Tournament: Spring Woods | Round: 1 | Opponent:  | Judge:
Ethical theories must be consistent
Rachels: (Rachels, James. "Punishment and Desert," Ethics in Practice, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997), pp. 470-479)

And, arbitrary moral rules can't guide action 

I contend truth seeking is arbitrary. Analytics although I probably will have a carded version up.

1. Forces lawyers to make judgment calls 

2. Gives power to legal institutions to intervene whenever they feel client or lawyer are concealing truth.

Tournament: Greenhill Fall Classic | Round: 1 | Opponent: Unknown | Judge: Unknown
Germany AC

v: m

Ethical theories are developed based on usefulness

Hookway:
Hookway, Christopher, "Pragmatism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/pragmatism/.

Having discussed.... what we do with it

2. Only pragmatism guides action- people would not be motivated to follow useless theories

3. Pragmatism consistent with our conception of what truth is

James:
James, William, American philosopher, Lecture: Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, http://www.d.umn.edu/~dcole/phillang/WilliamJamesPragmatismLecture6.htm

"Truth, as any dictioanry will tell you... for it is essential"

Political realism is true

Mearsheimer:
Mearsheimer, John (Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Chicago.) “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War.” http://www.scribd.com/doc/54088483/Back-to-the-Future-John-Mearsheimer
"Conflict is common among.... more power at the expense of rivals"

Realism precedes normative evaluations
Stensli:

vc: consistency with realism

A is the plan text: The German legislature ought to implement compulsory voting in the upcoming 2013 elections.

No German CV now
Kent:
Kent, Jason. “Compulsory voting: Motivating The Base and Australia's Electoral Fraud.” 4 April 2012.

Merkel has small lead in the polls

Torry:

CV drastically benefits opposing candidate and hurts Merkel

Ulrich:

Merkel loss key to repeal of austerity and increased financial aid

Hawley:

Continued austerity will collapse Eurozone

Steinberg:
Steinberg, Stefan (Journalist focusing on economic issues). "Austerity Policies Heighten National Divisions in Europe -." N.p., 06 May 2013. Web. 24 Aug. 2013. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/06/euro-m06.html.

Collapse of eurozone leads to global collapse

Egan:
Egan, Matt. "Citi: Euro Collapse Would Spark Global Depression, Push Unemployment Above 20." Fox Business. N.p., 08 Dec. 2011. Web. 24 Aug. 2013. http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/2011/12/08/citi-euro-collapse-would-cause-global-depression-send-unemployment-above-20/.

Economic collapse means extinction.
Bearden:
Bearden (Director of Association of Distinguished American Scientists) T. E., “The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly,” Space Energy Access Systems, 2000. http://www.seaspower.com/EnergyCrisis-Bearden.htm

Underview: Plans are good
a. stable advocacies
b. Breadth
c. Real World/ Policymaking

Tournament: Greenhill Fall Classic | Round: Quads | Opponent: Unknown | Judge: Unknown
Prefer political philosophy
Any legitimate government must be bound to its citizens’ will. 1. The state’s authority is derived from the general will, so it has no external right to rule. Bertram:

Bertram, Christopher, "Jean Jacques Rousseau", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/rousseau/.

3. The people are the will of the government. The state only exists to carries out the general will. Rousseau:

4.Public deliberation is a critical component of democracy since it checks political manipulation, ensuring that the true interests of its citizens are accounted for. 

Niemeyer, Simon. "The emancipatory effect of deliberation: Empirical lessons from mini-publics." Politics and Society 39.1 (2011): 103-140.

2. The government is no longer accountable to the general will or any citizen when they reject an idea before thoroughly deliberating about it. Gutmann and Thompson:  Gutmann, Amy, and Dennis Thompson. "Sample Chapter for Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D.: Why Deliberative Democracy?" Princeton University Press. Princeton University, 2004. Web. 17 Aug. 2013.

vc: consistency with principles of deliberative democracy

Democracy with a deliberative focus is the most epistemologically reliable standard.  Christiano:

 (Thomas Christiano. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Jul 27, 2006. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democracy/#NonInsVal Democracy)

No moral theory is perfect, or else debate would be impossible. Deliberative democracy is the only theory that can correct its own mistakes. Gutmann and Thompson 2:

My advocacy text is that democratic governments ought to mandate compulsory voting to promote deliberation at both the public and government levels. For clarity, Dawood explains  the scope of deliberative democracy:

Dawood, Yasmin. “Second Best Deliberation and Election Law.” LAW OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY, New York University. April 5-6, 2013. http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/staff/events/files/Program20-20Law20of20Deliberative20Democracy,20NYU.pdf

Contention one: Compulsory voting forces citizens to become more educated which encourages political discussion. Milazzo:

Milazzo, Caitlin. "Institutions and Engagement: The Impact of Compulsory Voting on Political Discussion in Switzerland" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association 67th Annual National Conference, The Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, Apr 02, 2009 Not Available. 2013-05-05 http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p363025_index.html

When all people are forced to express their opinions, smaller party candidates are more likely to get elected. This forces the government to consider and deliberate about new perspectives. Jensen:

Jensen, Christian B., and Jae-Jae Spoon. "Compelled without direction: Compulsory voting and party system spreading." Electoral Studies 30.4 (2011): 700-711.

Tournament: Greenhill Fall Classic | Round: 2 | Opponent: Unknown | Judge: Unknown
Presume aff- neg bias 57

skep affirms

Aff--- RVI

Compulsory voting is consistent with democracy- 7 reasons(this case the reasons were analytic)

1. voter turnout key to preserving legitimacy
   2. social Contract theory - voting is a reciprocal oblgiation to the state
   3. Democracy premised on voters showing up- rejecting voting= rejecting democracy
   4.Helps include less well off people and maintain everyone in a democracy
   5. Allows more accurate deliberation
   6. Allows consensus and check against oppressive, non democratic regimes

burden of the AC: prove democracy true

Ethics devolve to first person
Anker: 

Moral disagreement plagues ethical theories
Mcgrath: 

Democracy epistemologically likely to be true

Christiano: 

Democracy only good in subj world
Mouffe:

Tournament: tfa | Round: Triples | Opponent: tfa | Judge: tfa
Framework

I affirm, “Resolved: Political conditions on humanitarian aid in foreign countries is unjust.”

I value Life as it is the most important value in the round and is a necessary precondition to all other concepts.
Uyl and Rasmussen explain Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, Professors of Philosophy, Bellarmine College and St. John’s University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 1981, p.245
In so far as one chooses, regardless of the choice, one must choose (value) man’s life. It makes no sense to value some X without also valuing that which makes the valuing of X possible (notice that this is different from saying “that which makes X possible”). If one lets X be equivalent to “death” or “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” one is able to have such a valuation only because of the precondition of being a living being. Given that lie is a necessary condition for valuation, there is no other way we can value something without also (implicitly at least) valuing that which makes valuation possible.

Additionally, The purpose of Humanitarian aid itself is to maximize the protection of those who are suffering so Life should be prioritized above all else especially in the context of the resolution.  

Utilitarianism is the only ethical theory that accounts for the equal worth of all moral beings. Cummiskey 96
David, Professor of Philosophy at Bates College, “Kantian Consequentialism”, Oxford University Press, 1996
If I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I do not use them arbitrarily and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have “dignity, an unconditional and incomparable value” that transcends any market value, but, as rational beings, persons also have a fundamental equality which dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others. The formula of the end-in-itself thus does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal consideration dictates that one sacrifice to save many

And only utilitarianism takes into account the inevitability of sacrifices and compromise – any other framework is utopian and inevitably fails. Only through a utilitarian f/w can we make decisions that would be better for humanity.
Humanitarian aid is defined as: GHA,
Global Humanitarian Assistance, Humanitarian response is complex and varied and not without its confusion. It involves a plethora of actors, international and national, large and small, organisations with complex global mandates and organisations that serve a community or a neighbourhood. There are actions undertaken by militaries and governments and those by families and individuals. There is preparedness for events, immediate response to them, the provision of basic needs and the first elements of recovery. There is also a continual blurring of lines between humanitarian aid, investments in disaster preparedness, recovery programming, and long-term development spending.

aid and action designed to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity during and in the aftermath of emergencies. The characteristics that mark it out from other forms of foreign assistance and development aid are that:¶ it is intended to be governed by the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence¶ it is intended to be short-term in nature and provide for activities in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. In practice it is often difficult to say where ‘during and in the immediate aftermath of emergencies’ ends and other types of assistance begin, especially in situations of prolonged vulnerability.¶ Traditional responses to humanitarian crises, and the easiest to categorise as such, are those that fall under the aegis of ‘emergency response’:¶ material relief assistance and services (shelter, water, medicines etc.)¶ emergency food aid (short-term distribution and supplementary feeding programmes)¶ relief coordination, protection and support services (coordination, logistics and communications).¶ But humanitarian assistance can also include reconstruction and rehabilitation (repairing pre-existing infrastructure as opposed to longer-term activities designed to improve the level of infrastructure) and disaster prevention and preparedness (disaster risk reduction (DRR), early warning systems, contingency stocks and planning). Under the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) reporting criteria, humanitarian assistance has very clear cut-off points – for example, ‘disaster preparedness’  it excludes longer-term work such as prevention of floods or conflicts. ‘Reconstruction relief and rehabilitation’ includes repairing pre-existing infrastructure but excludes longer-term activities designed to improve the level of infrastructure.

1. A-priori to the question of the debate itself, as per the text of the resolution we would have no choice but to affirm. Since humanitarian aid itself is inherently neutral and impartial it cannot have political conditions placed upon it making it automatically unjust.
   2. The question of the resolution is in times of disaster as per the definition of humanitarian aid. Therefore, since the negative has the burden of rejoinder and clash all their arguments need to prove why political conditions are good in the immediate aftermath of conflicts. Arguments about political conditions necessary to promote long term stability or infrastructure are not within the bounds of the resolution and thus should be disregarded.
   The resolution specifies the actor as a state, as only states can put political restrictions on humanitarian aid, which means we must evaluate the consequences of our actions and view how they benefit the people.
   Woller, (Gary, Economics Professor at BYU, “Policy Currents,” June, http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf)
   Moreover, virtually all public policies entail some redistribution of economic or political resources, such that one group's gains must come at another group's expense. Consequently, public policies in a democracy must be justified to the public, and especially to those who pay the costs of those policies. Such justification cannot simply be assumed  by invoking some a priori higher-order moral principle. Appeals to a priori  moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public policies inherently imply winners and losers, the policymakers' duty to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that the redistributive effects and value trade-offs implied by their polices are somehow to the overall advantage of society. At the same time, deontologically based other ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured reasonable assurance that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient, though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy.

Thus the value criterion: Maximizing well-fare.

Contention 1
Short-term aid will solve. And, even if the negative gets up and says that corruption will divert aid away. More money will be distributed until the problem is solved. Recent studies are on my side. All their evidence will be mere speculations. Ulph et. Al.,
Humanitarian aid: short term immediate relief vs long term rebuilding Geethanjali Selvaretnam; Kannika Thampanishvongy; David Ulphz School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews, KY16 9AL October 15, 2010
We have analysed the factors that ina?uence the amount of humanitarian aid received by countries which are hit by natural disasters. This analysis was carried out both theoret- ically and empirically, drawing a distinction between the amount received as immediate relief and what is received for long term purposes. The theoretical model predicts that the amount of immediate disaster relief increases with the severity of the natural dis- aster, as measured by the number of people a§ected, killed and O?nancial loss. Level of corruption increases immediate relief while reduces long term aid. This can be explained as the donor being more altruistic towards those who are in immediate need to survive. Therefore, higher the amount lost to corruption, the more is given to ensure the survival of the victims. On the other hand, longer term aid would be better used in a country with lower corruption which would utilise better what is received. If the a§ected country is richer, is less severely a§ected and has high level of corruption, it will receive less aid for longer term re-building purposes. 

Empirics prove that conditions are impractical and often times can’t even be implemented, so the negative can never solve. Velazquez,
 ¶ Ian Vasquez writes,¶ IAN VASQUEZ (member of the Council of Foreign Relation and director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity). The ¶ False Promise of Aid to Africa. July 5, 2005. CATO Institute.  http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/continuing-failure-foreign-aid¶
“Even when aid is supposed to promote policy change, it fails to do so. Countries promise ¶ reform, receive donor largesse, then introduce half-hearted reforms or fail to do so altogether. ¶ A recent World Bank study looked at the record of aid from 1980 to 2000 and found that “aid on ¶ balance significantly retards rather than encourages market-oriented policy reform.” That ¶ finding is consistent with a previous Bank study that observed that “reform is more likely to be ¶ preceded by a decline in aid than an increase in aid.” One reason aid does not promote good ¶ policies is because aid agencies have an institutional incentive to lend. When borrowers know ¶ that donors will lend irrespective of their actions, the conditions attached to aid lose credibility. ¶ Despite the probability that massive increases in aid would only worsen the credibility of donors’ conditions, proponents of more aid ¶ to Africa claim that things will be different in the future. Lending will somehow have teeth. Aid will be directed on a “selective” basis ¶ to countries that have good governance and have shown a willingness to reform on their own. Aid will support health and education, ¶ without which growth is undermined. In fact, there is no reason to believe that aid effectiveness will noticeably improve. Lending ¶ agencies will still have no enforcement mechanism and rich countries will still rely on such agencies, which have a proven record of ¶ poor judgment, to determine which countries deserve aid and when.”

Historical studies are on my side when it comes to the question of whether or not conditions are effective. They just make the problem worse.

Contention 2
Conditions on humanitarian aid essentially place a condition on survival. It dehumanizes them and denies them help in dire times of need.
 James K. Boyce, Senior Fellow and Director of Health Policy Research, University of Massachusetts, "Aid Conditionality as a Tool for Peacebuilding: Opportunities and Constraints", Development and Change 33(5), 2002.
Although smart aid is attractive in principle, it would be imprudent to assume that in practice the aid donors consistently will make smart decisions that aim to minimize human suffering. Not only do the donors lack perfect foresight, but also decisions may be affected by other foreign-policy objectives (such as those mentioned above), and by the institutional incentives and cultures of the aid agencies themselves (discussed below). In gauging both the willingness and ability of donors to implement this approach, caution is therefore in order, especially since the costs of wrong decisions by conditional aid are likely to include the suffering of other people.

 Contention 3

 This disaster capitalism, when countries use disasters in order to push their neoliberal capitalist policies onto them by prescribing conditions of conformity before aid is received.
Benjamin F. Timms Social Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA; “The (Mis)Use of Disaster as Opportunity: Coerced Relocation from Celaque National Park, Honduras” No Date
In light of such devastation, assistance provided to survivors of natural disasters is commonly welcomed as altruistically beneficial. However, assistance predicated on conditions can be critically interpreted through the lens of what Naomi Klein (2007) termed “disaster capitalism”, which explains how post- disaster reconstruction has been used to implement neoliberal capitalist economic policies that redistribute wealth and exacerbate socio-economic divisions. A pointed example is the privatization and profiteering that occurred during the reconstruction efforts for Hurricane Katrina whereby the United States government was complicit in advancing capitalist corporate interests at the expense of a large section of the affected populace which were, or became, “disposable” (Giroux 2006). In this article the basic tenets of “disaster capitalism” are adopted in another context; to analyze how conditional aid was used to coercively implement another set of principles serving capitalist¶ interests—namely exclusionary protected area policies—with negative socio-economic and ecological repercussions.
This is empirically proven in Honduras- countries gave aid on the condition that they adopted capitalist policies that altered the way they governed- the citizens were forced to relocate from the National Park and the developed count ries set up cheap labor for agriculture and used peasants of the area as slaves.
Benjamin F. Timms Social Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA; “The (Mis)Use of Disaster as Opportunity: Coerced Relocation from Celaque National Park, Honduras” No Date
The post-Hurricane Mitch relocation of residents from Celaque National Park, Honduras is presented as a case study of this process. Honduras, with a heavy international debt load, implemented neoliberal structural adjustment policies during the 1990s that retracted state spending and power while, simultaneously, required environmental programs including a formalized protected area system (Jansen 1998; Richards 1996; Schelhas and Pfeffer 2008; Schulz and Schulz 1994). To rectify the lack of funding for such initiatives, non-state entities were legally allowed to take charge of protected area management (Beltr ?an and Esser 1999). For Celaque National Park the NGO Proyecto Celaque, created by the German development agency GTZ in 1997, was given the task of crafting and executing a management plan that included the stated goal of “encouraging” the depopulation of the park (AFECOHEDEFOR, GTZ and GFA TERRA Systems 2002).¶ Within a year of the founding of Proyecto Celaque, the devastation of Hurricane Mitch provided the opportunity to coercively implement this policy through conditional aid that resulted in the displacement, impoverishment, and increased semi-proletarianization of half the park’s inhabitants who “accepted” relocation. These conditions initially served the stated interests of nature protection while contributing to the funding objectives of GTZ. But ultimately relocation benefited the cheap- labor interests of the agro-export coffee industry through the dispossession and impoverishment of peasant households relocated from Celaque National Park who significantly increased labor services for the coffee industry while accepting lower wages, with additional negative ecological consequences (Timms 2007).¶ While the proximate cause of relocation was a natural disaster, the ultimate cause was the coercive implementation of a national park model based on the exclusion of human occupation.

Contention 4

Loss of impartiality of aid has led to further harm.
Curtis, Devon, PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, “Politics and Humanitarian Aid: Debates, Dilemmas and Dissension”, 2001
Even when humanitarian aid was delivered to Serbia, therewas were examples of inclusion and exclusion. For¶ instance, there was a differentiation between people who had been displaced from Kosovo in 1999 and 2000, and¶ people who had been displaced between 1992 and 1996, even though many lived in very similar conditions,¶ often in the same refugee camps. Likewise, Skuric-Prodanovic shows that, by the second half of 2000, some urban¶ areas in central Serbia received large amounts of humanitarian assistance, while other more remote areas that¶ were mainly controlled by the regime suffered a severe lack of aid. A distinction was also made between¶ displaced and non-displaced people, contributeding to the alienation of internally displaced persons and refugees in¶ local communities in Serbia, and causing tensions to rise.¶ This has led Serbs to see humanitarian aid agencies as tools of Western governments, rather than as has not been neutral or¶ impartial actors. Skuric-Prodanovic believes that the politicisation of humanitarian assistance and the exclusion¶ resulting from it has had a negative effect on the lives of vulnerable groups in Serbia, and has devalued the¶ currency of humanitarianism in the eyes of Serbs.
The Aff most directly solves for these issues. By removing political conditions, impartiality is achieved, thus solving for inequalities and deaths in society. Thus, the Aff achieves utilitarian notions of justice and morality, while the neg causes these impacts.
AT: Military
OECD explains how military action is not included in the context of huamanitarian aid, therefore I don’t have to defend it.
http://www.oecd.org/site/dacsmpd11/glossary.htm
1.18 Humanitarian aid includes: natural disaster prevention and preparedness; the provision of shelter, food, water and sanitation, health services and other items of assistance for the benefit of affected people and to facilitate the return to normal lives and livelihoods; measures to promote and protect the safety, welfare and dignity of civilians and those no longer taking part in hostilities and rehabilitation, reconstruction and transition assistance while the emergency situation persists. Activities to protect the security of persons or property through the use or display of force are excluded. Includes aid to refugees in developing countries, but not to those in donor countries.of which: Relief food aid (code 062)

Tournament: tfa | Round: 7 | Opponent: tfa | Judge: tfa
An examination of justice requires we default to utilitarianism. Arneson,
Dick Arneson Explains John Stuart Mill “MILL ON JUSTICE: CHAPTER 5 of UTILITARIANISM” Philosophy 13 Fall, 2004 University of San Diego California Philosophy Department. Modified for Gendered Language

And since only governments have jurisdiction to place political conditions, this entails a specific set of obligations to fulfill its duties as a just government. Kennan clarifies,
Morality and Foreign Policy George F. Kennan From Foreign Affairs. Winter 1985/86 George F. Kennan is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.)

Role-playing as policy-makers has important research and education benefits as encouraging debaters to become an advocate for change rather than mere spectators. Joyner,
Joyner , 99 – Professor of International Law in the Government Department at Georgetown University  (Christopher C., Spring, 199, 5 ILSA J Int'l and Comp L 377)

Policy-making means Util especially in the question of the resolution. Woller,
Woller”, A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics, June 1997, pg. 10

And, Aid is short term in nature. GHA,
Global Humanitarian Assistance, Humanitarian response is complex and varied and not without its confusion. It involves a plethora of actors, international and national, large and small, organisations with complex global mandates and organisations that serve a community or a neighbourhood. There are actions undertaken by militaries and governments and those by families and individuals. There is preparedness for events, immediate response to them, the provision of basic needs and the first elements of recovery. There is also a continual blurring of lines between humanitarian aid, investments in disaster preparedness, recovery programming, and long-term development spending.

Thus, I advocate that the United States Federal Government remove all political conditions on humanitarian aid to Syria and Pakistan. I reserve the right to clarify in CX. I will accept links to all countries in the Middle East receiving the aid.
MIDDLE EAST
Bahrain
Iraq
Iran
Israel
Jordan
Kuwait
Lebanon
Oman
Palestine
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Yemen

Current U.S. aid is grounded in political conditions. Landler and Gordon,
More U.S. Help for Syrian Rebels Would Hinge on Pledges By MARK LANDLER and MICHAEL R. GORDON Published: April 19, 2013, The New York TImes

Political conditions have empirically failed in resolving the problem and won’t succeed. Metzler on the 2nd,
Metzler, John. Syrian hell: Even Russia, China agree to ‘unhindered’ humanitarian aid, March 2nd 2014, worldtribune.com, http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/03/02/syrian-hell-even-russia-china-agree-to-unhindered-humanitarian-aid/ Professor at St. John’s University

Removing political conditions is key. CSM,
Making US humanitarian aid to Syria a political tool is ineffective – and dangerous, Christian Science Monitor, Jun 13, 2013

The suffering runs rampant and the conditions have denied certain groups the right to aid. The Economist,
Syria's crisis The extent of the suffering Apr 2nd 2013, 15:31 by Economist.com http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/04/syrias-crisis

The U.S.’s current political approach have failed and destroyed relations and credibility. Tabler,
Syria's Collapse and How Washington Can Stop It. Andrew J. Tablet Foreign Affairs. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/syrias-collapse-and-how-washington-can-stop-it

The US’s perceived indifference destroys credibility. CSM,
CSM 13 (Christian Science Monitor, is an international news organization, May 28, 2013, “Why US must stop Russian missiles for Syria,” http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0528/Why-US-must-stop-Russian-missiles-for-Syria, RM)

The perception the U.S. can credibly intervene is crucial to preventing several extinction scenarios. Reiffel,  
Reiffel, ‘5 (Lex, Visiting Fellow at the Global Economy and Development Center of the Brookings Institution,  The Brookings Institution, Reaching Out: Americans Serving Overseas, 12-27-2005, www.brookings.edu/views/papers/20051207rieffel.pdf)

Tournament: churchill | Round: 1 | Opponent: bob | Judge: idk
The governments of Iran and Niger should ban all uranium mining facilities in recognition of their environmental costs. I reserve the right to clarify – the affirmative doesn’t deny that other countries ought not stop uranium mining, but rather identifies these as the largest risk

solvency advocate 

Global call to action for a ban on uranium mining- Lohrer

Check Katy Taylor NY for full disclosure.

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Annie Kors | Judge: Paneled
I defend a post fiat utility calculus that models governmental decision-making.

 First, non-consequential theories are utopian and detrimental—err for pragmatic responses over abstract side constraints. Alinsky,
 Alinsky, 1971  (Saul D. Alinsky, Activist, Professor, and Social Organizer with International Fame, Founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation, Rules for Radicals, 1971, p. 24-27)
We cannot think first and act afterwards.  From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. Alfred North Whitehead That perennial question, “Does the end justify the means?”  is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, “Does this particular end justify this particular means?” Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends.  The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it.  Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises.  The man of action views the issue of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms.  He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action.  He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.  To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.  The real arena is corrupt and bloody.  Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life. The practical revolutionary will understand Geothe’s “conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action”; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of humankind.  The choice must always be for the latter.  Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual’s personal salvation.  He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has peculiar conception of “personal salvation”; he doesn’t care enough for people to be “corrupted” for them. The men who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics of means and ends—which with rare exception is conspicuous for its sterility—rarely write about their won experiences in the perpetual struggle of life and change.  They are strangers, moreover, to the burdens and problems of operational responsibility and the unceasing pressure for immediate decisions.  They are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect.  They assume a nonexistent situation where man suspect.  They assume a nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and devise means and ends as if studying a navigational chart on land.  They can be recognized by one of two verbal brands;  “We agree with the ends but not the means,” or “This is not the time.” The means-and-end moralists or non-doers always wind up on their ends without any means. The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position.  In fact, they are passive—but real—allies of the Haves.  They are the ones Jacques Maritain referred to in his statement, “The fear of soiling ourselves by entering the context of history is not virtue, but a way of escaping virtue.”  These non-doers were the ones who chose not to fight the Nazis in the only way they could have been fought; they were the ones who drew their window blinds to shut out the shameful spectacle of Jews and political prisoners being dragged through the streets; they were the ones who privately deplored the horror of it all—and did nothing.  This is the nadir of immorality.  The most unethical of all means is the nonuse of any means.  It is this species of man how so vehemently and militantly participated in that classically idealistic debate at the old League of Nations on the ethical differences between defensive and offensive weapons.  Their fears of action drive them to refuge in an ethics so divorced from the politics of life that it can apply only to angels, not to men

Second, Metaphysics goal is to describe the world around us and the way objects act and are. This process is most precise and most accurate under a naturalized ontology of physical realism. Williams,
Donald Williams. “Naturalism and the Nature of Things.” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 53, No. 5 (Sep., 1944), pp. 417-443. Duke UP. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2181355
Casting up our accounts to this point, we observe that physical realism is in sum a meaningful, consistent, and essentially confirmable hypothesis. We turn accordingly to assess its credibility a posterior, in relation to the actual evidence, as we should that of a scientific theory or a war communique. We can know forthwith that materialism, granted that metaphysics is confirmable at all, is in principle the most thoroughly confirmable of all world hypotheses. It initiates the most conclusive confirmation or disconfirmation. The ideal aim of systematic knowledge is to disclose the fewest primitive elements into which the diversest objects are analyzable, and the fewest primitive facts, singular and general, from which the behavior of things is deducible. Metaphysics is the most 'scientific' of the sciences because it tries the hardest to explain every kind of fact by one simple principle or simple set of principles. It is the most empirical of sciences (as Peirce reminded us) because, by the same token, a metaphysics is relevant to and confirmable by every item of every experience, whereas every other science is concerned with only a few select and abstract aspects of some experiences, Physical realism is the ideal metaphysics, the veritable paradigm of philosophy, because its category of spatio- temporal pattern best permits analysis of diverse complexity to uniform and ordered simplicities.
The implications are A) Claims about the origins of moral obligations must be rooted in the physical world as there are no abstract principles. B) Only standards that link into this conception of ontology can be applied since physical realism limits the scope of what impacts are considered existent. C) We default to consequentialism because only it takes natural impacts of pain and suffering into consideration.  Additionally, since humans all value pleasure nand pain, it’d be contradictory to not value everyone’s capacity for happiness in the event of an existential crisis.

Third,
Policymaking dictates util as the only ethical theory of the state—even if your framework is true, the state couldn’t act that way.

Woller, (Gary, Economics Professor at BYU, “Policy Currents,” June, http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf) 

Moreover, virtually all public policies entail some redistribution of economic or political resources, such that one group's gains must come at another group's expense. Consequently, public policies in a democracy must be justified to the public, and especially to those who pay the costs of those policies. Such justification cannot simply be assumed  by invoking some a priori higher-order moral principle. Appeals to a priori  moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public policies inherently imply winners and losers, the policymakers' duty to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that the redistributive effects and value trade-offs implied by their polices are somehow to the overall advantage of society. At the same time, deontologically based other ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured reasonable assurance that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient, though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy.

Debating rounds in this way is therefore crucial to gaining real world education and thinking skills. Keller,  
Keller, Whittaker, and Burke 01 Thomas E., Asst. professor School of Social Service Administration U. of Chicago, James K., professor of Social Work, and Tracy K., doctoral student School of Social Work, “Student debates in policy courses: promoting policy practice skills and knowledge through active learning,” Journal of Social Work Education, Spr/Summer
Policy practice encompasses social workers' "efforts to influence the development, enactment, implementation, or assessment of social policies" (Jansson, 1994, p. 8). Effective policy practice involves analytic activities, such as defining issues, gathering data, conducting research, identifying and prioritizing policy options, and creating policy proposals (Jansson, 1994). It also involves persuasive activities intended to influence opinions and outcomes, such as discussing and debating issues, organizing coalitions and task forces, and providing testimony. According to Jansson (1984, pp. 57-58), social workers rely upon five fundamental skills when pursuing policy practice activities:?    * value-clarification skills for identifying and assessing the underlying values inherent in policy positions;?    * conceptual skills for identifying and evaluating the relative merits of different policy options;?    * interactional skills for interpreting the values and positions of others and conveying one's own point of view in a convincing manner;?    * political skills for developing coalitions and developing effective strategies; and?    * position-taking skills for recommending, advocating, and defending a particular policy. These policy practice skills reflect the hallmarks of critical thinking (see Brookfield, 1987; Gambrill, 1997). The central activities of critical thinking are identifying and challenging underlying assumptions, exploring alternative ways of thinking and acting, and arriving at commitments after a period of questioning, analysis, and reflection (Brookfield, 1987). Significant parallels exist with the policy-making process--identifying the values underlying policy choices, recognizing and evaluating multiple alternatives, and taking a position and advocating for its adoption. Developing policy practice skills seems to share much in common with developing capacities for critical thinking

AND We utilize these decision-making skills on a daily basis. This real-world education is the most important thing debate can offer. Strait and Wallace write,
THE SCOPE OF NEGATIVE FIAT AND THE LOGIC OF DECISION MAKING; L. Pall! Sirait. George Mason University Brett Wallace. George Washington University
 Why debate? Some do it for scholarships. Some do it for social purposes. and many just believe it is fun. These are certainly all-relevant considerations when making the decision to join the debate team, but as debate theorists they aren’t the focus of our concern. Our concern is finding a framework for debate that educates the largest quantity of students with the highest quality of skills. While at the same time preserving competitive equity. The ability to make decisions deriving from discussions, argumentation or debate, is the key skill. It is the one thing every single one of us will do every day of our lives besides breathing. Decision-making transcends boundaries between categories ofleal1ling like "policy education"' and "kririk education," it makes irrelevant considerations of whether we will eventually be policymakers, and it transcends questions of what substantive content a debate round should contain. The implication for this analysis is that the critical thinking and argumentative skills offered by real-world decision-making are comparatively greater than, any educational disadvantage weighed against them. It is the skills we learn, not the content of our arguments that can best improve all of our lives. While policy comparison skills are going to be learned through debate in one way or another, those skills are useless if they are not grounded in the kind of logic actually used to make decisions.
Moreover, prefer utilitarianism for two reasons. First, util is reciprocal because both debaters have to do weighing analysis to win the round whereas deontological views are based on “side constraints” that even if one meets the constraint they still don’t win.  Reciprocity is important because Second, util ground is best because a) there is extensive literature no matter what topic and b) util is the best for generating offense whereas conceptions of deontology leaves little if no turn ground in which debaters are forced into purely defensive rounds. Fairness is a voter because debater is a competition. Education is a voter because it’s the only real lasting impact.

Fourth, rights are only instrumentally valuable in that they enable agents to pursue their own life plans and preferences; they have no value endowed by some objective observer. As a result, deontological theories of rights devolve into consequentialism once lives are at stake because rights have no value outside an agent’s existence.  

Therefore, the standard is maximizing the protection of life. 

Thus the plan text: The Pakistani federal government should implement a system of Australian compulsory voting in order to strengthen its democratic institutions and prevent collapse from terrorism.
?
Pakistan on the brink of collapse AND Pakistan collapse creates terrorist haven. Pakistan will collapse in six months due to a clumsy state regime. DailyBhaskar ‘13,
DailyBhaskar, Popular Indian Newspaper, Aug 12, 2013, “Pakistan to become global terror-hub in next 6 months, country on the verge of collapse”
Islamabad: The word terrorism has become synonymous with Pakistan. The country has been under the shackles of some of the most dreaded militant groups for the past few decades. Lashkar-i-Jhangvi in Balochistan, TTP in KP, Fata and Karachi, Al Qaeda in the tribal areas and buried deep inside Pakistani cities- Pakistan is deeply infested with militants who have been carrying out attacks at will. Pakistan has witnessed several terrorist attacks at regular interval. More than 200 prisoners, some of them dreaded terrorists, were set free after a coordinated attack on Dera Ismail Khan Prison, last month. In another terror-related incident 11 boys were blown to pieces in the business city of Pakistan. Recently, chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif said that Pakistan would be on the verge of collapse if terrorism is not eliminated. In recent years, Tehrik e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has become one of the most dreaded militant groups in Pakistan. The province of North Waziristan has become a hub of militants and mercenary fighters from across the globe. TTP enjoys an unquestionable hold over the region in the north.   Analysts believe that Pakistan will become a global hub for militants and terroists in next six-months. In an editorial piece written on Pakistan's leading daily, The Dawn the author advocates that North Waziristan should be declared as an Emirate of TTP. "From a legal perspective, the contemporary notion of state sovereignty has four attributes: defined territory; distinct population; authority over territory and population; and recognition of such authority. Should the TTP not claim North Waziristan as the Emirate of TTP?" he quotes. The author goes a step further and discusses the advantages of such an emirate. However, TTP is not the only malice troubling Pakistan. Al-Qaeda and Pro-Kashmiri militant groups have found safe haven in Pakistan.  To further worsen the situation, the state's administration has been left grappling for answers. It has failed to come up with an effective strategy to counter the menace. On more occasion than one, its security forces were caught unaware by the attacks launched across the length and breadth of the nation. Despite its close relations with Beijing, Islamabad has been unable to stop terror-related activities directed at Uyghurs region in China. 

Pakistani collapse guarantees loose nukes triggering nuclear war by drawing in China, Russia, and India. Pitt,
Pitt, William, a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." 5/8/09, “Unstable Pakistan Threatens the World” http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=articleandcat=commentaryandarticle=2183
Pakistan is now trembling on the edge of violent chaos, and is doing so with nuclear weapons in its hip pocket, right in the middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. The situation in brief: Pakistan for years has been a nation in turmoil, run by a shaky government supported by a corrupted system, dominated by a blatantly criminal security service, and threatened by a large fundamentalist Islamic population with deep ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this is piled atop an ongoing standoff with neighboring India that has been the center of political gravity in the region for more than half a century. The fact that Pakistan, and India, and Russia, and China all possess nuclear weapons and share the same space means any ongoing or escalating violence over there has the real potential to crack open the very gates of Hell itself. Recently, the Taliban made a military push into the northwest Pakistani region around the Swat Valley. According to a recent Reuters report: The (Pakistani) army deployed troops in Swat in October 2007 and used artillery and gunship helicopters to reassert control. But insecurity mounted after a civilian government came to power last year and tried to reach a negotiated settlement. A peace accord fell apart in May 2008. After that, hundreds — including soldiers, militants and civilians — died in battles.  since late 2007 and 250,000 to 500,000 fled, leaving the militants in virtual control. Pakistan offered on February 16 to introduce Islamic law in the Swat valley and neighboring areas in a bid to take the steam out of the insurgency. The militants announced an indefinite cease-fire after the army said it was halting operations in the region. President Asif Ali Zardari signed a regulation imposing sharia in the area last month. But the Taliban refused to give up their guns and pushed into Buner and another district adjacent to Swat, intent on spreading their rule. The United States, already embroiled in a war against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, must now face the possibility that Pakistan could collapse under the mounting threat of Taliban forces there. Military and diplomatic advisers to President Obama, uncertain how best to proceed, now face one of the great nightmare scenarios of our time. "Recent militant gains in Pakistan," reported The New York Times on Monday, "have so alarmed the White House that the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, described the situation as 'one of the very most serious problems we face.'" "Security was deteriorating rapidly," reported The Washington Post on Monday, "particularly in the mountains along the Afghan border that harbor al-Qaeda and the Taliban, intelligence chiefs reported, and there were signs that those groups were working with indigenous extremists in Pakistan's populous Punjabi heartland. The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight. But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence." It is believed Pakistan is currently in possession of between 60 and 100 nuclear weapons. Because Pakistan's stability is threatened by the wide swath of its population that shares ethnic, cultural and religious connections to the fundamentalist Islamic populace of Afghanistan, fears over what could happen to those nuclear weapons if the Pakistani government collapses are very real. "As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan," reported the Times last week, "senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities. In public, the administration has only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army. But that cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure." "The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons," reported Time Magazine last month. "Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say." In other words, a shaky Pakistan spells trouble for everyone, especially if America loses the footrace to secure those weapons in the event of the worst-case scenario. If Pakistani militants ever succeed in toppling the government, several very dangerous events could happen at once. Nuclear-armed India could be galvanized into military action of some kind, as nuclear-armed China  or nuclear-armed Russia. If the Pakistani government does fall, and all those Pakistani nukes are not immediately accounted for and secured, the specter (or reality) of loose nukes falling into the hands of terrorist organizations could place the entire world on a collision course with unimaginable disaster. We have all been paying a great deal of attention to Iraq and Afghanistan, and rightly so. The developing situation in Pakistan, however, needs to be placed immediately on the front burner. The Obama administration appears to be gravely serious about addressing the situation. So should we all.

And, the mere perception of Pakistani collapse triggers pre-emptive Indian nuclear strike. Ricks,
Ricks, Thomas, Prized American journalist on defense topics and studied at Yale “At Pentagon: Worries Over War’s Costs, Consequences,” The Washington Post, 10/21/1 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27875-2001Oct20?language=printer
The prospect of Pakistan being taken over by Islamic extremists is especially worrisome because it possesses nuclear weapons. The betting among military strategists is that India, another nuclear power, would not stand idly by, if it appeared that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal were about to fall into the hands of extremists. A preemptive action by India to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile could provoke a new war on the subcontinent. The U.S. military has conducted more than 25 war games involving a confrontation between a nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, and each has resulted in nuclear war, said retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert on strategic games. 

Indo-Pak War means extinction. GSN,
Global Security Newswire, “Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate World Population, Report Warns,” Produced independently, Global Security Newswire is underwritten by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), as part of its public education mission.
Computer modeling suggests a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would block out the sun with large amounts of airborne debris, disrupting global agriculture and leading to the starvation of around 1 billion people, Scientific American reported in its January issue (see GSN, March 4). The nuclear winter scenario assumes that cities and industrial zones in each nation would be hit by 50 bombs the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II. Although some analysts have suggested a nuclear exchange would involve fewer weapons, researchers who created the computer models contended that the panic from an initial nuclear exchange could cause a conflict to quickly escalate. Pakistan, especially, might attempt to fire all of its nuclear weapons in case India's conventional forces overtake the country's military sites, according to Peter Lavoy, an analyst with the Naval Postgraduate School. The nuclear blasts and subsequent blazes and radiation could kill more than 20 million people in India and Pakistan, according to the article. Assuming that each of the 100 bombs would burn an area equivalent to that seen at Hiroshima, U.S. researchers determined that the weapons used against Pakistan would generate 3 million metric tons of smoke and the bombs dropped on India would produce 4 million metric tons of smoke. Winds would blow the material around the world, covering the atmosphere over all continents within two weeks. The reduction in sunlight would cause temperatures to drop by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit for several years and precipitation to drop by one-tenth. The climate changes and other environmental effects of the nuclear war would have a devastating affect on crop yields unless farmers prepared for such an occurrence in advance. The observed effects of volcano eruptions, smoke from forest fires and other events support the findings of the computer modeling, the researchers said. "A nuclear war could trigger declines in yield nearly everywhere at once, and a worldwide panic could bring the global agricultural trading system to a halt, with severe shortages in many places. Around 1 billion people worldwide who now live on marginal food supplies would be directly threatened with starvation by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan or between other regional nuclear powers," wrote Alan Robock, a climatology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Owen Brian Toon, head of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "it is The combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability and urban demographics may constitute one of the greatest dangers to the stability of society since the dawn of humans," they added. "Only abolition of nuclear weapons will prevent a potential nightmare. Immediate reduction of U.S. and Russian arsenals to the same levels as other nuclear powers (a few hundred) would maintain their deterrence, reduce the possibility of nuclear winter and encourage the rest of the world to continue to work toward the goal of elimination" (Robock/Toon, Scientific American/Rutgers University, January 2010).

Current voter turnout in Pakistan is low which is hurting democratic and government accountability. Only compulsory voting can bring about smooth democratic transition. Yamin,
Yamin, Saira, Ph.D. Conflict Analysis and Resolution with 19 years of experience in the area specializing in Pakistan afairs, “The Case for Compulsory Voting”. July 23, 2012,  The Express Tribune
Is there a case for compulsory voting in Pakistan? As the next general elections draw nearer, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) should consider measures for strengthening the electoral process such that it contributes to more effective functioning of the stat Introducing a compulsory voting law provides one such opportunity; the timing for such an effort could not be better. Public participation in policy formulation is implicit in the concept of democracy and voting is one of its most — if not the most — important aspect. A look at voting trends in south Asia reveals that Pakistan lags behind all other countries in this area. Consider, for instance, voter turnout rates in the region in the most recent parliamentary elections in each country: Bangladesh 85 per cent (2008), Maldives 79 per cent (2009), Bhutan 79 per cent (2008), Nepal 63 per cent (2008), Sri Lanka 61 per cent (2010) and India 58 per cent (2009). Even Afghanistan with a voter turnout of 46 per cent (2010) has fared better than Pakistan, which had a 45 per cent rate (2008). While it is the fundamental right of the people to elect the right leadership, it is also an obligation to public welfare that they must uphold. And it must be taken more seriously by both the governed and those who govern. The experience of advanced democratic societies suggests that greater public participation in political processes encourages them to effectively create the demands and pressures on the state to provide necessary goods and services; and to hold it accountable to the social contract.  The system is tried and tested and it worksIn Pakistan, voter participation has not moved in tandem with its democratic trajectory, showing a negligible increase of three per cent between election years 2002 to 2008, from 42 per cent to 45 per cent. Surely, Pakistan could do better. But would it in the next elections? Realistically speaking, it is quite unlikely that voter turnout in Pakistan will increase significantly without a deliberate and concerted effort on the part of key state institutions to make this possible. The fact that over half of Pakistan’s registered voters do not cast their vote does not bode well for its democratic aspirations. Democracy, after all, is is government by the people, at least a majority, if not all of them. The electoral results should be representative of their will. The government must, therefore, take concrete measures to bridge the gap between voters and non-voters, even if it means going the extra mile. Making voting compulsory prior to the next elections is necessary and critical for Pakistan for a smoother and meaningful democratic transition. Evidence suggests that policies formulated by governments have greater legitimacy when higher numbers of people participate in electing them. It would clearly place Pakistan’s democratically elected leadership on surer footing and a steadier path. On another note, as Pakistan continues to navigate an increasingly competitive and challenging economic and political global landscape, a more robust democratic image would serve its interests well.

Reforming the election process is key to bringing about democratic reforms and stopping terrorism. The US also has great interest in promoting democracy. Thus democratic reform leads to more aid as well. Daly and Lal,
Daly and Lal (Rollie and Sara; Political Scientists at the RAND Institute; http://www.rand.org/commentary/2003/12/06/CST.html online. “Democracy is the Best Weapon Against Terrorists in Pakistan”)

The U.S. government says democracy is necessary to inoculate Iraq and Afghanistan against the return of dangerous regimes that oppress their people, support terrorism and threaten America. At the same time, Taliban and al-Qaida forces displaced from Afghanistan are finding refuge and a place to regroup in neighboring Pakistan, which sided with the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. The increasingly unstable situation in Pakistan demonstrates that terrorism will continue to flourish until serious democratic reforms are undertaken there as well.¶ While Pakistan says it has arrested more than 500 al-Qaida and Taliban members, some Pakistani militants have continued attacks against Westerners and given support to al-Qaida, particularly in the tribal area along the border with Afghanistan.¶ Complicating the situation, the repressive political environment in Pakistan encourages the population to turn to fundamentalist Islamic parties. In the last parliamentary election, President Pervez Musharraf closed the political arena to secular candidates Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. This manipulation of the electoral system gave more votes to the coalition of Islamic parties than in previous elections.¶ Moreover, poor education is contributing to the popularity of fundamentalist thought and support for militant groups. With a shortage of government schools, families often have no choice when it comes to their children's schooling, and instead send them to madrassahs that teach fundamentalist ideologies. Until a proper educational infrastructure is put in place, extremist groups will have a captive audience.¶ Al-Qaida has tried to capitalize on the frustration over political repression in Pakistan by adding its voice to those calling for President Musharraf's overthrow. An Al- Qaida senior official recently released an audiotape appealing to Pakistanis to install an alternative government. If the United States does not take more significant measures to implement democracy in Pakistan to enable Musharraf's opponents to seek change peacefully, extremists may take matters into their own hands, potentially ousting Musharraf and installing an Islamic government.¶ With control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, a fundamentalist Islamic government that retains ties to the Taliban or al-Qaida might use nuclear weapons to escalate its conflict with India or blackmail the United States. In this scenario, there would be pressure for U.S. military intervention.¶ Musharraf argues that if he were to step down as president, or allow free and fair elections, radical fundamentalism would follow. But Islamic parties have never won a majority in any of the previous national elections in Pakistan. In the last elections, the coalition of Islamic parties was only able to win in a few provinces, and in those places only with a plurality. If given the choice, Pakistanis would likely vote a secular government into power, as they have done in the past.¶ U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage recently stated that although Musharraf remains committed to ousting al-Qaida, not all of Pakistan's security forces are committed to this same goal. One solution has been to create a rapid reaction force designed specifically to focus on hunting down al-Qaida and Taliban elements in the tribal areas. Another is to provide Pakistan with more security assistance, in the form of military and other technical equipment.¶ However, Pakistan does not need a military government to catch al-Qaida. The military regime has turned over only a fraction of the terrorists who ha                                          ve found refuge in the country. Assisting its transition to a democratic state, however, can help avoid a situation where terrorists determine Pakistan's future.¶ A long-term solution will require serious reforms in Pakistan. The United States should put its weight and leverage behind establishing a constitution in Pakistan that subordinates the military to the civilian leadership, tries aid to political progress.¶ It seems clear that in order to effectively stem the tide of terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the United States will need to take more significant steps to institute substantial democratic reform in Pakistan.¶

Underview:

First, presume aff and prefer all aff interpretations since affirming is harder as proven by the 70 neg bias  on a sample size of over 30 thousand rounds, so in the case of a tie I will have overcome the greatest disadvantages and thus do the better debating. Only Aff gets RVIS to check back against negative side-bias. I only have 4 minutes to respond to 7 minutes of offense, which could include no-risk issues like theory. And the negative gets to adapt their strategy to mine whereas I’m forced to present my case in the dark. 

Second, the neg must defend the converse of the resolution, that noncompulsory voting is more desirable than compulsory voting; otherwise they are unpredictable because they could advocate any number of permutations that disprove the truth of the resolution. And they are unreciprocal because it gives them a 3-1 structural advantage since they have multiple different avenues to disprove the resolution. And, don’t punish me for discourse I’m forced to use or discourse my opponent finds objectionable, just ask me in cx or before the round to not use it and I won’t.

Third, compulsory is defined as “using compulsion; compelling” by dictionary.com. 

Fourth, reject the argument and reevaluate offense on T or theory since I frame substance so it’s not worth sacrificing the entire round for a marginal gain on T or theory. Additionally, I’m in a double bind because neg can read theory no matter what  so reject the argument for AC violations.

Finally default reasonability on T and theory since there’s an infinite number of interps and definitions on this topic so it’d be impossible for me to win a marginal gain on T or theory.

And, force k links to be established in cx since the premise of a kritik is that aff did something wrong so checking in cx avoids accusations of defending assumption I don’t’ actually defend.

?

Tournament: Isidore | Round: 1 | Opponent: IDK | Judge: IDK
Plan Text:
The United States’ criminal justice system ought to give precedence to truth-seeking by compelling attorneys to testify about communications with deceased clients, eliminating the attorney-client privilege after the death of a client.

My solvency advocate is  Chipliech- I will dislocse after I break

Tournament: TFA | Round: 1 | Opponent: dunno | Judge: dunno
ADvocacy: Placing political conditions on humanitarian aid to Pakistan is unjust. 

xixiangxiong@yahoo.com or fb message  me I'll disclose full text on NDCA if you think that's fair.

Tournament: TFA | Round: 1 | Opponent: dunno | Judge: dunno
ADvocacy: Placing political conditions on humanitarian aid to Pakistan is unjust. 

xixiangxiong@yahoo.com or fb message  me I'll disclose full text on NDCA if you think that's fair.

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 5 | Opponent: Cedar Ridge RP | Judge: Kassam
interp: neg needs an written advocacy text
must use normative logic to negate

must read empirical evidence

It's an accountability aff i'll disclose after i break

Tournament: tfa | Round: Doubles | Opponent: tfa | Judge: tfa
Disregard high impact scenarios- prefer systemic impacts instead.
Rescher ’83   
Nicholas, Risk Analysis BadassRisk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management, Pg 34-36
  On this issue there is a systemic di sagreement between pro- babilists working in mathematics or natural science and decision theorists who work on issues relating to human affairs. The former take the line that small numbers are small numbers and must be taken into account as such. The latter tend to take the view that small probabilities represent extremely remote prospects and can be written off. (Dc niinimis non curat 1ev, as the old precept has it: there is no need to bother with trifles.) When something is about as probable as it is that a thousand fair dice when tossed a thousand times will all come up sixes, then, so it is held, we can pretty well forget about it as worthy of concern. As a matter of practical policy we operate with probabilities on the principle that when xCa, then x  0. Where human dealings in real-life situations are concerned, sufficiently remote possibilities can - for all sensible purpose- be viewed as being of probability zero, and possibilities with which they are associated set aside.   In "the real world'' people are prepared to treat certain pro- babilities as effectively zero, taking certain sufficiently improbable eventualities as no longer representing real possibilities. ` In such cases our handling of the probabilities at issue is essentially a mat- ter of fiat, of deciding as a matter of policy that a certain level of sufficiently low probability can be taken as a cut-off point below which we are no longer dealing with ``real possibilities'' and with "genuine risks.''   In real-life deliberations, in the law (especially in the context of negligence) and indeed throughout the setting of our practical affairs, it is necessary to distinguish between real and unreal (or ``merely theoretical'') possibilities. Once the probability of an eventuation gets to be small enough, the event at issue may be seen as no longer a real possibility (theoretically possible though it may be). Such an event is something we can simply write off as being "outside the range of appropriate concern, " something we can dismiss for "all practical purposes.'' As one writer on insurance puts it: People refuse to worry about losses whose probability is below some threshold. Probabilities below the threshold are treated as though they were zero.

Poverty outweighs- focus on trades off with more probable solutions that control the root cause of issues- for example the idea terroism causes extinction ignores the fact poverty motivates terroism and motivates reckless action in times of economic collapse meaning the AC is always a prior issue.
Poverty worse than nuclear war.
Ongoing global poverty outweighs nuclear war- only our ev is comparative
Spina 2k
(Stephanie Urso, Ph.D. candidate in social/personality psychology at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, Smoke and Mirrors: The Hidden Context of Violence in Schools and Society, p. 201)
This sad fact is not limited to the United States.  Globally, 18 million deaths a year are caused by structural violence, compared to 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict.  That is, approximately every five years, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths, and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period.  This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war or genocide, perpetuated on the weak and the poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. 

This means even if  nuclear war historically, poverty has killed billions and is killing millions today as we speak so poverty under til is a prior question because the body count outweighs.

4. WE have a moral obligation to reduce poverty.
Abu-Jamal writes on the factors of global poverty that create an obligation in morality.

Mumia, Abu-Jamal - journalist and political activist - A Quiet and Deadly Violence - D/L 7,15,09- http://www.angelfire.com/az/catchphraze/mumiaswords.html - 9/19/98

We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignore wide-ranging "structural' violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes;  By "structural violence" I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are  not acts of God. I am contrasting "structural" with "behavioral violence" by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths  we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. --(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.)  This form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it--really? Gilligan notes:  Every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Gilligan, p. 196  Worse still, in a thoroughly capitalist society, much of that violence became internalized, turned back on the Self, because, in a society based on the priority of wealth, those who own nothing are taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently wrong with themselves, instead of the social order that promotes this self-loathing. This intense self-hatred was often manifested in familial violence as when the husband beats the wife, the wife smacks the son, and the kids fight each other.  This vicious, circular, and invisible violence, unacknowledged by the corporate media, uncriticized in substandard educational systems, and un- understood by the very folks who suffer in its grips, feeds on the spectacular and more common forms of violence that the system makes damn sure -that we can recognize and must react to it.  This fatal and systematic violence may be called The War on the Poor.

Even if there’s no automatic policy change, discussions are crucial to spreading awareness of these issues and making us mroe informed advocates about such issues.  My argument isn’t you vote me up because just that you as the competitor cannot ignore these discssions. 

Poverty causes worse sfferring- even if impacts such as death prevent our ability to experience pleasure poverty  prevents our ability to both experience pleasure and prevent usffering meaning under util it’s  way worse.
I contend affirming reduces poverty. 

Politicizing aid and adding conditions makes the distribution of aid to citizens dangerous and ineffective.  It undermines the ability of humanitarian agencies to do their work allowing impoverished conditions to continue unopposed. Fox writes
‘Conditioning the Right to Humanitarian Aid? Human Rights and the “New Humanitarianism”’, Fiona Fox, Rethinking Human Rights, Palgrave, 2002
At a meeting of aid agency programme officers in 1998 senior officials¶ from DFID emphasized that the Department’s project was necessarily a¶ political one. Correspondence to the directors of several UK NGOs indicated¶ that agencies should expect the Department’s decisions on funding¶ humanitarian relief to reflect political outcomes to a much greater degree¶ than in the past. The UK government argues that one of the key reasons¶ for promoting a new kind of humanitarian action is the strong evidence¶ that traditional humanitarian action has done harm. Short believes that¶ relief has been used to prolong wars and legitimize corrupt regimes. This¶ fear of the misuse of relief aid by warring factions has been used to justify¶ unprecedented decisions made by this government to withhold humanitarian¶ aid from people in need. In defending the UK government’s¶ refusal to fund humanitarian assistance for the victims of the coup in¶ Sierra Leone, Short said: ‘We made those decisions on humanitarian¶ grounds and on the principle of not allowing humanitarian assistance to¶ be misused by fighters and thus prolonging wars’ (IDC, 1999).¶ Perhaps the most obvious risk of a new, more political, humanitarian¶ action is that warring sides will no longer accept the neutrality of aid¶ workers in crisis. The increased use of ‘humanitarian protection’ in wartorn¶ societies has seen the institutionalization of military support for¶ humanitarian relief efforts. We now regularly hear about the military¶ creating humanitarian corridors or providing armed protection for relief¶ workers and their logistics networks. While humanitarian workers may¶ have little choice but to avail themselves of this protection, it does compromise¶ the neutrality of NGOs. The Red Cross has rejected the protection¶ of national armies, preferring to pay for reputable private security¶ firms to protect its independence. The increasing use of the military in¶ the delivery of humanitarian aid also compromises the independence of¶ NGOs. For British aid workers during the Kosovo crisis, being managed¶ by soldiers in NATO-run camps at the same time that NATO forces were¶ bombing civilian targets inside Serbia did little to enhance their image¶ of independence.¶ Moving towards a more political humanitarianism would undoubtedly¶ lead to an increase in the targeting of aid workers. Indeed, this trend is¶ already evident. There are also several unpleasant examples of warring¶ sides targeting people from certain nations who are regarded as having¶ taken sides in Third World conflicts. For example, the Hutu militia who¶ kidnapped tourists in Uganda in March 1999 separated out the English¶ and Americans, killing them while sparing the lives of other nationalities.¶ The new human rights-based humanitarians have accepted that¶ speaking out carries a risk of losing access to those in need. Again, there¶ is nothing new about individuals being thrown out of countries for¶ opposing government policies: it has been happening in countries like¶ Kenya for many years. What is different is the more frequent decisions of¶ agencies to speak out in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. Slim and¶ McConnan note this trend in their review of humanitarian principles¶ and point to the dangers: ‘Agencies cannot expect immunity or “humanitarian¶ space” if they are leaning towards solidarity’ (1998).¶ The politicization of aid by donor governments therefore also carries¶ the risk of undermining the ability of humanitarian agencies to do their¶ work. The British government’s attempts to deter UK NGOs from working¶ in places like Afghanistan and Serbia, for example, carries a serious¶ risk of undermining the capacity of humanitarian agencies to reach all¶ those in need. It is crucial to the ability of humanitarian agencies that¶ they are not seen as tools of government policy. As Joanna Macrae, from¶ the Overseas Development Institute, states: ‘It is vital that aid workers¶ can convincingly state that they are not an instrument of British foreign¶ policy.’ Action Aid openly accused the DFID of restricting humanitarian¶ aid to Sierra Leone after the 1997 coup as a deliberate component of the¶ UK government’s policy of reinstating the Kabbah government (IDC,¶ 1999). Action Aid saw this as part of a broader trend:

An increased reliance on conditional humanitarian aid has caused an increased distribution on the basis of politics rather than needs- means that the poor get ignored unless they serve some greater political goal. Barnett
Michael Barnett Prof. of political science at the U. of Minnesota, Humanitarianism Transformed,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 2005)
The bilateralization of aid and the earmarking of funds also potentially steers individual agencies, and has produced disturbing trends in the allocation of aid. Multilateral aid is technically defined as aid given to multilateral organizations and not earmarked; these organizations, therefore, have complete discretion over how the money is spent. Bilateral aid can mean the state either dictates to the multilateral organization how the money is spent or gives the money to a non-multilateral organization such as an NGO. Earmarking means that the donor dictates where and how the assistance will be used, frequently identifying regions, countries, operations, or even projects; this is especially useful if governments have geopolitical interests or pet projects. Since the 1980s there has been a dramatic shift away from multilateral aid and toward bilateral aid and earmarking. In 1988 states directed roughly 45 percent of humanitarian assistance to UN agencies in the form of multilateral assistance. After 1994, however, the average dropped to 25 percent (and even lower in 1999 because of Kosovo).66 Accordingly, state interests, rather than the humanitarian principle of relief based on need, increasingly drives funding decisions. For instance, of the top 50 recipients of bilateral assistance between 1996 and 1999, the states of the former Yugoslavia, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq received 50 percent of the available assistance.67 In 2002 nearly half of all funds given by donor governments to the UN’s 25 appeals for assistance went to Afghanistan. 68 If funding decisions were based solely on need, then places like Sudan, Congo, northern Uganda, and Angola would leapfrog to the top of the list.69 In general, while there is more aid than ever before, it is controlled by fewer donors, who are more inclined to impose conditions and direct aid toward their priorities, undermining the principle of impartiality. Funding is now a several tiered system, with the least fortunate getting the least attention.70

Conditional aid forces recipient nations into an unequal bargaining position where they are economically taken advantage of- means that the impoverished conditions only get worse. Shah  Shah, Anup. (2012) “Foreign Aid for Development Assistance.”
As a condition for aid money, many donors apply conditions that tie the recipient to purchase products only from that donor. In a way this might seem fair and “balanced”, because the donor gets something out of the relationship as well, but on the other hand, for the poorer country, it can mean precious resources are used buying more expensive options, which could otherwise have been used in other situations. Furthermore, the recipient then has less control and decision-making on how aid money is spent. In addition the very nations that typically promote free-markets and less government involvement in trade, commerce, etc., ensure some notion of welfare for some of their industries. IPS noted that aid tied with conditions cut the value of aid to recipient countries by some 25-40 percent, because it obliges them to purchase uncompetitively priced imports from the richer nations. IPS was citing a UN Economic Council for Africa study which also noted that just four countries (Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) were breaking away from the idea of “tied aid” with more than 90 percent of their aid “untied”.
Conditional aid provides an incentive for nations to skimp out an aid-leading to a decreased quality of aid. Shah 2
Recent increases in foreign aid do not tell the whole truth about rich countries’ generosity, or the lack of it. Measured as a proportion of gross national income (GNI), aid lags far behind the 0.7 percent target the United Nations set 35 years ago. Moreover, development assistance is often of dubious quality. In many cases, Aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries; Or aid is primarily designed to benefit powerful domestic interest groups; Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make making development assistance inefficient; Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it; and, All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.

Underview 1: 

Part A). Is preempts

Presume aff  because affirming is an omission and we err on the sie of not causing harm absent a reason not to . Force them to weigh abuse claims against the AC side bias- aff may get to do things neg don’t get to do but this may be necessary to compensate for the bias so weighing against side bias is the only way to ensure I’m not overcompensating for the skew.
If I lose an interp on T or theory Reject argument and reevaluate offense  and use a reasonability threshold for evaluating abuse. a). Aff is in a double bind neg can always read T or theory on me no matter what I do b). I frame substance so it’s not worth sacrificing an entire round in the 1AC for marginal gains on T or theory C). I have no idea what T interps are written on this topic because there is only one tournament - the purpose of T is that it is revised and adapted based on the positions run but I have no clue what positions might be run on this topic.