a geopolitical rather than an environmental threat. Had this not been the case, why isn’t Vilnius worried about the critical safety situation at Ukrainian NPPs? Accordingly, the consequences of the Lithuanian struggle against the Ostrovets NPP could be geopolitical, rather than environmental. Of course, one could envision a positive scenario when the attacks on the power plant cease simultaneously with the parliamentary elections in Belarus and Lithuania this autumn. Implementation of the Ostrovets project will be depoliticised as much as possible and, after Grybauskaitė steps down as President, Lithuania and other Baltic states could become interested in the power produced at the Ostrovets NPP (thus far, the Lithuanian leadership is seeking to organise a “regional boycott” of the project). Yet the negative scenario is more likely. Lithuania will increasingly politicise the Belorusian nuclear plant construction. Vilnius will traditionally try to deliver a blow against Russia by calling the construction unsafe and Rosatom incompetent, and dubbing the project another of the “Kremlin’s tentacles” squeezing Europe. In the very near future, we might expect “expert reports” explaining that the Ostrovets NPP is intended to play a role in the “impending Russian annexation of Belarus.” There could be options, but the main goal will be to blame Moscow for its attempts to use the NPP to embroil Belarus in confrontation with the West, although the picture we see so far is the direct opposite. But, in its attempts to “teach a lesson” to Russia, Lithuania will inevitably tread on Belarus’ toes. The thing is that, today, the Ostrovets NPP is one of Minsk’s top priority economic projects. And Minsk is unlikely to look kindly at the attempts to interfere with its implementation. Moreover, the Belarus leadership has enough instruments to retaliate against Vilnius, up to and including re-routing its transit shipments from Klaipeda to Russian ports. Lithuanian attacks on the Ostrovets NPP could result in failure of the “engagement policy” the European Union has been attempting to pursue over recent years toward Belarus; these attacks could also lead to Lithuania losing another regional partner (following Poland and Russia) and incurring economic losses owing to Minsk’s retaliation. The Baltic politicians will hardly succeed in pulling the plug on the Ostrovets project. As paradoxical as it sounds, the Republic of Lithuania itself might suffer the greatest losses in this story.

Conflict in the Baltics goes nuclear before NATO even gets involved and spills over into the rest of Europe. Goldmanis 16
Maris Goldmanis (Master’s Degree in History, currently getting PhD, Russian Invasion in the Baltic States: Nightmare or Reality? 7/09/16, https://latvianhistory.com/2016/07/09/russian-invasion-in-the-baltic-states-nightmare-or-reality/ VC
There are two possible scenarios for invasion. First: full-scale invasion. Second: limited, non-direct like it’s happening in Eastern Ukraine. Full scale invasion would require much use of land, sea and air force. The main Russian objectives would be securing control over the air and blockade the Baltic Sea. Kaliningrad region would be used to blockade the land route trough Suwalki, Poland to Vilnius and Riga. Russia would not necessarily need to assault Suwalki itself, but rather secure control over Lithuanian towns of Kybartai, Marijumpole, Kalvarija and Druskinskai. First cities to fall would be Narva, Tartu, Balvi, Kārsava, Rēzekne, Krāslava and Daugavpils. Since Vilnius is close to Belarusian border it would be first Baltic capital to be attacked. The question of further advance will determined in the skies over Baltic, in the sea and the Suwalki gap zone. If Russia manages to secure access points to Baltic States it has chance to overrun the NATO forces trapped in encirclement. NATO forces in every way has technical and numeric advantage over Russia and using it NATO would eventually break the blockade and force Russia to retreat. So NATO objective is to prevent the Baltic blockade and cut off Russia from Kaliningrad. Air, Naval and tactical superiority is in need. A logical question then arises what about nuclear weapons? First no country has ever had experience of using nuclear weapon against country that also have them. However, the common sense and most military doctrines is to use nuclear weapons after the warring country has exceeded all conventional means. Their forces are defeated and are on rout and country is on breakdown. That is one of the actions Russia would possibly choose. However, Russia has far-fetched doctrine of using nuclear detonation to prevent NATO for acting further. A scenario in mind that Russia would use tactical nuke against military unit or city and then in fear of nuclear war would try to impose ceasefire advantageous for them. However, such strategy is a gamble. One country might possibly not respond and seek solution while other fires tactical nuke in response, creating response after response leading to ultimate nuclear annihilation. So using or not using nuclear weapons it’s a question of common sense. Second scenario is limited invasion like the one that takes place in Ukraine. Russia could try to form Russian peoples republics in Narva, Daugavpils and Rēzekne and try to instigate revolts in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. Same as in Ukraine Russia has large Russian speaking population to use for their goals, many of them including some Latvians would support pro-Russian revolt. Russia might still try to blockade Baltic sea and Suwalki gap, but it will refrain from taking all countries completely. Border areas would fall for Russian control and there Russia would try to create environment for frozen conflict that would bleed out three Baltic States and NATO trying to help them. Such scenario may avoid discussion of using nuclear weapons, however, Russia would have hard time to prove that there are no Russian troops in Latgale. The Consequences In both case of full and limited invasion Russia would fall under tougher sanctions and isolation. Russian populace at first would support the invasion., however basing on military success or failures it would change drastically. Victory if such is possible would lead to Russia as totalitarian fortress in opposition against western block for times to come. Defeat would cause an unpredictable series of events, like state breakdown, civil war and foreign intervention. Limited frozen conflict in Baltic states will lead to same Russian totalitarianism and isolation only to hope find agreement over the conflict. Failure and loss of national prestige will leave its regime vulnerable. For Baltic States its means great loses of lives, destruction of infrastructure and economical breakdown. In some ways the limited invasion and frozen conflict would be more crucial as it would be a constant bleed out. For the world it would mean the danger of WW3. Not to mention fear of use of nuclear weapon, the conflict might spread to Poland, Caucasus, Moldovo everywhere where NATO and Russian troops might encounter each other. This would be major political and economical disruption for EU countries and US and UK that are already plagued by social disturbances. By all means such conflict would be highly disadvantageous for both sides.

Belarusian annexation leads to Russia cutting the Baltic States off from the rest of Western Europe – causes conflict with NATO. Goldmanis 16
Maris Goldmanis (Master’s Degree in History, currently getting PhD, Russian Invasion in the Baltic States: Nightmare or Reality? 7/09/16, https://latvianhistory.com/2016/07/09/russian-invasion-in-the-baltic-states-nightmare-or-reality/ VC
Another point of argument is Belarus. Belarus is one of the most loyal allied states to Russia, not to mention Armenia. It has force of 62,000 active men and woman, sizable tank and air force. Whats more to add to importance is that Belarus hosts Russian troops and probably will host more as answer to NATO buildup. While Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko officially seeks a partnership with EU countries he has stated many times that in case of Russian conflict with NATO Belarus will side with Russia and take direct part. That means Belarusian army is a threat to Latvian eastern region of Latgale and to Lithuania particularly to Lazdijai and Druskinkai municipalities along the Polish border that have Belarusian border on the east and Russian border on the east. Presumably both forces could attempt to take the region to cut off Baltic States from Poland and Western Europe. So far there has been insignificant opposition towards Russian military presence among Belarusian society. That could change if economic difficulties deepen for Belarus. Two nearby Scandinavian countries Sweden and Finland with sizable military, but are not NATO members are concerned over worsening security issues in the region. There are many in both countries who advice to join NATO or at least expand the cooperation with NATO. Sweden that has maintained long history of neutrality and now it as the crossroads. Russia knows this and ha begun campaign of intimidation against Sweden to weaken their will to join NATO. Finland has very long border with Russia and historical policy of keeping neutrality with Russia, however that may change at some point and how Finland would react to the assault against ethnically close Estonia? So involvement of these two countries remains a question. Russia’s reasons for invasion. For and against. Baltic States provides almost no valuable natural resources for Russia to plunder. Financial gains might be the worth, however Russia already gains from Baltic States by trade, transit and gas supplies. Baltic States are trying to shake off reliance on Russian energy export, most successful in this matter is Lithuania. That’s way as same in Ukraine, Russia’s goal is to prevent Baltic States independence on energy sources and that can be done by multiple means. One of the main reason for invasions are political and emotional. Baltic States was possession of Russian Empire and was under Soviet occupation for most of XX century. Moscow highly regarded the European cultured territory and invested much in their industrialization and militarization. Now what is left is mostly empty carcasses of abandoned factories and war bases but what was left as inheritance was large numbers of Russian speaking immigrants in Latvia and Estonia. Both countries in early nighties did crucial and disputable actions to deny citizenship for most of these people creating a massive disappointment towards Latvian and Estonian ethnic population. The creation of large non-citizen community had political reason – Latvian national parties feared that Russian speaking voters could elect anti-western political force that would disrupt Latvian and Estonian path to NATO and US. In last 20 years the naturalization laws have allowed non citizens to obtain citizenship and indeed most of them vote for parties supporting Russia. While still significant size of non citizens remain and they are material for Russian special foreign policy to support Russian speakers outside Russia.

Russia-NATO war due to Baltic annexation is the most likely scenario for extinction – it spirals out of control and no one knows what’s going on. Thompson 16
Loren B. Thompson (Chief Operating Officer of the non-profit Lexington Institute and Chief Executive Officer of Source Associates, a for-profit consultancy. Prior to holding his present positions, he was Deputy Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and taught graduate-level courses in strategy, technology and media affairs at Georgetown. He has also taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government), Why The Baltic States Are Where Nuclear War Is Most Likely To Begin, 7/20/16, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-the-baltic-states-are-where-nuclear-war-most-likely-17044?page=2 VC
However, the possibility of nuclear war between America and Russia not only still exists, but is probably growing.  And the place where it is most likely to begin is in a future military confrontation over three small Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  Since those nations and several other Eastern European states joined NATO in 2004, the United States has been committed to defending their freedom and territorial integrity under Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty. Because NATO from its inception was aimed at containing the expansion of a nuclear country -- Russia -- a vital part of the U.S. security commitment to Europe consists of Washington's willingness to use its nuclear arsenal in defense of allies. The formal name for that strategy is "extended deterrence," and since 2004 it has included the Baltic states. Simply stated, the United States seeks to deter aggression or blackmail against NATO allies from a nuclear-armed Russia by threatening to use atomic weapons. The Obama Administration's 2010 Nuclear Posture Review confirmed that extended deterrence remains a pillar of U.S. global strategy. Although the credibility of extended deterrence ultimately resides in the U.S. strategic "triad" of long-range bombers and missiles, the posture review explicitly stated that the U.S. would preserve the ability to deploy nuclear weapons with suitably equipped tactical fighters in places like Europe. According to Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. currently deploys about 200 B61 nuclear gravity bombs in Europe for use by American or allied forces in a future East-West war. The weapons are receiving life-extension modifications that will allow their use for decades to come, first on F-16 fighters and later on the stealthy F-35 fighter. Russia also deploys a sizable number of so-called "non-strategic" nuclear weapons in the European theater, although like the U.S. it does not disclose numbers or locations. While nuclear weapons could potentially be used in any number of future warfighting scenarios, there are multiple reasons to suspect that the greatest danger exists with regard to the three Baltic states. Here are eight of those reasons. First, both Washington and Moscow assign high strategic significance to the future disposition of the Baltic states. From Moscow's perspective, the three states are located close to the centers of Russian political and military power, and therefore are a potential base for devastating attacks. For instance, the distance between Lithuania's capital of Vilnius and Moscow is less than 500 miles -- a short trip for a supersonic aircraft. From Washington's perspective, failure to protect the Baltic states from Russian aggression could lead to the unraveling of America's most important alliance. Second, Washington has been very public about it commitment to the Baltic states. For instance, in 2014 President Obama stated during a visit to Estonia that defense of the three countries' capitals was "just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London." That is an extraordinary assertion considering that the population of metropolitan London (about 8 million) is greater than that of all three Baltic states combined (about 6 million), and that the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea is so close to the Russian heartland. Third, there is a disconnect between the rhetoric that Washington applies to Baltic security and the tactical situation that would likely obtain in a future war. Russia has massive local superiority in every form of military force, and the topography of the three states presents few obstacles to being quickly overrun. The RAND Corporation reported earlier this year that in a series of war games, Russian forces were always able to overcome indigenous defenders and reach Baltic capitals within a few days. The forces of other NATO nations had little time to respond. Fourth, for all of its talk about reinforcing NATO at the recent alliance summit ("we will defend every ally" President Obama said), there is scant evidence the U.S. is willing to make the kind of commitment of conventional forces needed to blunt a Russian invasion in the Baltic region. The proposed placement of NATO-led battalions in each state totaling about 1,000 soldiers each is widely described as a "tripwire" defense, meaning it might trigger a bigger alliance response but would not be able to prevent Moscow from reaching its military objectives quickly. Fifth, any counter-attack by NATO in the Baltics could easily be misconstrued by Moscow as a threat to its core interests, in part because some strikes against attacking forces would occur on Russian territory, and in part because Russia's fragile reconnaissance system would quickly be overwhelmed by the fog of war. Anthony Barrett of the RAND Corporation has recently produced a worrisome analysis detailing how an East-West conventional conflict along the Russian periphery could escalate to nuclear-weapons use through miscues or misjudgments. Sixth, both sides in any such conflict would have military doctrine potentially justifying the use of nuclear weapons to prevent defeat. In the case of Russia, it has stated repeatedly that it needs non-strategic nuclear weapons to cope with the superiority of NATO conventional forces, that it would use such weapons in order to protect its core assets and values, and even that nuclear weapons might sometimes be useful tools for de-escalating a conflict. Successive U.S. administrations have stressed that nuclear weapons underpin alliance commitments. Seventh, both sides have non-strategic nuclear weapons in theater ready for quick use if tactical circumstances dictate. For example, Hans Kristensen noted the presence of several nuclear-capable military systems in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad located between Lithuania and Poland. Although the Russians have not disclosed whether nuclear warheads are also located in the district, there is little doubt that hundreds could quickly be deployed to areas around the Baltic states in an escalating conflict. Nuclear-capable NATO jets could reach the area within hours. Eighth, new technologies are gradually being incorporated into forces on both sides that could accelerate the pace and confusion of a local conflict. For instance, the F-35 fighter that will replace F-16s in the tactical nuclear role cannot be tracked by Russian radar. The integrated air defenses that Russia has deployed in Kaliningrad and elsewhere on its territory could severely impede NATO use of local air space in support of ground forces, and Russian electronic-warfare capabilities could impede coordination of ground maneuvers. The bottom line is that all the ingredients are present in the eastern Baltic area for an East-West conflict escalating to nuclear weapons use. Neither side understands what actions might provoke nuclear use by the other, and once war began both sides would likely have a tenuous grasp of what was happening. The high stakes assigned to the outcome of such a conflict and the ready availability of "non-strategic" nuclear weapons in a context where either side might view their use as strategic in consequences is a prescription for catastrophe.