Embargo Word PIC

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Embargo Word PIC


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1NC

Text: The United States Federal Government should lift its trade blockade on

the Republic of Cuba.

The word embargo camouflages the aggressive policy towards Cuba with a

benign legal action

AlfredoPuig, 1997(AlfredoEconomic Sanctions and Development, edited by HansKchler, professor of philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and president of theInternational Progress Organization, a non-governmental organization in consultative status withthe United Nations. Papers presented at the International Panel Discussion on "EconomicSanctions and their Impact on Development" organized by the NGO Committee on Developmentat the Vienna International Centre (United Nations) on 28 November 1996,http://i-p-o.org/sanctpap.htm#5)JNWhen the political and economic relationship between Cuba and the United States changed after1959, Washington chose a bland and neutral term to camouflage its policy of aggression against

Cuba. Thus, the blockade, because it cannot be considered a simple economic sanction, is madeto appear as a legal measure, becoming part of the legislative framework of the Trading with theEnemy Act, which implies both a state of hostility and a declaration of war. The sanctions thathave been applied are based on the fundamental legal tenets of the Cold War. For Cubans, theembargo is nothing more than a euphemism that hides the fact that the blockade's purpose is toplace the island under siege. The blockade aims to exhaust Cuba's resources, in order to force thecivilian population to surrender. The restraining forces of the Cold War the Soviet Union andthe socialist camp have been defeated. What remains in today's unipolar world is the blockadein its crudest form, attempting to encircle a tiny Caribbean island.

Confronting the manipulation of language is the most important taskeven if

the plan seems like a good idea, choosing the proper terminology is essential to

combat the ideologies that uphold the worst aspects of the status quo.

Gordon 98[Theresa, Vice President at NO-LEAD (North Lakes Environmental ActionDefence), LEAD Action News, vol 6 no 1, http://www.lead.org.au/lanv6n1/lan004.html]Over the years, I have found myself involved in fights against corporate stratagems whichmanipulate language and images to win public support and approval. It is a paradox that, throughthe manipulation of language, greater public support for corporate ideology can be used againstthe public good. In public interest debates, the playing field is not level. Grassroots groups andindividuals can never match the resources of major corporations in the battle to be heard. Sincethe important weapons are words and images, the outcomes are not always clear cut. Subtletiesand time are big factorswords and images can manipulate emotions, passions, instincts, dreams

and a myriad of other responses in an individual, community or population. Since my firstencounter with word manipulation in the watering down of an important document on lead riskreduction from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), I havefound this strategy has featured in almost every battle over lead I have been involved in. I havecome to see that the aim of this strategy is not just to win a particular battle but also to win apropaganda war that has, as its prize, an unthinking and accepting majority population. Thesepoints I make in an effort to examine the question of the manipulation by and conduct of ourauthorities and bureaucracies. It is via these government departments that the influence on the

peoples perception is at its most damaging. Industry propaganda also uses similar methods. The
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threat of ideology The subtlety of the manipulation of language belies the power of effect. Whenan initiative appears well meaning and progressive (such as the OECD initiative) supporters often

look to praise the intention, not nit pick about words used. But I have found that nit picking is

essential . On the surface, a battle may appear to be about, say, tightening a regulation, but the

battle is but part of a war for allegiance and trust. In effect it is seeking the support for the

corporate ideology. The influential thinker and social commentator Saul argues in his 1995 bookUnconscious Civilisation that promotion of corporate ideology (or any ideology for that matter)and the embracing of ideology leads to passivity. Ideologies infer that those responsible fordeveloping this ideology have the truth and should be followed without question, else you riskbeing seen as irrational or worse still unfashionable. Saul states: Those who have the "truth" areby definition a small minority. They are the elect. Their desire is not to convince the rest of us oftheir truth. It isnt a matter of democratic debate with all the compromise that involves. They have

the truth. The aim of the ideologue is therefore to manipulate, trick or force the majority intoacceptance. A corporate ideology is based on short-term gains for these elite. This system leavesno room for the long-term public good. Saul warns In a corporatist system, there is never anymoney for the public good because the society is reduced to the sum of the interests. It istherefore limited to measurable self-interest.


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2NC Overview

Prefer the CP

1) The Net Benefit turns the casethe term embargo is a euphemism for a

destructive and far-reaching economic blockade. The language of their plan

sanitizes and legitimizes the blockade, re-authorizing the root cause of Cubas

marginalizationthats Puig. Confronting the manipulation of language is a

prerequisite to combatting ideologies of exploitation. We must nit pick over

word choices to solve their advantagesextend Gordon.

2) The CP solves the whole Affwe lift all of the economic barriers that subject

Cuba to a blockade. We just use better terms to make sure that we dont subtly

re-authorize oppression. Any risk of the net benefit means you should voteNeg.


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ExtensionEmbargo = Euphemism

The term embargo is a euphemism deployed to legitimize Cubas systematic

marginalization.

Boron 9[Atilio, Professor of Political Science at the Latin American Social Sciences Instituteand at the University of Buenos Aires, 10/23,http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?lg=en&reference=9098]Conscious that by its nature, it violates the most basic norms of international law and humanrights, the empires publicistsand their local spokesmen have unleashed, as on so many other

occasions, a persistent semantic battle aimed at confusing and misleading worldwide public

opinion. To this end they resort to a euphemism : they refer to the blockade as an embargo

and present it as though it were merely a commercial matter. This is how they hide the farreaching U.S. blockade against Cuba: a blockade that is economic, commercial, financial andtechnological, but also international (penalizing as it does, companies in third countries who tradewith Cuba, and hindering Cubas diplomatic relations with the rest of the world); informational

(by preventing Cubans from gaining access to high-speed broadband internet); social (making there-unification of Cuban families separated by emigration difficult or impossible); and cultural, byimpeding the free movement of artists, writers, intellectuals and scientists between Cuba and theUnited States.[1]


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AT: PermDo Both

1) Still linksincluding the plan means they still describe the blockade as an

embargo. That means they still endorse the sorts of euphemistic language thatprovide a rationale for Cubas exploitation in the first place.

2) Prefer the CP alonetheres no net benefit to including their plan. Theres

only a risk that it conflates the terms embargo and blockade, making

current US economic policies toward Cuba seem valid.

Any residual link is enough---must reject doublethink in EVERY instance

Kehl and Livingston 99[D.G. and Howard, English at Arizona State University and Pace

University, July 1999, English Journal 88.6]Doublespeak is not a frivolous game about humorous euphemisms, such as "sanitation engineer"for one who collects garbage, or "sanitarians" (who "deroach" buildings) for pest exterminators,or "automotive technicians" for car mechanics, or "field service technicians" for repair people.Rather, doubles peak in all too many cases is an insidious practice whereby the powerful abuselanguage to deceive and manipulate for the purpose of controlling public behaviorthe public asconsumer, as voter, as studentby depriving us of our right to make informed choices. Beforeteachers of English at any level are permitted to "practice" in the classroom, we should subscribeto a linguistic equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, an Orwellian Oath perhaps, whereby wecommit to (1) use language clearly and responsibly our selves; (2) combat doublespeak whereverwe find it; and (3) seek effective pedagogical ways of making students sensitive to language andaware of linguistic vulnerability in all forms.


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AT: PermDo the CP

1) Seversthis permutation abandons the word embargothats in their plan.

Severance is a voting issueit makes the Aff a moving target, which makes it

impossible to generate any Neg strat.

2) Hold them to their plan wording

A) Predictabilitythey get to choose the words in their plan and they get a

strategic benefit from using a term like embargo to concisely encapsulate a

broad range of economic policies. That means they should also be accountable

for the strategic cost that their word choices create during Neg prep.

B) Only Non-Arbitrary standardeven if the plan doesnt contain everything

Congress would say when they passed a bill to do the Aff, they should have to

defend at a minimum that the words in the plan are included. The only non-random way to interpret how the plan would be described is by looking at the

words they use.


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Word PICs Good

1. Word PICS are key to educationThe Aff should have to defend every word

in the plan.Kehl and Livingston 99[D.G. & Howard, English at Arizona State University and PaceUniversity, July, English Journal 88.6]Second, studentsown linguistic vulnerability should be demonstrated in a meaningful andconvincing way. How would they react, for example, if while shopping they encountervegetarian leather for plain, cheap vinyl; or synthetic glass for plastic; or, in place of down

payment, they get customer capital cost reduction? Third, they should be made more sensitiveto language and how it works, not just denotation but connotation, concrete versus abstract terms,specific versus general, adjectives as evaluative projections of a speaker or writer, slantedlanguage, and much more. For example, they can be asked to consider how many times in a yearthey buy something simply on the persuasive appeal of words rather than on the genuine merits ofthe product, whether that product is sunglasses, clothes, vehicles, or food. Especially illuminating

in developing sensitivity to language are exercises that ask students to distinguish differences inconnotation among lists of so-called synonyms. For example, which of the following would theylike to be calledand why: boy/girl, lad/lassie, kid, young person, youngster, tyke, juvenile,future citizen, Generation X-er, member of the rising generation? Lively discussions can beconducted on the connotative effects of the language of advertising. For example, why are certainwords taboo in advertising, requiring the substitution of euphemisms: not fat but full figured,not cheap but inexpensive, not used car but preowned automobile, not smell but

aroma. (A recent example of doublespeak for stink is exceed the olfactory threshold.) Fourth, students should be taught not only to read critically but also to speak and write re

responsibility Wasn'tit Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch who noted that a writer should be prepared to

stand cross-examination on every word ? And as for reading critically, perhaps ThomasCarlyle said it best: If we think of it, all that a universityor final highest school can do for us isstill but what the first school began doingteach us to read. Isnt that at least a significant partof the English teachers job description?

2. Specificallyconfronting euphemisms is a prerequisite to policy deliberation.

Failure to scrutinize word choices constrains the possibility of effectively

advocating against international violence.

Mral 4[Brigitte, professor of Rhetoric at Department of Humanities, rebro University, May,http://www.krisberedskapsmyndigheten.se/4453.epibrw]Big events sometimes call for big words. In times of crisis, Swedish politicians are also expectedto become skillful rhetoricians, to describe events so that we can understand them and lead us intothe future. But Swedes are suspicious of passionate, emotional rhetoric, and sceptical of big

words. We are not used to politicians coming out at all odd times of the day to speak to thepeople. The Prime Minister rarely appears as the interpreter of the Swedish Parliament, or theSwedish people for that matter. We usually judge the American way of handling public languageas excessive, emotional and full of religious terms. And this is also why we tend to underestimatethe significance of what is said. We do not take it seriously; we consider it mere rhetoric, orempty contentand usually miss the real meaning and implications. Our unfamiliarity with

linguistic analyses means that we often underestimate the power of images and concepts,

especially when they are vague and ambiguous. A cornerstone of this study is that the speeches,


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no matter how twisted they sometimes seem to us, express exactly what is meant; they are not

mere rhetoric, they are a description of the reality that will determine how politics will be

conducted and should be understood. For if we see the speeches as mere wordy desktop

products, we are underestimating the power of constantly repeated assertions and vague butpowerful terms and phrases. This war on terrorism has seen an accumulation of ambiguous but

strong value words. There are plenty of Gods terms and Devils terms, according to RichardM. Weavers modern rhetorical theory.5 He refers to positively and negatively charged words,

usually arranged in pairs of opposites: freedomfear; civilisationbarbarism; warpeace. Thisongoing war has generated an abundance of big words and emotionally charged images. Eventshave been interpreted in value words and metaphors that sometimes remind us of what GeorgeOrwell in his gloomy utopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four, refers to as Newspeak, where war becomes

peace, attacks becomes pre-emptive defence, military invasion becomes change of regime,occupation becomes humanitarian intervention. This distortion of language is by no means anew phenomenon. Manipulation and lies have always constituted a basic ingredient in warfare.And those in power have always endeavoured to explain and defend complex and controversial

decisions with cosmetic euphemisms . The question today, however, should be how democratic

communities ought to relate to this deliberate misdirection of public opinion and openly

manipulative impact. One response would be to develop our sensitivity to deceptive rhetorical

gimmicks and verbal tricks. We do not necessarily need to oppose military action in order todemand straightforward and honest language in a crisis situation. A democratic society is basedon rational dialogue. When democratic countries go to war, we should be able to demand an openaccount of why the war is legitimate, instead of settling for what is referred to in Englishliterature as perception management6, i.e. persuasion or indoctrination with any availablemeans, including deception, to create and recreate our feelings, motives and objective reasoning.Of course the war has been debated, in the media and on the streets. But as in any otherhistorically comparable period, political leaders have conducted a one-sided, black and white,

opinion-forming campaign that should be unacceptable in democratic communities.

3. Our education impact outweighsword choices are comparatively moreimportant than the substance of the policies since they implicate other

decisions that happen around and in the wake of the planextend Gordon. Nit

picking about words is essential.

4. Word PICs are predictablethey get to choose the approximately 15 words

in the plan. They should be able to foresee potential word pics and prepare. If

they dont, thats their fault.

5. Err Negthe Aff gets to speak first and last, they get to choose their plan and

advantages, and we always have to react to new innovations. We should get

leeway to craft specific strategies like word pics.


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6. All CPs are PICsevery counterplan changes part of the plan. Tossing out

word pics is infinitely regressive and kills all CPs, which are key to test big

affirmatives.


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AT: Censorship Bad

1) No Linkthe CP doesnt censor the term embargo. We just replace it with

something else since embargo is a euphemism that conceals the scope and

magnitude of the US economic blockade of Cuba.

2) Turnrefusing to choose some terms over others is infinitely regressive.

Their argument authorizes using all sorts of racist or sexist language just to

oppose censorship. Even if we shouldnt censor words, we should make choices

about which terms are better than others and be held responsible for those

choices.


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AT: Reappropriation Good

1) No Linkthis argument does not apply in this context. Their authors are

talking about how a marginalized group can take a term thats used to degrade

them and use it as a positive label. Theres no explanation for how that worksin the context of the embargo.

2) Err NegPeople in Cuba refer to the embargo as a blockade. We shouldnt

use Western postmodern philosophy as an excuse to sanitize oppression and

paternalistically ignore the language used by the recipients of US dominance.

3) Doesnt SolveTheyre using the term embargo in exactly the same way

the USFG always has, as a purportedly neutral description of US economic

policies toward Cuba. Theres no explanation for how they RE-appropriate the

term. They just appropriate it.

Err neg---Butlers pedantic insistence on subversive performance ignores the

very real political and emotional damage done through the choices of certain

words---if we win a net-benefit, you should ignore this argument

Nussbaum 99(Martha, law and ethics at University of Chicago, New Republic,p. ebsco)

Suppose we grant Butler her most interesting claims up to this point: that the social structure of gender is ubiquitous, but we can resistit by subversive and parodic acts. Two significant questions remain. What should be resisted, and on what basis? What would the acts

of resistance be like, and what would we expect them to accomplish? Butler uses several words for what she takes to be bad andtherefore worthy of resistance: the "repressive," the "subordinating," the "oppressive." But sheprovides no empiricaldiscussion of resistanceof the sort that we find, say, in Barry Adam's fascinating sociological study The Survival ofDomination (1978), which studies the subordination of blacks, Jews, women, and gays and lesbians, and their ways of wrestling with

the forms of social power that have oppressed them. Nor does Butler provide any account of the concepts ofresistance and oppression that would help us, were we really in doubt about what we ought to beresisting.Butler departs in this regard from earlier social-constructionist feminists, all of whom used ideas such as non-hierarchy,equality, dignity, autonomy, and treating as an end rather than a means, to indicate a direction for actual politics. Still less is shewilling to elaborate any positive normative notion. Indeed, it is clear that Butler, like Foucault, is adamantly opposed to normative

notions such as human dignity, or treating humanity as an end, on the grounds that they are inherently dictatorial. In her view,we ought to wait to see what the political struggle itself throws up, rather than prescribe inadvance to its participants.Universal normative notions, she says, "colonize under the sign of the same."This idea ofwaiting to see what we get--in a word, this moral passivity--seems plausible in Butler because shetacitly assumes an audience of like-minded readers who agree(sort of) about what the bad thingsare--discrimination against gays and lesbians, the unequal and hierarchical treatment of women--and who even agree(sort of) about why they are bad(they subordinate some people to others, they deny peoplefreedoms that they ought to have). But take that assumption away, and the absence of a normativedimension becomes a severe problem.Try teaching Foucault at a contemporary law school, as I have, and you willquickly find that subversion takes many forms, not all of them congenial to Butler and her allies.As a

perceptive libertarian student said to me, Why can't I use these ideas to resist the tax structure, or theantidiscrimination laws, or perhaps even to join the militias? Others, less fond of liberty, mightengage in the subversive performances of making fun of feminist remarks in class, or ripping


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down the posters of the lesbian and gay law students' association. These things happen. They areparodic and subversive. Why, then, aren't they daring and good? Well, there are good answers to those questions, but youwon't find them in Foucault, or in Butler. Answering them requires discussing which liberties and opportunities human beings ought tohave, and what it is for social institutions to treat human beings as ends rather than as means--in short, a normative theory of social

justice and human dignity. It is one thing to say that we should be humble about our universal norms, andwilling to learn from the experience of oppressed people. It is quite another thing to say that we

don't need any norms at all.Foucault, unlike Butler, at least showed signs in his late work of grappling with this problem;and all his writing is animated by a fierce sense of the texture of social oppression and the harm that it does. Come to think of it,justice, understood as a personal virtue, has exactly the structure of gender in the Butlerian analysis: it is not innate or "natural," it isproduced by repeated performances (or as Aristotle said, we learn it by doing it), it shapes our inclinations and forces the repression ofsome of them. These ritual performances, and their associated repressions, are enforced by arrangements of social power, as childrenwho won't share on the playground quickly discover. Moreover, the parodic subversion of justice is ubiquitous in politics, as in

personal life. But there is an important difference. Generally we dislike these subversive performances, and we think that young

people should be strongly discouraged from seeing norms of justice in such a cynical light. Butler cannot explain in anypurely structural or procedural way why the subversion of gender norms is a social good whilethe subversion of justice norms is a social bad. Foucault, we should remember, cheered for the Ayatollah, and whynot? That, too, was resistance, and there was indeed nothing in the text to tell us that that struggle was less worthy than a struggle for

civil rights and civil liberties.There is a void, then, at the heart of Butler's notion of politics. This void can lookliberating, because the reader fills it implicitly with a normative theory of human equality or dignity. But let there be no mistake: for

Butler, as for Foucault, subversion is subversion, and it can in principle go in any direction. Indeed,

Butler's naively empty politics is especially dangerous for the very causes she holds dear. Forevery friend of Butler, eager to engage in subversive performances that proclaim therepressiveness of heterosexual gender norms, there are dozens who would like to engage insubversive performances that flout the norms of tax compliance, of non-discrimination, of decenttreatment of one's fellow students. To such people we should say, you cannot simply resist as youplease, for there are norms of fairness, decency, and dignity that entail that this is bad behavior.But then we have to articulate those norms--and this Butler refuses to do.

Re-appropriation fails- empirics prove- any other use contradicts the very

meaning of the word

Esteva, 92(Mexican activist, "deprofessionalized intellectual" and founder of theUniversidad de la Tierra in the Mexican city of Oaxaca - (Gustavo, TheDevelopment Dictionary A Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed by WolfgangSachs, p. 15-16)

The experts of Unesco, for their part,promoted the concept of endogenous development.For some time,this conception won more acceptance than all the others.It seemed clearly heretical, openlycontradicting the conventional wisdom.Emerging from a rigorous critique of the hypothesis of development 'in stages'(Rostow), the thesis of endogenous development rejected the necessity or possibility-let alone suitability -of mechanically imitating industrial societies. Instead, it proposed taking due account of theparticularities of each nation.Little acknowledged, however was the fact that this sensible consideration

leads to a dead-end in the very theory and practice of development, that it contains acontradiction in terms. If the impulse is truly endogenous, that is, if the initiatives really come out of thediverse cultures and their different systems of values, nothing would lead us to believe that fromthese would necessarily arise development - no matter how it is defined - or even an impulse leading in thatdirection. If properly followed, this conception leads to the dissolution of the very notion of development,after realizing the impossibility of imposing a single cultural model on the whole world- as aconference of Unesco experts pertinently recognized in 1978.


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Embargo Word PIC