1AC

I always get the shakes before a drop. . . look. Flores died on the way up.
          
This excerpt from Robert Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers describes a human attack on the Skinnies, an alien species allied with humanity’s greatest enemies, the Arachnids.  Just as American soldiers today rely on dazzling technological superiority over our impoverished, low-tech enemies, troopers wearing robotic power armor execute a raid—not quite a war, but a limited intervention, designed to show what humanity is capable of.  Much like the United States intervention in Libya, this is only a small part of a much broader conflict, but the consequences are real.  Johnny Rico, the hero of Starship Troopers, kills untold numbers of civilians in this scene with flamethrowers, grenades, and nuclear warheads.  There is no remorse for the alien enemy, but Johnny won’t leave his wounded comrades behind.  Enemy lives may be cheap, but the Mobile Infantry looks out for its own.

The soldiers of our Mobile Infantry are all volunteers, but in the society of Starship Troopers, citizenship is a privilege, not a right.  No one can vote or participate in politics without first serving in combat.  Heinlein’s novel has been criticized as thinly-veiled fascist propaganda, where the alien enemies are stand-ins for America’s Communist enemies in Asia.  At the height of the Cold War, Heinlein seemed to be in favor of restricting democracy and giving up on the concept of equality.

There is another reading, however—interventions might happen in the world of Starship Troopers, but at least the decisions are made by the same people who bear the costs.  In modern America, civilians get behind interventions like the war in Libya because they are isolated from the true sacrifices of war.  A hyperreal culture of mass media distortion makes war seem clean, even humanitarian.  Heinlein’s politics might be extreme, but the story of Starship Troopers provides a corrective to this armchair militarism, forcing us to rethink constant imperial interventions.
SIMMERS 2011 (Erich, PhD in English, U of Florida expected 2011, “The Importance of Starship Troopers Today: Reflecting on Bloom, Heinlein, and Libya,” Weaponized Culture, April 27, http://weaponizedculture.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/the-importance-of-starship-troopers/)
Wading through Twitter this morning, I came . . . soldiers on the ground will pay the costs.

These interventions are not harmless.  Heinlein’s space war and the casual use of nuclear weapons will be brought on by the confluence of hyperreal media saturation and cost-free militarism.  The endless manufacture of new threats and new interventions can only end in extinction.
KROKER AND KROKER 2006 [Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture at the University of Victoria. Marilouise Kroker is Senior Research Scholar at the University of Victoria. Interview with William Wood published in “Culture, power, and history: studies in critical sociology”, Stephen J. Pfohl, ed., Google Books]
Krokers: The theory of viral power was . . . based, warfare in the darkness of space.

Hence the plan: On behalf of Libya, The United States Federal Government should require that federal service be a prerequisite to citizenship.
                                                                   
Our reading of Starship Troopers can challenge the ontological and epistemological certainty of world politics—this deployment of the story can be an ironic challenge to the anti-politics of militarism
WHITEHALL 2003 – Associate Professor, Political Science. . . Bristol University. Palgrave Macmillan 2003, 179)
Notwithstanding the dominance of this reading, Starship . . . secured world to a plurality of alternative interpretations.

Destroying the hyperreal fictions of the media-militarist society requires us to tell stories that are impossibly false—science fiction is a gift that the system can only receive by destroying itself
BOGARD 2004 (Bill Bogard, Professor of Sociology at Whitman University, “Hyperfacticity and Fatal Strategies,” Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2)
A social science fiction is not some Utopia . . . image of its own desire. Fatal strategy.

The aff’s act of imagination is a prerequisite to breaking down a hypermilitarized fascistic politics
Gray 94 (Chris Hables Gray is an Associate Professor of the Cultural Studies of Science and Technology and of Computer Science at the University of Great Falls, Nov., 1994, ‘"There Will Be War!": Future War Fantasies and Militaristic Science Fiction in the 1980s’, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3)

Envoi. As this article has tried to . . . peaceful world, how will we make one?

The resolution asks us the question of democracy assistance – it can’t be answered without an investigation into democracy within the US
SAMIEI 10 (Mohammed, Senior Lecturer in Faculty of World Studies @ U. of Tehran, “Neo-Orientalism? The relationship between the West and Islam in our globalised world” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 7, pp. 1156-1157)

The limits, shortcomings and deficiencies of the . . . be the sole possible solution that we have.

The point of our advocacy is to cultivate a more responsible model of democracy.  Science fiction is critical to a functioning participatory democracy because it educates citizens about the crucial role of technology in modern politics
BRAKE AND THORNTON 2003  *Principal Lecturer and Professor of Science Communication at the University of Glamorgan, AND  teacher of Science and Science Fiction degree at the University of Glamorgan (“Science fiction in the classroom.” 2003 Phys. Educ. 38 31, Google Scholar)
Our intention in relation to teaching science has . . . unrealistic suspicions about science in many public debates.

Creative engagement with political decisionmaking is critical to human survival
STANNARD 2006 (Matt, Department of Communication and Journalism, University of Wyoming, Spring 2006 Faculty Senate Speaker Series Speech, April 18, http://theunderview.blogspot.com/2006/04/deliberation-democracy-and-debate.html)

The complexity and interdependence of human society, . . . , is one way to resist this colonization.

All politics is fictional – imagination is a central component of representation – our affirmative merely exposes this truth
FREEDMAN 2000  Associate Professor of English at Louisiana State University (Carl, “Critical Theory and Science Fiction” Wesleyan University Press, University Press of London, 20-22)
It is a priori likely that most texts . . . hand, and Star Wars on the other.

World politics is merely science fiction – our representations of reality exist as a cultural product inscribed as text
WELDES 2003 – Senior Lecturer, Bristol University; PhD (Minn) (Jutta, “Popular culture, science fiction, and world politics: exploring inter textual relations” in “To seek out new worlds: science fiction and world politics” ed. Weldes, Palgrave Macmillan 2003, 12-13)
But this is at best a partial understanding . . . ” (2001: 132, emphasis added).

Cognitive estrangement is core to science fiction – we must be able to study a new world without endorsing it – that is crucial for all forms of politics and predictions
Booth et al. 9 (Charles Booth, Reader in Strategy and International Business at the University of the West of England, Bristol, Professor Michael Rowlinson, Professor of Organization Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, 2009, “Scenarios and counterfactuals as modal narratives”, Futures 41 (2009) 87–95)

In this final section of the paper we . . . our ontological innocence, once and for all.

Fictional imagination is the beginning of true politics – it’s a heuristic device that subverts hegemonic discourse and mobilizes activism
Brincat 9 (Shannon Brincat, Department Member, Center of Excellence for Global Governance Research at the University of Helsinki, “Reclaiming the Utopian imaginary in IR theory”, Review of International Studies (2009), 35: 581-609)

Utopianism permeates our political thought as the store . . . be a more critical, even transformative discipline.

This is the preferred site of resistance – only science fiction can engage in a holistic critique and forge a democratic alliance politics that can transform
Moylan 2k (Tom Moylan, Glucksman Professor of contemporary writing and Director of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies, University of Limerick, 2000, “Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia”, pg. 187-190) Text altered to expand “sf” to “science fiction” for clarity

Writing within the realm of literary critique (. . . and forging a radical alternative in its place.

From science fiction emerges overt political mobilization – textual resistance is a necessary condition for opposition
Moylan 2k (Tom Moylan, Glucksman Professor of contemporary writing and Director of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies, University of Limerick, 2000, “Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia”, pg. 192-193)

Pointing to the self-reflexivity of the . . . that world" ( "Unmasking"1).

Science fiction hones our decisionmaking skills—no other medium can improve our abilities to make predictions as well as this one can
Huntington 1975 – teaches English at The University of Rhode Island and for the last five years has given a course on Science Fiction. (John, “Science Fiction and the Future.” College English, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Dec., 1975), JSTOR)FROM THE VERY BEGINNING of modern SF, . . . , but to reinter- pret its function.

Traditional conceptions of government fiat are also fiction—they misrepresent the process of government decisionmaking, which means they are neither educational nor predictable
CLAUDE 1988 (Inis, Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, States and the Global System, pages 18-20)
This view of the state as an institutional . . . to them–and that they sometimes claim.

Aff: Harvard BS

Round #2  Tournament:Wake

Vs Team:

Judge:

Plan Text

Same

1ac Advantages

Same

2ac Offense

Sci-Fi Args make Topicality Irrelevant

Project first-Imagination key

Language is interpretive

Limits impossible,

C/I (To Framework): We should defend the plan as “thought experiment”, but not the theoretical implementation. Fictional reality = better limits and what not

Reinterpretation of “For”

1ar Strategy

T-

Our boundaries are better

Our Definition of “For” means we are democracy assistance

2ar Strategy

Our Sci-Fi strat solves

Contention One: “The Greatest Threat”

Yemen today appears filtered through the lens of imperialist knowledge: a cultural backwaters of tribal violence – these descriptions are not neutral but created through the repetitive snippets of media coverage that sustain the very backwardness they attempt to resolve

Blumi 11 (Isa Blumi, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Deparment and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Araian Gulf and Yemen, Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2011, pg. 13-16)
Scholars have long ... of indigenous realities.

THE SPREAD OF THE IMPERIALIST EPISTEMOLOGIES CREATED ABOUT YEMEN IS PART OF A LARGER DISCURSIVE STRUCTURE THAT MAKES MACRO-SCALE VIOLENCE INEVITABLE

BATUR 7 [Pinar Batur, PhD @ UT-Austin – Prof. of Scociology @ Vassar, ‘7 [“The Heart of Violence: Global Racism, War, and Genocide,” in Handbook of the The Soiology of Racial and Ethnic Relations, eds. Vera and Feagin, p. 446-7]
At the turn ... genocide, in Darfur.

AMERICA’S RELATIONSHIP TO YEMEN REMAINS INSCRIBED AND LIMITED TO THE FLAWED KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION OF THE WAR ON TERROR. WHAT YEMEN IS AND CAN BE IS CONFINED TO WHAT THE DRONES SEE AND WHO THEY KILL
BLUMI 11 (Isa Blumi, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Deparment and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Araian Gulf and Yemen, Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2011, pg. 2-4)
As if this ...

the violence in different parts of the country.

Institutionalized fear of Al Qaeda in Yemen spreads even devoid of any truth content – these portrayals only bolster AQAP narratives about US imperialism, converting warnings into self-fulfilling prophecies

Greenwald 11 (Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York, now contributor to Salon.com, JUL 18, 2011, “The War on Terror, now starring Yemen and Somalia”, )            

There is a concerted campaign underway to ensure

AND

industry: it endlessly spawns its own justification.

Fear of the AQAP in Yemen is a symptom of the War on Terrorism’s obsession with “Islamic terrorism” even though it is thoroughly denied by empirical studies

Jackson 9 (Richard Jackson is Reader in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, and a Senior Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence (CSRV). He is the founding editor of the journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism, and the author of Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counterterrorism (2005). “Knowledge, power and politics in the study of politsical terrorism” in Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda, ed. Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning, Routledge)

As explained earlier, a first order or

AND

and to pursue alternative intellectual and political projects.

These dominant narratives of terrorism are not just incorrect – they function as a political technology to uphold the brutal exercise of state power

Jackson ‘7 (Richard Jackson, Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, 2007, “Terrorism Studies and the Politics of State Power”,

Together with certain state, military, think

AND

terrorism campaigns and the current war on terror.

The spread of this knowledge creates a paralyzing cycle of vilification – the end result is permanent warfare in the name of combating the multivalent terrorist threat

Jabri 6 (Vivienne Jabri, Professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, 2006, “War, Security and the Liberal State”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 37, No. 1, p. 52-55)

The practices of warfare taking place in the

AND

of power that take life as their objective’.

When knowledge becomes a closed cycle, America’s self-image becomes the only truth. The war on terror becomes mere purification: an infinite war on difference itself

Lifton 3 (Robert Lifton, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Psychology, The City University of New York. He was formerly Director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He held the Foundations’ Fund Research Professorship of Psychiatry at Yale University for more than two decades, Super Power Syndrome: America’s Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Rogue_State_US/War_Terrorism_SPS.html)

A superpower dominates and rules. Above all

AND

has been "the culture of modern evangencalism.

Thus we advocate:

The United States Federal Government should assist the political opposition in the Republic of Yemen with gaining access to political activity.

Contention two is Solvency

Yemen is the crucial site to break down the broader frames of epistemic racism and the war on terror. Engaging with the political opposition through an assistance of solidarity is key

Voting affirmative means there is still a space for HOPE in Yemen.

Blumi 11 (Isa Blumi, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Deparment and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Araian Gulf and Yemen, Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2011, pg. 151-155)

At the same time, however, those

AND

the suffering of people it fails to comprehend.

Our moral and ethical imperative is to refuse absolutely the methodology of violence – Only then can Yemen appear on its own, outside the narrative of the War on Terror

Blumi 11 (Isa Blumi, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Deparment and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Araian Gulf and Yemen, Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2011, pg. 7-8)

The first is the possibility that a combination

AND

than eradicated with tanks and fighter jets.26

This investigation of the epistemology of terrorism must precede specific policy analysis – only a prior break from uncritical approaches of the past allows us to politicize the debate space

Toros and Gunning 9 (Harmonie Toros is completing her doctoral research at the Department of International Politics of Aberystwyth University, researching the role of negotiations and dialogue in the transformation of conflicts involving terrorist violence. Jeroen Gunning is Lecturer in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence and co-editor of the journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism. He is author of Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence (2007).  “Exploring a critical theory approach to terrorism studies” in Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda, ed. Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning, Routledge)

Deepening terrorism research Theory is always from somewhere

AND

terrorism research, to which we now turn.

//


////


//

1AC

Our Contention is Tahrir Here

American politics is dead – the extreme right controls mainstream discourse and an entirely depoliticized public is allowing the 1% to steer the US toward fascism

Giroux 11 (Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, 1 June 2011, “Zombie Politics, Democracy, and the Threat of Authoritarianism - Part I”, )

In the world of popular culture, zombies

AND

from any semblance of a claim to democracy.

We are the midst of a worldwide paradigm shift away from neoliberalism – the Occupy movement is the only hope to stop the extreme right from controlling the aftermath                                                                                                                                

Schreiner 11 (Ben Schreiner, contributor to New Politics journal, freelance writer, October 23, 2011, “Occupy Wall Street in Context: Systemic Crisis and Rebellion”, )

The main flaw of the Occupy Wall Street

AND

will be beaten back by a reactionary counteroffensive.

[Schreiner continues]

In effect, we see, neoliberalism flipped

AND

does this, and can this, mean?

The alternative is extinction – the dogma of the 1% leads to ecocidal self-annihilation

Hedges 11 (Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has reported from more the 50 countries, received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights, senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University, October 1, 2011, “No Excuses Left”, )

Either you join the revolt taking place on

AND

are frog-marched toward self-annihilation.

As debaters and intellectuals, our only option is to occupy – higher education represents the last bastion of democratic dissent, but one threatened by ongoing corporatization. Only Occupying can politicize the debate-space and infuse the ballot with concrete political meaning

Giroux 11 (Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, 21 November 2011, “Occupy Colleges Now: Students as the New Public Intellectuals”, )

Finding our way to a more humane future

AND

both to their future and to democracy itself.

The question is not Occupy vs. Policy proposals: single-issue politics is broken – Only by activating debate’s political capacity through holistic critique can we break down casino capitalism

Giroux 11 (Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, 26 October 2011, “Occupy Wall Street's Battle Against American-Style Authoritarianism”, )

The Occupy Wall Street movement is raising new

AND

public spheres that enable an emergent radical democracy.

Thus, in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, Suo and I occupy debate in solidarity with democratic protesters in Tahrir Square.

The assumption inherent to democracy assistance is that America, as the great democratic educator, is capable and willing to assist Egypt’s political revolution. The opposite is true – only by linking our Occupation of debate and democracy assistance to the radical emancipatory potentials of Tahrir Square through solidarity can we create democracy at home and abroad.

Kennedy 11 (Michael D. Kennedy, Professor of Sociology and International Studies at Brown University, Oct 11 2011, “Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Historical Frames: 2011, 1989, 1968”, )

Activists and analysts increasingly join the Arab Spring

AND

, in anticipation of what 2012 can bring.

What “democracy assistance” really is can’t be answered without an investigation into democracy within the US

SAMIEI 10 (Mohammed, Senior Lecturer in Faculty of World Studies @ U. of Tehran, “Neo-Orientalism? The relationship between the West and Islam in our globalised world” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 7, pp. 1156-1157)

The limits, shortcomings and deficiencies of the

AND

be the sole possible solution that we have.

Rather than see democracy as a one-way street ending at model America, our politics of occupation recognizes that the fight in Egypt is our fight as well.

Alessandrini 11 (Anthony Alessandrini, affiliate faculty member of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, associate professor of English at Kingsborough Community College-City University of New York in Brooklyn, Nov 16 2011, “Back to Work: OWS and the Arab Spring”, )

I have been trying, and failing,

AND

, at least to fail better each time.

Occupy is not just a movement but a heuristic for re-engaging and re-imagining politics – policymaking should start with the 99%Marcuse 11 (Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University, November 3, 2011, “For Occupy, What Does 99% Mean (with slogans)”, http://pmarcuse.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/for-occupy-what-does-99-mean-with-slogans/)

In the debate about the meaning, potential

AND

than bumper-stickers or slogans on signs):

[Marcuse continues]

It is important to read ... the non-occupiers do next.

We are not the leaders of a new vanguard, Occupy’s leaderlessness is key to its radicality. The ballot affirms a new site of protest and multiplies already-existing spaces for radical imagination

Harcourt 11 (Bernard E Harcourt is chair of the political science department, professor of political science and the Julius Kreeger professor of law at the University of Chicago. He has also taught at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Université Paris X-Nanterre, Harvard University and New York University. 30 November 2011, “Occupy's new grammar of political disobedience”, )

That seems to be a central message of

AND

there is a virtue in keeping contestation open.

Worn-out ideological battle lines have only

AND

we must forge an entirely new mode of resistance

Harcourt 11 (Bernard E. Harcourt is chair of the political science department and professor of law at The University of Chicago, October 13, 2011, “Occupy Wall Street’s ‘Political Disobedience’”, )

Occupy Wall Street is best understood, I

AND

in, not a handful of policy demands.

//


////


////


////


//The hegemony of the 1% causes planetary extinction

Ketcham 11 (Christopher Ketcham, contributor to Orion Magazine, has written for Vanity Fair, Harper's, The Nation, Mother Jones, November/December 2011, “The Reign of the One Percenters”, AND a postscript, “Reign of the Ninety-nine Percenters?”, )

For the One Percenters are ... of an immoral economic system.

Don’t map Occupy onto an existing view of politics. The ballot affirms a fluid, polyvalent site of protest that’s necessary to activate our radical imagination

Shulman 11 (George Shulman teaches political theory and American Studies at the Gallatin School of New York University, December 20, 2011, “Interpreting Occupy”, )

The appearance of OWS has ... self-reflection and creative action.

//


////


//Our Contention is the Rhizome

American politics is dead – the extreme right controls mainstream discourse and an entirely depoliticized public is allowing the 1% to steer the US toward fascism

Giroux 11 (Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, 1 June 2011, “Zombie Politics, Democracy, and the Threat of Authoritarianism - Part I”, )

In the world of popular culture, zombies

AND

democracy into a full-fledged authoritarian state.

The hegemony of the 1% causes planetary extinction

Ketcham 11 (Christopher Ketcham, contributor to Orion Magazine, has written for Vanity Fair, Harper's, The Nation, Mother Jones, November/December 2011, “The Reign of the One Percenters”, AND a postscript, “Reign of the Ninety-nine Percenters?”, )

For the One Percenters are a global threat

AND

of Wall Street began, see Orion’s blog.]

[Ketcham continues]

When I wrote the first … of an immoral economic system.

Neoliberal capitalism, biopolitics, and eco-catastrophe are not static entities but assemblages of interconnected practices and mobilized affect. They are nevertheless disintegrating and bringing both benefits and destructive violence.

The world has been simplified to death by categories of expert knowledge and disconnections between geographic mobility and space. Only by understanding complexity and multiplicity can we create a politics of the possible

Larner 11 (Wendy Larner, Professor of Geographical Scientists at the University of Bristol, “C-change? Geographies of crisis” Dialogues in Human Geography 1(3) 319–335)

The reason for reviewing these debates about neoli

AND

geographers to engage with in the period ahead.

Modernity’s project of control ignores this complexity, leading to catastrophic environmental blowback – our practice must affirm immanence by creating rhizomatic connections that reconfigure the system from within

Clark 5 (Nigel Clark, Professor of Sociology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, Oct 12, 2005, “Ex-orbitant Globality”,  Theory Culture Society 2005 22: 165)

While aspects of the Gaia hypothesis remain contentious

AND

but have all-inclusive or universal aspirations.

Occupy is this rhizomatic politics – a continuously growing, horizontally connected set of political action. Our role as debaters should be to Occupy-theory: to critically engage with Occupy and create new modes of communication, possibilities of becoming, and spaces of resistance

Weissman 11 (Joseph Weissman, contributor to Fractal Ontology, December 1, 2011, “Occupy Theory!”, http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/occupy-theory/)

The 99% movement sweeping the … that we need to learn.”

Modernity manufactures consent by controlling speech. The 1AC hijacks this speech – it creates a new vacuole of noncommunication: space for minor politics to flourish. This is key to contestation and argument.

Thoburn 6 (Nicholas Thoburn is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester. 2006, “Vacuoles of Noncommunication: Minor Politics, Communist Style and the Multitude” in Deleuze and the Contemporary World, pub. Edinburgh University Press)

In an interview first published in 1990,

AND

. (Guattari 1995: 37–8)

We go to Harvard and UT is not Wall Street, but Occupy’s power resides in its ability to generate new modes of thinking politics through the virtual occupation of space.

This is premediation: the generation of new blocks of affect that remove jams in politics and mobilize thought towards new futures.

It is not a specific demand – the ballot establishes a new space of potential demands, and affects. This is not politics toward an end, but politics constantly in the making

Grusin 11 (Richard Grusin is Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “Premediation and the Virtual Occupation of Wall Street”, Theory & Event, Volume 14, Number 4, 2011 Supplement)

Nearly two weeks into the occupation of Wall

AND

its own affectivities, and its own scale.

Thus, in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, Suo and I occupy debate in resonance with democratic protests in Tahrir Square.

Voting aff lets our politics resonate – by creating new rhizomatic linkages between the nodes of Egypt and Wall Street and here, we reconfigure the materiality of space. Traditional debate fetishizes the transcendental gaze of the State – a panoptic view of human relations, revolutions manipulated like pieces on a chessboard. Our politics adopts the gaze of the rhizome, forever immanent, forever open.

Gordillo 11 (Gastón Gordillo is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. November 14, 2011, “Occupy Wall Street as a Node of Resonance”, )

The North American insurrection began when a handful

AND

expansive dissonances begin disrupting the global capitalist machine.

What “democracy assistance” really is can’t be answered without an investigation into democracy within the US

SAMIEI 10 (Mohammed, Senior Lecturer in Faculty of World Studies @ U. of Tehran, “Neo-Orientalism? The relationship between the West and Islam in our globalised world” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 7, pp. 1156-1157)

The limits, shortcomings and deficiencies of the

AND

be the sole possible solution that we have.

Only freeing up the frozen, institutionalized politics we call democracy and allowing democratic desire to truly circulate can remedy the failings of American democracy, its assistance, and repression. The 1AC is not desiring democracy, but democratizing desire and affirming this possibility, present in Tahrir Square

Olivier 11 (Bert Olivier is Professor of Philosophy at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. July 10, 2011, “Desire, democracy and Deleuze/Guattari”, )

Deleuze/Guattari encourage us to stop thinking

AND

against the forces of political and economic repression.

Debate is an assemblage of enunciation – a system of arbitrary rules, voices, and thinking that should not be rendered static. Our 1AC is an affirmation of creative community-making, which otherwise becomes a self-referential, closed sphere, dooming debate’s political potential

Lorraine 11 (Tamsin Lorraine is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Swarthmore College. 2011, “Deleuze and Guattari’s Immanent Ethics”, Introduction)

Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (hereafter

AND

only occur through the thinking of embodied individuals.

//


////


//

1AC

I always get the shakes before a drop. I've had the injections, of course, and hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can't really be afraid. The ship's psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn't fear, it isn't anything important -- it's just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate. I couldn't say about that; I've never been a race horse. But the fact is: I'm scared silly, every time. At D-minus-thirty, after we had mustered in the drop room of the Rodger Young, our platoon leader inspected us. He wasn't our regular platoon leader, because Lieutenant Rasczak had bought it on our last drop; he was really the platoon sergeant, Career Ship's Sergeant Jelal. Jelly was a Finno-Turk from Iskander around Proxima -- a swarthy little man who looked like a clerk, but I've seen him tackle two berserk privates so big he had to reach up to grab them, crack their heads together like coconuts, step back out of the way while they fell. Off duty he wasn't bad -- for a sergeant. You could even call him "Jelly" to his face. Not recruits, of course, but anybody who had made at least one combat drop. But right now he was on duty. We had all each inspected our combat equipment (look, it's your own neck -- see?), the acting platoon sergeant had gone over us carefully after he mustered us, and now Jelly went over us again, his face mean, his eyes missing nothing. He stopped by the man in front of me, pressed the button on his belt that gave readings on his physicals. "Fall out!" "But, Sarge, it's just a cold. The Surgeon said -- " Jelly interrupted. " `But Sarge!' " he snapped. "The Surgeon ain't making no drop -- and neither are you, with a degree and a half of fever. You think I got time to chat with you, just before a drop? Fall out!" Jenkins left us, looking sad and mad -- and I felt bad, too. Because of the Lieutenant buying it, last drop, and people moving up, I was assistant section leader, second section, this drop, and now I was going to have a hole in my section and no way to fill it. That's not good; it means a man can run into something sticky, call for help and have nobody to help him. Jelly didn't downcheck anybody else. Presently he stepped out in front of us, looked us over and shook his head sadly. "What a gang of apes!" he growled. "Maybe if you'd all buy it this drop, they could start over and build the kind of outfit the Lieutenant expected you to be. But probably not -- with the sort of recruits we get these days." He suddenly straightened up, shouted, "I just want to remind you apes that each and every one of you has cost the gov'ment, counting weapons, armor, ammo, instrumentation, and training, everything, including the way you overeat -- has cost, on the hoof, better'n half a million. Add in the thirty cents you are actually worth and that runs to quite a sum." He glared at us. "So bring it back! We can spare you, but we can't spare that fancy suit you're wearing. I don't want any heroes in this outfit; the Lieutenant wouldn't like it. You got a job to do, you go down, you do it, you keep your ears open for recall, you show up for retrieval on the bounce and by the numbers. Get me?" He glared again. "You're supposed to know the plan. But some of you ain't got any minds to hypnotize so I'll sketch it out. You'll be dropped in two skirmish lines, calculated two-thousand-yard intervals. Get your bearing on me as soon as you hit, get your bearing and distance on your squad mates, both sides, while you take cover. You've wasted ten seconds already, so you smash-and-destroy whatever's at hand until the flankers hit dirt." (He was talking about me -- as assistant section leader I was going to be left flanker, with nobody at my elbow. I began to tremble.) "Once they hit -- straighten out those lines! -- equalize those intervals! Drop what you're doing and do it! Twelve seconds. Then advance by leapfrog, odd and even, assistant section leaders minding the count and guiding the envelopment." He looked at me. "If you've done this properly -- which I doubt -- the flanks will make contact as recall sounds . . . at which time, home you go. Any questions?" There weren't any; there never were. He went on, "One more word -- This is just a raid, not a battle. It's a demonstration of firepower and frightfulness. Our mission is to let the enemy know that we could have destroyed their city -- but didn't -- but that they aren't safe even though we refrain from total bombing. You'll take no prisoners. You'll kill only when you can't help it. But the entire area we hit is to be smashed. I don't want to see any of you loafers back aboard here with unexpended bombs. Get me?" He glanced at the time. "Rasczak's Roughnecks have got a reputation to uphold. The Lieutenant told me before he bought it to tell you that he will always have his eye on you every minute . . . and that he expects your names to shine!" Jelly glanced over at Sergeant Migliaccio, first section leader. "Five minutes for the Padre," he stated. Some of the boys dropped out of ranks, went over and knelt in front of Migliaccio, and not necessarily those of his creed, either -- Moslems, Christians, Gnostics, Jews, whoever wanted a word with him before a drop, he was there. I've heard tell that there used to be military outfits whose chaplains did not fight alongside the others, but I've never been able to see how that could work. I mean, how can a chaplain bless anything he's not willing to do himself? In any case, in the Mobile Infantry, everybody drops and everybody fights chaplain and cook and the Old Man's writer. Once we went down the tube there wouldn't be a Roughneck left aboard -- except Jenkins, of course, and that not his fault. I didn't go over. I was always afraid somebody would see me shake if I did, and, anyhow, the Padre could bless me just as handily from where he was. But he came over to me as the last stragglers stood up and pressed his helmet against mine to speak privately. "Johnnie," he said quietly, "this is your first drop as a non-com." "Yeah." I wasn't really a non-com, any more than Jelly was really an officer. "Just this, Johnnie. Don't buy a farm. You know your job; do it. Just do it. Don't try to win a medal." "Uh, thanks, Padre. I shan't." He added something gently in a language I don't know, patted me on the shoulder, and hurried back to his section. Jelly called out, "Tenn . . . shut!" and we all snapped to. "Platoon!" "Section!" Migliaccio and Johnson echoed. "By sections-port and starboard-prepare for drop!" "Section! Man your capsules! Move!" "Squad!" -- I had to wait while squads four and five manned their capsules and moved on down the firing tube before my capsule showed up on the port track and I could climb into it. I wondered if those old-timers got the shakes as they climbed into the Trojan Horse? Or was it just me? Jelly checked each man as he was sealed in and he sealed me in himself. As he did so, he leaned toward me and said, "Don't goof off, Johnnie. This is just like a drill." The top closed on me and I was alone. "Just like a drill," he says! I began to shake uncontrollably. Then, in my earphones, I heard Jelly from the center-line tube: "Bridge! Rasczak's Roughnecks . . . ready for drop!" "Seventeen seconds, Lieutenant!" I heard the ship captain's cheerful contralto replying -and resented her calling Jelly "Lieutenant." To be sure, our lieutenant was dead and maybe Jelly would get his commission . . . but we were still "Rasczak's Roughnecks." She added, "Good luck, boys!" "Thanks, Captain." "Brace yourselves! Five seconds." I was strapped all over-belly, forehead, shins. But I shook worse than ever. It's better after you unload. Until you do, you sit there in total darkness, wrapped like a mummy against the accelerations, barely able to breathe -- and knowing that there is just nitrogen around you in the capsule even if you could get your helmet open, which you can't -- and knowing that the capsule is surrounded by the firing tube anyhow and if the ship gets hit before they fire you, you haven't got a prayer, you'll just die there, unable to move, helpless. It's that endless wait in the dark that causes the shakes -- thinking that they've forgotten you . . . the ship has been hulled and stayed in orbit, dead, and soon you'll buy it, too, unable to move, choking. Or it's a crash orbit and you'll buy it that way, if you don't roast on the way down. Then the ship's braking program hit us and I stopped shaking. Eight gees, I would say, or maybe ten. When a female pilot handles a ship there is nothing comfortable about it; you're going to have bruises every place you're strapped. Yes, yes, I know they make better pilots than men do; their reactions are faster and they can tolerate more gee. They can get in faster, get out faster, and thereby improve everybody's chances, yours as well as theirs. But that still doesn't make it fun to be slammed against your spine at ten times your proper weight. But I must admit that Captain Deladrier knows her trade. There was no fiddling around once the Rodger Young stopped braking. At once I heard her snap, "Center-line tube . . . fire!" and there were two recoil bumps as Jelly and his acting platoon sergeant unloaded -- and immediately: "Port and starboard tubes -- automatic fire!" and the rest of us started to unload. Bump! and your capsule jerks ahead one place -- bump! and it jerks again, precisely like cartridges feeding into the chamber of an old-style automatic weapon. Well, that's just what we were . . . only the barrels of the gun were twin launching tubes built into a spaceship troop carrier and each cartridge was a capsule big enough (just barely) to hold an infantryman with all field equipment. Bump! -- I was used to number three spot, out early; now I was Tail-End Charlie, last out after three squads. It makes a tedious wait, even with a capsule being fired every second; I tried to count the bumps -- bump! (twelve) bump! (thirteen) bump! (fourteen -with an odd sound to it, the empty one Jenkins should have been in) bump! -And clang! -- it's my turn as my capsule slams into the firing chamber -- then WHAMBO! the explosion hits with a force that makes the Captain's braking maneuver feel like a love tap. Then suddenly nothing. Nothing at all. No sound, no pressure, no weight. Floating in darkness . . . free fall, maybe thirty miles up, above the effective atmosphere, falling weightlessly toward the surface of a planet you've never seen. But I'm not shaking now; it's the wait beforehand that wears. Once you unload, you can't get hurt -- because if anything goes wrong it will happen so fast that you'll buy it without noticing that you're dead, hardly. Almost at once I felt the capsule twist and sway, then steady down so that my weight was on my back . . . weight that built up quickly until I was at my full weight (0.87 gee, we had been told) for that planet as the capsule reached terminal velocity for the thin upper atmosphere. A pilot who is a real artist (and the Captain was) will approach and brake so that your launching speed as you shoot out of the tube places you just dead in space relative to the rotational speed of the planet at that latitude. The loaded capsules are heavy; they punch through the high, thin winds of the upper atmosphere without being blown too far out of position -- but just the same a platoon is bound to disperse on the way down, lose some of the perfect formation in\ which it unloads. A sloppy pilot can make this still worse, scatter a strike group over so much terrain that it can't make rendezvous for retrieval, much less carry out its mission. An infantryman can fight only if somebody else delivers him to his zone; in a way I suppose pilots are just as essential as we are. I could tell from the gentle way my capsule entered the atmosphere that the Captain had laid us down with as near zero lateral vector as you could ask for. I felt happy -- not only a tight formation when we hit and no time wasted, but also a pilot who puts you down properly is a pilot who is smart and precise on retrieval. The outer shell burned away and sloughed off -- unevenly, for I tumbled. Then the rest of it went and I straightened out. The turbulence brakes of the second shell bit in and the ride got rough . . . and still rougher as they burned off one at a time and the second shell began to go to pieces. One of the things that helps a capsule trooper to live long enough to draw a pension is that the skins peeling off his capsule not only slow him down, they also fill the sky over the target area with so much junk that radar picks up reflections from dozens of targets for each man in the drop, any one of which could be a man, or a bomb, or anything. It's enough to give a ballistic computer nervous breakdowns -- and does. To add to the fun your ship lays a series of dummy eggs in the seconds immediately following your drop, dummies that will fall faster because they don't slough. They get under you, explode, throw out "window," even operate as transponders, rocket sideways, and do other things to add to the confusion of your reception committee on the ground. In the meantime your ship is locked firmly on the directional beacon of your platoon leader, ignoring the radar "noise" it has created and following you in, computing your impact for future use. When the second shell was gone, the third shell automatically opened my first ribbon chute. It didn't last long but it wasn't expected to; one good, hard jerk at several gee and it went its way and I went mine. The second chute lasted a little bit longer and the third chute lasted quite a while; it began to be rather too warm inside the capsule and I started thinking about landing. The third shell peeled off when its last chute was gone and now I had nothing around me but my suit armor and a plastic egg. I was still strapped inside it, unable to move; it was time to decide how and where I was going to ground. Without moving my arms (I couldn't) I thumbed the switch for a proximity reading and read it when it flashed on in the instrument reflector inside my helmet in front of my forehead. A mile and eight-tenths -- A little closer than I liked, especially without company. The inner egg had reached steady speed, no more help to be gained by staying inside it, and its skin temperature indicated that it would not open automatically for a while yet -- so I flipped a switch with my other thumb and got rid of it. The first charge cut all the straps; the second charge exploded the plastic egg away from me in eight separate pieces -- and I was outdoors, sitting on air, and could see! Better still, the eight discarded pieces were metal-coated (except for the small bit I had taken proximity reading through) and would give back the same reflection as an armored man. Any radar viewer, alive or cybernetic, would now have a sad time sorting me out from the junk nearest me, not to mention the thousands of other bits and pieces for miles on each side, above, and below me. Part of a mobile infantryman's training is to let him see, from the ground and both by eye and by radar, just how confusing a drop is to the forces on the ground -- because you feel awful naked up there. It is easy to panic and either open a chute too soon and become a sitting duck (do ducks really sit? -- if so, why?) or fail to open it and break your ankles, likewise backbone and skull. So I stretched, getting the kinks out, and looked around . . . then doubled up again and straightened out in a swan dive face down and took a good look. It was night down there, as planned, but infrared snoopers let you size up terrain quite well after you are used to them. The river that cut diagonally through the city was almost below me and coming up fast, shining out clearly with a higher temperature than the land. I didn't care which side of it I landed on but I didn't want to land in it; it would slow me down. I noticed a dash off to the right at about my altitude; some unfriendly native down below had burned what was probably a piece of my egg. So I fired my first chute at once, intending if possible to jerk myself right off his screen as he followed the targets down in closing range. I braced for the shock, rode it, then floated down for about twenty seconds before unloading the chute -- not wishing to call attention to myself in still another way by not falling at the speed of the other stuff around me. It must have worked; I wasn't burned. About six hundred feet up I shot the second chute . . . saw very quickly that I was being carried over into the river, found that I was going to pass about a hundred feet up over a flat-roofed warehouse or some such by the river . . . blew the chute free and came in for a good enough if rather bouncy landing on the roof by means of the suit's jump jets. I was scanning for Sergeant Jelal's beacon as I hit. And found that I was on the wrong side of the river; Jelly's star showed up on the compass ring inside my helmet far south of where it should have been -- I was too far north. I trotted toward the river side of the roof as I took a range and bearing on the squad leader next to me, found that he was over a mile out of position, called, "Ace! dress your line," tossed a bomb behind me as I stepped off the building and across the river. Ace answered as I could have expected -- Ace should have had my spot but he didn't want to give up his squad; nevertheless he didn't fancy taking orders from me. The warehouse went up behind me and the blast hit me while I was still over the river, instead of being shielded by the buildings on the far side as I should have been. It darn near tumbled my gyros and I came close to tumbling myself. I had set that bomb for fifteen seconds . . . or had I? I suddenly realized that I had let myself get excited, the worst thing you can do once you're on the ground. "Just like a drill," that was the way, just as Jelly had warned me. Take your time and do it right, even if it takes another half second. As I hit I took another reading on Ace and told him again to realign his squad. He didn't answer but he was already doing it. I let it ride. As long as Ace did his job, I could afford to swallow his surliness -- for now. But back aboard ship (if Jelly kept me on as assistant section leader) we would eventually have to pick a quiet spot and find out who was boss. He was a career corporal and I was just a term lance acting as corporal, but he was under me and you can't afford to take any lip under those circumstances. Not permanently. But I didn't have time then to think about it; while I was jumping the river I had spotted a juicy target and I wanted to get it before somebody else noticed it -- a lovely big group of what looked like public buildings on a hill. Temples, maybe . . . or a palace. They were miles outside the area we were sweeping, but one rule of a smash & run is to expend at least half your ammo outside your sweep area; that way the enemy is kept confused as to where you actually are -- that and keep moving, do everything fast. You're always heavily outnumbered; surprise and speed are what saves you. I was already loading my rocket launcher while I was checking on Ace and telling him for the second time to straighten up. Jelly's voice reached me right on top of that on the all-hands circuit: "Platoon! By leapfrog! Forward!" My boss, Sergeant Johnson, echoed, "By leapfrog! Odd numbers! Advance!" That left me with nothing to worry about for twenty seconds, so I jumped up on the building nearest me, raised the launcher to my shoulder, found the target and pulled the first trigger to let the rocket have a look at its target -- pulled the second trigger and kissed it on its way, jumped back to the ground. "Second section, even numbers!" I called out . . . waited for the count in my mind and ordered, "Advance!" And did so myself, hopping over the next row of buildings, and, while I was in the air, fanning the first row by the river front with a hand flamer. They seemed to be wood construction and it looked like time to start a good fire -- with luck, some of those warehouses would house oil products, or even explosives. As I hit, the Y-rack on my shoulders launched two small H. E. bombs a couple of hundred yards each way to my right and left flanks but I never saw what they did as just then my first rocket hit -- that unmistakable (if you've ever seen one) brilliance of an atomic explosion. It was just a peewee, of course, less than two kilotons nominal yield, with tamper and implosion squeeze to produce results from a less-than-critical mass -- but then who wants to be bunk mates with a cosmic catastrophe? It was enough to clean off that hilltop and make everybody in the city take shelter against fallout. Better still, any of the local yokels who happened to be outdoors and looking that way wouldn't be seeing anything else for a couple of hours -- meaning me. The dash hadn't dazzled me, nor would it dazzle any of us; our face bowls are heavily leaded, we wear snoopers over our eyes -- and we're trained to duck and take it on the armor if we do happen to be looking the wrong way. So I merely blinked hard -- opened my eyes and stared straight at a local citizen just coming out of an opening in the building ahead of me. He looked at me, I looked at him, and he started to raise something -- a weapon, I suppose -- as Jelly called out, "Odd numbers! Advance!" I didn't have time to fool with him; I was a good five hundred yards short of where I should have been by then. I still had the hand flamer in my left hand; I toasted him and jumped over the building he had been coming out of, as I started to count. A hand flamer is primarily for incendiary work but it is a good defensive anti-personnel weapon in tight quarters; you don't have to aim it much. Between excitement and anxiety to catch up I jumped too high and too wide. It's always a temptation to get the most out of your jump gear -- but don't do it! It leaves you hanging in the air for seconds, a big fat target. The way to advance is to skim over each building as you come to it, barely clearing it, and taking full advantage of cover while you're down -- and never stay in one place more than a second or two, never give them time to target in on you. Be somewhere else, anywhere. Keep moving. This one I goofed -- too much for one row of buildings, too little for the row beyond it; I found myself coming down on a roof. But not a nice flat one where I might have tarried three seconds to launch another peewee A-rocket; this roof was a jungle of pipes and stanchions and assorted ironmongery -- a factory maybe, or some sort of chemical works. No place to land. Worse still, half a dozen natives were up there. These geezers are humanoid, eight or nine feet tall, much skinnier than we are and with a higher body temperature; they don't wear any clothes and they stand out in a set of snoopers like a neon sign. They look still funnier in daylight with your bare eyes but I would rather fight them than the arachnids -- those Bugs make me queezy. If these laddies were up there thirty seconds earlier when my rocket hit, then they couldn't see me, or anything. But I couldn't be certain and didn't want to tangle with them in any case; it wasn't that kind of a raid. So I jumped again while I was still in the air, scattering a handful of ten-second fire pills to keep them busy, grounded, jumped again at once, and called out, "Second section! Even numbers! . . . Advance!" and kept right on going to close the gap, while trying to spot, every time I jumped, something worth expending a rocket on. I had three more of the little A-rockets and I certainly didn't intend to take any back with me. But I had had pounded into me that you must get your money's worth with atomic weapons -- it was only the second time that I had been allowed to carry them. Right now I was trying to spot their waterworks; a direct hit on it could make the whole city uninhabitable, force them to evacuate it without directly killing anyone -- just the sort of nuisance we had been sent down to commit. It should -- according to the map we had studied under hypnosis -- be about three miles upstream from where I was. But I couldn't see it; my jumps didn't take me high enough, maybe. I was tempted to go higher but I remembered what Migliaccio had said about not trying for a medal, and stuck to doctrine. I set the Y-rack launcher on automatic and let it lob a couple of little bombs every time I hit. I set fire to things more or less at random in between, and tried to find the waterworks, or some other worth-while target. Well, there was something up there at the proper range -- waterworks or whatever, it was big. So I hopped on top of the tallest building near me, took a bead on it, and let fly. As I bounced down I heard Jelly: "Johnnie! Red! Start bending in the flanks." I acknowledged and heard Red acknowledge and switched my beacon to blinker so that Red could pick me out for certain, took a range and bearing on his blinker while I called out, "Second Section! Curve in and envelop! Squad leaders acknowledge!" Fourth and Fifth squads answered, "Wilco"; Ace said, "We're already doin' it -- pick up your feet." Red's beacon showed the right flank to be almost ahead of me and a good fifteen miles away. Golly! Ace was right; I would have to pick up my feet or I would never close the gap in time -- and me with a couple of hundredweight of ammo and sundry nastiness still on me that I just had to find time to use up. We had landed in a V formation, with Jelly at the bottom of the V and Red and myself at the ends of the two arms; now we had to close it into a circle around the retrieval rendezvous . . . which meant that Red and I each had to cover more ground than the others and still do our full share of damage. At least the leapfrog advance was over with once we started to encircle; I could quit counting and concentrate on speed. It was getting to be less healthy to be anywhere, even moving fast. We had started with the enormous advantage of surprise, reached the ground without being hit (at least I hoped nobody had been hit coming in), and had been rampaging in among them in a fashion that let us fire at will without fear of hitting each other while they stood a big chance of hitting their own people in shooting at us -- if they could find us to shoot at, at all. (I'm no games-theory expert but I doubt if any computer could have analyzed what we were doing in time to predict where we would be next.) Nevertheless the home defenses were beginning to fight back, co-ordinated or not. I took a couple of near misses with explosives, close enough to rattle my teeth even inside armor and once I was brushed by some sort of beam that made my hair stand on end and half paralyzed me for a moment -- as if I had hit my funny bone, but all over. If the suit hadn't already been told to jump, I guess I wouldn't have got out of there. Things like that make you pause to wonder why you ever took up soldiering -- only I was too busy to pause for anything. Twice, jumping blind over buildings, I landed right in the middle of a group of them -- jumped at once while fanning wildly around me with the hand flamer. Spurred on this way, I closed about half of my share of the gap, maybe four miles, in minimum time but without doing much more than casual damage. My Y-rack had gone empty two jumps back; finding myself alone in sort of a courtyard I stopped to put my reserve H.E. bombs into it while I took a bearing on Ace -- found that I was far enough out in front of the flank squad to think about expending my last two A-rockets. I jumped to the top of the tallest building in the neighborhood. It was getting light enough to see; I flipped the snoopers up onto my forehead and made a fast scan with bare eyes, looking for anything behind us worth shooting at, anything at all; I had no time to be choosy. There was something on the horizon in the direction of their spaceport -- administration & control, maybe, or possibly even a starship. Almost in line and about half as far away was an enormous structure which I couldn't identify even that loosely. The range to the spaceport was extreme but I let the rocket see it, said, "Go find it, baby!" and twisted its tail -- slapped the last one in, sent it toward the nearer target, and jumped. That building took a direct hit just as I left it. Either a skinny had judged (correctly) that it was worth one of their buildings to try for one of us, or one of my own mates was getting mighty careless with fireworks. Either way, I didn't want to jump from that spot, even a skimmer; I decided to go through the next couple of buildings instead of over. So I grabbed the heavy flamer off my back as I hit and dipped the snoopers down over my eyes, tackled a wall in front of me with a knife beam at full power. A section of wall fell away and I charged in. And backed out even faster. I didn't know what it was I had cracked open. A congregation in church -- a skinny flophouse -- maybe even their defense headquarters. All I knew was that it was a very big room filled with more skinnies than I wanted to see in my whole life. Probably not a church, for somebody took a shot at me as I popped back out just a slug that bounced off my armor, made my ears ring, and staggered me without hurting me. But it reminded me that I wasn't supposed to leave without giving them a souvenir of my visit. I grabbed the first thing on my belt and lobbed it in -- and heard it start to squawk. As they keep telling you in Basic, doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later. By sheer chance I had done the right thing. This was a special bomb, one each issued to us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): "I'm a thirty-second bomb! I'm a thirty-second bomb! Twenty-nine! . . . twenty-eight! . . . twenty-seven! -- " It was supposed to frazzle their nerves. Maybe it did; it certainly frazzled mine. Kinder to shoot a man. I didn't wait for the countdown; I jumped, while I wondered whether they would find enough doors and windows to swarm out in time. I got a bearing on Red's blinker at the top of the jump and one on Ace as I grounded. I was falling behind again -- time to hurry. But three minutes later we had closed the gap; I had Red on my left flank a half mile away. He reported it to Jelly. We heard Jelly's relaxed growl to the entire platoon: "Circle is closed, but the beacon is not down yet. Move forward slowly and mill around, make a little more trouble -- but mind the lad on each side of you; don't make trouble for him. Good job, so far -- don't spoil it. Platoon! By sections . . . Muster!" It looked like a good job to me, too; much of the city was burning and, although it was almost full light now, it was hard to tell whether bare eyes were better than snoopers, the smoke was so thick. Johnson, our section leader, sounded off: "Second section, call off!" I echoed, "Squads four, five, and six -- call off and report!" The assortment of safe circuits we had available in the new model comm units certainly speeded things up; Jelly could talk to anybody or to his section leaders; a section leader could call his whole section, or his non-coms; and the platoon could muster twice as fast, when seconds matter. I listened to the fourth squad call off while I inventoried my remaining firepower and lobbed one bomb toward a skinny who poked his head around a corner. He left and so did I -- "Mill around," the boss man had said. The fourth squad bumbled the call off until the squad leader remembered to fill in with Jenkins' number; the fifth squad clicked off like an abacus and I began to feel good . . . when the call off stopped after number four in Ace's squad. I called out, "Ace, where's Dizzy?" "Shut up," he said. "Number six! Call off!" "Six!" Smith answered. "Seven !" "Sixth squad, Flores missing," Ace completed it. "Squad leader out for pickup." "One man absent," I reported to Johnson. "Flores, squad six." "Missing or dead?" "I don't know. Squad leader and assistant section leader dropping out for pickup." "Johnnie, you let Ace take it." But I didn't hear him, so I didn't answer. I heard him report to Jelly and I heard Jelly cuss. Now look, I wasn't bucking for a medal -- it's the assistant section leader's business to make pickup; he's the chaser, the last man in, expendable. The squad leaders have other work to do. As you've no doubt gathered by now the assistant section leader isn't necessary as long as the section leader is alive. Right that moment I was feeling unusually expendable, almost expended, because I was hearing the sweetest sound in the universe, the beacon the retrieval boat would land on, sounding our recall. The beacon is a robot rocket, fired ahead of the retrieval boat, just a spike that buries itself in the ground and starts broadcasting that welcome, welcome music. The retrieval boat homes in on it automatically three minutes later and you had better be on hand, because the bus can't wait and there won't be another one along. But you don't walk away on another cap trooper, not while there's a chance he's still alive -- not in Rasczak's Roughnecks. Not in any outfit of the Mobile Infantry. You try to make pickup. I heard Jelly order: "Heads up, lads! Close to retrieval circle and interdict! On the bounce!" And I heard the beacon's sweet voice: " -- to the everlasting glory of the infantry, shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young!" and I wanted to head for it so bad I could taste it. Instead I was headed the other way, closing on Ace's beacon and expending what I had left of bombs and fire pills and anything else that would weigh me down. "Ace! You got his beacon?" "Yes. Go back, Useless!" "I've got you by eye now. Where is he?" "Right ahead of me, maybe quarter mile. Scram! He's my man ." I didn't answer; I simply cut left oblique to reach Ace about where he said Dizzy was. And found Ace standing over him, a couple of skinnies flamed down and more running away. I lit beside him. "Let's get him out of his armor -- the boat'll be down any second!" "He's too bad hurt!" I looked and saw that it was true -- there was actually a hole in his armor and blood coming out. And I was stumped. To make a wounded pickup you get him out of his armor . . . then you simply pick him up in your arms -- no trouble in a powered suit -and bounce away from there. A bare man weighs less than the ammo and stuff you've expended. "What'll we do?" "We carry him," Ace said grimly. "Grab ahold the left side of his belt." He grabbed the right side, we manhandled Flores to his feet. "Lock on! Now . . . by the numbers, stand by to jump -- one -- two!" We jumped. Not far, not well. One man alone couldn't have gotten him off the ground; an armored suit is too heavy. But split it between two men and it can be done. We jumped -- and we jumped -- and again, and again, with Ace calling it and both of us steadying and catching Dizzy on each grounding. His gyros seemed to be out. We heard the beacon cut off as the retrieval boat landed on it -- I saw it land . . . and it was too far away. We heard the acting platoon sergeant call out: "In succession, prepare to embark!" And Jelly called out, "Belay that order!" We broke at last into the open and saw the boat standing on its tail, heard the ululation of its take-off warning -- saw the platoon still on the ground around it, in interdiction circle, crouching behind the shield they had formed. Heard Jelly shout, "In succession, man the boat -- move!" And we were still too far away! I could see them peel off from the first squad, swarm into the boat as the interdiction circle tightened. And a single figure broke out of the circle, came toward us at a speed possible only to a command suit. Jelly caught us while we were in the air, grabbed Flores by his Y-rack and helped us lift. Three jumps got us to the boat. Everybody else was inside but the door was still open. We got him in and closed it while the boat pilot screamed that we had made her miss rendezvous and now we had all bought it! Jelly paid no attention to her; we laid Flores down and lay down beside him. As the blast hit us Jelly was saying to himself, "All present, Lieutenant. Three men hurt -- but all present!" I'll say this for Captain Deladrier: they don't make any better pilots. A rendezvous, boat to ship in orbit, is precisely calculated. I don't know how, but it is, and you don't change it. You can't. Only she did. She saw in her scope that the boat had failed to blast on time; she braked back, picked up speed again -- and matched and took us in, just by eye and touch, no time to compute it. If the Almighty ever needs an assistant to keep the stars in their courses, I know where he can look. Flores died on the way up.

This excerpt from Robert Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers describes an attack on the Skinnies, an alien species allied with the Terran Federation’s greatest enemies, the Arachnids.  Just as American soldiers rely on dazzling technological superiority over impoverished, low-tech enemies, troopers wearing robotic power armor execute a raid—not quite a war, designed to show what they are capable of.  Like the US intervention in Libya, this is only a small part of a much broader conflict, but the consequences are real.  The heroes kill untold masses with flamethrowers, grenades, and nuclear warheads.  There is no remorse for the alien enemy, but Johnny won’t leave his wounded comrades behind.  Enemy lives may be cheap, but the Mobile Infantry looks out for its own.

The soldiers of our Mobile Infantry are all volunteers, but in the society of Starship Troopers, citizenship is a privilege, not a right.  No one can participate in politics without first serving in combat. Heinlein’s novel has been criticized as thinly-veiled fascist propaganda but

Another reading is key—interventions might happen in the world of Starship Troopers, but at least decisions are made by those who bear the costs-- .  In modern America, civilians get behind interventions like the war in Libya because they are isolated from the true sacrifices of war.  Hyperreal mass media distortion makes war seem clean.  The story of Starship Troopers provides a corrective to this armchair militarism

SIMMERS ‘11 (Erich, PhD in English, U of Florida expected 2011, “The Importance of Starship Troopers Today: Reflecting on Bloom, Heinlein, and Libya,” Weaponized Culture, April 27, http://weaponizedculture.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/the-importance-of-starship-troopers/)

Wading through Twitter this morning, ... ground will pay the costs.

These interventions are not harmless.  Heinlein’s space war and casual use of nuclear weapons will be brought on by the confluence of hyperreal media saturation and cost-free militarism.  The endless manufacture of new threats ends in infinite violence.

KROKER AND KROKER ’6 [Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture at the University of Victoria. Marilouise Kroker is Senior Research Scholar at the University of Victoria. Interview with William Wood published in “Culture, power, and history: studies in critical sociology”, Stephen J. Pfohl, ed., Google Books]

Krokers: The theory of viral ... in the darkness of space.

Hence the plan: On behalf of Libya, The United States Federal Government should require that federal service be a prerequisite to citizenship in the United States.

The resolution asks us the question of democracy assistance which can’t be answered without an investigation into democracy within the US. For’s inclusion in the resolution begs the question – who is democracy assistance on behalf of?

SAMIEI ‘10 (Mohammed, Senior Lecturer in Faculty of World Studies @ U. of Tehran, “Neo-Orientalism? The relationship between the West and Islam in our globalised world” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 7, pp. 1156-1157)

The limits, shortcomings and deficiencies ... possible solution that we have.

Our reading of Starship Troopers can challenge the ontological and epistemological certainty of world politics—this deployment of the story can be an ironic challenge to the anti-politics of militarism          

WHITEHALL ‘3 – Associate Professor, Political Science, Acadia University (Geoffrey, “The problem of the ‘world and beyond,’ in “To seek out new worlds: science fiction and world politics” ed. Weldes, Senior Lecturer, Bristol University. Palgrave Macmillan 2003, 179)

Notwithstanding the dominance of this ... a plurality of alternative interpretations.

Destroying the hyperreal fictions of the media-militarist society requires us to tell stories that are impossibly false—science fiction is a gift the system can only receive by destroying itself

BOGARD ‘4 (Bill Bogard, Professor of Sociology at Whitman University, “Hyperfacticity and Fatal Strategies,” Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2)

A social science fiction is ... its own desire. Fatal strategy.

The aff’s act of imagination is a prerequisite to breaking down a hypermilitarized fascistic politics

Gray ‘94 (Chris Hables Gray is an Associate Professor of the Cultural Studies of Science and Technology and of Computer Science at the University of Great Falls, Nov., 1994, ‘"There Will Be War!": Future War Fantasies and Militaristic Science Fiction in the 1980s’, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3)

Envoi. As this article has ... how will we make one?

The point of our advocacy is to cultivate a more responsible model of democracy.  Science fiction is critical to functioning participatory democracy because it educates citizens about the role of technology in modern politics

BRAKE AND THORNTON ‘3 -- *Principal Lecturer and Professor of Science Communication at the University of Glamorgan, AND ** teacher of Science and Science Fiction degree at the University of Glamorgan (“Science fiction in the classroom.” 2003 Phys. Educ. 38 31, Google Scholar)

Our intention in relation to ... science in many public debates.

All politics is fictional – imagination is a central component of representation – our affirmative merely exposes this truth

FREEDMAN 2k -- Associate Professor of English at Louisiana State University (Carl, “Critical Theory and Science Fiction” Wesleyan University Press, University Press of London, 20-22)

It is a priori likely ... Star Wars on the other.

Cognitive estrangement is core to science fiction – we must be able to study a new world without endorsing it – that is crucial for all politics and predictions

Booth et al. ‘9 (Charles Booth, Reader in Strategy and International Business at the University of the West of England, Bristol, Professor Michael Rowlinson, Professor of Organization Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, 2009, “Scenarios and counterfactuals as modal narratives”, Futures 41 (2009) 87–95)

In this final section of ... innocence, once and for all.

Fictional imagination is the beginning of true politics – it’s a heuristic device that subverts hegemonic discourse and mobilizes activism

Brincat ‘9 (Shannon Brincat, Department Member, Center of Excellence for Global Governance Research at the University of Helsinki, “Reclaiming the Utopian imaginary in IR theory”, Review of International Studies (2009), 35: 581-609)

Utopianism permeates our political thought ... more critical, even transformative discipline.

This is the preferred site of resistance – only science fiction can engage in a holistic critique and forge a democratic alliance politics

Moylan 2k (Tom Moylan, Glucksman Professor of contemporary writing and Director of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies, University of Limerick, 2000, “Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia”, pg. 187-190) Text altered to expand “sf” to “science fiction” for clarity

Writing within the realm of... radical alternative in its place.

From science fiction emerges overt political mobilization – textual resistance is a necessary condition for opposition

Moylan 2k (Tom Moylan, Glucksman Professor of contemporary writing and Director of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies, University of Limerick, 2000, “Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia”, pg. 192-193)

Pointing to the self-reflexivity ... toward a better, utopian future.

Traditional conceptions of government fiat are fiction—they misrepresent the process of government decisionmaking, and are neither educational nor predictable

CLAUDE 1988 (Inis, Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, States and the Global System, pages 18-20)

This view of the state ... and that they sometimes claim.

We should engage in modal narrativity – combining two different temporal worlds in our minds allows productive political engagement

Booth et al. 9 (Charles Booth, Reader in Strategy and International Business at the University of the West of England, Bristol, Professor Michael Rowlinson, Professor of Organization Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, 2009, “Scenarios and counterfactuals as modal narratives”, Futures 41 (2009) 87–95)

It might be said that ... it might even be true.

It’s not the worlds themselves, but the combination of two worlds that makes science fiction most valuable

Freedman 2k -- Associate Professor of English at Louisiana State University (Carl, “Critical Theory and Science Fiction” Wesleyan University Press, University Press of London, 67-70) 

Two conclusions may, then, be ... constituted a significantly critical act.