DA

The Cuban government engages in multiple human rights violations such as torture, unexplained deaths, arrests of dissidents without any judicial orders, and more Tamayo, Political Writer at the Miami Herald, 12
Juan O. Tamayo, 6/2/12, The Miami Herald, UN panel blasts Cuba on human rights abuses, http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/02/v-fullstory/2828219/un-panel-blasts-cuba-on-human.html, accessed 7-2-13, KB)

The U.N.s Committee Against Torture hammered Cuba on Friday for a lengthy string of human rights abuses and repeatedly complained the island had provided few or none of the details about specific allegations of abuses that it had requested. The panel noted that it was concerned by reports denouncing the use of coercive methods during (p olice) interrogations, particularly the denial of sleep, detention under conditions of isolation and exposure to
sudden changes in temperatures. On Cubas prisons, it wrote that it continues to be supremely concerned by the reports received about the

overcrowding, malnutrition, lack of hygiene and healthy conditions (and) adequate medical attention. There have been thousands of complaints of short-term detentions of dissidents, it added, singling out Jos Luis Ferrer Garca and Oscar Elias
Biscet. And Cuban officials never explained the deaths of dissidents Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Juan Wilfredo Soto Garca. Cuba should establish an independent body to gather, investigate and report on allegations of government abuses, and should meet its promis e to allow a visit by the U.N.s top official on several types of mistreatments, the committee noted in a 6,000-word report. Cubas compliance with

The report summed up the panels conclusions after its May 22-23 hearings in Switzerland on the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Marked unedited, it was issued by the U.N. media office in Geneva. Using the U.N.s typically diplomatic language,
the report noted the panel laments, expresses concern, still worries, disagrees, has serious reservations, views with concern, considers it indispensable and is seriously concerned. But the report Friday amounted

to a harsh and detailed indictment of Cubas human rights record, especially in areas that involve physical punishments or abuses, such as the justice and prison systems and the harassment of dissidents. Cubas own report on its compliance with the convention on torture, presented to the panel in May, was more than nine years late and does not fully meet the guidelines set by the panel, it noted. The 10-member committee reviews countries records on a rotating basis. In a sharply worded section, the report urged Cuba to investigate, without delay, exhaustively, without bias and in an e fficient way, all deaths of prisoners. Cuba told the panel that prison officials were not
responsible for any of the 202 such deaths in 2010-2011, but gave no further information. The report also blasted Cuba for the rapid increase in the use of short-term arrests of dissidents without any judicial orders, usually to keep opposition activists away from activities. Cuban officials told the panel last month that all detentions follow due process. Despite Havanas denials, panel member Fernando Mario told a news conference Friday, it seems that this has been generalized of late. Human rights activists in Havana reported the number of such arrests doubled from 2010 to 2011. The panel also condemned the restrictions on freedom of movement, invasive security operations, physical aggressions and other acts of intimidation and harassment presumably committed by the National Revolutionary Police or members of the Organs of State Security.

Torture is an intrinsic evil that destroys human dignityuniquely bad when government endorsed.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 12
[ 2012, USCCB, TORTURE IS AN INTRINSIC EVIL, http://www.usccb.org/issues-andaction/human-life-and-dignity/torture/upload/torture-is-an-intrinsic-evil-study-guide.pdf, accessed 7/9/13, MC]

Torture destroys our human dignity in multiple ways. An act of such violence pushes individuals and members within a society towards two different forms of dehumanization: savagery, when feelings of anger or fear overwhelm principles of ethics and human rights; and barbarism, when perceived needs for security and supremacy destroy feelings of faith, solidarity and compassion. In fact, torture compromises the human dignity of both the victim and the perpetrator, estranging the torturer from God, and debasing the integrity of the tortured.What is more, when members of a society allow violent, dehumanizing practices to occur within their social sphere, that societys collective integrity and social fabric are greatly eroded. When a government not

only allows, but sponsors, degrading, dehumanizing acts of violence, it sets a dangerous precedent that undermines the respect for everyones human dignity and human rights. The Catechism of the Church makes clear that torture is a grave sin which violates the Fifth Commandment. In his 1993
Encyclical, Veritas Splendor, Pope John Paul II included physical and mental torture in his list of social evils that are not only shameful, but intrinsically evil.

Vote Neg: Engagement with human rights abusers makes you complicit with Evil, no political end is worth this compromise.
Gordon & Gordon, senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University, and independent Scholar, 95
(Haim and Rivca, Sartre and Evil: Guidelines for a Struggle, 1995, xvi-xvii, Questia, 7-2-13, JS)
Put differently, this book is also about us, a man and a woman who, often with others, have for years been struggling for freedom, for dialogue, for justice, for human

what we have learned from Sartre that has helped us to conduct this daily struggle. Yet it should also be clear: We are not standard do-gooders. When we use the word "struggle," we mean fighting, attacking, pointing at evildoers, demanding that they be prosecuted. We mean accepting the profound loneliness that often characterizes such struggles. We mean living with the stupid decisions and the mistakes that we have often made, and, we hope, learning from them. We mean knowing that we too have done Evil. Like Sartre we do not need to be identified with a party or an organization or a large group when we attack an evildoer, although we are, at times, happy when such occurs. For instance, when human rights are blatantly abused in the Gaza Strip, or when violence against women is ignored by the Israeli police, we are unwilling to compromise such a destruction of human freedom with the goals of a party or an organization so that the organization or party can attain its political ends from this Evil. Learning from Sartre, we condemn the Evil and the oppression and exploitation as loudly and clearly as possible. And like Sartre, our condemnations often fall on deaf ears. Again and again we have failed, as this book will often indicate. The Israeli military administration in Gaza, the Israeli press, Israeli politicians, other intellectuals and academics, and even other human rights organizations have often made us feel frustrated, impotent, stuck, irrelevant. But we continue. It is in this kind of struggle, we believe, that one can learn much from Sartre's writings. Hence, in what follows, while we
rights in Israel and in the Middle East, and about shall discuss in detail and in depth quite a few philosophical themes central to Sartre's writings, we shall always attempt to suggest how these themes can help in the day-to-day struggle against Evil. To do so, we often add to our discussion of Sartre's insights on Evil an instance from our personal experiences or from events in the world that these insights have helped to clarify. It is in this kind of struggle, we believe, that one can learn much from Sartre's writings. Hence, in what follows, while

we shall always attempt to suggest how these themes can help in the day-to-day struggle against Evil. To do so,
we shall discuss in detail and in depth quite a few philosophical themes central to Sartre's writings, we often add to our discussion of Sartre's insights on Evil an instance from our personal experiences or from events in the world that these insights have helped to

Sartre would have preferred such a book to a strict scholarly study of his relationship to Evil. He repeatedly pointed out that he was deeply concerned with the relevance of his writings to day-to-day praxis, to day-to-day struggles, to the situation in which persons find themselves. He wanted his writings to make a concrete difference in the world, not only to be a topic of analysis and discussion among scholars and philosophers. We also believe that Sartre would have liked a book that at times reeks of the blood, sweat, and tears -- and yes, the rage, the passion, the debilitating loneliness, and the ongoing fight against impotence -- that characterize any worthy struggle for freedom today.
clarify. We firmly believe that

CP
CP Text: The United States Federal Government should offer Cuba to do [the plan] if: - Cuba agrees to engage in dialogue with the United States Federal Government over human rights reform and release Alan Gross Only the CP solvesthe plan strengthens the elites grip on power
LA Times 07 (Los Angeles Times, 26 Oct 2007, Carrots for Cuba; We've lifted trade and travel embargoes on China and Vietnam. Why
should Havana be different?, proquest) //KY

Washington's thinking about Cuba -- when it has thought about the island at all -- has mainly been tinged with the unjustified hope that its oppressive regime will reform or collapse following the death of Fidel Castro. Politicians of both parties generally assume that lifting the
In the wake of 9/11, trade embargo on the hated revolutionary would be a nonstarter, but that U.S. policy would be ripe for reevaluation after his passing. But in a major speech this week, President Bush attempted to put his stamp on U.S.-Cuba policy through the end of his presidency and beyond with a defiant embrace of the spectacularly unsuccessful U.S. policies of the past. While eloquently

describing Cuba's sins

he

against human rights and economic and political freedoms, Bush offered only the fantasy that the Cuban people will revolt
against their rulers. He declared the transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his brother, Raoul, unacceptable to the United States. And

ruled out lifting the embargo until Havana grants its people freedom .

trading with Cuba "would merely grip."

enrich the elites in power

Until then, Bush said, and strengthen their

Unconditional lifting of the embargo strengthens the regime, causes terrorism, and turns Latin America influence
Suchlicki 13 (Jaime, Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies,
University of Miami, What Ifthe U.S. Ended the Cuba Travel Ban and the Embargo? 2/26/13, http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/what-ifthe-u-s-ended-the-cuba-travel-ban-and-the-embargo/) //KY

Lifting the travel ban without major concessions from Cuba would send the wrong message to the enemies of the United States: that a foreign leader can seize U.S. properties without compensation; allow the use of his territory for the introduction of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States; espouse terrorism and anti-U.S. causes throughout the world; and eventually the United States will forget and forgive, and reward him with tourism, investments and economic aid. Since the Ford/Carter era, U.S. policy toward Latin America has emphasized democracy, human rights and constitutional government. Under President Reagan the U.S.
intervened in Grenada, under President Bush, Sr. the U.S. intervened in Panama and under President Clinton the U.S. landed marines in Haiti, all to restore democracy to those countries. The U.S. has prevented military coups in the region and supported the will of the people in free elections. U.S. policy has not been uniformly applied throughout the world, yet it is U.S. policy in the region. Cuba is part of Latin America. While no one is advocating military intervention,

normalization of relations with a military dictatorship in

Cuba will send the wrong message to the rest of the continent. Once American tourists begin
to visit Cuba, Castro would probably restrict travel by Cuban-Americans. For the Castro regime, Cuban-Americans represent a far more subversive group because of their ability to speak to friends and relatives on the island, and to influence their views on the Castro regime and on the United States. Indeed, the return of Cuban exiles in 1979-80 precipitated the mass exodus of Cubans from Mariel in 1980. A large influx of American tourists into Cuba would have a dislocating effect on the economies of smaller Caribbean islands such as Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and even Florida, highly dependent on tourism for their well-being. Careful planning must take place, lest we create significant hardships and social problems in these countries. If the embargo is lifted, limited trade with, and investments in Cuba would develop. Yet there are significant implications.

The Net Benefit is to avoid the DA.

K
The affirmative reading of the Status Quo fails to take account of our current sociopolitical occasion, that of the interregnum A time in which US hegemony has already entered a mode of disappearance, trading off now not with other nation states but rather something to come - an assemblage of transnational configuration Hardt and Negri 2009 (MICHAEL HARDT is Professor of Literature and Italian at Duke University. ANTONIO NEGRI is an
independent researcher and writer. They are coauthors of Empire (Harvard) and Multitude. THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts Page 232-233)

The disorder and complexity of the current global situationwith the reappearance of a wide variety of outdated forms of violence, economic appropriation, political domination, and so forthlead many to look to old models, such as unilateralist hegemony and multilateralist collaboration, to understand the terms of global order. Even though ghosts of the past continually spring up in this period of interregnum, however, we insist that the emerging world order has to be read in terms that are fundamentally new. "The hegemonic baton will likely be passed," maintains William Robinson, with an eye to this novelty, "from the United States, not to a new hegemonic nation-state or even to a regional bloc, but to a transnational configuration." Once we focus on the assemblages and authorities being formed in the context of global governance, we can see that a new imperial formation is emerging that can function only through the collaboration of a variety of national, supranational, and non-national powers. Our future politics will have to be cast in relation to this Empire.

Even the most well-intentioned forms of economic engagement under the capitalist ideology of the plan will inevitably only serve to concretize the security state by way of extending new means for imperial outreach and encirclement. Akbas 2012 (Eren Karaca, MA, A sociological study of corporate social responsibility: a marxist perspective. a thesis submitted to the
graduate school of social sciences of middle east technical university by eren karaca akba in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of science in the department of sociology June 2012, https://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614474/index.pdf)

The corporation is where the capital becomes concrete that it realizes the circulation of capital and serves as the concrete body making the capital accumulation possible It reserves
, in that context, in general in the sense (Ylmaz, 2010:96).

the economic and social relations defined by the capitalist system and represents these capitalist relations of production
. The growth of capitalist production has clearly been experienced throughout the world particularly after the Industrial Revolution. The capitalist enterprises, namely the corporations, have gained power since then. Lenin

In the beginning and then, capitalist competition forced them to merge

(2006) reveals how the competition among individual capitals has been monopolistic in character.

of the 19th century, we see that the number of

capitalist enterprises increased

. As Lenin puts it, the enormous growth o f industry and the remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises

are one of the most characteristic features of capitalism (2006:19). This concentration of production also paved the way for concentration of power in capitalist enterprises, which at the end created monopolies. The holding system, which is composed of many shareholders as we have today, serves enormously to increase the power of the monopolists. Yet, according to Lenin, the only benefit of the holdi ng system to the capitalist is not only this. The system also allows them to cheat the public, because the owners of the main corporation are not legally accountable for the smaller firms merged into the big one, and through the medium of which they can pull off anything (ibid:56). Therefore, as the companies get bigger, it becomes difficult to follow their business activities. Lenin describes the effects of the concentration of production so well that he also covers todays situation. He claims that none of th e rules of control, the publication of balance-sheets, the drawing up of balance-sheets according to a definite form, the public auditing of accounts, etc., the things about which well-intentioned professors and officialsthat is, those imbued with the good intention of defending and prettifying capitalismdiscourse to the public, are of any avail; for private property is sacred, and no one can be prohibited from buying, selling, exchanging or hypothecating shares, etc. (ibid:57).

What Lenin saw then is presented as the monstrous corporation today. The relationship between global capitalism and corporations seem to be interdep endent in the sense that the global expansion of capitalism demanded for corporations to become even larger and the monopolistic character of corporations demanded for larger corporations to reach larger markets for more accumulation. The

history of corporations, therefore, is composed of this mutual relationship based on the capitalistic instincts. Especially with neoliberalism, as the corporation became more liberal than ever, the power of corporations is now considered more or less natural. The idea that the large corporations are running the world today stems from the political and economic engagement of capitalist ideology in almost

everywhere around the world. For example, David Harvey informs that the leading companies in the US accounted for about one half of the
GNP of the United States during the 1970s, and they spent close to $900 million annually (a huge amount at that time) on political matters (2005:43,44). Besides the direct expenditures on political lobbying, the capitalist

ideology has created its own global political institutions, for which Hardt and Negri use the term supranational regulatory institutions such as UN, IMF, World Bank, etc. and what legitimizes them now is ... their newly possible function in the symbology of the imperial order
(2000:31).

The affirmative remains trapped within a policy paradigm that problematizes life itself as a problem to be managed; this epistemological and ontological investment in capitalist security produces inequality and will inevitably result in serial policy failure, turning the case.
Dillon and Reid 2000 Professor of Politics at the University of Lancaster and lecturer in international relations at Kings College in
London, 2000 Michael and Julian, Alternatives vol. 25, issue 1, spring, EbscoHost)

governmentality, according to Foucault's initial account, poses the question of order not in terms of the origin of the law and the location of sovereignty, as do traditional accounts of power, but in terms instead of the management of population. The management of population is further refined in terms of specific problematics to which population management may be reduced.
As a precursor to global governance, These typically include but are not necessarily exhausted by the following topoi of governmental power: economy, health, welfare, poverty, security, sexuality, demographics, resources, skills, culture, and so on. Now, where there is an operation of power there is knowledge, and where there is knowledge there is an operation of power. Here discursive formations emerge and, as Foucault noted, in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and

where there is a policy problematic there is expertise, and where there is expertise there, too, a policy problematic will emerge. Such problematics are detailed and elaborated in terms of discrete forms of knowledge as well as interlocking policy domains. Policy domains reify the problematization of life in certain ways by turning these epistemically and politically contestable orderings of life into "problems" that require the continuous attention of policy science and the continuous resolutions of policymakers. Policy "actors" develop and compete on the basis of the expertise that grows up around such problems or clusters of problems and their client populations.Here, too, we may also discover what might be called "epistemic entrepreneurs." Albeit the market for discourse is prescribed and policed in ways that Foucault indicated, bidding to formulate novel problematizations they seek to "sell" these, or otherwise have them officially adopted. In principle, there is no
dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality.[ 34] More specifically, limit to the ways in which the management of population may be problematized. All aspects of human conduct, any encounter with life, is problematizable. Any problematization is capable of becoming a policy problem. Governmentality thereby creates a market for policy, for science and for policy science, in which problematizations go looking for policy sponsors while policy

. Reproblematization of problems is constrained by the institutional and by the sheer difficulty of challenging the inescapable ontological and epistemological assumptions that go into their very formation. There is nothing so fiercely contested as an epistemological or ontological assumption. And there is nothing so fiercely ridiculed as the suggestion that the real problem with problematizations exists precisely at the level of such assumptions. Such "paralysis of analysis" is precisely what policymakers seek to avoid since they are compelled constantly to respond to circumstances over which they ordinarily have in fact both more and less control than they proclaim. What they do not have is precisely the control that they want. Yet serial policy failurethe fate and the fuel of all policy--compels them into a continuous search for the new analysis that will extract them from the aporias in which they constantly find themselves enmeshed.[ 35] Serial policy failure is no simple shortcoming that science and policy--and policy science--will ultimately overcome. Serial policy failure is rooted in the ontological and epistemological assumptions that fashion the ways in which global governance encounters and problematizes life as a process of emergence through fitness landscapes that constantly adaptive and changing ensembles have continuously to negotiate. As a particular kind of intervention into life, global governance promotes the very changes and unintended outcomes that it then serially reproblematizes in terms of policy failure. Thus, global liberal governance is not a linear problem-solving process committed to the resolution of objective
sponsors fiercely compete on behalf of their favored problematizations ideological investments surrounding accepted "problems," and policy problems simply by bringing better information and knowledge to bear upon them. A nonlinear economy of power/knowledge, it deliberately installs socially specific and radically inequitable distributions of wealth, opportunity, and mortal danger both locally and globally through the very detailed ways in which life is variously (policy) problematized by it.

The aff promotes market fundamentalism and rabid individualism as the answers to Americas ills, replacing citizens with an assemblage of entrepreneurial subjects. This elevates profits over people, resulting in never-ending wars abroad in the quest for capital, and authoritarianism at home. Giroux 2006 (Henry, Dirty Democracy and State Terrorism: The Politics of the New Authoritarianism in the United States,
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 26:2, pp. 163-177, MUSE) While it would be ludicrous to suggest that the United States either represents a mirror image of fascist ideology or mimics the systemic racialized terror of Nazi Germany, it is not unreasonable, as Hannah Arendt urged in The Origins of Totalitarianism, to learn to recognize how different elements

of fascism crystallize in different historical periods into new forms of authoritarianism. Such antidemocratic elements combine in often unpredictable ways, and I believe they can be found currently in many of the political practices, values, and policies that characterize U.S. sovereignty under the Bush administration. Unchecked power at the top of the political hierarchy is increasingly matched by an aggressive attack on dissent throughout the body politic and fuels both a war abroad and a war at home. The economic and militaristic
powers of global capitalspearheaded by U.S. corporations and political interestsappear uncurbed by traditional forms of national and international sovereignty, the implications of which are captured in David Harveys serviceable phrase accumulation by dispossession. Entire populations are now seen as disposable, marking a dangerous moment for the promise of a global democracy.8 The discourse of liberty, equality, and freedom that emerged with modernity seems to have lost even its residual value as the central project of democracy. State sovereignty is no longer organized around the struggle for life but an insatiable quest for the accumulation of capital, leading to what Achille Mbembe calls necropolitics, or the destruction of human bodies.9 War, violence, and death have become the principal elements shaping the biopolitics of the new authoritarianism that is emerging in the United States and increasingly extending its reach into broader global spheres, from Iraq to a vast

As the state of emergency, in Giorgio Agambens aptly chosen words, becomes the rule rather than the exception, a number of powerful antidemocratic tendencies threaten the prospects for both American and global democracy. 10 The first is a market fundamentalism that not only trivializes
array of military outposts and prisons around the world. democratic values and public concerns but also enshrines a rabid individualism, an all-embracing quest for profits, and a social Darwinism in which misfortune is seen as a weaknessthe current sum total being the Hobbesian rule of a war of all against all that replaces any vestige of shared responsibilities or compassion for others. The

values of the market and the ruthless workings of finance capital become the template for organizing the rest of society. Everybody is now a customer or client, and every relationship is ultimately judged in bottom-line, cost-effective terms as the neoliberal mantra privatize or perish
is repeated over and over again. Responsible citizens are replaced by an assemblage of entrepreneurial subjects, each tempered in the virtue of selfreliance and forced to face the increasingly difficult challenges of the social order alone. Freedom is no longer about securing equality, social justice, or the public welfare but about unhampered trade in goods, financial capital, and commodities. As the logic of capital trumps democratic sovereignty, low-intensity warfare at home chips away at democratic freedoms, and high-intensity warfare abroad delivers democracy with bombs, tanks, and chemical warfare. The global cost of these neoliberal commitments is massive human suffering and death, delivered not only in the form of bombs and the barbaric practices of occupying armies but also in structural adjustment policies in which the drive for land, resources, profits, and goods are implemented by global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Global lawlessness and armed violence accompany the imperative of free trade, the virtues of a market without boundaries, and the promise of a Western-style democracy imposed through military solutions, ushering in the age of rogue sovereignty on a global scale. Under

such

conditions, human suffering and hardship reach unprecedented levels of intensity. In a rare moment of
truth, Thomas Friedman, the columnist for the New York Times, precisely argued for the use of U.S. power including military forceto support this antidemocratic world order. He claimed that the

hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. . . . And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valleys technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force,
Navy and Marine Corps.11 As Mark Rupert points out, In Friedmans twisted world, if people are to realize their deepest aspirationsthe longing for a better life which comes from their very soulsthey must stare down the barrel of Uncle Sams gun.12 As neoliberals in the Bush administration implement policies at home to reduce taxation and regulation while spending billions on wars abroad, they slash funds that benefit the sick, the elderly, the poor, and young people. But public resources are diverted not only from crucial domestic problems ranging from poverty and unemployment to hunger; they are also diverted from addressing the fate of some 45 million children in the worlds poor countries [who] will die needlessly over the next decade, as reported by the British -based group Oxfam.13 The U.S. commitment to market fundamentalism elevates profits over human needs and consequently offers few displays of compassion, aid, or relief for millions of poour and abandoned children in the world who do not have adequate shelter, who are severely hungry, who have no access to health care or safe water, and who succumb needlessly to the ravages of AIDS and other diseases.14 For instance, as Jim Lobe points out, U.S. foreign aid in 20 03 ranked dead last among all wealthy nations. In fact, its entire development aid spending in 2003 came to only ten percent of what it spent on the Iraq war that year. U.S. development assistance comes to less than one-fortieth of its annual defense budget.15 Carol Bellamy, the executive director of UNICEF, outlines the consequences of the broken promises to children by advanced capitalist countries such as the United States. She writes, Today more than one billion children are suffering extreme deprivations from poverty, war, and HIV/AIDS. The specifics are staggering: 640 million children without adequate shelter, 400 million children without access to safe water, and 270 million children without access to basic health services. AIDS has orphaned 15 million children. During the 1990s alone, war forced 20 million children to leave their homes.16

Our alternative is to renounce the affirmative. We have an ethical obligation to reject this glossing over of structural violence it renders the loss of millions of lives incalculable Zizek and Daly 2004 (Slavoj Zizek and Glyn Daly, Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at
University College, Northampton, 2004, Conversations With Zizek, p. 14-16)

our ethico-political responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of todays global capitalism and its obscene naturalization of millions who are subjugated by it throughout the world
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that /anonymization the Against the standardized positions of postmodern culture with all its pieties con cerning multiculturalist etiquette Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be called radically incorrect in the sense that it breaks with these types of po sitions and focuses instead on the very organizing principles of todays social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has been bedevilled by an almost fetishistic economism that has tended towards political morbidity. With the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and more recently Laclau and Mouffe, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the transcendence of all forms of economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem that now presents itself is almost that of the opposite fetish. That is to say,

the prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a way of not engaging with economic reality and as a way of implicitly accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. in order to create a universal global system the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the politico-discursive violence of its construction that the gentrification of global liberal capitalism is one whose universalism fundamentally reproduces and depends upon a disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors of the worlds population.
In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian twist, the fear of economism can end up reinforcing a de facto economic necessity in respect of contemporary capitalism (i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears). This is not to endorse any kind of retrograde return to economism. Zizeks point is rather that in rejecting economism we should not lose sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies of humanity and our very sense of the possible. In particular we should not overlook Marxs central insight that through a kind of gentrification of that system. What is persistently denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning and losing as if they were simply a matter of chance and sound judgement in a neutral marketplace. Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and de graded lifechances cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social exclusion remains mystified and nameless (viz, the patronizing reference to the developing world. And Zizeks point is that this mystification is mag nified through capitalisms profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation. Instead of Bolshevism, the tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms of consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek argues for a new universalism whose primary ethical directive is to confront the fact that our forms of social existence are founded on exclusion on a global scale. While it is perfectly true that universalism can never become Universal (it will always require a hegemonic-par ticular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is novel about Zizeks universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or to reduce the status of the abject Other to that of a glitch in an otherwise sound matrix.

Any determination of the ballot demands a prior question, one situating the task of the intellectual and role of the critic not only within in our current socio-political occasion, but also the unique space of debate. We ask that you take up an approach to pedagogy that will alter the coordinates of curriculum in this debate away from capitalist positions of securitization. Bowers 2011 (C.A. Bowers, University of Oregon. Ecologically and Culturally Informed Educational Reforms in Teacher Education
and Curriculum Studies. Critical Education. Volume 2 Number 14 December 20, 2011 ISSN 1920-4125) Classroom teachers and university professors do not have the political and economic power to challenge directly the global agenda of the military/corporate/religious alliances that are aggressively promoting a consumer-dependent lifestyle and winning converts in countries where

teachers and professors can discuss the political, economic, and technological developments with students in the hope that it will raise awareness and thus the need for them to become more active in the political processone that seems now to be heavily tilted to the advantage of corporations in exercising even more control over the federal and state governments. Given the slippery political slope we are now on, and the increasing perils that await
political expediency dictates emulating the Western model of development. But classroom teachers who deviate from the test-driven curriculum and the market liberal and libertarian ideologies promoted by members of local school boards, it

is still possible to introduce reforms that focus on educating students about the local alternatives to a consumer-dependent lifestylewhich is, to reiterate a key point, the lifestyle that requires exploiting the earths natural systems and the economic colonization of other cultures. It is also the lifestyle that is dependent
upon an industrial culture that is being radically transformed by information technologies. The Internet now enables corporations to ship jobs overseas to low-wage regions of the world, while computer-driven automation enables corporations to replace workers with machines that can run twenty-four hours a day, and do not require health insurance and other human costs. In effect, the consumer- dependent lifestyle that was based upon the assumption of lifetime employment is now only a possibility for the people who are highly educated, and for people who will

perform the low-paying, low-status work that cannot be automated. The drive to further automate all levels of work, from the conceptual to the manual, means that everybodys economic future is now insecure and dependent upon corporate policies for maximizing their profits.

Professors have a great many more opportunities to raise questions, to address the cultural roots of the ecological and cultural crises, and to introduce students to alternative lifestyles that are less dependent upon consumerismif they chose to do so. But this may also change, as the less expensive online courses
begin to have the same impact on universities that online news has had on the countrys traditional newspapers.