1NC vs MM NK

T
A. Substantially requires at least a 2% reduction --- this is
the smallest percentage we could find
Word and Phrases 1960
'Substantial" means "of real worth and importance; of considerable value;
valuable." Bequest to charitable institution, making 1/48 of expenditures in
state, held exempt from taxation; such expenditures constituting
"substantial" part of its activities. Tax Commission of Ohio v. American
Humane Education Soc., 181 N.E. 557, 42 Ohio App.

B. Plan violates
American Muslim Population is only .8%
Walen 14 (Andrew Walen, Muslim Population in US: New Poll Shows None of Us Have Any Idea, iDigital Times,
11/3/14, http://www.idigitaltimes.com/muslim-population-us-new-poll-shows-none-us-have-any-idea-392930, 7/31/15 AV)

According to the new poll, US citizens guessed the Muslim population of the US to be about 15 percent
when asked Out of every 100 people, how many do you think are Muslim? This would mean that the US

the percentage
of Muslims in the United States at about .8 percent of the population , with an
has 47.4 million Muslims. The reality is quite different, with current research putting

estimated 2.6 million Muslims in the US as of 2010. Even higher estimates find that there are between five
and eight million Muslims in the entire country.

C. THE AFFIRMATIVE INTERPRETATION IS BAD FOR DEBATE

Limits are necessary for negative preparation and clash,
and their interpretation makes the topic too big.
Permitting minor changes like the plan permits a huge
number of cases.
D. T IS A VOTER because the opportunity to prepare
promotes better debating, education and fairness.

K
Democracy is inherently tied to capitalist expansion.
Those stuck within this thought process are called
democratic fundamentalists and creates a false binary
of either being a fundamentalist or democratic that is
premised on the continued expansion and support of this
system
Jodi Dean 2004, political theorist, author of several books including Democracy and Other Liberal Fantasies
(2009), gives lectures throughout various countries including the US, Denmark, England, China, and Canada, Zizek
Against Democracy//MMWang

In this article, I take up Slavoj Zizeks critical interrogation of democracy. I specify and defend Zizeks
position as an alternative left politics, indeed, as that position most attuned to the loss of the political
today. Whereas liberal and pragmatic approaches to politics and political theory accept the diminishment
of political aspirations as realistic accommodation to the complexities of late capitalist societies as well as

Zizeks
psychoanalytic philosophy confronts directly the trap involved in
acquiescence to a diminished political field , that is to say, to a political field
constituted through the exclusion of the economy: within the ideological
matrix of liberal democracy, any move against nationalism , fundamentalist,
or ethnic violence ends up reinforcing Capital and guaranteeing democracys
failure. Arguing that formal democracy is irrevocably and necessarily stained by a particular content
preferable to the dangers of totalitarianism accompanying Marxist and revolutionary theories,

that conditions and limits its universalizability, he challenges his readers to relinquish our attachment to

the procedures and institutions of constitutional

democracies privilege the wealthy and exclude the poor, if we know that
efforts toward inclusion remain tied to national boundaries, thereby
disenfranchising yet again those impacted by certain national decisions and
policies, and if we know that the expansion and intensification of networked
communications that was supposed to enhance democratic participation
serves primarily to integrate and consolidate communicative capitalism , why do
democracy: if we know that

we present our political hopes as aspirations to democracy, rather than something else? Why in the face of
democracys obvious inability to represent justice in the social field that has emerged in the incompatibility
between the globalized economy and welfare states to displace the political, do critical left political and
cultural theorists continue to emphasize a set of arrangements that can be filled in, substantialized, by
fundamentalisms, nationalisms, populisms, and conservatisms diametrically opposed to progressive

democracy is the form our

attachment to Capital takes. Faithful to democracy, we eschew the
demanding task of politicizing the economy and envisioning a different
political order. R-r-really R-r-radical Some theorists construe Zizek as an intellectual bad boy trying to
visions of social and economic equality? The answer is that

out-radicalize those he dismisses as deconstructionists, multiculturalists, Spinozans, and Leftist scoundrels

and dwarves. Ernesto Laclau, in the dialogue with Zizek and Judith Butler, refers scornfully to the nave
self-complacence of one of Zizeks r-r-revolutionary passages: Zizek had told us that he wanted to
overthrow capitalism; now we are served notice that he also wants to do away with liberal democratic
regimes. Although Laclau implies that Zizeks anti-democratic stance is something new, askepticism
toward democracy has actually long been a crucial component of Zizeks project. It is not, therefore, simply

Zizek voices a sense of

betrayal at the bait and switch occurring in Eastern Europe when they went
for democracy and got capitalism and nationalism instead . For example, in For They
a radical gesture. In a number of his early books published in English,

Know Not What They Do, his first book written after the collapse of actually existing socialism, Zizek
wonders if the Left is condemned to pledge all its forces to the victory of democracy? He notes that in
the initial days of communisms disintegration in Eastern Europe, the democratic project breathed with
new life.

Democracy held out promises of hope and freedom, of arrangements

that would enable people to determine collectively the rules and practices
through which they would live their lives. But instead of collective governance in the
common interest, people in the new democracies got rule by capital. Their
political choices became constrained within and determined by the neoliberal
market logics of globalized capitalism already dominating Western Europe, Great Britain, and
the United States. What emerged after the communists were gone was the combination of neoliberal
capitalism and nationalist fundamentalism, a scoundrel time when capitalism appears as democracy and

skepticism
toward democracy is not a recent radical gesture but a central element in
Zizeks thinking is also clear in the fact that one of his most fundamental
theoretical insights concerns the constitutive non-universalizability of liberal
democracy. Thus, in The Sublime Object of Ideology, written before the collapse of communism,
Zizek refers to the universal notion of democracy as a necessary fiction.
democracy as and through capitalism. Is this what the Left is doomed to defend? That

Adopting Hegels insight that the Universal can realize itself only in impure, deformed, corrupted forms,
he emphasizes the impossibility of grasping the Universal as an intact purity. In all his work thereafter,
Zizek struggles with the relation between democracy and universality, concerned with the way that
contemporary adherence to democracy prevents the universalizing move proper to politics. Finally, in his

Zizek names the limit to current thinking democratic

fundamentalism. One should read the term in two ways. First, democratic
fundamentalism refers to the connection between liberal democracy and
ethnic/religious fundamentalism. Rather than two opposing forces in an ideological battle (as
presented in mainstream U.S. media and politics), liberal democracy and fundamentalism
are two components of the current ideological formation . Fundamentalism is
not the preservation of authentic traditions against forces of modernization. Rather, it is the
postmodern appropriation of cultural forms in the context of global capital .
Likewise, liberal democracy is not an alternative to fundamentalism; indeed, it is
laced through with fundamentalisms. The choice liberal democracy sets up
fundamentalism or democracyis thus false; not only is it premised on the
hegemony of democracy but it disavows its own relationship to
fundamentalism. Indeed, the false choice is one of the ways that liberal democracy attempts to
recent work,

ensure that nothing will really happen in politics, that everything (global capital) will go as before.

Human rights are tied to neoliberalism they require the

use of economic resources based on democracy, economic
welfare, and trade. The history of capitalism to
neoliberalism cannot be separated from that of human
rights
Samuel Moyn 2014, professor of law and history at Harvard University, A Powerless Companion: Human
Rights in the Age of Neoliberalism, pgs 147-149//MMWang

human rights law is a neoliberal phenomenon.

And certainly the common timing is right: the human rights revolution and the victory of
market fundamentalism have been simultaneous . In an important new essay, Marxist
It is increasingly common to claim that international

international lawyer Susan Marks compares Naomi Kleins The Shock Doctrine with my own recent history of international
human rights, which emphasizes the 1970s as the moment of breakthrough for their ascent. Both histories, Marks
observes, ascribe the newfound visibility of human rights to their promise to transcend formerly attractive political options
east and west that seemed inadequate or even dangerous.1 For her too, Marks acknowledges of Kleins treatment,
the

human rights movement as we know it today took shape during the

1970s. And for her too, a defining characteristic of the new movement was its
non-political creed.2 But for Marks, Klein succeeds by unveiling the neoliberal
circumstances of human rights that have permanently defined their
trajectory: [S]he considers that a rather important aspect of the context for the movements emergence is one Moyn
omits to mention: the rise in that period of the neo-liberal version of private
capitalism, with its now familiar policy prescription of privatisation,

deregulation and state retreat from social provision. To its influential enthusiasts then and
now, that is the last utopia. . . . From Kleins perspective, then, the history of human rights cannot
be told in isolation from developments in the history of capitalism .3 (At this point
Marks notes that Milton Friedman won the Nobel prize for economics in 1976, the year before Amnesty International was
given the Nobel peace prize.) Friedrich Hayek, the guru of neoliberalism, was as impressed a witness of the human
rights revolution of the 1970s as anyone else. But it is interesting that, although occasionally an advocate of the
constitutionalization of basic liberties like freedom of speech and press, he was in fact an acerbic critic of that revolution.
In an interview, he described the spike in talk around human rights associated with Jimmy Carters election to the
American presidency as a strange fad, which (like all fashions) risked excess: Im not sure whether its an invention of
the present administration or whether its of an older date, but I suppose if you told an eighteen year old that human
rights is a new discovery he wouldnt believe it. He would have thought the United States for 200 years has been
committed to human rights, which of course would be absurd. The United States discovered human rights two years ago
or five years ago. Suddenly its the main object and leads to a degree of interference with the policy of other countries
which, even if I sympathized with the general aim, I dont think its in the least justified. . . . But its a dominating belief in
the United States now.4 All the same, since that moment of modish popularity,

the staying power of

human rights has led to many more positive visions of the essential harmony
if not identityof economic liberalism and international human rights. The
Marxist left, indeed, is hardly the only source of claims concerning the synergetic relationship between the advancement
of market freedoms and human rights.5 If anything,

it is much more common to promote

neoliberalism as an agent of the advancement of human rights rather than to
link them as malign accomplices. Perhaps most notably, Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann argues that,
although human rights law may exact some costs to efficiency, the general relationship between
economic liberty and human rights is productive and strong, so much so that
promoting the former and latter are not very different enterprises .6 He writes:
[E]njoyment of human rights require[s] the use of dispersed information and
economic resources that can be supplied most efficiently, and most
democratically, through the division of labour among free citizens and
through liberal trade promoting economic welfare, the freedom of choice and
the free flow of scarce goods, services, and information across frontiers in
response to supply and demand by citizens. 7 There is, accordingly, little daylight between
economic liberalization and the promotion of international human rights. And though Petersmanns optimism about near

mainstream international human rights lawyers

generally envision a large zone of compatibility between their norms and
standard market arrangements; they merely insist that the values of international human rights need to
identity has certainly drawn their fire,

be kept separate so as to provide critical purchase on globalization if and when it goes wrong.8 In the mainstream
vision, international human rights can offer a toolbox of legal and other standards to guide, tame, and civilize an era of
transnational market liberalization that has generally improved the human condition.

Neoliberalism is producing accelerating inequality,

environmental destruction, and conflict in the squo
statistics showing the world is getting better only
illustrate the positive impact of Latin American and
Chinese resistance to the neoliberal model
Milne 15

(Seumus Milne, Guardian columnist and associate editor, The Davos

oligarchs are right to fear the world theyve made, 22 January 2015,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/22/davos-oligarchsfear-inequality-global-elite-resist)
The scale of the crisis has been laid out for them by the charity Oxfam. Just 80 individuals now
have the same net wealth as 3.5 billion people half the entire global
population. Last year, the best-off 1% owned 48% of the worlds wealth, up from 44% five years ago.
On current trends, the richest 1% will have pocketed more than the
other 99% put together next year. The 0.1% have been doing even better, quadrupling
their share of US income since the 1980s. This is a wealth grab on a grotesque scale. For 30 years,
under the rule of what Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, calls market

fundamentalism, inequality in income and wealth has ballooned,

both between and within the large majority of countries. In Africa,
the absolute number living on less than $2 a day has doubled since 1981
as the rollcall of billionaires has swelled. In most of the world, labours share of national
income has fallen continuously and wages have stagnated under this
regime of privatisation, deregulation and low taxes on the rich . At the
same time finance has sucked wealth from the public realm into the
hands of a small minority, even as it has laid waste the rest of the economy. Now the
evidence has piled up that not only is such appropriation of wealth a moral
and social outrage, but it is fuelling social and climate conflict, wars, mass
migration and political corruption, stunting health and life chances,
increasing poverty, and widening gender and ethnic divides.
Escalating inequality has also been a crucial factor in the economic
crisis of the past seven years, squeezing demand and fuelling the credit boom. We dont just know that
from the research of the French economist Thomas Piketty or the British authors of the social study The
Spirit Level. After years of promoting Washington orthodoxy, even the western-dominated OECD and IMF

widening income and wealth gap has been key to the slow
growth of the past two neoliberal decades. The British economy would have been
almost 10% larger if inequality hadnt mushroomed . Now the richest are
using austerity to help themselves to an even larger share of the cake.
The big exception to the tide of inequality in recent years has been Latin America.
Progressive governments across the region turned their back on a
disastrous economic model, took back resources from corporate
control and slashed inequality. The numbers living on less than $2 a
day have fallen from 108 million to 53 million in little over a decade. China,
which also rejected much of the neoliberal catechism, has seen sharply rising inequality
at home but also lifted more people out of poverty than the rest of
the world combined, offsetting the growing global income gap .
These two cases underline that increasing inequality and poverty are
very far from inevitable. Theyre the result of political and economic
decisions. The thinking persons Davos oligarch realises that allowing things to carry on as they are is
argue that the

dangerous. So some want a more inclusive capitalism including more progressive taxes to save the
system from itself. But it certainly wont come about as a result of Swiss mountain musings or anxious

vested corporate and

elite interests including the organisations they run and the political structures they have
colonised have shown they will fight even modest reforms tooth and
nail. To get the idea, you only have to listen to the squeals of protest, including from some in his own
Guildhall lunches. Whatever the feelings of some corporate barons,

party, at Ed Milibands plans to tax homes worth over 2m to fund the health service, or the demand from
the one-time reformist Fabian Society that the Labour leader be more pro-business (for which read procorporate), or the wall of congressional resistance to Barack Obamas mild redistributive taxation

Perhaps a section of the worried elite might be prepared to

pay a bit more tax. What they wont accept is any change in the
balance of social power which is why, in one country after another, they resist any attempt
proposals.

to strengthen trade unions, even though weaker unions have been a crucial factor in the rise of inequality

Its only through a challenge to the entrenched

interests that have dined off a dysfunctional economic order that the
tide of inequality will be reversed. The anti-austerity Syriza party,
favourite to win the Greek elections this weekend, is attempting to do just that as the
Latin American left has succeeded in doing over the past decade and
a half. Even to get to that point demands stronger social and political
movements to break down or bypass the blockage in a colonised
political mainstream. Crocodile tears about inequality are a symptom of a fearful elite. But
in the industrialised world.

change will only come from unrelenting social pressure and political
challenge.

The impact is extinction neoliberal social organization

ensures extinction from resource wars, climate change,
and structural violence only accelerating beyond
neoliberalism can resolve its impacts
Williams & Srnicek 13
(Alex, PhD student at the University of East London, presently at work on a
thesis entitled 'Hegemony and Complexity', Nick, PhD candidate in
International Relations at the London School of Economics, Co-authors of the
forthcoming Folk Politics, 14 May 2013,
http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manifesto-for-anaccelerationist-politics/)
At the beginning of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, global civilization faces a
new breed of cataclysm. These coming apocalypses ridicule the norms and organisational
structures of the politics which were forged in the birth of the nation-state, the rise of capitalism, and a

Most significant is the breakdown of

the planetary climatic system. In time, this threatens the continued
existence of the present global human population. Though this is the most critical of the
threats which face humanity, a series of lesser but potentially equally destabilising
problems exist alongside and intersect with it. Terminal resource depletion,
especially in water and energy reserves, offers the prospect of mass
starvation, collapsing economic paradigms, and new hot and cold
wars. Continued financial crisis has led governments to embrace the
paralyzing death spiral policies of austerity , privatisation of social
welfare services, mass unemployment, and stagnating wages.
Increasing automation in production processes including intellectual labour is
evidence of the secular crisis of capitalism, soon to render it
incapable of maintaining current standards of living for even the former
middle classes of the global north. 3. In contrast to these ever-accelerating catastrophes, todays
politics is beset by an inability to generate the new ideas and modes of
organisation necessary to transform our societies to confront and
resolve the coming annihilations. While crisis gathers force and speed, politics withers and
retreats. In this paralysis of the political imaginary, the future has been cancelled. 4. Since 1979, the
hegemonic global political ideology has been neoliberalism , found in some
Twentieth Century of unprecedented wars. 2.

variant throughout the leading economic powers. In spite of the deep structural challenges the new global

since 20078,
neoliberal programmes have only evolved in the sense of deepening. This
continuation of the neoliberal project, or neoliberalism 2.0, has begun to apply
another round of structural adjustments, most significantly in the form of encourproblems present to it, most immediately the credit, financial, and fiscal crises

aging new and aggressive incursions by the private sector into what remains of social democratic institu-

This is in spite of the immediately negative economic and social

effects of such policies, and the longer term fundamental barriers posed by the new global
tions and services.
crises.

The alternative articulates a counter-conduct voting

neg pushes towards a cooperative conduct that organizes
individuals around a collectively shared commons
affirming this conduct creates a new heuristic that decouples government from the demand for competition and
production
Dardot & Laval 13
(Pierre Dardot, philosopher and specialist in Hegel and Marx, Christian Laval,
professor of sociology at the Universite Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense, The
New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, pgs. 318-321)
This indicates to what extent we must take on board in our own way the main lesson of neo-liberalism:

the subject is always to be constructed. The whole question is then

how to articulate subjectivation with resistance to power. Now, precisely
this issue is at the heart of all of Foucaults thought. However, as Jeffrey T. Nealon has recently shown, part
of the North American secondary literature has, on the contrary, stressed the alleged break between
Foucaults research on power and that of his last period on the history of subjectivity.55 According to the
Foucault consensus, as Nealon aptly dubs it, the successive impasses of the initial neo-structuralism, and
then of the totalizing analysis of panoptical power, led the last Foucault to set aside the issue of power
and concern himself exclusively with the aesthetic invention of a style of existence bereft of any political
dimension. Furthermore, if we follow this de-politicizing reading of Foucault, the aestheticization of ethics
anticipated the neo-liberal mutation precisely by making self-invention a new norm. In reality, far from
being oblivious of one another, the issues of power and the subject were always closely articulated, even
in the last work on modes of subjectivation. If one concept played a decisive role in this respect, it was
counter-conduct, as developed in the lecture of 1 March 1978.56 This lecture was largely focused on the

forms of
resistance of conduct that are the correlate of the pastoral mode of power. If such forms of
crisis of the pastorate. It involved identifying the specificity of the revolts or

resistance are said to be of conduct, it is because they are forms of resistance to power as conduct and,

are themselves forms of conduct opposed to this powerconduct. The term conduct in fact admits of two meanings: an activity
that consists in conducting others, or conduction; and the way one
conducts oneself under the influence of this activity of conduction.57
The idea of counter-conduct therefore has the advantage of directly
signifying a struggle against the procedures implemented for
conducting others, unlike the term misconduct, which only refers
to the passive sense of the word.58 Through counter-conduct,
people seek both to escape conduction by others and to define a way
of conducting themselves towards others. What relevance might
this observation have for a reflection on resistance to neo-liberal
governmentality? It will be said that the concept is introduced in the context of an analysis of the
pastorate, not government. Governmentality, at least in its specifically neo-liberal
form, precisely makes conducting others through their conduct towards
themselves its real goal. The peculiarity of this conduct towards oneself,
conducting oneself as a personal enterprise, is that it immediately
and directly induces a certain conduct towards others : competition
with others, regarded as so many personal enterprises. Consequently, counter-conduct as a form of
as such,

resistance to this governmentality must correspond to a conduct that is indivisibly a conduct towards
oneself and a conduct towards others. One cannot struggle against such an indirect mode of conduction by
appealing for rebellion against an authority that supposedly operates through compulsion external to
individuals. If politics is nothing more and nothing less than that which is born with resistance to
governmentality, the first revolt, the first confrontation,59 it means that ethics and politics are absolutely
inseparable. To the subjectivation-subjection represented by ultra-subjectivation, we must oppose a

To neo-liberal governmentality as a
specific way of conducting the conduct of others, we must therefore
oppose a no less specific double refusal: a refusal to conduct oneself
subjectivation by forms of counter-conduct.

towards oneself as a personal enterprise and a refusal to conduct

oneself towards others in accordance with the norm of competition.
As such, the double refusal is not passive disobedience.60 For, if it is true that the personal
enterprises relationship to the self immediately and directly
determines a certain kind of relationship to others generalized
competition conversely, the refusal to function as a personal
enterprise, which is self-distance and a refusal to line up in the race for
performance, can only practically occur on condition of establishing
cooperative relations with others, sharing and pooling. In fact, where
would be the sense in a self-distance severed from any cooperative
practice? At worst, a cynicism tinged with contempt for those who are dupes. At best, simulation or
double dealing, possibly dictated by a wholly justified concern for self-preservation, but ultimately

such a game
could lead the subject, for want of anything better, to take refuge in
a compensatory identity, which at least has the advantage of some stability by contrast with
the imperative of indefinite self-transcendence. Far from threatening the neo-liberal
order, fixation with identity, whatever its nature, looks like a fall-back
position for subjects weary of themselves, for all those who have abandoned the
race or been excluded from it from the outset. Worse, it recreates the logic of
competition at the level of relations between little communities . Far
from being valuable in itself, independently of any articulation with politics, individual
subjectivation is bound up at its very core with collective
subjectivation. In this sense, sheer aestheticization of ethics is a pure and simple abandonment of
a genuinely ethical attitude. The invention of new forms of existence can only
be a collective act, attributable to the multiplication and intensification of
cooperative counter-conduct. A collective refusal to work more, if only local, is a good
exhausting for the subject. Certainly not a counter-conduct. All the more so in that

example of an attitude that can pave the way for such forms of counter-conduct. In effect, it breaks what
Andr Gorz quite rightly called the structural complicity that binds the worker to capital, in as much as
earning money, ever more money, is the decisive goal for both. It makes an initial breach in the

The genealogy of neoliberalism attempted in this book teaches us that the new global rationality
is in no wise an inevitable fate shackling humanity. Unlike Hegelian Reason, it is not
the reason of human history. It is itself wholly historical that is, relative to
strictly singular conditions that cannot legitimately be regarded as
untranscendable. The main thing is to understand that nothing can release us from the task of
immanent constraint of the ever more, ever more rapidly.61

promoting a different rationality. That is why the belief that the financial crisis by itself sounds the deathknell of neo-liberal capitalism is the worst of beliefs. It is possibly a source of pleasure to those who think
they are witnessing reality running ahead of their desires, without them having to move their little finger. It
certainly comforts those for whom it is an opportunity to celebrate their own past clairvoyance. At
bottom, it is the least acceptable form of intellectual and political abdication. Neo-liberalism is not falling
like a ripe fruit on account of its internal contradictions; and traders will not be its undreamed-of
gravediggers despite themselves. Marx had already made the point powerfully: History does nothing.62

There are only human beings who act in given conditions and seek
through their action to open up a future for themselves. It is up to us
to enable a new sense of possibility to blaze a trail. The government of human
beings can be aligned with horizons other than those of maximizing
performance, unlimited production and generalized control . It can
sustain itself with self-government that opens onto different
relations with others than that of competition between selfenterprising actors. The practices of communization of knowledge,
mutual aid and cooperative work can delineate the features of a
different world reason. Such an alternative reason cannot be better
designated than by the term reason of the commons.

Case

Solvency
MOSQUES EXCLUDED FROM SURVEILLANCE

John Careccia 13, Islamic Mosques: Excluded From Surveillance By Feds, 617-2013, Western Journalism, http://www.westernjournalism.com/islamicmosques-excluded-from-surveillance-by-feds/
Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents.
Surveillance or undercover sting operations are not allowed without
high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice
Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee
(SORC). Who makes up this body, and under what methodology do they review requests nobody
knows. The names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret. Why is it necessary to keep the
names and titles of the people who decide whether or not to protect the rest of the country from radical
Muslims, secret?

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist

groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months
before the panels formation, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for
allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by
hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques in
Americas second largest city. Another defeat for the politically correct imbeciles in our

government. Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration
has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown radicals inside
mosques, and disrupted dozens of plots against innocent American citizens across the United States.

No NYPD surveillance society is making progressive

steps
CBS 14 (CBS New York, End of NYPD Muslim Surveillance Program

Applauded, CBS New York, April 16, 2014,

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/04/16/end-of-nypd-muslim-surveillanceprogram-applauded/, 7/30/15 AV)
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) Muslim groups and civil liberties advocates applauded
the decision by NYPD officials to disband a controversial unit that tracked the
daily lives of Muslims as part of efforts to detect terrorism threats, but they said
there were concerns about whether other problematic practices remained in place. The NYPD said
Tuesday it had disbanded the surveillance program and that detectives
assigned to the unit had been transferred to other duties within the division .
An ongoing review of the Demographics Unit by Police Commissioner Bill Bratton found that the same
information collected by the unit could be better collected through direct contact with community groups,
officials said. This

reform is a critical step forward in easing tensions between

the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens
can help one another go after the real bad guys , Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a
statement. The Demographics Unit was created 18 months after the 9/11 terror attacks. The program,
conceived with the help of a CIA agent working with the NYPD, assembled databases on where Muslims
lived, shopped, worked and prayed. Plainclothes officers infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants
in mosques, monitored sermons and cataloged Muslims in New York who adopted new, Americanized
surnames. Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, applauded
the decision but said theres still concern about the police use of informants to infiltrate mosques without
specific evidence of crime. This was definitely a part of the big puzzle that were trying to get
dismantled, Sarsour said. But, she added, This doesnt necessarily prove to us yet that these very
problematic practices are going to end. Others also voiced concerns and said they want more assurances
that the NYPD is ending the practice. Its a good step, but I think what we need to do now is build bridges

between the NYPD and law enforcement authorities in general, Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the
Council on American-Islamic Relations. Were, of course, concerned that some of the functions might just
be carried out by different parts of the NYPD, said Glenn Katon, legal director for Muslim Advocates. New
York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said police-community relations took a blow
from the NYPD units broad surveillance of all Muslims, not just people suspected of wrongdoing. The
NYPDs disbanding of a unit that targeted New York Muslims and mapped their everyday institutions and
activities is a welcome first step for which we commend Commissioner Bratton, said Lieberman. We hope
that the Demographics Units discriminatory activities will not be carried out by other parts of the NYPD.
Former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly defended the surveillance tactics, saying officers observed legal
guidelines while attempting to create an early warning system for terrorism. But in a deposition made
public in 2012, an NYPD chief testified that the units work had never generated a lead or triggered a
terrorism investigation in the previous six years. In Washington, 34 members of Congress had demanded
a federal investigation into the NYPDs actions. Attorney General Eric Holder said he was disturbed by
reports about the operations and the Department of Justice said it was reviewing complaints received from

While campaigning for office last fall, de Blasio said he

would end broad spying on Muslims. He said on his watch, NYPD surveillance
tactics would only be authorized to follow up on specific leads and that the
police force would be under the supervision of a new inspector general . Former
Muslims and their supporters.

federal prosecutor Philip Eure was named to the inspector general position last month. Bratton also met
last week with Muslim community leaders to work on improved relations.

Islamophobia
Alt causes to Islamophobia affirmatives plan cant solve

Eve Loren Goldstein 15, Psychiatrist, AllAboutCouseling,

http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/library/islamophobia/
The leading cause for Islamophobia is usually misinformation or total
lack of information based on the religion. Unfortunately,
Islamophobic people are not likely to be willing to educate
themselves about their fears or spend time around any Islamic
people. This feeling is somewhat understandable, as they do claim to be
physically afraid of the Islamic people, but this attitude will likely lead to
a worsening of their fear and not provide any situation for positive
change.
Islamophobia can not only hold you back in your life, it can also hold back
others around you. This condition is not only an extreme or irrational
fear of people following the Islamic beliefs, it is usually coupled with
a hatred of their religion. As a result, it leads to an unfair demeanor
towards someones right for a personal choice. This phobia is generally
construed as a form of prejudice towards other religions and has
recently become a relatively significant issue in our society. Making
the effort for change will make a huge difference in your personal life, usually
resulting in a more calm and collected composure in previously
perceived stressful situations. If you are ready to make this positive change,
on both a personal and social level, do some preliminary Internet research to
find the best treatment options available locally to you.

The affs own Srinagar 12 card states Muslims are represented

in the media, though primarily in political cartoons, irreverent statements
this proves alternate causes to Islamophobia that the aff cannot counteract
within society curtailing religious surveillance does not stop the media or
political cartoons

No online islamophobia solvency

Spence 14 (Duncan Spence, Why online Islamophobia is difficult to stop,
CBC News, 11/1/14, Duncan Spence is an author for CBC News,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/why-online-islamophobia-is-difficult-to-stop1.2810242, 7/31/15 AV)
Islamophobia has been an ongoing concern in the west since 9/11, but a number of recent
incidents in Britain have given rise to a new wave of hatred that experts say is finding a
breeding ground online. Part of the problem, researchers say, is that right-wing groups can post antiIslamic comments online without fear of legal prosecution. If they were to say, Black people are evil,
Jamaicans are evil, they could be prosecuted, says Fiyaz Mughal, founder of Islamophobia reporting web site
TellMamaUK.org. But

because religious hatred isn't covered legally in the same way that racism
is, Mughal says "the extreme right are frankly getting away with really toxic stuff. Researchers
believe the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and incidents such as the murder of British
soldier Lee Rigby and the recent sexual exploitation scandal in the town of Rotherham have contributed to a

spike in online anti-Muslim sentiment in the UK. Imran Awan, deputy director of the Centre for Applied
Criminology at Birmingham City University, noticed the trend when he was working on a paper regarding Islamophobia
and Twitter following Rigby's death. Rigby was killed in the street in southeast London in 2013 by two Islamic extremists
who have since been convicted. Awan says the anonymity of social media platforms makes them a popular venue for hate

Of the 500 tweets from 100 Twitter

users Awan examined, 75 per cent were Islamophobic in nature. He cites posts such as "'Let's go out
speech, and that the results of his report were shocking, to say the least.

and blow up a mosque' and 'Lets get together and kill the Muslims," and says most of these were linked to far-right
groups. Awans findings echo those of Tell MAMA UK, which has compiled data on anti-Muslim attacks for three years.
(MAMA stands for "Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks.") Tell MAMA's Mughal says anti-Muslim bigotry is "felt significantly,"
and adds that "in our figures, we have seen a year-by-year increase." Researchers believe far-right advocates are partly
responsible for a spike in online hate speech. Theres been a real increase in the far right, and in some of the material I
looked at online, there were quite a lot of people with links to the English Defence League and another group called
Britain First, says Awan. Both Mughal and Awan believe that right-wing groups such as Britain First and the EDL become
mobilized each time there is an incident in the Muslim community. The Twitter profile of the EDL reads: #WorkingClass
movement who take to the streets against the spread of #islamism & #sharia #Nosurrender #GSTQ. Below it is a link to
their Facebook page, which has over 170, 000 likes. Below that page, a caption reads, Leading the Counter-Jihad fight.
Peacefully protesting against militant Islam. EDL spokesperson Simon North dismisses accusations that his group is
spreading hate, emphasizing that Muslims are often the first victims of attacks carried out by Islamic extremists. We
address things that are in the news the same way newspapers do, says North. Experts in far-right groups, however, say
their tendency to spread hateful messages around high-profile cases is well established. North allows that some
Islamophobic messages might emanate from the group's regional divisions. But they do not reflect the groups overall
thinking, he says. There are various nuances that get expressed by these organizations, North says. Our driving line is
set out very clearly in our mission statement. According to EDL's web site, their mission statement is to promote human
rights while giving a balanced picture of Islam. Awan argues online Islamophobia should be taken seriously and says
police and legislators need to make more successful prosecutions of this kind of hate speech and be more techno-savvy
when it comes to online abuse. Prosecuting online Islamophobia, however, is rare in the UK, says Vidhya Ramalingam of
the European Free Initiative, which researches far-right groups. That's because groups like Britain First, which have over
400,000 Facebook likes, have a fragmented membership and do not have the traditional top-down leadership that groups
have had in the past. Online Islamophobia is also flourishing in Canada. The National Council of Canadian Muslims
(NCCM) is receiving a growing number of reports. But there are now fewer means for prosecuting online hate speech in
Canada. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act protected against the wilful promotion of hate online, but it was
repealed by Bill C-304 in 2012. Its kind of hard to say what the impact is, because even when it existed, there werent a

Though there is a
criminal code provision that protects against online hate speech, it requires the attorney
generals approval in order to lay charges and that rarely occurs , says Zwibel. Section 319 of the
lot of complaints brought under it, says Cara Zwibel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Criminal Code of Canada forbids the incitement of hatred against any section of the public distinguished by colour, race,
religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." A judge can order online material removed from a public forum such as social
media if it is severe enough, but if it is housed on a server outside of the country, this can be difficult. Ihsaan Gardee,
executive director of NCCM, says without changes, anti-Muslim hate speech will continue to go unpunished online, which
he says especially concerns moderate Muslims. They worry about people perceiving them as sharing the same values
these militants and these Islamic extremists are espousing.

Democracy
Democratic peace theory leads to conflict liberal
peace relies on accounting errors that ignore massive
structural violence and ensure self-fulfilling prophecy
solutions predicated on it cause error replication
Kiely 5

[Ray Kiely, Professor of International Politics @ University of London Queen

Mary] [Empire in the Age of Globalisation US Hegemony and Neoliberal
Disorder] (http://tinyurl.com/qgmv49l) (accessed 7-16-15) //MC
Liberal notions of democratic peace should therefore be seen in this light. It is true that liberal democracies
in the advanced capitalist countries are less likely to go to war with each other today than in the past. But

so-called liberal peace is itself a product of a history of bloody

conflict, and the idea that such peace can be simply imposed on premodern states ignores the ways in which the advanced powers have
generated bloody conflict in those parts of the world. It also ignores ongoing
processes of state formation and territorial conflict in relatively new
states. Coopers division of the world into post-modern, modern and pre-modern states has a simplistic
this

appeal, but it is purely descriptive, and tells us nothing about the (violent) histories of state formation that

It also betrays a simplistic linearity in which the

virtues of the advanced can quickly be imposed upon the backward .
This is a version of modernisation theory, in which countries are said to be poor simply
because they are insufficiently globalised (see Chapter 5). Quick- fix
solutions such as the illiberal imposition of liberal democracy are thus likely to exacerbate
such problems, no matter how well intentioned they may be and we would do
have led to such a division.

well to remember that past interventions have been justified by recourse to support for freedom and
democracy. Indeed, these have often been based on the idea that intervention in the past was ill-

These points are not made to

support a blanket anti-interventionist position, but they do warn against easy solutions,
liberal follies and messianic rhetoric. Moreover, no US administration
has really been committed to genuinely democratic principles of multilateral
global governance. All post-war US governments have upheld the belief in the
desirability of US hegemony, even if some have regarded multilateral negotiation as more
intentioned or misguided, but that we have got it right this time.

important than others. It could of course be argued that because the US is a liberal democracy it has a

if democracy is to be valued,
then it cannot be selective: it must apply to states not only in relation to their domestic
greater right than others to exercise world leadership. But

populations, but also in relation to the international system of nation-states.10 In this international system,

the US has a poor record in terms of democratic principles , as we have

seen. Singer usefully makes the point: Advocates of democracy should see something wrong with the idea

a nation fewer than 300 million people dominating a planet with

more than six billion inhabitants. Thats less than 5 per cent of the
population ruling over the remainder more than 95 per cent without their consent.
of

(Singer 2004: 191) It may of course be utopian to espouse the cause of global democracy, even if, as
cosmopolitan democrats point out, a similar argument was used in the past to argue against democracy

it is wishful thinking to expect the worlds

population to acquiesce passively to such a patently undemocratic
international system. This is not to romanticise much of the anti-imperialist resistance to
within nation-states. But surely

current US global domination, much of which is reactionary. Terrorism should be condemned, and indeed
efforts should be made to counter terrorist attacks. But it is absurd to dismiss all resistance to the US as

the most
ardent wishful thinking about US destiny and the most dangerous
the actions of terrorist minorities, whose actions are completely beyond explanation. Only

amnesia about history such as that shared by George Bush and Tony Blair can reduce
global politics to simplistic struggles between good and evil .11 This is
hardly surprising, as it reflects a long tradition of liberal thought justifying
illiberal measures against illiberal people. John Stuart Mill argued that despotism
is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement and

terrorism
has been reduced to a totally inexplicable, polymorphous mass. As a
the means justifi ed by actually effecting that end (Mill 1974: 69). In the war on terror,

result, [w]ithout defi ned shape or determinate roots, its mantle can be cast over any form of resistance to
sovereign power (Gregory 2004: 140)

Democracy and human rights claims are used as false

pretense for war
Chojnacki 6 (Sven, Professor @ Berlin Freie, Democratic Wars, pg. 35)

Moreover, an active policy of democratization might not only accelerate

violent processes but the norms of democracy and human rights may also
be a pretext for pursuing power interests by military means (ct. Shannon,
2000; Schjelset, 2001). Taking into account the -growth in military
intervention capabilities, unilateral options for action on the part of
powerful states, and the existing power asym- metries in the international
system on the one hand, and the relevance of violent intrastate and
substate conflicts for international politics in an era of interdependence on
the other, there is little reason to assume that the number of military
interventions will decrease in the future. A final risk to democratic peace
arises through norm- and value-based demarcation processes and warpromoting patterns of argumentation vis-a-vis non-democratic systems.
The more democratic states identify themselves in contrast to potential
adversaries and the less the cost--benefit argumen t comes to hear in the
face of technological superiority, the more the risk of war increases (d.
Muller, 2oo2a, p. 58). At the same time, it should be noted that superior
military capabilities, normative orienta- tions and global liberalization
pressures could be regarded as potential threats to non-democratic states
and regions. This could result in the emergence of new images of what an
enemy is and a 'democracy- specific security dilemma' vis-a-vis the rest of
the world (MUller, 2oo2a, pp. 59-60). The 'clash of civilizations' envisaged
by Samuel Huntington could thus evolve as a self-fulfilling prophecy as it
begins to inhabit the security policies of Western democracies . A policy of
democratic interventionism would not only confront democracies with
incalculable security risks but might also undermine their own nonnative
claims.

Democracy destroys the environment several reasons.

Li and Reuveny 7
Li, Prof of poli sci at Penn State, and Reuveny, prof of public and
environmental affairs @ Indiana U, Quan and Rafael, The Effects of
Liberalism on the Terrestrial Environment
http://cmp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/219
According to the policy inaction argument, facing environmental
degradation, democracy can often exhibit policy inaction for several
reasons (Midlarsky, 1998: 159). First, democracy seeks to please
competing interest groups. As such, it may be reluctant to alleviate

environmental degradation because some groups are expected to

benefit (or lose) from environmental policies more than others. Second,
corporation and environmental groups can fight each other to a
standstill, leaving a decision making vacuum instead of a direct impact
of democracy on the environment. Third, when budgets are tight
democracies may ignore environmental problems, perceiving economic
issues to be more pressing.

Democracy re-entrenches inequality five reasons turns

the human rights impact
McElwee 14 (Five Reasons Why Democracy Hasn't Fixed Inequality,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-mcelwee/five-reasons-whydemocrac_b_5858160.html)//A.V.
One of the most longstanding hopes (on the left) and fears (on the right)
about democratic politics is that voters of modest means will use their
electoral weight to level the economic playing field . In a market economy, the median

voter's income will invariably be below the national average creating an apparently compelling opportunity
for a politics of redistribution.

This makes the sustained increase in income inequality

in the United States and other developed countries a bit of a puzzle. One
common suggestion, offered recently by Eduardo Porter in The New York Times, is ignorance. Voters "don't
grasp how deep inequality is." But while Americans' understanding of economic trends is certainly
imperfect, the data suggest that the broad trends are known to the population. Nathan Kelly and Peter
Enns, for instance, find that when asked to compare the ratio of the highest paid occupation and the
lowest, Americans at the bottom of the income distribution do believe inequality is high and rising. In
1987, Americans as reported that the highest-paid occupation took home 20 times what the lowest paid
occupation did - by 2000, they thought the gap had grown to 74 times. A recent Pew survey finds that 65%
of adults agree that the gap between the rich and everyone else has increased in the past 10 years, only
8% say it has decreased. A Gallup poll from earlier this year suggests that 67% of Americans report that
they are either "somewhat" or "very" dissatisfied with the income and wealth distribution in the U.S.

If

ignorance doesn't explain inaction, what does? These five factors are the
most important culprits: 1) Upward mobility According to research from
Carina Engelhardt and Andreas Wagner, around the world people
overestimate the level of upward mobility in their society. They find that
redistribution is lower then when actual social mobility is but also lower where perceived mobility is higher .

Even if voters perceive the level of inequality correctly, their tendency to

overstate the level of mobility can undermine support for redistribution . In

another study Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrara find that, Americans who believe that American society

Using data from 33

democracies, Elvire Guillaud finds that those who believe they have
experienced downward mobility in the past decade are 32% more likely to
support redistribution. A relatively strong literature now supports this thesis .
2) Inequality undermines solidarity Enns and Kelly find, rather
counterintuitively, that when "inequality in America rises, the public responds
with increased conservative sentiment." That is, higher inequality leads to
less demand for redistribution. This is perhaps because as society becomes
less equal, its members have less in common and find it less congenial to act
in solidarity. Bo Rothstein and Eric Uslaner argue that, "the best policy response to growing inequality
offers equal opportunity (a mythology) are more likely to oppose redistribution.

is to enact universalistic social welfare programs. However, the social strains stemming from increased

As inequality increases, the

winner-take-all economy leads voters try to look out for their own childre n.
The period during which overall inequality has risen has seen a massive
increase in more affluent families' spending on enrichment for their own
children. Chris Dillow points to research by Klaus Abbink, David Masclet and Daniel Mirza who find in
inequality make it almost impossible to enact such policies."

social science experiments that disadvantaged groups are more likely to sacrifice their wealth to reduce

Kris-Stella
Trump finds that rising inequality perpetuates itself, noting that, "Public ideas
of what constitutes fair income inequality are influenced by actual inequality:
when inequality changes, opinions regarding what is acceptable change in
the same direction." 3) Political misrepresentation Ideological factors can't tell the
whole story. Many Americans support redistributive programs like the minimum
wage and support for the idea that hard work leads to success has
plummeted in the last decade. A further important reason for the lack of
political response to inequality relates to the structure of American political
institutions, which fail to translate the desires of less-advantaged Americans
for more redistribution into actual policy change . Support for this thesis comes from
the wealth of the advantaged group when inequality was lower than when it was higher.

many corners of the political science field, including Martin Gilens, Dorian Warren, Jacob Hacker, Paul

Research by five political scientists finds that

status quo bias of America's often-gridlocked congress serves to entrench
inequality. More simply, lower-income Americans tend to vote at a lower rate.
William Franko, Nathan Kelly and Christopher Witko find that states with lower
turnout inequality also have lower income inequality. Elsewhere, Franko finds that
Pierson, andKay Lehman Schlozman.

states with wider turnout gaps between the rich and poor are less likely to pass minimum-wage increases,
have weaker anti-predatory-lending policies and have less generous health insurance programs for
children in low-income families. Kim Hill, Jan Leighley and Angela Hilton-Andersson find, "an enduring
relationship between the degree of mobilization of lower-class voters and the generosity of welfare
benefits." Worryingly, Frederick Solt finds that, "citizens

of states with greater income

inequality are less likely to vote and that income inequality increases income
bias in the electorate." That is, as inequality increases, the poor are less likely
to turn out, further exacerbating inequality. 4) Interest-group politics The decline
of labor unions has decreased the political importance of poor voters, because unions were an important

A recent study by Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler finds

that the decline in union strength has reduced low-income and middleincome turnout. But labor's influence (or lack thereof) is also important when the voting is done.
"get-out-the-vote" machine.

Research finds that policy outcomes in the United States are heavily mediated by lobbying between

Martin Gilens writes, "Given the fact that most

Americans have little independent influence on policy outcomes, interest
groups like unions may be the only way to forward their economic interests
and preference." His research indicates that unions regularly lobby in favor of policies broadly
interest groups, so organization matters.

supported by Americans across the income spectrum, in contrast to business groups, which lobby in favor
of policies only supported by the wealthy. It's no surprise then that numerous studies have linked the

5) Racial conflict A recent

study by Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson finds that when white
Americans are reminded that the nation is becoming more diverse, they
become more conservative. Dog-whistle phrases like "welfare queens" have
long driven whites to oppose social safety net programs they
disproportionately benefit from. Research from Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam indicates that racial
decline in union membership and influence with rising inequality.

bias among white voters is strongly correlated with hostility toward means-tested social assistance

Another study by Steven Beckman and Buhong Zhen finds that blacks
are more likely to support redistribution even if their incomes are far above
average and that poor whites are more likely to oppose redistribution. In
other words, a massive public education campaign about the extent of
income inequality is neither necessary nor sufficient to achieve the kind of
redistributive policies liberals favor. The real obstacles to policy action on
inequality are more deeply ingrained in the structure of American politics,
demographics, and interest group coalitions. Insofar as there is a role for better
programs.

information to play, it likely relates not to inequality but tosocial mobility which remains widely
misperceived and is a potent driver of feelings about the justice of economic policy. As John Steinbeck

noted, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited
proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Stronger unions, more lower income voter turnout
and policies to reduce the corrupting influence of money on the political process would all work to reduce
inequality. It will take political mobilization, not simply voter education to achieve change. The wonks have
interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it.

Democracy does not affect whether or not a state

represses.
Timmerman 12(Ashley M; B.A University of Central Florida; WHEN LEADERS REPRESS: A STUDY OF
AFRICAN STATES; http://etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFE0005428/Masters_thesis_final.pdf)

Some studies (Davenport and Inman, 2012) present evidence that contradicts
this, saying that while regime type is important, it is not universally
applicable across all concepts. Davenport and Armstrong (2004) argue that
the previous studies showing negative linear relationships between
democracy and levels of repression are flawed. According to them, there is a
negative linear relationship, but only above a particular threshold, that varies
due to the measure in question. In their study, the measures include
international war, civil war, and military control, among others. However,
below this threshold, democracy does not affect the levels of repression . Beer
and Mitchell (2006) also present evidence that suggest democracy is 5 not
the deciding factor in whether or not a state will repress. Using the case of
India as an example, Beer and Mitchell (2006) suggest ethnic and religious
factors for the high levels of repression within a democratic state. The study
accurately accounts for the election of specific political parties and the
electoral participation as factors for repression, within this democratic state.
This contradicts most of the previous research that suggests democracies will
not repress.