Japan Withdrawl

The situation in Japan has changed drastically because of the recent 8.9-magnitude earthquake. According to The Wall Street Journal, "U.S. military forces stepped up relief activities in support of Japanese efforts to cope with a humanitarian crisis.

Days after an earthquake and tsunami rocked northeastern Japan, the region remains flooded and pieces of demolished buildings extend miles out to sea. WSJ's Yoree Koh captures the city of Sendai from a helicopter. The 8.9-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck eastern Japan on Friday left thousands unaccounted for and sent more than 200,000 evacuees to relief centers in search of food, water and shelter. Marines stationed on Okinawa dispatched a high-speed military ferry to Japan Monday morning to assist in the operations, according to the U.S. military. The fast logistics craft, based on a commercial passenger ferry, is to deliver food, water, medical supplies, communications equipment, personnel. and equipment for a refueling base."

 

This year's resolution is “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce its military and/or police presence in one or more of the following: South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey." The events unfolding in Japan are probably going to drastically change the way people debate Japan teams. Our troops in the area are currently providing aid to Japan. Some negative teams might try to say that we have to the moral obligation to stay there. Other's might claim that Japan will perceive our withdrawal as abandonment. There is no doubt that that would devastate US Japan relations. Still others might claim that withrawl would send a bad signal to other countries and hurt our overall credibility. With Varsity State and the Tournament of Champions coming up within the next few weeks, I am very interested in how recent developments in Japan will affect the topic.

Egypt Protest Could Become Deadly

The streets of Cairo are currently filled thousands of protesters. The cries for Mubarak to leave are strong, and freedom may finally come to Egypt, which has been ruled by a dictator for over 30 years. Although most are hopeful for the future, some fear that the civil unrest has a darker motive. On January 28th, according to CNN, "The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt this week urged its followers to protest after Friday prayers ". The Muslim Brotherhood is a long established international terrorist group. In 2008, Shai D. Bronshtein said, "If Egypt were to be led by radicals, like the Muslim Brotherhood, who espouse violence and want to implement their radical version of Islamic law—even against civilians—this balance would be disrupted and the United States and the rest of the world would face a very different, far more hostile Middle East. Such a transformation would likely destabilize and endanger Israel and other American allies.  The possibility of such a radical transformation is very real. “Recent polls have found that many in Egypt support the Brotherhood, and the possibility of them taking over is high. Still, I continue to hope that Egypt will become free and will not be controlled by terrorists or dictators.

Eazier Said Than Dunn

And now for something completely different. 

John Cleese couldn't have said it better. While working on the Britisch comedy show, "Monty Python", he managed to turn this phrase into an ode for the random. This motto of the haphazard managed to become the title of a hilarious movie, which everyone should see.

I know this blog is supposed to be about Policy debate but, it has recently come to my attention that not enough people know this song. Well, they should.

Easier Said Than Dunn

Water Wars- A Real Crisis

Today is Blog Action Day, so I will be blogging about water. Specifically, I will be talking about water wars.
During the 2007-2008 school, the debate topic was African Public Health. One of the major impacts during this topic was water wars, which are a very real and serious threat. For those unfamiliar with debate, the affirmative team proposes a plan which has advantages. The negative can say that there are disadvantages to that plan (In case you were wondering, there are many more things the negative team can say, and debates are usually a lot more complicated than this). 

The format of a disadvantage goes like this-

Uniqueness- What is the world like right now
Link- Plan causes something to happen
Impact- That the thing plan causes is bad

Often times during the Africa topic, the link in many disadvantages was that the plan caused water wars to happen, and the impact was that water wars would escalate and cause nuclear wars. Many authors shared this view, but here is one in particular. According to the National Association for Scientific and Cultural Appreciation “The spectre of a world water shortage evokes a truly frightening scenario. In fact the United Nations warns that disputes over water will become the prime source of conflict in the not too distant future. Where these shortages become ever more acute it could forseeably lead to the brink of nuclear conflict.”

This evidence is truly shocking. The world must recognize water shortages as a major threat to peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much talk about this wide spread problem. Blog Action Day is one of the only institutions addressing the subject. I believe that more people should know about water scarcity and should try to help.

Terrorism Impacts- What happened?

For the past decade, the debate community has been buzzing about the number of terrorism impacts. They have been a staple of policy debate, and almost every plan imaginable can either solve terrorism, or link to it. Most terror impacts are based off the idea that a large terror attack would spark retaliation by U.S. that would result in global nuclear war, but a recent article by Charles V. Peña, a Senior Fellow with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, former Senior Fellow with the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute and Former Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute has splashed onto the scene and virtually disproven all terrorism impacts. In his article, "Better Safe Than Sorry?", Peña cites the fact there have been over 1,300 terrorist attacks since the 70s, but none have of them have had the major effects that Alexander Yonah, along with every other terrorism impact author, claims they should have. More people die every year from unintentional poisonings than from all the terrorist atacks from the past 35 years combined.

I really wonder what kind of effect this new evidence will have on the debate community. I highly doubt that teams will stop running Terrorism advantages,but I might be wrong. To see the actual article, go to http://original.antiwar.com/pena/2010/09/30/better-safe-than-sorry/print/

A Critique Of Kerpen

Phil Kerpen is the policy director of Americans for Prosperity, and in 2008, he wrote an article called "From Panic to Depression?" in which he says that "In a world of nuclear and biological weapons and non-state terrorist organizations that breed on poverty and despair, another global economic breakdown of such extended duration would risk armed conflicts on an even greater scale."
I want to recommend this article as a good way to get an impact for economic decline. It is from 2008, almost 2 decades newer than the commonly used MEAD 92. It takes into account new developtments in the world like the rise of extremism and the recent Global Recession. It has the same warrants as the MEAD 92 card, which is the fact that it is empiracly proven that economic collapse causes war. This was the case in World War II, which both authors site.
If you want to cut the card, go to http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226120/panic-depression/phil-kerpen

Sup

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Today I created a blog Chronicling the struggles, the highs, the lows, the valleys, the mountains, the smalll rock face crevaces, the streams, rivers, oceans, puddles, leaps, jumps, skips, steps, and aspiring moments of the Policy Debate Community.

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