From stables at usc.edu Mon Jun 1 00:57:52 2009 From: stables at usc.edu (Gordon Stables) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 22:57:52 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] CEDA Summer Meetings And Debate Summit Message-ID: <39c1ac890905312257u42e7cab1k8dbfb1eb9f0a7406@mail.gmail.com> The full schedule and agendas for the summer meetings are available at http://www.cedadebate.org/ All topic papers and topic wording work will be regularly updated at http://topic.cedadebate.org/ Thanks Gordon Gordon Stables, Ph.D. Director of Debate & Forensics Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California Office: 213 740 2759 Fax: 213 740 3913 www.usctrojandebate.com From debatekorea at hotmail.com Mon Jun 1 01:18:19 2009 From: debatekorea at hotmail.com (Jason Jarvis) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 02:18:19 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky In-Reply-To: <000001c9e254$0bc9e200$235da600$@net> References: <000001c9e254$0bc9e200$235da600$@net> Message-ID: This message gave me chills. . .time passes, but sometimes wounds don't heal. I wonder, is the documentary that she did online? Anyone got a link? I seem to recall the title was something like "Two bikes, One cause" I know I am messing it up, but after reading this I had a strong urge to see it again. in solidarity, Jason Jarvis KDI School Seoul, Korea From: sugarcats at cox.net To: edebate at www.ndtceda.com Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 17:58:15 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years since Becky left us physically (but not in spirit). For those who knew her, you know how vibrant, intelligent, sassy and cut-throat competitive she was. But she was also a caring, compassionate and true friend to those around her. She inspired (and still inspires) greatness through her memory and legacy via the Seattle Debate Foundation. For those who did not have the privilege to know (and compete against) her, I can only hope you meet or know folks like her who are as inspiring in the face of the most fucked up situations. This post is meant to honor and remember Becky publicly, but also to help me deal with the enormity of it all. Life, death, injustice and unfairness, happiness and hope, sadness and remembrance, but most of all celebration of a life too short. Please keep Becky, Joey, and her family and friends in your warm thoughts on this very heavy day. Peace to all, CM O?Neill _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd1_052009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090601/7a40f070/attachment.htm From dperkins at fas.harvard.edu Mon Jun 1 07:29:47 2009 From: dperkins at fas.harvard.edu (Dallas Perkins) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:29:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky In-Reply-To: References: <000001c9e254$0bc9e200$235da600$@net> Message-ID: The documentary was called "Two Chicks, Two Bikes, One Cause." Becky didn't make it, but was prominently featured. I attended the film release in NYC with Becky. By then she knew she would not survive, but her spirit was still utterly indomitable, her charisma enough to captivate an audience. This anniversary is a great moment for memories and sentimentality, but it won't hurt to get a little angry (again) at the monstrous unfairness of it all, and consider sending a fat check to support breast cancer research. dp On Mon, 1 Jun 2009, Jason Jarvis wrote: > > > This message gave me chills. . .time passes, but sometimes wounds don't heal. > > I wonder, is the documentary that she did online? Anyone got a link? I seem to recall the title was something like "Two bikes, One cause" I know I am messing it up, but after reading this I had a strong urge to see it again. > > in solidarity, > > Jason Jarvis > > KDI School > Seoul, Korea > > > > > > > From: sugarcats at cox.net > To: edebate at www.ndtceda.com > Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 17:58:15 -0700 > Subject: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years since Becky left > us physically (but not in spirit). For those who knew her, you know how > vibrant, intelligent, sassy and cut-throat competitive she was. But she was > also a caring, compassionate and true friend to those around her. She inspired (and > still inspires) greatness through her memory and legacy via the Seattle Debate > Foundation. > > > > For those who did not have the privilege to know (and > compete against) her, I can only hope you meet or know folks like her who are as > inspiring in the face of the most fucked up situations. > > > > This post is meant to honor and remember Becky publicly, but > also to help me deal with the enormity of it all. Life, death, injustice and > unfairness, happiness and hope, sadness and remembrance, but most of all > celebration of a life too short. > > > > Please keep Becky, Joey, and her family and friends in your > warm thoughts on this very heavy day. > > > > Peace to all, > > > > CM O?Neill > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. > http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd1_052009 From stannardmatt at hotmail.com Mon Jun 1 09:08:35 2009 From: stannardmatt at hotmail.com (matt stannard) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:08:35 -0600 Subject: [eDebate] Far right blogger and Hannity pal Turner praises Tiller murder, calls for more murder Message-ID: http://theunderview.blogspot.com/2009/06/far-right-blogger-and-hannity-pal.html _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has a new way to see what's up with your friends. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/WhatsNew?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_WhatsNew1_052009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090601/1df8b1c2/attachment.htm From stannardmatt at hotmail.com Mon Jun 1 09:10:03 2009 From: stannardmatt at hotmail.com (matt stannard) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:10:03 -0600 Subject: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky In-Reply-To: References: <000001c9e254$0bc9e200$235da600$@net> Message-ID: I couldn't say anything as powerful as what's already been said, but I cherished every moment with Becky including our debates, and I still think about her all the time. mjs > Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:29:47 -0400 > From: dperkins at fas.harvard.edu > To: debatekorea at hotmail.com > CC: sugarcats at cox.net; edebate at ndtceda.com > Subject: Re: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky > > The documentary was called "Two Chicks, Two Bikes, One Cause." Becky > didn't make it, but was prominently featured. > > I attended the film release in NYC with Becky. By then she knew she would > not survive, but her spirit was still utterly indomitable, her charisma > enough to captivate an audience. > > This anniversary is a great moment for memories and sentimentality, but it > won't hurt to get a little angry (again) at the monstrous unfairness of it > all, and consider sending a fat check to support breast cancer research. > > dp > > On Mon, 1 Jun 2009, Jason Jarvis wrote: > > > > > > > This message gave me chills. . .time passes, but sometimes wounds don't heal. > > > > I wonder, is the documentary that she did online? Anyone got a link? I seem to recall the title was something like "Two bikes, One cause" I know I am messing it up, but after reading this I had a strong urge to see it again. > > > > in solidarity, > > > > Jason Jarvis > > > > KDI School > > Seoul, Korea > > > > > > > > > > > > > > From: sugarcats at cox.net > > To: edebate at www.ndtceda.com > > Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 17:58:15 -0700 > > Subject: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years since Becky left > > us physically (but not in spirit). For those who knew her, you know how > > vibrant, intelligent, sassy and cut-throat competitive she was. But she was > > also a caring, compassionate and true friend to those around her. She inspired (and > > still inspires) greatness through her memory and legacy via the Seattle Debate > > Foundation. > > > > > > > > For those who did not have the privilege to know (and > > compete against) her, I can only hope you meet or know folks like her who are as > > inspiring in the face of the most fucked up situations. > > > > > > > > This post is meant to honor and remember Becky publicly, but > > also to help me deal with the enormity of it all. Life, death, injustice and > > unfairness, happiness and hope, sadness and remembrance, but most of all > > celebration of a life too short. > > > > > > > > Please keep Becky, Joey, and her family and friends in your > > warm thoughts on this very heavy day. > > > > > > > > Peace to all, > > > > > > > > CM O?Neill > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. > > http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd1_052009 _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd1_052009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090601/ba1340cd/attachment.htm From chipp43 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 1 13:57:07 2009 From: chipp43 at yahoo.com (Douglas Charles Schwab) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 11:57:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [eDebate] Rolling Stone magazine Message-ID: <913457.96073.qm@web43137.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> Collegiate debate is mentioned in the June 11 issue. Context is a bit difficult to describe, but there are a few quotes from Jon Bruschke. I couldn't find the article online, but if your at a news stand check out pages 97-100. The Jay Leno article and Lady Gaga stuff is A+ as well Chipp From tara_l_tate at hotmail.com Mon Jun 1 15:54:53 2009 From: tara_l_tate at hotmail.com (Tara Tate) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 15:54:53 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky In-Reply-To: References: <000001c9e254$0bc9e200$235da600$@net> Message-ID: Thank you everyone for posting these thoughts today. Although it was a punch in the gut to even see the first subject line and realize that it has been ten years, this moment of reflection (and, yes, DP is correct...anger) was so, so needed. I did not know Becky nearly as well as some of you, but she left an imprint on me each and every time we interacted. For a lot of us, her memory is front and center when we are faced with a crisis and we need to call on a model in how to handle it with grace, dignity, and perseverence. No one embodies those traits to me more than Becky... Tara GBS From: stannardmatt at hotmail.com To: dperkins at fas.harvard.edu; debatekorea at hotmail.com Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:10:03 -0600 CC: sugarcats at cox.net; edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: Re: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky I couldn't say anything as powerful as what's already been said, but I cherished every moment with Becky including our debates, and I still think about her all the time. mjs > Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:29:47 -0400 > From: dperkins at fas.harvard.edu > To: debatekorea at hotmail.com > CC: sugarcats at cox.net; edebate at ndtceda.com > Subject: Re: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky > > The documentary was called "Two Chicks, Two Bikes, One Cause." Becky > didn't make it, but was prominently featured. > > I attended the film release in NYC with Becky. By then she knew she would > not survive, but her spirit was still utterly indomitable, her charisma > enough to captivate an audience. > > This anniversary is a great moment for memories and sentimentality, but it > won't hurt to get a little angry (again) at the monstrous unfairness of it > all, and consider sending a fat check to support breast cancer research. > > dp > > On Mon, 1 Jun 2009, Jason Jarvis wrote: > > > > > > > This message gave me chills. . .time passes, but sometimes wounds don't heal. > > > > I wonder, is the documentary that she did online? Anyone got a link? I seem to recall the title was something like "Two bikes, One cause" I know I am messing it up, but after reading this I had a strong urge to see it again. > > > > in solidarity, > > > > Jason Jarvis > > > > KDI School > > Seoul, Korea > > > > > > > > > > > > > > From: sugarcats at cox.net > > To: edebate at www.ndtceda.com > > Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 17:58:15 -0700 > > Subject: [eDebate] 10 years---I miss you Becky > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years since Becky left > > us physically (but not in spirit). For those who knew her, you know how > > vibrant, intelligent, sassy and cut-throat competitive she was. But she was > > also a caring, compassionate and true friend to those around her. She inspired (and > > still inspires) greatness through her memory and legacy via the Seattle Debate > > Foundation. > > > > > > > > For those who did not have the privilege to know (and > > compete against) her, I can only hope you meet or know folks like her who are as > > inspiring in the face of the most fucked up situations. > > > > > > > > This post is meant to honor and remember Becky publicly, but > > also to help me deal with the enormity of it all. Life, death, injustice and > > unfairness, happiness and hope, sadness and remembrance, but most of all > > celebration of a life too short. > > > > > > > > Please keep Becky, Joey, and her family and friends in your > > warm thoughts on this very heavy day. > > > > > > > > Peace to all, > > > > > > > > CM O?Neill > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. > > http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd1_052009 Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. See how. _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd1_052009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090601/96407a2a/attachment.htm From asymonds at asu.edu Mon Jun 1 17:08:12 2009 From: asymonds at asu.edu (Adam Symonds) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 15:08:12 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Last day for ADI Early Bird Registration Message-ID: Hey Everyone, Today is the last call for Early Bird Registration to the ADI. Any registration emailed or faxed by the end of the day will qualify for our best possible rate. We hope you can join us for this fun and educational institute. ADI on the Web: http://www.public.asu.edu/~asymonds/ ADI on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=cf2e8e0a47de261be877c5bbb2108fbb&gid=74808980618&ref=search Adam Symonds Director Arizona Debate Institute -- Adam Symonds Director of Forensics Arizona State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090601/2e208c97/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Mon Jun 1 18:19:02 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 18:19:02 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] obama stealing autoworker pensions Message-ID: http://www.gregpalast.com/grand-theft-auto-how-stevie-the-rat-bankrupted-gm/#more-2515 Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GMby Greg Palast Monday, June 1, 2009 Screw the autoworkers. They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day. Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders ? led by Morgan and Citibank ? expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion. The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal. I smell a rat. Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama's 'Car Czar' - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning. When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left. That's the law. What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock - or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.Preventive Detention for PensionsSo what's wrong with seizing workers' pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it's illegal. In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can't seize workers' pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that's because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits. The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries." Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits." "The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits."Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it's not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank's a little short. A plan's assets are for the plan's members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker's spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another "Guantanamo" moment for the Obama Administration - channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must "...act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses."By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock.This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds. House of RubinPensions are wiped away and two connected banks don't even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren't asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who've already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama's point-man in winning banks' endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).With GM's last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan's Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank's "finest year ever."Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?And it's been a good year for Se?or Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. "Owning" is a loose term. Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler - indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama's working class hero.If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers' funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat's plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.It doesn't make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.******Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981. Palast's latest reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! are collected on the newly released DVD, "Palast Investigates: from 8-Mile to the Amazon - on the trail of the financial marauders." Watch the trailer here. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live?: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_BR_life_in_synch_052009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090601/aed683b7/attachment.htm From debate at ou.edu Mon Jun 1 20:09:50 2009 From: debate at ou.edu (Massey, Jackie B.) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 20:09:50 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Oklahoma Coaching Staff Addition! part One! Message-ID: <650DB0CBB8E8E3418E627BD179329677F94774EB04@XMAIL2.sooner.net.ou.edu> Hello, I would like to welcome to our team someone who I think is a great addition to our coaching staff. The Sooners welcome Gabe Murillo to the OU Debate team as one of our additional assistant coaches. I say additional because Jason is staying, and we have decided to just not pay Conor, and give Gabe his job. Cleary is a 3L if you know what that means, and turned over his responsibility of taking care of the old guys to Gabe. All Smiles! Massey OU Debate From mjh450 at psu.edu Mon Jun 1 22:09:20 2009 From: mjh450 at psu.edu (Mark Hlavacik) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 23:09:20 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] (no subject) Message-ID: <7d29728b0906012009j76d7aa2do6797584deb8d56ad@mail.gmail.com> Debate Heroes, they happen everyday: http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/news/1600950,4_1_JO01_LIFELESS_S1-090601.article Joliet West student is debate crusader June 1, 2009 By CATHERINE ANN VELASCO cvelasco at scn1.com JOLIET--When Sarah Robinson transferred to Joliet West High School from Nebraska, she planned to join the debate team her sophomore year, but there was one problem. Joliet Township High School District didn't have a debate team. ? Click to enlarge image Sarah Robinson (above) stands with her high school debate team trophies. After transferring to Joliet West from Nebraska, she started a JTHS debate team and won numerous awards. (Michael R. Schmidt/Staff Photographer) "With a bigger town, I expected something," recalled Sarah who attended Kearney High School as a freshman. "They had a huge debate team. It was a huge deal. Everyone knew the debate team. We were the only team that won state championships that year in our school," she said. "Then, I moved here and there was nothing." Similar to track and field, there were individual events she could participate in so Sarah created an one-person team. "I love the camaraderie and the intellectually-charged atmosphere at debate tournaments--it turns a light on inside my head," she said. "I love the feeling of standing up to give a really good speech." For three years, Sarah, now 18, represented JT in Lincoln-Douglas debates, debating moral and ethical issues, such as nuclear proliferation and the death penalty. "There are people with 50 people on their teams and they have professional coaches and there is me," she said. Sarah relied on her parents, Matt and Peggy Robinson, who gave her moral support and were friendly faces at the debates as well as her ride to the weekend events that were sometimes five hours away. "She was really at a serious disadvantage having no coach and having no team. Peggy and I would maybe listen to her case and helped. ... We didn't have the background to help her and do the research," said Matt, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Joliet. "She couldn't do practice rounds with teammates," said Peggy, senior branch office administrator at Edward Jones in Joliet. "She didn't have coaches to consult with between rounds at tournaments," Matt said. "It was tough. I've been really proud of her." Chick in a tie The one-woman debate team became a legacy among schools statewide. She was easy to spot as the only female dressed in a suit and tie which was her trademark. "There were kids that came up to me from Evanston," Sarah said. "They were like 'Oh, you're that girl. My coach had a lecture with us before this tournament and said that some people are here without coaches and teams.'" "A young man said to Sarah before the tournament, 'Well, you don't know me, but I know who you are,'" Matt said. Those sentiments meant a lot to Sarah. "I didn't think anyone noticed, honestly, what I was doing. It felt really good to know that even though I don't win big awards at state, someone is noticing my efforts," she said. Twice the work The first two years was rough with Sarah almost moving up to the next level, but not scoring enough points to do so. During debates, teammates would observe and take notes on Sarah's case and give a summary to their teammates so they could prepare. "Everybody knew her cases because they had teammates," Peggy said. "I'd would walk into a round and no nothing," Sarah said. So she came up with a plan "I would honestly start to write three to four cases per tournament," Sarah said. "So they wouldn't know what she would argue so she still had an element of surprise which is three to four times the work," Matt said. Sarah started this strategy at the end of her junior year. "I started to realize that if I was going to be serious, if I was going to win then I needed to do twice the work because I'm half the team," she said. All her hard work paid off during her senior year, winning second place at IHSA State Tournament in Bloomington. There, she came home with a medal for second place for All State Speaker Award and Octa Finalist Award. She also earned the special distinction degree in the National Forensics League. Helpful competitors Sarah got help from unusual sources: her competition. They were impressed and wanted to help her out. Peter Lemperis, a graduate from Glenbrook North High School, would critique her debates. Debate coaches Lainee and Scott McGraw from Carl Sandburg High School would take Sarah aside and help her with her cases. "They didn't divulge to their team what Sarah's cases were even though she was the competition," Peggy said. "We'd have tough rounds where I would debate with one of their teammates. It always ended with a handshake and we were fine," Sarah said. "I really felt I was part of their team. It was nice. ... They would include me in their team pep talk." The Robinson family even went to the school's banquet dinner for the debate team. Chris Olson, athletic director for JT, helped out Sarah through JT Foundation grants so she could attend debate camps and provided the funds to pay for a judge at the tournaments which was a requirement to debate. Sarah, who graduated from Joliet West High School on Friday night, showed off her talent as graduation speaker. In the fally, she will attend Northwestern University, majoring in philosophy and political science, minoring in French. She plans to join the Peace Corps, helping out anywhere she is needed before going to law school. Her words of wisdom: "Don't let anyone stand in your way--ever," she said. "I faced a lot of adversity and at times there were tears. I cried a lot, but if you find something that you're really passionate about and I was really passionate about it. ... If you find something that you are passionate about, don't let it die. Keep it alive." -- Mark J. Hlavacik Graduate Student The Pennsylvania State University Department of Communication Arts & Sciences 316 Sparks, Cube 1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090601/01ce0cf3/attachment.htm From uwgdebate at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 08:33:27 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 09:33:27 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Seeking info from Coaches about Liability/Insurance Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906020633l1642ee72wb63f03ead07698f3@mail.gmail.com> UWG is examining if/how to restructure university-wide procedures for student travel, specifically the issues of liability waivers and (separately) requirements of insurance coverage. i'm interested in knowing whether anyone works at a university that- a) requires students to sign a waiver of liability so they won't sue the university if they are injured/become sick on travel (or sign a waiver for any other purpose) b) requires the debate program to vouch for whether students traveling have insurance OR has to provide some form of insurance itself (from debate budgets) c) has any other kinds of regulations/procedures in place which include paperwork and/or additional responsibilities for the debate program regarding student travel and university liability if you work at a university that doesn't require any of this or doesn't have a stated policy, that would be useful to know as well. thanks in advance, hester -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090602/cac69947/attachment.htm From Kelly.McDonald at asu.edu Tue Jun 2 13:13:14 2009 From: Kelly.McDonald at asu.edu (Kelly McDonald) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:13:14 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Tenure and Promotion working group materials - please review the Word document! Message-ID: <3920DC962E323A46B40D415ADC1CD6C24BDD9D6ADF@EX10.asurite.ad.asu.edu> On behalf of the Tenure and Promotion Working Group, I am posting a link to the forum section of the CEDA website with our working paper and supporting documents. http://conference.cedadebate.org/forum/2 I am attaching the Working Paper and would invite folks to please comment in the forum section and email Robert Rowland (rrowland at ku.edu) comments and reactions to the document which is aimed to help directors in a range of position categories successful navigate tenure (if that is the position type they have) and secure promotions / advancement in all types of positions. Below is a note Working Group Chair, Professor Robert C. Rowland: Colleagues: The Tenure and Promotion Working Group has completed a draft of our report, which we hope that you will review prior to the conference. It is attached. The Working Group consisted of the following members: Chair: Robin Rowland, University of Kansas Members: Jarrod Atchison, Trinity University Matt Gerber, Baylor Univ Derek Buescher, Puget Sound Steve Hunt, Lewis and Clark (Remote) Ryan Galloway, Samford Univ Kelly McDonald, Arizona State Univ (Remote) Jeff Jarman, Wichita State Univ. Kelly Young, Wayne State Univ Tom Hollihan, Univ of Southern California (Remote) The draft of the report is based on a review of existing literature on tenure and promotion as it relates to debate, a survey of current coaches (ably conducted and summarized in the report by Jarrod Atchison), group discussion among members of the working group and input from members of the distinguished advisory committee, Tom Hollihan and David Zarefsky. In addition to the draft report, we have compiled two PDFs containing material on tenure and promotion as it applies to debate and samples related to how research is assessed in theater and related disciplines. Conference Director Louden has agreed that members of other working groups will be able to slip out of their group meetings on Saturday morning and share thoughts on our draft with the Tenure and Promotion Working Group. The working group plans to take this input and make appropriate revisions in the draft prior to presenting the report at the conference. If anyone has thoughts prior to the conference, please send them to rrowland at ku.edu. We will look forward to a dialogue about our draft report at the conference. For the working group, Robin Tenure and Promotion Working Group Aims and Tasks: The purpose of this working group is to examine the relationship between the coaching profession and tenure and promotion. The working group should begin by examining the status of tenure stream debate coaches throughout the academy and design a set of recommendations and standards for a variety of institutions. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Tenure_and_Promotion_Working_GroupRevisedConferencedraft.doc Type: application/msword Size: 107520 bytes Desc: Tenure_and_Promotion_Working_GroupRevisedConferencedraft.doc Url : http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090602/97faa7bb/attachment.doc From searwr6 at wfu.edu Tue Jun 2 18:46:34 2009 From: searwr6 at wfu.edu (searwr6) Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:46:34 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Topic Meeting Liveblog Message-ID: <4A25B9DA.9050005@wfu.edu> The link to the topic meeting liveblog can be found here: http://topic.cedadebate.org/. Seth, Alex and I will be updating it throughout the conference, and uses can post responses or questions by logging in and adding a new comment to the post. -Will From gordonm at pitt.edu Wed Jun 3 09:34:12 2009 From: gordonm at pitt.edu (Mitchell, Gordon Roger) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 10:34:12 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Policy Debate Brief series Message-ID: Response to the Debate Summit Tenure and Promotion Working Group: http://debatescholarship.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/policy-debate-brief-series/ Gordon R. Mitchell Associate Professor of Communication Director, William Pitt Debating Union University of Pittsburgh CL 1117, 4200 Fifth Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Phone: (412) 624-8531 Fax: (412) 624-1878 http://www.pitt.edu/~gordonm/ From csedelmyer at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 12:54:28 2009 From: csedelmyer at gmail.com (Chris Sedelmyer) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 10:54:28 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Rounds for sale - NFL Nationals Message-ID: I have rounds to sell and can be available for most of the week. Don't need housing. Email me if you're interested. thanks, Chris -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/d0321864/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Wed Jun 3 13:11:47 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 13:11:47 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] will the ACORN $$$ spiderweb be investigated? Message-ID: http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/acorn_spiderweb_king/2009/06/02/220811.html Rep. King: Probe ACORN's Financial 'Spiderweb' Tuesday, June 2, 2009 8:24 PM By: David A. Patten Iowa GOP Congressman Steve King is calling for simultaneous FBI and congressional investigations into what he calls a "spiderweb" of shadowy financial and business relationships linked to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)."With ACORN, it's pervasive," King tells Newsmax, referring to criminal allegations and malfeasance leveled at ACORN's low-income, voter-registration operation. "It's everywhere. It's 12 or 14 states where there are investigations going on for voter registration [fraud]."ACORN has admitted to ? around 400,000 fraudulent voter-registration forms being introduced. They claim they don't hire people on commission, but they do hire people on commission," King tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview. King says ACORN has over 270 corporate affiliates and business units that have received more than $53 million in federal tax dollars. Recent stimulus legislation, he tells Newsmax, could give the organization access up to $8.5 billion.According to a recent Fox News report, over 250 nonprofit groups list ACORN's New Orleans headquarters as their address. One of those groups is Citizens Services Inc., which received $800,000 from the Obama administration in return for a get-out-the-vote program during last year's campaign.Although King charges that ACORN is "in the business of electing Democrats," he says its impact transcends politics. He tells Newsmax the organization has intimidated bank executives into making risky mortgage loans to people who shouldn't have received them, adding that is "a contributing factor, I believe, to this financial meltdown that we have."King, who has represented Iowa's fifth congressional district since 2002, describes ACORN as "an organization that erodes the integrity of the election process," adding: "I believe it has completely the face of a criminal enterprise, and it should be thoroughly investigated by Congress and the Department of Justice. And it should happen simultaneously."Although King says ACORN is responsible for "hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms," the type of investigation he wants would go far beyond current state and FBI investigations for alleged voter fraud. Rather, it would look into the interlocking financial connections between ACORN and its affiliate organizations.To date, there have been four post-election prosecutions by state authorities involving ACORN. All focus on voter fraud rather than finances."We need to do a lot more. We cannot let them bring down our election process," King tells Newsmax.In the exclusive Newsmax interview, King also addressed the controversy surrounding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's allegations that the CIA lied in stating she had been briefed on "enhanced interrogation" methods, such as water-boarding.He says Pelosi's security clearance should be withdrawn until her assertions can either be verified or disproven.King says the controversy stirred up by Pelosi's assertion "puts our national security at risk," because the CIA and 14 other U.S. security agencies no longer can have the "level of trust" they need to liaison effectively with the Speaker of the House. King blames this on Pelosi's "wild allegations."He also points out that the speaker follows only the vice-president in the order of succession, should anything happen to the president. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/6970af92/attachment.htm From gordonm at pitt.edu Wed Jun 3 20:57:54 2009 From: gordonm at pitt.edu (Mitchell, Gordon Roger) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 21:57:54 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Sedalia's Blind Spot: A Research Roadmap Message-ID: http://debatescholarship.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/sedalias-blind-spot-a-research-roadmap/ Join in comments; the published proceedings from both previous developmental conferences on forensics (1974 in Colorado; 1984 in Illinois) featured feedback and comments prominently - the fact that the third conference is being held in a digital age opens the door to even wider participation (as recent trends toward transparency in the topic committee deliberations attest). * * * Gordon R. Mitchell Associate Professor of Communication Director, William Pitt Debating Union University of Pittsburgh CL 1117, 4200 Fifth Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Phone: (412) 624-8531 Fax: (412) 624-1878 http://www.pitt.edu/~gordonm/ From jarrod.atchison at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 21:39:00 2009 From: jarrod.atchison at gmail.com (Jarrod Atchison) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 21:39:00 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Sad News Message-ID: It is with great sadness that I write to let the debate community know that Frank Harrison passed away Monday, June 1, at his home in Galveston, TX. Frank was the Director of Debate at Trinity University for twenty years. During that time he was a tremendous coach, teacher, and friend to countless debaters both at Trinity University and within the debate community at large. At the 1961 National Debate Tournament, Frank was third speaker and final round participant for King's College. He later earned a degree from Harvard Law and served as a United States Representative for the state of Pennsylvania. Debate, however, was his passion. He was the 2003 Dr. Lucy M. Keele Award winner, chair of the National Debate Tournament committee, and host of the 1991 National Debate Tournament. Although he had success coaching throughout the nation, his heart was always with the American Debate Association where he served in almost every official capacity including president. There are already articles being written on his tenure in Congress (like the two below), but I hope that we will be vigilant in reminding the world that Frank Harrison was first and foremost a director of debate and that in that role he was one of our best. Sincerely, Jarrod Atchison http://www.citizensvoice.com/articles/2009/06/03/news/doc4a26fc39911f1177769059.txt http://lulacpoliticaletter.blogspot.com/2009/06/lulac-edition-837-june-3rd-2009.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/abcb2170/attachment.htm From katebaxterkauf at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 21:55:02 2009 From: katebaxterkauf at gmail.com (Kate Baxter-Kauf) Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:55:02 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Minnesota Urban Debate League Seeks Executive Director Message-ID: <4A273786.4000602@gmail.com> If you have any questions about the position, feel free to contact me. -- ** *JOB BULLETIN* * * *Executive Director, Minnesota Urban Debate League* Augsburg College is a private co-educational college of the liberal and professional arts and sciences grounded in Christian values (ELCA affiliate). The College offers a diverse campus community and an exciting metropolitan setting in the heart of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. The College is committed to diversity and the education of students in a global perspective. The goal of the Minnesota Urban Debate League (MNUDL) is to provide equal access to academic debate programs for urban students, currently serving almost 200 students within the Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts. The mission of the Minnesota Urban Debate League is to empower students to become engaged learners, critical thinkers, and active citizens who are effective advocates for themselves and their communities. *POSITION STATUS:* Full-time, Exempt. Reports to Vice President of Academic Affairs. *RESPONSIBILITIES: * Under the administrative direction of Augsburg College and in consultation with an Advisory Board, the Executive Director is responsible for the overall operations, asset development and marketing/public relations of the Minnesota Urban Debate League. Key responsibilities include writing grants and overseeing awards; coordinating fundraising activities; cultivating and developing relationships with philanthropic groups and individuals; actively engaging with other academic support organizations, booster clubs, corporate and foundation supporters, and government entities; overseeing accounting functions including budgeting, financial planning and auditing; actively engaging the Advisory Board in policy development and administration; and assisting in the development of current and long-term organizational goals and objectives for MNUDL operations. Additional responsibilities include supervision of two staff and supervising contract compliance. *QUALIFICATIONS: * A Bachelor's degree and 5-10 years of experience; advanced degree preferred. Candidates must have the ability to communicate effectively and work collaboratively. Additional required skills and abilities include but are not limited to prior experience in competitive policy debate at the high school level; experience in all facets of fundraising with history of developing and maintaining relationships with the funding community; experience crafting policies and procedures in the youth development field; experience working with students from low-income communities and communities of color; and exceptional interpersonal skills. * * *TO START: *Immediately* APPLICATION DEADLINE: *June 26, 2009 *TO APPLY: * Visit the College's web site for further information regarding the College and this position http://www.augsburg.edu/. Augsburg is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to a diverse workforce. Posted: 6/03/09** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/761f5267/attachment.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: clip_image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 5445 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/761f5267/attachment.jpg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: MNUDL Exec Director Post (long) 6-09-1.doc Type: application/msword Size: 52224 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/761f5267/attachment.doc From jbhdb8 at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 22:28:44 2009 From: jbhdb8 at gmail.com (Josh) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 23:28:44 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Sad News In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Frank will be missed, I fondly remember him flowing many of my and my teams debates in D3 on those gigantic pads....So many great memories... RIP A sad day indeed, Josh On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 10:39 PM, Jarrod Atchison wrote: > It is with great sadness that I write to let the debate community know that > Frank Harrison passed away Monday, June 1, at his home in Galveston, TX. > Frank was the Director of Debate at Trinity University for twenty years. > During that time he was a tremendous coach, teacher, and friend to countless > debaters both at Trinity University and within the debate community at > large. At the 1961 National Debate Tournament, Frank was third speaker and > final round participant for King's College. He later earned a degree from > Harvard Law and served as a United States Representative for the state of > Pennsylvania. Debate, however, was his passion. He was the 2003 Dr. Lucy M. > Keele Award winner, chair of the National Debate Tournament committee, and > host of the 1991 National Debate Tournament. Although he had success > coaching throughout the nation, his heart was always with the American > Debate Association where he served in almost every official capacity > including president. There are already articles being written on his tenure > in Congress (like the two below), but I hope that we will be vigilant in > reminding the world that Frank Harrison was first and foremost a director of > debate and that in that role he was one of our best. > > Sincerely, > > Jarrod Atchison > > > http://www.citizensvoice.com/articles/2009/06/03/news/doc4a26fc39911f1177769059.txt > > > http://lulacpoliticaletter.blogspot.com/2009/06/lulac-edition-837-june-3rd-2009.html > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/338bff20/attachment.htm From mstruth at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 22:56:00 2009 From: mstruth at gmail.com (Matt Struth) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 23:56:00 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] NFL Nationals - Rounds for Sale Message-ID: I can be in Birmingham from the 16th (the full day) till the end of the tournament. I do need a place to stay (starting the night of the 16th), and don't need transportation. I can help cut cards and scout without extra pay. Email me if you're interested. Thanks, Matt Struth Liberty Debate -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/1166dcc4/attachment.htm From gabejmurillo at yahoo.com Wed Jun 3 23:30:15 2009 From: gabejmurillo at yahoo.com (gabe murillo) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 21:30:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [eDebate] Condolences Message-ID: <804983.43747.qm@web32704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The news we received tonight is really tearing me up. When I debated at ADA and D5 tournaments that Trinity attended Frank Harrison always went out of his way to be supportive and friendly. Frank loved debate, and was truly welcoming to anyone in our community. I will remember him as one of the kindest souls I have met. My thoughts are with his family, friends, and all of the people mourning tonight. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090603/ae92f75a/attachment.htm From hansonjb at whitman.edu Thu Jun 4 03:35:31 2009 From: hansonjb at whitman.edu (Jim Hanson) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 01:35:31 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Condolences References: <804983.43747.qm@web32704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: totally agreed. frank was a class act and very kind to me. I am sorry to hear this news. jim :) hansonjb at whitman.edu From: gabe murillo Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 9:30 PM To: edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: [eDebate] Condolences The news we received tonight is really tearing me up. When I debated at ADA and D5 tournaments that Trinity attended Frank Harrison always went out of his way to be supportive and friendly. Frank loved debate, and was truly welcoming to anyone in our community. I will remember him as one of the kindest souls I have met. My thoughts are with his family, friends, and all of the people mourning tonight. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090604/a4313607/attachment.htm From daisy_verney at hotmail.com Thu Jun 4 07:11:55 2009 From: daisy_verney at hotmail.com (Danielle Verney) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 08:11:55 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Condolences In-Reply-To: References: <804983.43747.qm@web32704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Upon hearing the news I was at a loss for words--and even still I am finding it difficult to express how sad I am. When I was an undergrad helping to manage the Cap Cities tournament, Frank nicknamed me The General (I must have a talent for barking orders). Upon learning of my move to Navy, I got an email from Frank telling me that I was being "upgraded" to The Admiral. I had quite literally no idea how to run a debate tournament my first year at Navy and I had very little assistance from the Academy as we were between Officer Reps and I wasn't even sure what to ask for from my department. I called Frank, somewhat desperate, in December. I got about two sentences in when he stopped me and said "Admiral, what can I do?" Needless to say, his capable management skills and the respect given him by the entire community made the Navy tournament a success. I honestly do not know what we will do without his wise counsel and assistance. I think "what can I do?" summed up Frank's interaction with most of the debate community. I have heard and am sure I will continue to hear many stories of him riding to the rescue of programs or people in need of assistance, in addition to his continual service to and support of the ADA. To Trinity alums and debaters, and especially to Jarrod and Jamie, you have our condolences, and in the spirit of Frank, let us know what we can do. To Frank--fair winds and following seas, as a true friend of Navy Debate. You will be missed. Danielle Verney O'Gorman (aka Admiral Daisy) Navy Debate _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090604/b3777f8f/attachment.htm From privethedge at yahoo.com Thu Jun 4 07:21:56 2009 From: privethedge at yahoo.com (Duane Hyland) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 05:21:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [eDebate] Sad News Message-ID: <836554.372.qm@web50902.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Rank Harrison was a good friend to Mansfield Univeristy's debate team when we still had a program - he and Coach Watts are good friends, and everytime I talked to him I thought he was one of the nicest people in this community. The former MU debaters will miss him a lot, and his loss is very sad indeed. ? Duane "You may be whatever you resolve to be." Thomas J. Jackson" "If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that person that he, if he had the power, would be in silencing mankind? If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by??its collision with error." John S. Mill ? President Barack Obama: "So explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial...uh..." (Politico5/29/09)? Boy..do I feel safe...... --- On Wed, 6/3/09, Jarrod Atchison wrote: From: Jarrod Atchison Subject: [eDebate] Sad News To: edebate at www.ndtceda.com Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 10:39 PM It is with great sadness that I write to let the debate community know that Frank Harrison passed away Monday, June 1, at his home in Galveston, TX. Frank was the Director of Debate at Trinity University for twenty years. During that time he was a tremendous coach, teacher, and friend to countless debaters both at Trinity University and within the debate community at large. At the 1961 National Debate Tournament, Frank was third speaker and final round participant for King's College. He later earned a degree from Harvard Law and served as a United States Representative for the state of Pennsylvania. Debate, however, was his passion. He was the 2003 Dr. Lucy M. Keele Award winner, chair of the National Debate Tournament committee, and host of the 1991 National Debate Tournament. Although he had success coaching throughout the nation, his heart was always with the American Debate Association where he served in almost every official capacity including president. There are already articles being written on his tenure in Congress (like the two below), but I hope that we will be vigilant in reminding the world that Frank Harrison was first and foremost a director of debate and that in that role he was one of our best. Sincerely, Jarrod Atchison http://www.citizensvoice.com/articles/2009/06/03/news/doc4a26fc39911f1177769059.txt http://lulacpoliticaletter.blogspot.com/2009/06/lulac-edition-837-june-3rd-2009.html -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090604/5b125090/attachment.htm From berchnorto at msn.com Thu Jun 4 09:45:20 2009 From: berchnorto at msn.com (NEIL BERCH) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 10:45:20 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Condolences In-Reply-To: <804983.43747.qm@web32704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <804983.43747.qm@web32704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Indeed, even though Frank hadn't been doing that well for a while, I'm overwhelmed with sadness. Three memories: 1. When we established a small tournament in memory of my late predecessor, John Jacobsohn, Frank insisted on attending, and he dragged his team from San Antonio to Morgantown to honor the memory of his friend. 2. While Frank was so helpful to me as a new coach who had never debated, we quickly found that we were on opposite sides of virtually every issue facing the debate community. Frank never let that interfere with our friendship. Despite his very strong opinions, he always discussed these issues with respect and good humor. And I remember one incredibly lengthy and contentious ADA Business meeting that Frank chaired. After 10 hours, I realized that even though he held strong opinions on virtually every issue that had been discussed, it would have been impossible to determine from the meeting just what his opinions were. He was scrupulously fair. 3. Finally, a word about Frank's brief congressional career (a story that I tell in American Politics classes to illustrate the power of pork barrel representation). Frank's long-time predecessor (not his immediate predecessor but the person who held the seat for decades) was much-beloved in the district, in large part due to his ability to secure federal funds (particularly after natural disasters). He was so beloved that he continued to have electoral success even after federal prosecutors went after him (Gary Trudeau did a week's worth of Doonesbury strips on him). When this gentleman (a conservative Democrat) had to leave office due to the scandal, his seat was captured by a Republican. Frank (another conservative Democrat) then captured the seat in the next election. During his single term in office, a major flood hit the district. At the time of the flood, Frank was on a Congressional trip to South America and couldn't get back immediately due to travel difficulties. His opponent in the upcoming election got great (and somewhat unfair) mileage out of contrasting Frank with the long-time congressman who was great at getting money for the district, and this helped to lead to the end of Congressman Harrison's brief career. I knew the first part of the story (about the long-time congressman) from the historical record. The second part of the story (about Frank and his defeat) came from a reliable source, Frank himself (and I heard him tell it multiple times). And he always told the story with good humor. He claimed he only objected to one thing about his opponent's characterization of Frank sitting at poolside in South America, sipping martinis while the district suffered from the flood. "Everyone knew," Frank would protest, "that I only drank white wine." I believe I'll raise a glass of Chardonay (however you spell that) in Frank's memory tonight. --Neil Berch West Virginia University ----- Original Message ----- From: Danielle Verney To: edebate at ndtceda.com Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 8:11 AM Subject: Re: [eDebate] Condolences Upon hearing the news I was at a loss for words--and even still I am finding it difficult to express how sad I am. When I was an undergrad helping to manage the Cap Cities tournament, Frank nicknamed me The General (I must have a talent for barking orders). Upon learning of my move to Navy, I got an email from Frank telling me that I was being "upgraded" to The Admiral. I had quite literally no idea how to run a debate tournament my first year at Navy and I had very little assistance from the Academy as we were between Officer Reps and I wasn't even sure what to ask for from my department. I called Frank, somewhat desperate, in December. I got about two sentences in when he stopped me and said "Admiral, what can I do?" Needless to say, his capable management skills and the respect given him by the entire community made the Navy tournament a success. I honestly do not know what we will do without his wise counsel and assistance. I think "what can I do?" summed up Frank's interaction with most of the debate community. I have heard and am sure I will continue to hear many stories of him riding to the rescue of programs or people in need of assistance, in addition to his continual service to and support of the ADA. To Trinity alums and debaters, and especially to Jarrod and Jamie, you have our condolences, and in the spirit of Frank, let us know what we can do. To Frank--fair winds and following seas, as a true friend of Navy Debate. You will be missed. Danielle Verney O'Gorman (aka Admiral Daisy) Navy Debate ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. Check it out. _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090604/7852ef08/attachment.htm From Roy.Eno at utsa.edu Thu Jun 4 12:37:29 2009 From: Roy.Eno at utsa.edu (Roy Eno) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 12:37:29 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Frank Harrison Message-ID: <7CE039ACB3DF9645B48718D2FDB21DCAD73F81@opal1604.UTSARR.NET> Condolences to Frank's family friends and students! The common thread used by all remembering Frank is kindness which I experienced first hand at a tournament in Texas years ago. I was ill the morning of outrounds. I showed up to judge. Frank took one look at me and said, "Skip, come with me to the ballot table." At the table, he grabbed my ballot, looked at the director and said, "I'm Skip Eno." Obviously, this was before the days of MPJ; so, not a soul objected, though some may have privately celebrated. Frank was already missed within this community, and now he is missed in the much larger world--Peace, Frank! Skip -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090604/32240f95/attachment.htm From lenehan20 at hotmail.com Thu Jun 4 13:39:56 2009 From: lenehan20 at hotmail.com (Katherine Lavelle) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 13:39:56 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] FW: Condolences In-Reply-To: References: <804983.43747.qm@web32704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I share the debate community's sadness with the loss of Frank Harrison. When I was in my first year of coaching at Miami University, Frank was always very supportive of my efforts to transition from debater to coach. I clearly remember pacing the halls at the Clarion ADA, and Frank offered kind words for my coaching abilities, as well as our team's performance. This support continued as I was out on the job market. Frank was convinced that I needed to be a director somewhere. While it is important to have support from your coaches and directors, having individuals in the community support future coaches is just as important. I appreciate Frank's efforts over the years, and hope that he is in a more peaceful place. I send my condolences to his family, close friends, and students who benefited from his wonderful spirit over the years. Katherine L. Lavelle Director of Forensics University of Northern Iowa You must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Don't be resigned to that. Break out! ? Mr. Keating, Tom Schulman Dead Poets Society From: berchnorto at msn.com To: edebate at ndtceda.com; daisy_verney at hotmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 10:45:20 -0400 Subject: Re: [eDebate] Condolences Indeed, even though Frank hadn't been doing that well for a while, I'm overwhelmed with sadness. Three memories: 1. When we established a small tournament in memory of my late predecessor, John Jacobsohn, Frank insisted on attending, and he dragged his team from San Antonio to Morgantown to honor the memory of his friend. 2. While Frank was so helpful to me as a new coach who had never debated, we quickly found that we were on opposite sides of virtually every issue facing the debate community. Frank never let that interfere with our friendship. Despite his very strong opinions, he always discussed these issues with respect and good humor. And I remember one incredibly lengthy and contentious ADA Business meeting that Frank chaired. After 10 hours, I realized that even though he held strong opinions on virtually every issue that had been discussed, it would have been impossible to determine from the meeting just what his opinions were. He was scrupulously fair. 3. Finally, a word about Frank's brief congressional career (a story that I tell in American Politics classes to illustrate the power of pork barrel representation). Frank's long-time predecessor (not his immediate predecessor but the person who held the seat for decades) was much-beloved in the district, in large part due to his ability to secure federal funds (particularly after natural disasters). He was so beloved that he continued to have electoral success even after federal prosecutors went after him (Gary Trudeau did a week's worth of Doonesbury strips on him). When this gentleman (a conservative Democrat) had to leave office due to the scandal, his seat was captured by a Republican. Frank (another conservative Democrat) then captured the seat in the next election. During his single term in office, a major flood hit the district. At the time of the flood, Frank was on a Congressional trip to South America and couldn't get back immediately due to travel difficulties. His opponent in the upcoming election got great (and somewhat unfair) mileage out of contrasting Frank with the long-time congressman who was great at getting money for the district, and this helped to lead to the end of Congressman Harrison's brief career. I knew the first part of the story (about the long-time congressman) from the historical record. The second part of the story (about Frank and his defeat) came from a reliable source, Frank himself (and I heard him tell it multiple times). And he always told the story with good humor. He claimed he only objected to one thing about his opponent's characterization of Frank sitting at poolside in South America, sipping martinis while the district suffered from the flood. "Everyone knew," Frank would protest, "that I only drank white wine." I believe I'll raise a glass of Chardonay (however you spell that) in Frank's memory tonight. --Neil Berch West Virginia University ----- Original Message ----- From: Danielle Verney To: edebate at ndtceda.com Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 8:11 AM Subject: Re: [eDebate] Condolences Upon hearing the news I was at a loss for words--and even still I am finding it difficult to express how sad I am. When I was an undergrad helping to manage the Cap Cities tournament, Frank nicknamed me The General (I must have a talent for barking orders). Upon learning of my move to Navy, I got an email from Frank telling me that I was being "upgraded" to The Admiral. I had quite literally no idea how to run a debate tournament my first year at Navy and I had very little assistance from the Academy as we were between Officer Reps and I wasn't even sure what to ask for from my department. I called Frank, somewhat desperate, in December. I got about two sentences in when he stopped me and said "Admiral, what can I do?" Needless to say, his capable management skills and the respect given him by the entire community made the Navy tournament a success. I honestly do not know what we will do without his wise counsel and assistance. I think "what can I do?" summed up Frank's interaction with most of the debate community. I have heard and am sure I will continue to hear many stories of him riding to the rescue of programs or people in need of assistance, in addition to his continual service to and support of the ADA. To Trinity alums and debaters, and especially to Jarrod and Jamie, you have our condolences, and in the spirit of Frank, let us know what we can do. To Frank--fair winds and following seas, as a true friend of Navy Debate. You will be missed. Danielle Verney O'Gorman (aka Admiral Daisy) Navy Debate Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. Check it out. _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. Get it on your BlackBerry or iPhone. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090604/b406ab1e/attachment.htm From debateaboutdebate at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 16:56:25 2009 From: debateaboutdebate at gmail.com (Thurman Munson) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 17:56:25 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Debate about the topic wording Message-ID: <442fcede0906041456p385d0ee5l1ee7e52830772ada@mail.gmail.com> http://www.debateaboutdebate.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090604/0bca4ef4/attachment.htm From kel1773 at msn.com Thu Jun 4 20:51:55 2009 From: kel1773 at msn.com (Kelly Young) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 21:51:55 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Debate about the topic wording Message-ID: This is a great idea. I was just thinking what we really need is another 1000 websites with topic comments that have zero likelihood that anyone on the topic committee will read them. How about you post comments on the topic.cedadebate.org. Or perhaps email the committee members who addresses are all linked on that site. The assertion that the committee is spread thin is laughable and hasty. Just because you can't figure out how to press "respond" on the site or use email doesn't mean the committee is non-responsive. Kelly Kelly M. Young, Ph.D. Director of Forensics/ Assistant Professor Communication Department Wayne State University 585 Manoogian Hall Detroit, MI 48201 (313) 577-2953 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090604/50e3f661/attachment.htm From andy.edebate at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 00:16:35 2009 From: andy.edebate at gmail.com (Andy Ellis) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 01:16:35 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Debate about the topic wording In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9368bc9b0906042216s1fc90ea4g6ba158ac83f16a08@mail.gmail.com> Wow thats kinda a harsh thing to say to what seems to be a pretty cool platform that somebody put some work into...you might be right about parts of it, but it kinda seems like you went to the first line and where like oh m Gee i can't believe the insolence of this person... I like jarmen's drupal site, he has made a lot of good additions to it...though outside of the topic page none of the cedadebate.org things have become something people need, or want to discuss...not sticky at all...the most recent comment last time i checked was me bitching about some formatting stuff and in the three weeks since i made reasonable technical complaints not a single person said any thing....the debate about debate has a function that makes me want to come back...i like it...i want my debate sites to be like the rest of the internet but doing the things we find interesting...numbersgame wins there and so does debateaboutdebate On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Kelly Young wrote: > This is a great idea. I was just thinking what we really need is another > 1000 websites with topic comments that have zero likelihood that anyone on > the topic committee will read them. How about you post comments on the > topic.cedadebate.org. Or perhaps email the committee members who addresses > are all linked on that site. > The assertion that the committee is spread thin is laughable and > hasty. Just because you can't figure out how to press "respond" on the site > or use email doesn't mean the committee is non-responsive. > > Kelly > > Kelly M. Young, Ph.D. > Director of Forensics/ > Assistant Professor > Communication Department > Wayne State University > 585 Manoogian Hall > Detroit, MI 48201 > (313) 577-2953 > > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090605/a66053bb/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Fri Jun 5 00:47:58 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 00:47:58 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] "open gubment" project censors idea to end imperial presidency Message-ID: also getting barraged with eligibility questions about the birth certificate. what is obama going to do in oklahoma '12 where to be on the ballot one must submit their birth certificate to state officials? that's a law developed in response to his evasiveness in the courts. will other states suspicious of his coveted hawaiian short-form enact similar laws? the open gubment project is going too far with news organizations disclosing everything in the white house while the ante on surveillance is upped over the cheney level by the DOJ. smells like smoke and mirrors. it is best to think of obama as nietzsche thought of women, "in the act of taking off his clothes he puts them back on." only the middle class naive cows believe this stupid routine going on. the most obvious clue is how much they are trying too hard to be transparent. please, obama, you are fake and in bad taste: http://www.alternet.org/media/140443/obama%27s_%22open_government%22_project_censors_popular_proposal_to_%22end_imperial_presidency%22/ Is irony even the word for this? The president created a new online "open government" system in which people were free to brainstorm and vote proposals up or down. Far and away the leading proposal in the category of "Legal and Policy Challenges" as of the scheduled end of brainstorming was End Imperial Presidency. You can still find it, but it's been removed from that category and from the list of all proposals. Unless you have the direct link to it, you cannot find it, and when you do you can no longer vote for it. It has a label at the top with a closed lock and the words "pending moderator approval." When voting was scheduled to end on the 28th, this proposal was at the top in its category and ranked #3 over all.Then the Open Government announced that it would keep the brainstorming open until June 19th and not begin Phase 2, involving discussion of the brainstormed ideas until June 3rd. So, voting continued, and "End Imperial Presidency" moved up to second place over all. And here we are on June 3rd, and the proposal has been removed from the running. I'm not sure if you call this irony, but I definitely wouldn't call it Open Government. During the campaign, the top demand of Obama's supporters on his website was that he keep his promise to oppose and filibuster immunity for telecom companies. During the presidential transition, the top question was whether Obama would allow the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor for Bush-Cheney. Both of those proposals were rejected. Now this one has been rejected as well.In case it's deleted from the "Open" Government, this was the proposal to end the imperial presidency:Leave the White House less imperial than you found it. Appoint an independent prosecutor to prosecute Bush, Cheney, and their top officials in order to deter in the future the crimes of aggressive war, misleading congress, defrauding congress, misspending funds, war crimes, murder, warrantless spying, torture, domestic propaganda, violations of the Hatch Act and the Voting Rights Act, obstruction of justice, misprision of felony, retaliating against whistleblowers, etc. Restore to Congress the power to legislate, the power to begin and end wars, the power to raise and spend money, the power to approve or reject treaties and appointments, and the power to oversee the functioning of the federal government including through the power of impeachment and the power of inherent contempt. That means no more signing statements rewriting laws, and instead support for legislation that would criminalize such behavior. And it means similar action on each of the other offenses.We, the people, must:Demand that Congress ban the use of funds for any activities created in violation of the law by presidential signing statements.Amend the Constitution to clearly ban the use of presidential pardons to pardon crimes authorized by the president.Amend the War Powers Act and the Constition to include the requirement that Congressional authorizations of war include time limits of no more than 12 months, after which Congress must vote again to extend the war or end it, to disallow the unconstitutional initiation of wars without Congressional approval, and to make the law enforceable.Make war profiteering by any war maker a major felony. This would apply to any employee of the federal government or anyone who had within the past decade been an employee of the federal government.Legislate a requirement that, in any war, the military aged children and grandchildren of the president, the vice president, all cabinet officials, and all Congress members serve on the front lines in the most dangerous combat positions -- no exceptions, no exemptions. Prohibit the use of mercenaries or any armed contractors, as well as the use of any military force on American soil except when directly engaged in defensive war against a foreign nation.Repeal the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, the Protect America Act, the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the PATRIOT Act.Ban secret budgets, secret laws, and secret agencies.Change the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster.Create a task force to research whether the Senate has ever served any useful purpose not better served by the House.End all rendition, as distinct from extradition.Amend the Constitution to make the ban on ex-post-facto laws include any laws that would retroactively grant immunity for crimes.Amend the Constitution to bar the vice president from exercising executive power.Amend the Constitution to clarify the congressional power of inherent contempt.Amend the Constitution to include the right to vote and to have one's vote counted publicly at the polling place.Give Washington, D.C., full voting representation in Congress.Amend the Constitution to ban private financing of campaigns, create public financing, and provide free air time to candidates.Sign and ratify the Rome treaty to join the International Criminal Court.*****OPTIONAL PART 2 OF THIS PROPOSAL - Drafted and withheld at first, posted May 29th in response to useful comments from ttahiti and many others posted below.Release more evidence, and support organizations suing in court for the release of evidence.Ask Congress to update and reissue the subpoenas that were refused during the 110th Congress, and to enforce them through inherent contempt.Support media reform and independent media outlets. Break up the monopolies. Invest in public media, including an E-Span election network to provide free substantive election coverage.Advance a long-term vision in which the corrupting influences of money, media, and party are restrained, and our rights are restored, enforced, and expanded, including the right to vote and to have our votes counted publicly and locally, equal rights for all, environmental rights, the right to education and healthcare, worker rights, the right to basic welfare, freedom of press, freedom from war lies, and the right to know your rights.Push for approval, ratification, and enforcement of international human rights treaties. Build toward Constitutional amendments or a convention with a plan to establish the right to know the laws and to have them applied equally, a ban on signing statements, whistleblowers protected, inherent contempt established, corporations stripped of human rights, monopolies restricted, clean campaign money and free media created, the power of parties reduced, nonpartisan (not bipartisan) redistricting, limiting election seasons, no more electoral college, a bigger House with no Senate, the right to be represented, no appointing of senators, limiting terms for judges, requiring a balanced budget, limiting bills to single topics and requiring clarity, allowing legislation by public initiative, allowing recall elections, creating citizen assemblies, and developing a fourth (people's) branch of government.Why Is This Idea Important?Empires end and they can end happily by voluntarily reforming, or they can end miserably by refusing to. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090605/bd8f3a81/attachment.htm From james.maritato at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 12:56:15 2009 From: james.maritato at gmail.com (James Maritato) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 13:56:15 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] The Debate About Debate Message-ID: Best debate website ever: http://bit.ly/23csky -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090605/754e4ff8/attachment.htm From jarrod.atchison at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 15:38:02 2009 From: jarrod.atchison at gmail.com (Jarrod Atchison) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 15:38:02 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Fwd: Frank Harrison In-Reply-To: <348B2A31FF98E2488A7F8CB740645B61181F267B@its-goliad.trinity.local> References: <348B2A31FF98E2488A7F8CB740645B611A0F0B01@its-goliad.trinity.local> <348B2A31FF98E2488A7F8CB740645B61181F267B@its-goliad.trinity.local> Message-ID: Below is the official announcement from Trinity University From: Jones Schweitzer, Sharon Sent: Fri 6/5/2009 3:09 PM To: Trinity Faculty/Staff Subject: Frank Harrison It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Frank Harrison, former associate professor of speech and drama and director of Trinity University's debate program. Professor Harrison died earlier this week at his home in Galveston. He was 69. Professor Harrison had a remarkable career in several fields during his lifetime, serving in academia, law, the military, and government. His favorite field, however, was forensics and he was the driving force in reestablishing Trinity's debate program when he came to the University in 1988. He taught several courses in the speech and drama department, and was very active in the life of the University, serving as chair of the Publications Board, the Committee on Scholarships and Financial Aid, and the First Year Seminar Steering Committee. He was also presiding judge of the University Court and parliamentarian of the Faculty Assembly. Outside Trinity, Professor Harrison was deeply involved with several academic organizations related to speech and debate including serving as president of the American Debate Association. He presented numerous publications at academic conferences on free speech and debate. After he retired from Trinity in 2006, Professor Harrison volunteered as an adviser to the debate program, traveling with Trinity teams to offer instruction or help as a judge. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 11th Congressional District in 1982 and served one term, and was a member of the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. After leaving Congress, Professor Harrison became the city attorney for Wilkes-Barre before coming to Trinity. He received a bachelor's degree from King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. and a juris doctor from Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1965 and practiced law for several years in Wilkes-Barre. Donations may be made in memory of Professor Harrison to the Trinity University debate program. Sharon Jones Schweitzer Asst. Vice President for University Communications Trinity University One Trinity Place San Antonio, Texas 78212 (210) 999-8406 sjones at trinity.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090605/c7d3e3e4/attachment.htm From scottelliott at grandecom.net Fri Jun 5 15:39:11 2009 From: scottelliott at grandecom.net (scottelliott at grandecom.net) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:39:11 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Is there any reason why.... Message-ID: <20090605153911.294266beht3pk033@webmail.grandecom.net> ....either one of these resolutions are not superior to the results of three days of overthinking?: Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce its nuclear weapons. Resolved: The United States Federal Government should make substantial and tangible efforts toward abolishing nuclear weapons. From jbhdb8 at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 16:15:24 2009 From: jbhdb8 at gmail.com (Josh) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 17:15:24 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Is there any reason why.... In-Reply-To: <20090605153911.294266beht3pk033@webmail.grandecom.net> References: <20090605153911.294266beht3pk033@webmail.grandecom.net> Message-ID: One reason of the top of my head The topic paper explicitly was a POSTURE paper not a reductions topic (page one)...many changes in posture dont require a reductions in weapons. Josh On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 4:39 PM, wrote: > ....either one of these resolutions are not superior to the results of > three days of overthinking?: > > Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially > reduce its nuclear weapons. > > > Resolved: The United States Federal Government should make substantial > and tangible efforts toward abolishing nuclear weapons. > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090605/e35fa24e/attachment.htm From stannardmatt at hotmail.com Fri Jun 5 18:31:53 2009 From: stannardmatt at hotmail.com (matt stannard) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 17:31:53 -0600 Subject: [eDebate] Fwd: Frank Harrison In-Reply-To: References: <348B2A31FF98E2488A7F8CB740645B611A0F0B01@its-goliad.trinity.local> <348B2A31FF98E2488A7F8CB740645B61181F267B@its-goliad.trinity.local> Message-ID: Frank Harrison first judged me at the American University institute the summer before my senior year of high school. He was cordial, engaging and extremely on-point then, and remained so in all our interactions in subsequent years. It was obvious he loved debate and cared for his students, and all students. matt Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 15:38:02 -0500 From: jarrod.atchison at gmail.com To: edebate at www.ndtceda.com Subject: [eDebate] Fwd: Frank Harrison Below is the official announcement from Trinity University From: Jones Schweitzer, Sharon Sent: Fri 6/5/2009 3:09 PM To: Trinity Faculty/Staff Subject: Frank Harrison It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Frank Harrison, former associate professor of speech and drama and director of Trinity University's debate program. Professor Harrison died earlier this week at his home in Galveston. He was 69. Professor Harrison had a remarkable career in several fields during his lifetime, serving in academia, law, the military, and government. His favorite field, however, was forensics and he was the driving force in reestablishing Trinity's debate program when he came to the University in 1988. He taught several courses in the speech and drama department, and was very active in the life of the University, serving as chair of the Publications Board, the Committee on Scholarships and Financial Aid, and the First Year Seminar Steering Committee. He was also presiding judge of the University Court and parliamentarian of the Faculty Assembly. Outside Trinity, Professor Harrison was deeply involved with several academic organizations related to speech and debate including serving as president of the American Debate Association. He presented numerous publications at academic conferences on free speech and debate. After he retired from Trinity in 2006, Professor Harrison volunteered as an adviser to the debate program, traveling with Trinity teams to offer instruction or help as a judge. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 11th Congressional District in 1982 and served one term, and was a member of the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. After leaving Congress, Professor Harrison became the city attorney for Wilkes-Barre before coming to Trinity. He received a bachelor's degree from King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. and a juris doctor from Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1965 and practiced law for several years in Wilkes-Barre. Donations may be made in memory of Professor Harrison to the Trinity University debate program. Sharon Jones Schweitzer Asst. Vice President for University Communications Trinity University One Trinity Place San Antonio, Texas 78212 (210) 999-8406 sjones at trinity.edu _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090605/faf88b50/attachment.htm From stannardmatt at hotmail.com Fri Jun 5 18:34:11 2009 From: stannardmatt at hotmail.com (matt stannard) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 17:34:11 -0600 Subject: [eDebate] The Debate About Debate In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: How did they convince Seth Gannon to wear that tophat and monacle? mjs Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 13:56:15 -0400 From: james.maritato at gmail.com To: edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: [eDebate] The Debate About Debate Best debate website ever: http://bit.ly/23csky _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090605/47417348/attachment.htm From lacyjp at wfu.edu Fri Jun 5 20:02:12 2009 From: lacyjp at wfu.edu (JP Lacy) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:02:12 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Forget the Neg. Message-ID: <4A29C014.4030409@wfu.edu> The King is dead. --JP From bratt at capitol-debate.com Fri Jun 5 20:14:12 2009 From: bratt at capitol-debate.com (bratt at capitol-debate.com) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:14:12 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Frank Harrison Message-ID: <20090605181412.8cce6020757326d78a2cd7ce56dd3822.020042d3e8.wbe@email.secureserver.net> I was so sad to learn that Frank Harrison died this week. He has given so much to the debate community in his service to the American Debate Association, Trinity and so many of our tab rooms across the nation. When Catholic University hosted Cap Cities, Frank always volunteered to help run the ADA side of the tournament. He was a great friend to all of us in the ADA debate community and his service to the debate community was extraordinarily inspiring to me. Frank was a debate icon that will be sorely missed. Ron Bratt From kkuswa at richmond.edu Fri Jun 5 20:22:15 2009 From: kkuswa at richmond.edu (Kuswa, Kevin) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 21:22:15 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Frank Harrison In-Reply-To: <20090605181412.8cce6020757326d78a2cd7ce56dd3822.020042d3e8.wbe@email.secureserver.net> References: <20090605181412.8cce6020757326d78a2cd7ce56dd3822.020042d3e8.wbe@email.secureserver.net> Message-ID: <0212E622749FDB4EA3A538AF1F4ECC4F01A9378B65@UREXCHANGESCC.richmond.edu> these posts about frank have been good to read--he's meant so much to so many. i'll always remember his unconditional kindness to all involved in debate, one of the elder guides of the activity. frank always lived the important anxiom that the people matter first in debate. we'll miss his presence immensely in the ada and beyond. kevin ________________________________________ From: edebate-bounces at ndtceda.com [edebate-bounces at ndtceda.com] On Behalf Of bratt at capitol-debate.com [bratt at capitol-debate.com] Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 9:14 PM To: edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: [eDebate] Frank Harrison I was so sad to learn that Frank Harrison died this week. He has given so much to the debate community in his service to the American Debate Association, Trinity and so many of our tab rooms across the nation. When Catholic University hosted Cap Cities, Frank always volunteered to help run the ADA side of the tournament. He was a great friend to all of us in the ADA debate community and his service to the debate community was extraordinarily inspiring to me. Frank was a debate icon that will be sorely missed. Ron Bratt _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate From andy.edebate at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 20:33:24 2009 From: andy.edebate at gmail.com (Andy Ellis) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 21:33:24 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] New google tools ... Message-ID: <9368bc9b0906061833u3ac9ef08wef4942da1eb33149@mail.gmail.com> in case you where all engulfed in topicness...your searching capabilities might have just improved...not spam, not paid by google for clickthroughs, just interesting and useful http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-search-options-and-other-updates.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090606/b5a82e19/attachment.htm From blain at unt.edu Sun Jun 7 11:29:21 2009 From: blain at unt.edu (Brian Lain) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 11:29:21 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] A sad announcement Message-ID: Dear friends, It is with sad news that I write to you today. This morning Dr. John Gossett passed away at Methodist Hospital in Dallas, TX. John had been fighting infection for the last several days and although his spirit was willing, his body needed to rest beyond that which could be provided. Many of you know that Dr. Gossett had been dealing with complications arising from infection after his organ transplant last year. Dr. Gossett debated at the University of Houston graduating in 1974. He served as a teaching assistant and debate coach at the University of Houston from 1974-1976, and then did graduate work at the University of Southern California completing his degree in 1979. Before coming to North Texas, he served as the Director at the University of Northern Iowa (1979-1981). Dr. Gossett was a member of the North Texas faculty for 28 years. He taught classes on rhetoric and public address and advised scores of graduate and undergraduate students. He served as the Director of Debate for ten years, was a member of the NDT Committee from 1982 to 1990, and a member of the NDT Board of Trustees from 1992-2002 (serving as chair for four years). He guided the Department of Communication Studies as the chair for seventeen years. He was nominated as the University Educator of the Year in 1997 and 1998 and served as Vice-President of the Texas Speech Communication Association. Dr. Gossett was an active member of the University of North Texas community serving on multiple committees to help advance higher education in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. He was given the 'Fesser Graham award for unselfish service and total dedication by the UNT student government in 1987. He was the first recipient of the Joe G. Stewart Distinguished Service Award in 1998. And was given the Honors Faculty Excellence Award in 1998. He even served as the announcer for UNT commencements for two years under multiple presidents. Dr. Gossett was a driving force in the southwest for debate serving as the district chair and host multiple times. Gossett rebuilt the North Texas debate program and led the program to be a perennial qualifier for the National Debate Tournament. Under his leadership, the team won twenty different intercollegiate debate tournaments. He was a forceful teacher impacting many lives directly and indirectly through the classroom, the debate world, and his own life. Dr. Gossett believed in taking debate out of the round and into the community. He was an active Texas democrat, served as advisor to former Texas Governor Mark White, and served as an analyst for KDFW-TV (Channel 4) in Dallas. He was known for his service and dedication as a debate instructor who instilled a sense of intellectual curiosity in his students while encouraging personal, civic, and academic accountability. Services are being planned by the family for June 15, in Denton. -Brian From searwr6 at wfu.edu Sun Jun 7 12:05:56 2009 From: searwr6 at wfu.edu (searwr6) Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:05:56 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Airport Shuttle From Development Conference Message-ID: <4A2BF374.9040603@wfu.edu> Greetings all, The Development Conference will be offering rides, free of charge, from the Sundance hotel to the airport in Greensboro today and tomorrow. If you would like to arrange a ride, please email your flight departure information to searwr6 at wfu.edu, or give me a call at 339-223-0526. Best, -Will Sears From stables at usc.edu Sun Jun 7 12:12:16 2009 From: stables at usc.edu (Gordon Stables) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:12:16 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] [CEDA-L] A sad announcement In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <39c1ac890906071012t5eae1de0t88b1cccb2311b131@mail.gmail.com> I can only imagine that someone upstairs is starting a truly amazing debate program and needed two great coaches and even better human beings. Others knew John and Frank far better, but I count myself lucky to have known each of them. We are deeply saddened by their passing but so much better off for the time we had with them. Deepest condolences. Gordon Gordon Stables, Ph.D. Director of Debate & Forensics Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California Office: 213 740 2759 Fax: 213 740 3913 www.usctrojandebate.com On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Brian Lain wrote: > Dear friends, > > It is with sad news that I write to you today. ?This morning Dr. John > Gossett passed away at Methodist Hospital in Dallas, TX. ?John had > been fighting infection for the last several days and although his > spirit was willing, his body needed to rest beyond that which could be > provided. ?Many of you know that Dr. Gossett had been dealing with > complications arising from infection after his organ transplant last > year. > > Dr. Gossett debated at the University of Houston graduating in 1974. > He served as a teaching assistant and debate coach at the University > of Houston from 1974-1976, and then did graduate work at the > University of Southern California completing his degree in 1979. > Before coming to North Texas, he served as the Director at the > University of Northern Iowa (1979-1981). > > Dr. Gossett was a member of the North Texas faculty for 28 years. ?He > taught classes on rhetoric and public address and advised scores of > graduate and undergraduate students. ?He served as the Director of > Debate for ten years, was a member of the NDT Committee from 1982 to > 1990, and a member of the NDT Board of Trustees from 1992-2002 > (serving as chair for four years). ?He guided the Department of > Communication Studies as the chair for seventeen years. ?He was > nominated as the University ?Educator of the Year in 1997 and 1998 and > served as Vice-President of the Texas Speech Communication > Association. ?Dr. Gossett was an active member of the University of > North Texas community serving on multiple committees to help advance > higher education in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. ?He was given the > 'Fesser Graham award for unselfish service and total dedication by the > UNT student government in 1987. ?He was the first recipient of the Joe > G. Stewart Distinguished Service Award in 1998. ?And was given the > Honors Faculty Excellence Award in 1998. ?He even served as the > announcer for UNT commencements for two years under multiple presidents. > > Dr. Gossett was a driving force in the southwest for debate serving as > the district chair and host multiple times. ?Gossett rebuilt the North > Texas debate program and led the program to be a perennial qualifier > for the National Debate Tournament. Under his leadership, the team won > twenty different intercollegiate debate tournaments. ?He was a > forceful teacher impacting many lives directly and indirectly through > the classroom, the debate world, and his own life. > > Dr. Gossett believed in taking debate out of the round and into the > community. ?He was an active Texas democrat, served as advisor to > former Texas Governor Mark White, and served as an analyst for KDFW-TV > (Channel 4) in Dallas. He was known for his service and dedication as > a debate instructor who instilled a sense of intellectual curiosity in > his students while encouraging personal, civic, and academic > accountability. > > Services are being planned by the family for June 15, in Denton. > -Brian > _______________________________________________ > CEDA-L mailing list > CEDA-L at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/ceda-l > From jbhdb8 at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 12:37:02 2009 From: jbhdb8 at gmail.com (Josh) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:37:02 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Miss you Coach Message-ID: Friends, This part of the North Texas family is in shock today. Condolences to Brian and Jay and everyone else who had the honor of working with Doctor Gossett. Dr. G was my first college debate coach and the person who had to put up with most of my early shenenigans. I remember his booming voice yelling "HOE" like it was yesterday. I remember practice debates in front of him...I remember his first advice to me before my first debate tournament (not appropriate for edebate lol). I was lucky enough to have come back later and worked for Doctor Gossett for 7 years as a more mature (a little) coach. Gossett was as unique a person as you will ever meet. It is sad that so many new UNT debaters will never get to meet the person who was a mentor for so many of us. It will be like one of those conversations where you just "had to be there." First of all, he was larger than life....a towering figure who commanded your attention, who made you want to know what he had to say, and who was passionate about everything he put his mind to. He was a committed First Amendment scholar, was devoted to FDR and to the Democratic Party, he was such a devoted Yankees fan he named his dog Yankee and went to the Micks funeral. I had the pleasure of going to many Rangers/Yankees games with the G-Man and you could see the look on players like Paul O'Neals face as they heard this one booming voice through the crowd "Lets go Paulie." John Gossett was the most passionate friend to the University of North Texas and that North Texas Debate has and will ever have. I would often walk around town or go to lunch with Gossett and he would always know 90% of everyone we passed. Most of that is because along with all the rest of this Gossett was a great teacher and administrator and advocate for education and particularly debate. UNT Debate owes Gossett so much for its longevity, its space, and its pedigree its hard to put in words. Gossett was also a gigantic friend of the NDT. He was a member of the board of trustees, was always nervous about his job of getting the watches, and cared very deeply about the organization and the tournament. I last saw Gossett (he preferred to be called Gossett "call me Gosett for God's sake") in the hospital twice last summer. Even after being stuck in the hospital for what turned out to be years he still had his sense of humor, the ready smile, and a ton of stuff to say (when he wasnt getting in trouble for trying to escape the hospital). Today, I send all of my thoughts and feelings out to Karen and John Jr. John Jr. just started an internship at ESPN and I know John Sr. was incredibly proud. I still remember when Karen and John started dating and I remember when John Jr. was born. As many know, on Gosset's office door there was the following statement "I'm a Democrat without prefix, suffix, or apology." In honor of a great friend I hope he can hear when I say "Coach, I love you without prefix, suffix, or apology!" RIP Josh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090607/33214d7c/attachment.htm From jbhdb8 at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 12:43:32 2009 From: jbhdb8 at gmail.com (Josh) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:43:32 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Fwd: Miss you Coach In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Josh Date: Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 1:37 PM Subject: Miss you Coach To: stables at usc.edu Cc: Brian Lain , edebate at ndtceda.com, ceda-l at ndtceda.com Friends, This part of the North Texas family is in shock today. Condolences to Brian and Jay and everyone else who had the honor of working with Doctor Gossett. Dr. G was my first college debate coach and the person who had to put up with most of my early shenenigans. I remember his booming voice yelling "HOE" like it was yesterday. I remember practice debates in front of him...I remember his first advice to me before my first debate tournament (not appropriate for edebate lol). I was lucky enough to have come back later and worked for Doctor Gossett for 7 years as a more mature (a little) coach. Gossett was as unique a person as you will ever meet. It is sad that so many new UNT debaters will never get to meet the person who was a mentor for so many of us. It will be like one of those conversations where you just "had to be there." First of all, he was larger than life....a towering figure who commanded your attention, who made you want to know what he had to say, and who was passionate about everything he put his mind to. He was a committed First Amendment scholar, was devoted to FDR and to the Democratic Party, he was such a devoted Yankees fan he named his dog Yankee and went to the Micks funeral. I had the pleasure of going to many Rangers/Yankees games with the G-Man and you could see the look on players like Paul O'Neals face as they heard this one booming voice through the crowd "Lets go Paulie." John Gossett was the most passionate friend to the University of North Texas and that North Texas Debate has and will ever have. I would often walk around town or go to lunch with Gossett and he would always know 90% of everyone we passed. Most of that is because along with all the rest of this Gossett was a great teacher and administrator and advocate for education and particularly debate. UNT Debate owes Gossett so much for its longevity, its space, and its pedigree its hard to put in words. Gossett was also a gigantic friend of the NDT. He was a member of the board of trustees, was always nervous about his job of getting the watches, and cared very deeply about the organization and the tournament. I last saw Gossett (he preferred to be called Gossett "call me Gosett for God's sake") in the hospital twice last summer. Even after being stuck in the hospital for what turned out to be years he still had his sense of humor, the ready smile, and a ton of stuff to say (when he wasnt getting in trouble for trying to escape the hospital). Today, I send all of my thoughts and feelings out to Karen and John Jr. John Jr. just started an internship at ESPN and I know John Sr. was incredibly proud. I still remember when Karen and John started dating and I remember when John Jr. was born. As many know, on Gosset's office door there was the following statement "I'm a Democrat without prefix, suffix, or apology." In honor of a great friend I hope he can hear when I say "Coach, I love you without prefix, suffix, or apology!" RIP Josh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090607/4ecce67f/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Mon Jun 8 13:55:33 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 13:55:33 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] nytimes op-ed: OBAMA SUCKS ON THE ECONOMY Message-ID: go and read the whole article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07cohanWEB.html?_r=1 Mr. Obama thinks that the way to revive the economy is to restore confidence in it. If the mood is right, the capital will flow. But this belief is dangerously misguided. We are sympathetic to the extraordinary challenge the president faces, but if we?ve learned anything at all two years into the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, it is that a capital-markets system this dependent on public confidence is a shockingly inadequate foundation upon which to rest our economy. We have both spent large chunks of our lives working on Wall Street, absorbing its ethic and mores. We?re concerned that nothing has really been fixed. We?re doubly concerned that people appear to feel the worst of the storm is over ? and in this, they are aided and abetted by a hugely popular and charismatic president and by the fact that the Dow has increased by 35 percent or so since Mr. Obama started to lay out his economic plans in March. But wishing for improvement and managing by the Dow?s swings are a fool?s game. (Disclosure: One of us, Mr. Lewis, was convicted on federal charges of stock manipulation in 1989, pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001 and had his lifetime trading ban overturned by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2006; documents relating to the case can be found atsblewis.net.) The storm is not over, not by a long shot. Huge structural flaws remain in the architecture of our financial system, and many of the fixes that the Obama administration has proposed will do little to address them and may make them worse. At another fund-raising event, for Senator Harry Reid, President Obama said: ?We didn?t ask for the challenges that we face. But we are determined to answer the call to meet those challenges, to cast aside the old arguments and overcome the stubborn divisions and move forward as one people and one nation .... It will take time but I promise you, I promise you, I?ll always tell you the truth about the challenges we face.? Keeping that statement in mind ? as well as an abiding faith in the importance of properly functioning capital markets ? we have come up with a set of questions meant to challenge a popular president, with vast majorities in Congress, to find the flaws in the system, to figure out what?s being done to fix them and to get to the truth about the difficulties we face as we set out to restore the proper functioning of our markets and our standing in the world. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090608/a6725930/attachment.htm From jbhdb8 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 14:36:07 2009 From: jbhdb8 at gmail.com (Josh) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 15:36:07 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Gossett Memorial Service information Message-ID: Not meaning to step on Brian or anyone else's toes but I talked to Karen and Jay today and this is the information on the Gossett memorial, The memorial service for John will be held Monday, June 15 at 6:30 p.m. at Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church in Denton. People will be afforded an opportunity to speak as part of the service. Karen has requested in lieu of flowers that donations be made to the John S. Gossett Memorial Debate Scholarship through the Department of Communication Studies (1155 Union Circle #205268, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203-5268). Individuals wishing to make contributions to the scholarship should make checks payable to the UNT Foundation. >From what I can tell so far a very large amount of former and current Mean Green Eagles will be at the ceremony..It will be an amazing celebration of a great persons life! Josh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090608/109b39cd/attachment.htm From drmosbornesq at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 14:53:15 2009 From: drmosbornesq at gmail.com (bandana martin) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 13:53:15 -0600 Subject: [eDebate] nytimes op-ed: OBAMA SUCKS ON THE ECONOMY In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <39c09a80906081253i5b4d3b10o2557f4f9967ec7c6@mail.gmail.com> can somebody tell me how to delist myself from edebate? im serious. On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Old Strega wrote: > go and read the whole article > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07cohanWEB.html?_r=1 > Mr. Obama thinks that the way to revive the economy is to restore > confidence in it. If the mood is right, the capital will flow. But this > belief is dangerously misguided. We are sympathetic to the extraordinary > challenge the president faces, but if we?ve learned anything at all two > years into the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, it is that a > capital-markets system this dependent on public confidence is a shockingly > inadequate foundation upon which to rest our economy. > > We have both spent large chunks of our lives working on Wall Street, > absorbing its ethic and mores. We?re concerned that nothing has really been > fixed. We?re doubly concerned that people appear to feel the worst of the > storm is over ? and in this, they are aided and abetted by a hugely popular > and charismatic president and by the fact that the Dow has increased by 35 > percent or so since Mr. Obama started to lay out his economic plans in > March. But wishing for improvement and managing by the Dow?s swings are a > fool?s game. (Disclosure: One of us, Mr. Lewis, was convicted on federal > charges of stock manipulation in 1989, pardoned by President Bill Clinton in > 2001 and had his lifetime trading ban overturned by the Securities and > Exchange Commission in 2006; documents relating to the case can be found at > sblewis.net .) > The storm is not over, not by a long shot. Huge structural flaws remain in > the architecture of our financial system, and many of the fixes that the > Obama administration has proposed will do little to address them and may > make them worse. At another fund-raising event, for Senator Harry Reid, > President Obama said: > ?We didn?t ask for the challenges that we face. But we are determined to > answer the call to meet those challenges, to cast aside the old arguments > and overcome the stubborn divisions and move forward as one people and one > nation .... It will take time but I promise you, I promise you, I?ll always > tell you the truth about the challenges we face.? > Keeping that statement in mind ? as well as an abiding faith in the > importance of properly functioning capital markets ? we have come up with a > set of questions meant to challenge a popular president, with vast > majorities in Congress, to find the flaws in the system, to figure out > what?s being done to fix them and to get to the truth about the difficulties > we face as we set out to restore the proper functioning of our markets and > our standing in the world. > > ------------------------------ > Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. Check > it out. > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090608/4c27d07f/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Mon Jun 8 16:15:21 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 16:15:21 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] nytimes op-ed: OBAMA SUCKS ON THE ECONOMY Message-ID: i totally agree, except for the part about the restoration of capitalism. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETP6Ev8HOyI _ http://groups.myspace.com/zizekversuscolbert http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2246377316 ______________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090608/152962ed/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Mon Jun 8 20:40:52 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 20:40:52 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] empty outreach to muslims by president phosphorus? Message-ID: one card from a scathing critique of the imperial presidency (the idea deemed un-critique-able by the "open gubment project): http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13889 Obama's Cairo speech was profoundly disingenuous, much like others past and more recently. He decried the "killing of innocent men, women, and children," yet US forces slaughter them daily in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and supply Israel with billions of dollars and the latest weapons and technology to commit slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians, deny their legitimate self-determination, and right of their refugees to return home as international law demands.Also, Iraq and Afghanistan remain occupied, the former with unchanged troop levels for the duration if necessary and thousands more for the latter under a new commander, general Stanley McChrystal, known for his brutality as leader of the Pentagon's infamous Joint Special (death squad) Operations (JSO). No exiting timelines are in sight for either country. Human rights abuses and war crimes occur daily, and torture, extraordinary renditions, and military tribunals remain official US policies as they did under George Bush.America is a serial aggressor and abuser of binding human rights laws. High-sounding rhetoric changes nothing. Obama claimed America "did not go (to Afghanistan) by choice, we went of necessity....we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there....Iraq was a war of choice (but) I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.""Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future - and leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq's sovereignty is its own. That is why I ordered the removal of our combat brigades by next August (and) why we will honor our agreement with Iraq's democratically elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, (and) all our troops....by 2012."Secret provisions in the Pentagon's 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) indicate otherwise. They flagrantly violate Iraqi sovereignty and authorize the building of permanent US bases, camps, and prisons inside the country. They immunize US forces, civilian security, and private contractors from criminal prosecution. They assure Iraqi "democracy" is illusory.Their officials have no say over US operations, including incursions into other countries. They require Washington's approval before concluding any agreements with other countries. Key Iraqi ministries stay under US control, including defense, interior, and oil. No timeline is stipulated for America's withdrawal. Conditions depend on Iraqi force readiness, the removal of "security threats" in neighboring countries (namely, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine), and national reconciliation (meaning a defeated resistance). Unacknowledged is that America is in Iraq to stay, and the same holds for Afghanistan.The historical record shows what Obama won't say. America came to Japan in 1945 and South Korea in 1950, both close US allies, and remained there ever since. Obama plans the same fate for Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous other strategic countries where America intends permanent occupations towards its goal of "full spectrum dominance" globally, including by preemptive wars with first-strike nuclear weapons. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090608/50643036/attachment.htm From sjsnider at ksu.edu Tue Jun 9 20:47:16 2009 From: sjsnider at ksu.edu (Sarah Jane Green) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 20:47:16 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Topic Wordings? Message-ID: Were final wordings generated in Winston? The cedadebate.org website has not been updated since June 3rd. Is there somewhere else I should be looking? Sarah From kkuswa at richmond.edu Tue Jun 9 21:03:56 2009 From: kkuswa at richmond.edu (Kuswa, Kevin) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 22:03:56 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Topic Wordings? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0212E622749FDB4EA3A538AF1F4ECC4F01A9378BC4@UREXCHANGESCC.richmond.edu> Hi Sarah, i think the top of the google document pasted on the CEDA page has the correct slate. unofficially, the 3 topics are: Resolution 1: Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially change its nuclear posture to be more consistent with its nuclear disarmament commitments. Resolution 2: Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal, and/or substantially reduce and restrict the role and/or missions of its nuclear weapons arsenal. Resolution 3: Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially change its nuclear posture in one or more of the following ways: * Ratification and implementation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty * Adoption of a nuclear declaratory policy substantially reducing and restricting the use of its nuclear weapons * A substantial reduction in the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal * Negotiation and implementation of a bilateral agreement with Russia that at least includes a substantial reduction in nuclear weapons *A substantial decrease in the operational readiness of its nuclear weapons. kevin ________________________________________ From: edebate-bounces at ndtceda.com [edebate-bounces at ndtceda.com] On Behalf Of Sarah Jane Green [sjsnider at ksu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2009 9:47 PM To: edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: [eDebate] Topic Wordings? Were final wordings generated in Winston? The cedadebate.org website has not been updated since June 3rd. Is there somewhere else I should be looking? Sarah _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate From gordonm at pitt.edu Wed Jun 10 05:14:26 2009 From: gordonm at pitt.edu (Mitchell, Gordon Roger) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:14:26 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Speech and Debate Caucus Message-ID: Bracewell & Giuliani partner Scott H. Segal dropped some weighty material during last Saturday's closing session of the National Debate Development Conference (NDCC) held at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. Segal, former Emory debater and now one of the Beltway's top "Hired Guns" cued conferees' attention to the "Speech or Debate" clause of the U.S. Constitution: Article I, Section 6: ?The Senators and Representatives [?] shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.? Segal announced plans for the NDCC alumni networking working group to lead an effort aiming to establish a "Speech and Debate Caucus" in the U.S. Congress, beginning first with surveys of members, proceeding to formal enactment of the caucus. This represents an exciting development for American academic debate communities, something that would give us a formal political presence in the nation's leading deliberative body. What exactly might this mean? Segal hinted at the possibility that a Speech and Debate Caucus would be positioned to advocate for Urban Debate League funding, and press to restore the federal government research assistance program, where in previous years the Government Printing Office would publish a detailed sourcebook on that year's high school and college debate topics. But this could be just the tip of the iceberg. Segal also referenced an important U.S. Supreme Court case, Gravel v. United States (408 U.S. 606, 1972). Here, the Court broadened the scope of the Speech or Debate Clause by extending its coverage to legislative aides (not just members of Congress): PROCEDURAL POSTURE: Defendant senator filed motions to quash subpoenas in a grand jury criminal investigation, asserting that requiring witnesses to testify violated his privilege under the Speech or Debate Clause, U.S. Const. 1.6.1. The United States Court of Appeals for the First District affirmed the district court's denial of the motions but modified the protective order. Plaintiff United States appealed. OVERVIEW: The U.S. petitioned for certiorari challenging the ruling that aides and other persons could not be questioned with respect to legislative acts and that an aide to a member of Congress had a common-law privilege not to testify before a grand jury with respect to private publication of materials introduced into a subcommittee record. The senator also petitioned for certiorari seeking reversal of the court of appeals' decision insofar as it held private publication unprotected by the Speech or Debate Clause and asserting that the protective order of the court of appeals too narrowly protected against inquiries that a grand jury could direct to third parties. The Court held that the Speech or Debate Clause applied not only to a member but also to his aides insofar as the conduct of the latter was a protected legislative act if performed by the member himself, but did not protect illegal conduct. The Court noted that the courts had extended the privilege to matters beyond pure speech or debate in either house, but only when necessary to prevent indirect impairment of such deliberations. The Court vacated the court of appeals' judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings. OUTCOME: The Court vacated the court of appeals' judgment and remanded the matter to the court of appeals for revision of the protective order in accordance with the Court's opinion. Consider some implications of the "indirect impairment" doctrine established here. Does this doctrine mean that any person or organization taking actions that indirectly impair speech or debate in the U.S. Congress are potentially violating the U.S. Constitution? How far would this extend? What forms of injunctive relief might be available? Such questions are certainly ripe for research and reflection. While these are fascinating abstract issues, a more concrete aspect of the issue involves a resolution adopted later in the day by the NDDC plenary session: "The NDDC endorses the establishment of a U.S. Congressional Speech and Debate caucus and encourages that caucus to foster debate research and scholarship, including the publication of a CRS topic area packet, and support of a participatory design process oriented toward refinement and development of an open source digital debate archive." This resolution reflects NDDC conferees' sense that a digital debate archive (facilitating a transition to paperless debate and generation of "authority 3.0" metrics) should be built with open source code, using a participatory design process. These objectives may conflict with other plans soon to be unveiled, as rumors circulated during the NDDC conference that a commercial entity may be on the brink of releasing proprietary software designed to deliver archive functionality to academic debate communities. It is likely that such a commercial venture would feature "Big Design Up Front" development, conforming to the "Waterfall model" of software engineering. It is perhaps even the case that patent protections held by the corporation commercially marketing digital debate archive software could establish a legal basis for exclusivity, potentially blocking development of the participatory design process called for in the NDCC resolution. To date, commercial debate ventures utilizing electronic archiving (e.g. Planet Debate, Evazon) have not advanced aggressive exclusivity claims to quash open source efforts that might infringe on its patents. But this day may be coming soon, especially if a new profit-driven commercial entity enters the playing field. Members of the academic debate community would do well to start deliberations regarding this contingency, which would likely shape the trajectory of speech and debate in contexts far beyond the U.S. Congress for years to come. Relevant links Segal profile http://www.bracewellgiuliani.com/index.cfm/fa/lawyer.profile/attorney/69623c97-c342-4fcd-852b-ab2bb87c2034/Scott_Segal.cfm Segal best "Hired Gun" award announcement http://www.bracewellgiuliani.com/index.cfm/fa/news.release/item/14ea7180-0ab0-4047-a2e7-4520134a28d6/Ed_Krenik_Scott_Segal_Named_Best_Hired_Guns.cfm Big Design Up Front software model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Design_Up_Front Waterfall Model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model Carly Woods, Matthew Brigham, Brent Heavner, Takuzo Konishi, John Rief, Brent Saindon and Gordon R. Mitchell, "Deliberating Debate's Digital Futures," Contemporary Argumentation and Debate 27 (2006): 81-205. http://www.pitt.edu/~gordonm/JPubs/Woodsetal2006.pdf From blackdebateguy at hotmail.com Wed Jun 10 18:13:09 2009 From: blackdebateguy at hotmail.com (Douglas Dennis) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:13:09 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Are you looking for a debate coach/teaching job? Message-ID: If so, get back to me for logistics. Doug D From sykesjason at verizon.net Wed Jun 10 21:54:28 2009 From: sykesjason at verizon.net (Jason Sykes) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:54:28 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Seeking Rhonda E. Bell Message-ID: <6D1C62E67D9B4249AB4F12665372EA5F@JasonSykesPC> I apologize for the wasted bandwidth... If anyone has contact info for Ms. Rhonda Bell (of Chicago, not Houston), please backchannel. Thanks, jason -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090610/5cb9f2a2/attachment.htm From max.o.archer at gmail.com Thu Jun 11 09:52:30 2009 From: max.o.archer at gmail.com (Max Archer) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:52:30 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Unofficial Announcement - Augustana College Seeks Debate Hire Message-ID: <1944fe1d0906110752y742c97fk817b256c8d45e461@mail.gmail.com> This is an UNOFFICIAL announcement that Augustana College is exploring possibilities for hiring an additional debate coach for the 2009-2010 academic year. The specific details regarding this position should be finalized within the next three weeks, as funding for this position is pending. This position would assist in the direction of the Augustana Debate Team, and may include teaching responsibilities. The Augustana Debate Team is a young and growing group of students with varying degrees of debate experience. Augustana travels throughout the region and country to NDT/CEDA tournaments. The team receives substantial institutional support from the College and the Department of Communication Studies. The team is returning all of its debaters from this year, as well as adding several additional recruits. More information regarding the team can be found at the team's website: http://www.augustana.edu/debate. Augustana College is a selective, four-year, liberal arts institution of 2,500 students. Rock Island, Illinois is one of the Quad-Cities of Illinois and Iowa, a diverse metropolitan area on the Mississippi River with 400,000 residents. Augustana College is an equal opportunity employer and actively encourages applications from women and persons of diverse ethnic backgrounds. We do not discriminate based on age, race, color, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability or creed. Details about Augustana, our expectation of the faculty, the selection process, and the Quad Cities are all available at the Faculty Search website; http://www.augustanafaculty.org. An official announcement and job description should follow shortly. The position is UNOFFICIAL until the nature of the position is finalized and an official announcement can be made. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me directly at max.o.archer at gmail.com. Max Archer Director of Debate Augustana College -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090611/0d020852/attachment.htm From stannardmatt at hotmail.com Thu Jun 11 15:18:03 2009 From: stannardmatt at hotmail.com (matt stannard) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:18:03 -0600 Subject: [eDebate] of interest to californians Message-ID: Saturday on Shared Sacrifice Weekend: Adriel Hampton, candidate for U.S. Congress in the 2009 special election for California?s 10th District. 11AM-1PM Pacific Time. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Shared_Sacrifice Call-in number is (347) 327-9615 _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090611/c22efaa7/attachment.htm From stannardmatt at hotmail.com Fri Jun 12 11:12:31 2009 From: stannardmatt at hotmail.com (matt stannard) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:12:31 -0600 Subject: [eDebate] hey West Georgia folks Message-ID: This certainly raised my eyebrows... http://wsbradio.com/localnews/2009/06/crew-demolishes-wrong-house.html Apparently the demolisher used GPS to locate the home rather than the street address. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090612/6d279918/attachment.htm From alfred.snider at uvm.edu Sat Jun 13 14:56:05 2009 From: alfred.snider at uvm.edu (Alfred Snider) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:56:05 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Webcast of NFL Finals on 19 June Message-ID: <4A340455.2080103@uvm.edu> You can see the best high school speakers and debaters live on your computer. On Friday 19 June 2009 there will be a live webcast of a number of events from the National Forensic League's national speech and debate championship tournament from the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex Concert Hall in Birmingham, Alabama. The NFL Nationals is the largest speech and debate tournament in the world, with well over 5000 people attending. Competition will last all week leading up to Friday. The webcast can be viewed at http://www.uvm.edu/debate_theater/ Here are the times. All times are USA Central. 8 AM Original Oratory Finals 9:30 AM USA Extemporaneous Speaking Finals 11 AM International Extemporaneous Speaking Finals 12:30 PM Policy Debate Finals 2:30 PM Public Forum Debate Finals 3:30 PM Lincoln Douglas Debate Finals 5 PM Awards Program The webcast is sponsored by Debate Central, the World Debate Institute and the University of Vermont. Special thanks to the NFL for providing technical support, a three-camera shoot and fantastic events. -- Alfred C. Snider aka Tuna Edwin Lawrence Professor of Forensics University of Vermont Huber House, 475 Main Street, UVM, Burlington, VT 05405 USA Lawrence Debate Union http://debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/LDU/ Global Debate Blog http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com Debate Central http://debate.uvm.edu 802-656-0097 office telephone 802-656-4275 office fax From oldstrega at hotmail.com Sat Jun 13 17:00:09 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:00:09 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] will obama veto fed transparency bill? Message-ID: clearly, the best transparency idea of the obama presidency is NOT coming from the obama administration which leans heavily on its wall street ties (yes, the ties that gave him a 5 to 1 advantage on campaign spending during the election). kucinich pushes H.R. 1207 into majority support in the house: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=100855 Less than 24 hours after WND reported a proposal from U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, to audit the Federal Reserve was approaching majority support in the U.S. House, he is confirming the plan has reached that "crucial benchmark.""The tremendous grass-roots and bipartisan support in Congress for H.R. 1207 is an indicator of how mainstream America is fed up with Fed secrecy," Paul said shortly after U.S. Rep Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, became the 218th cosponsor, giving the plan, technically, majority support in the 435-member House."I look forward to this issue receiving greater public exposure," Paul said.A spokeswoman in Paul's office said by the end of the business day in Washington, D.C., the plan had attracted 221 cosponsors. She said hearings on the transparency of the Federal Reserve are expected over the next month as part of the Financial Services Committee's series of hearings on regulatory reform. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live?: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_BR_life_in_synch_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090613/329d0870/attachment.htm From malgorthewarrior at hotmail.com Mon Jun 15 13:14:39 2009 From: malgorthewarrior at hotmail.com (M G) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:14:39 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] topic Message-ID: is there a discussion of the topic going on somewhere? I see nothing on edebate or the CEDA site. Is it on the topic blog? I'm ready to hear the pitiful arguments in support of number 3. malgor _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090615/202895b8/attachment.htm From scottelliott at grandecom.net Mon Jun 15 14:19:53 2009 From: scottelliott at grandecom.net (scottelliott at grandecom.net) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:19:53 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] topic Message-ID: <20090615141953.10413o9q8wz1hqs9@webmail.grandecom.net> Topic Three is perfect. It is a perfect example of why decisions by consensus usually lead to the worst results. What will discussion on edebate yeild? There are only three topics to choose from and the choices are not much. I would just like an explanation of why we needed a list resolution with 86 words on this topic. I hope that, eventually, the community will elect people to Topic Committe who are opposed to list topics. Scott From delliott at KCKCC.EDU Mon Jun 15 15:47:01 2009 From: delliott at KCKCC.EDU (Darren Elliott) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:47:01 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] topic In-Reply-To: <20090615141953.10413o9q8wz1hqs9@webmail.grandecom.net> References: <20090615141953.10413o9q8wz1hqs9@webmail.grandecom.net> Message-ID: I wasnt in Winston-Salem and was not on the topic committee, even though my name is still listed on the website as so. Since I wasnt there or in on the discussions, I have a question for those in the know. In the opinion of the committee are the cases in the list in #3 all also topical under #1? thanks, chief ________________________________________ From: edebate-bounces at www.ndtceda.com [edebate-bounces at www.ndtceda.com] On Behalf Of scottelliott at grandecom.net [scottelliott at grandecom.net] Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 2:19 PM To: edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: [eDebate] topic Topic Three is perfect. It is a perfect example of why decisions by consensus usually lead to the worst results. What will discussion on edebate yeild? There are only three topics to choose from and the choices are not much. I would just like an explanation of why we needed a list resolution with 86 words on this topic. I hope that, eventually, the community will elect people to Topic Committe who are opposed to list topics. Scott _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate From kkuswa at richmond.edu Mon Jun 15 15:55:49 2009 From: kkuswa at richmond.edu (Kuswa, Kevin) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:55:49 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] topic In-Reply-To: References: <20090615141953.10413o9q8wz1hqs9@webmail.grandecom.net>, Message-ID: <0212E622749FDB4EA3A538AF1F4ECC4F01A9378C46@UREXCHANGESCC.richmond.edu> Darren, maybe....the topic committee was not willing to "write out topicality debates." that is one reason there are two options with fewer than a gazillion words (and the list is reasonable as far as lists go). I think you'll find lots of healthy disagreement on the committee, but it's really the words that matter at this point.... in fact, there may be a way to read a number of cases into the list (#3) that would not be topical under #1 or #2. kevin ________________________________________ From: edebate-bounces at ndtceda.com [edebate-bounces at ndtceda.com] On Behalf Of Darren Elliott [delliott at KCKCC.EDU] Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 4:47 PM To: scottelliott at grandecom.net; edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: Re: [eDebate] topic I wasnt in Winston-Salem and was not on the topic committee, even though my name is still listed on the website as so. Since I wasnt there or in on the discussions, I have a question for those in the know. In the opinion of the committee are the cases in the list in #3 all also topical under #1? thanks, chief ________________________________________ From: edebate-bounces at www.ndtceda.com [edebate-bounces at www.ndtceda.com] On Behalf Of scottelliott at grandecom.net [scottelliott at grandecom.net] Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 2:19 PM To: edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: [eDebate] topic Topic Three is perfect. It is a perfect example of why decisions by consensus usually lead to the worst results. What will discussion on edebate yeild? There are only three topics to choose from and the choices are not much. I would just like an explanation of why we needed a list resolution with 86 words on this topic. I hope that, eventually, the community will elect people to Topic Committe who are opposed to list topics. Scott _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate From jreubenclark at hotmail.com Mon Jun 15 18:10:11 2009 From: jreubenclark at hotmail.com (Josh clark) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:10:11 -0600 Subject: [eDebate] Job Announcement - Notre Dame HS, Sherman Oaks CA Message-ID: Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, CA (just west of downtown LA) is seeking a full time debate coach and speech teacher for the 2008-2009 school year. The person will teach two sections of novice debate, one section of Varsity debate team that travels nationally, and one semester speech class. Strong experience in the activity is required. This is a great group of students and a very supportive administration. Please contact Sabrina Landinguin ( landinguin at ndhs.org )and/or Josh Clark ( jreubenclark at hotmail.com ) if you are interested or have questions about the job. This job posting is coming very late, so the school will look to move as quickly as possible. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live?: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_BR_life_in_synch_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090615/f0bb8e09/attachment.htm From lenehan20 at hotmail.com Mon Jun 15 19:27:52 2009 From: lenehan20 at hotmail.com (Katherine Lavelle) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:27:52 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Director of Debate Position at University of Northern Iowa Message-ID: Hi all, I'm attaching and including information about the Director of Debate position at the University of Northern Iowa. This is a non-tenure track position, but is renewable. I am in a tenure track position as the Director of Forensics. The plan is to hire this summer, and Cate will help the new person transition into the job. We have been incredibly fortunate this year to have Kelsey Harr stay on as co-director of debate, and Cate's years of fantastic service to our team. Our students are working on the topic research right now. Please email me or John Fritch if you have any questions about the position or the team! Kate Lavelle Director of Debate DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION STUDIES INSTRUCTOR OF COMMUNICATION STUDIES/DIRECTOR OF DEBATE POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT POSITION: Instructor of Communication Studies/Director of Debate ? Three-year term appointment STARTING DATE: August 15, 2009 REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: Minimum of M. A. in Communication Studies (or curricularly-related program), (Masters students who expect to complete their degree by August 2009 are encouraged to apply), at least two years of NDT/CEDA debate coaching experience either as a graduate student or as an active coach, and demonstrated teaching effectiveness in an introductory communication course required. Pre-employment background checks are required. RESPONSIBILITIES: Teach 9 credit hours (three sections), including Oral Communication (basic course). Coach students in NDT/CEDA debate, work with Director of Forensics and forensics graduate assistants, travel 10-15 trips annually with team to tournaments and serve as a judge. Host tournaments, develop annual budget and report expenditures, conduct weekly team meetings, and hold weekly group and individual coaching sessions. COMPENSATION: Salary is competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience. UNI provides an excellent fringe benefits package including TIAA-CREF retirement, group life, disability, medical and dental insurance. APPLICATION: Send letter of application (which includes a description of areas of academic expertise); a vita (including a complete record of past employment and experience); evidence of teaching effectiveness; statement of forensics philosophy; and the names and contact information of at least three references to: Donna Uhlenhopp Attn: Instructor of Communication Studies/Director of Debate Search Department of Communication Studies University of Northern Iowa 326 Lang Hall Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0139 Phone: 319-273-6118 Fax: 319-273-7356 Electronic applications may be sent to donna.uhlenhopp at uni.edu. FORENSICS: The UNI Forensics program is the oldest student organization on campus. The forensics program has a Director of Forensics, Director of Individual Events, Director of Debate, and two graduate assistants. Forensics has a large squad room, with numerous computers and ample workspace. We are able to offer several scholarships each semester to interested students. The debate team typically consists of 8 to 12 competitors who are active on both the regional and national levels. DEPARTMENT: The Department of Communication Studies is a multi-area department with more than 30 full-time faculty and staff. There are approximately 600 undergraduate majors and 50 graduate students currently enrolled in the department. Undergraduate majors include: Electronic Media, Communication, and Public Relations. The department also provides a broad range of co-curricular experiences for students, including a Performance Studies program that produces four major productions per year in their ninety-seat Interpreters Theatre. UNIVERSITY: The University of Northern Iowa prides itself on putting "Students First" and has a reputation for providing exceptional undergraduate education, as well as complementary programs at the master?s, specialist, and doctoral levels. Building on its historic excellence in teacher education, the university has developed outstanding programs in business, natural sciences, humanities and fine arts, and social and behavioral sciences. One of three state universities, UNI enjoys national recognition for its high educational standards. U.S. News and World Report has ranked UNI second among Midwest public universities for 12 consecutive years. The university?s size -- just more than 12,900 students -- allows it to offer faculty, facilities and academic choices of a large university, while retaining a friendly, small-college atmosphere on a compact, park-like campus. UNI is a smoke-free campus. For more information, see www.uni.edu. COMMUNITY: The University is located in Cedar Falls in Northeast Iowa. The metropolitan area, which includes sister city Waterloo, has a population of 125,000, making it the fourth largest in the state. The two communities provide a broad range of cultural and entertainment activities. The metropolitan area serves as the commercial, cultural, and political hub of Northeast Iowa. TIMELINE: Applications received by July 6, 2009, will be given full consideration. The Department of Communication Studies encourages applications from persons of color, women, persons living with disabilities, and veterans. THE UNIVERSITY IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER WITH A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. Search # F2009-048 Department of Communication Studies Instructor of Communication Studies/Director of Debate The University of Northern Iowa seeks applicants for the following position in the Department of Communication Studies. Instructor of Communication Studies/Director of Debate, Three-year term (non-tenure track). Required qualifications: M.A. in Communication Studies (or curricularly-related program). Masters students who expect to complete their degree by August 2009 are encouraged to apply. At least two years of NDT/CEDA debate coaching experience either as a graduate student or an active coach, and demonstrated teaching effectiveness in an introductory communication course. Pre-employment background checks are required. Responsibilities: Teach 9 credit hours (three sections), including Oral Communication (basic course). Coach students in NDT/CEDA debate, work with Director of Forensics and forensics graduate assistants, travel 10-15 trips annually with team to tournaments and serve as a judge. Host tournaments, develop annual budget and report expenditures, conduct weekly team meetings, and hold weekly group and individual coaching sessions. Salary competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience. To view full position description, visit our web page at www.uni.edu/comstudy. Send letter of application (which includes a description of areas of academic expertise), vita (including complete record of past employment and experience), evidence of teaching effectiveness, statement of forensics philosophy, and the names and contact information of at least three references to Donna Uhlenhopp, Attn: Instructor of Communication Studies/Director of Debate Search, Department of Communication Studies, University of Northern Iowa, 326 Lang Hall, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50614-0139. Phone: (319) 273-6118. Electronic materials may be sent to donna.uhlenhopp at uni.edu. Applications received by July 6, 2009, will be given full consideration. UNI is an equal opportunity employer with a comprehensive plan for affirmative action. UNI is a smoke-free campus. SEARCH NUMBER: F2009-048 Katherine L. Lavelle Director of Forensics University of Northern Iowa You must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Don't be resigned to that. Break out! ? Mr. Keating, Tom Schulman Dead Poets Society _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090615/bdc6b3db/attachment.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: DEBATEPOSITIONANNOUNCEMENT 2009.doc Type: application/msword Size: 137216 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090615/bdc6b3db/attachment.doc -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Debate Coach Ad final 2009.doc Type: application/msword Size: 138240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090615/bdc6b3db/attachment-0001.doc From pieromannino at yahoo.com Wed Jun 17 09:52:12 2009 From: pieromannino at yahoo.com (Piero Mannino) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:52:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [eDebate] FALL 2010: SEEKING COACHING + PHD OPPORTUNITIES IN NON-COMMUNICATION FIELD Message-ID: <651188.49048.qm@web32704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hey all, ? This may be a little early, but in the spring of 2010 I'll be completing my Juris Doctor and Master of public and international affairs at the university of pittsburgh. I would like to continue my education by obtaining a phd in international affairs or a field relevant to political theory and I would prefer not to pay for it -- this is where you come in! If any of you are thinking about hiring a new coach and can offer a deal of tuition + stipend, then I would really be interested in hearing what you have to offer. ? Thanks! Piero Mannino -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090617/3b5e15f3/attachment.htm From stefan.bauschard at gmail.com Wed Jun 17 13:56:04 2009 From: stefan.bauschard at gmail.com (Stefan Bauschard) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:56:04 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Consolidate Camp Coverage of the Poverty Topic Message-ID: <524839830906171156m6a6bd84co2de3113ed3d61350@mail.gmail.com> http://www.planetdebate.com/blogs/view/260 If you have things to add, email me. We will be hosting the Emory camp lectures, so check back in a couple of days for those. -- Stefan Bauschard President & Co-Founder, PlanetDebate.com Debate Coach, Harvard Debate Director of Debate, Lakeland Schools Director of Development & Operations, NFL National Tournament 2011 (c) 781-775-0433 (fx) 617-588-0283 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090617/6dfe6ee5/attachment.htm From hansonjb at whitman.edu Wed Jun 17 17:56:46 2009 From: hansonjb at whitman.edu (Jim Hanson) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:56:46 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] wnpt 2009, join us Message-ID: <346ABC13EE76475AB094027300006390@whitman.edu> 6 prelims, quarters food served throughout, all rounds in one building free registration and transportation shuttle for teams 600 and more miles away mpj, rounds start after 9:30am the wnpt 2009 invitation is at: http://www.whitman.edu/rhetoric/collegetourn/54wnpt2009.htm jim :) hansonjb at whitman.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090617/e0a75168/attachment.htm From alfred.snider at uvm.edu Thu Jun 18 06:32:37 2009 From: alfred.snider at uvm.edu (Alfred Snider) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:32:37 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Worlds 2010 Phase 1 Registration Important Info Message-ID: <4A3A25D5.3050503@uvm.edu> -- Alfred C. Snider aka Tuna Edwin Lawrence Professor of Forensics University of Vermont Huber House, 475 Main Street, UVM, Burlington, VT 05405 USA Lawrence Debate Union http://debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/LDU/ Global Debate Blog http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com Debate Central http://debate.uvm.edu 802-656-0097 office telephone 802-656-4275 office fax -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Fatih Inal Subject: [EUDC] Worlds 2010 Phase 1 Registration Important Info Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:18:13 -0700 (PDT) Size: 42590 Url: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090618/54fd0d93/attachment.eml From bsmithm at gmail.com Fri Jun 19 07:32:37 2009 From: bsmithm at gmail.com (Brian Smith) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:32:37 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Great News Message-ID: <6e12829d0906190532n294743ecq6033bedfa2567252@mail.gmail.com> I'm pleased to announce (to the eDebate world anyway) the recent engagement of Margaret Kachenmeister Berthiaume and John Cameron Turner. Congratulations! ps: this is way cooler than resolution #3. And for those of you keeping track, it means we'll have 3 straight years of intra-DFU marriages. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090619/32054244/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Fri Jun 19 10:39:51 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:39:51 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times Message-ID: Iranian Elections - The 'Stolen Elections' Hoax By James Petras 6-18-9 "Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation. Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion." Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009 Introduction There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an 'electoral success' in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote. The recently concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (3.2 million votes). Iran's presidential election drew a record turnout of more than 80% of the electorate, including an unprecedented overseas vote of 234,812, in which HM won 111,792 to MA's 78,300. The opposition led by HM did not accept their defeat and organized a series of mass demonstrations that turned violent, resulting in the burning and destruction of automobiles, banks, public building and armed confrontations with the police and other authorities. Almost the entire spectrum of Western opinion makers, including all the major electronic and print media, the major liberal, radical, libertarian and conservative web-sites, echoed the opposition's claim of rampant election fraud. Neo-conservatives, libertarian conservatives and Trotskyites joined the Zionists in hailing the opposition protestors as the advance guard of a democratic revolution. Democrats and Republicans condemned the incumbent regime, refused to recognize the result of the vote and praised the demonstrators' efforts to overturn the electoral outcome. The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, the Israeli Foreign Office and the entire leadership of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations called for harsher sanctions against Iran and announced Obama's proposed dialogue with Iran as 'dead in the water'. The Electoral Fraud Hoax Western leaders rejected the results because they 'knew' that their reformist candidate could not loseFor months they published daily interviews, editorials and reports from the field 'detailing' the failures of Ahmadinejad's administration; they cited the support from clerics, former officials, merchants in the bazaar and above all women and young urbanites fluent in English, to prove that Mousavi was headed for a landslide victory. A victory for Mousavi was described as a victory for the 'voices of moderation', at least the White House's version of that vacuous clich?. Prominent liberal academics deduced the vote count was fraudulent because the opposition candidate, Mousavi, lost in his own ethnic enclave among the Azeris. Other academics claimed that the 'youth vote' based on their interviews with upper and middle-class university students from the neighborhoods of Northern Tehran were overwhelmingly for the 'reformist' candidate. What is astonishing about the West's universal condemnation of the electoral outcome as fraudulent is that not a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count. During the entire electoral campaign, no credible (or even dubious) charge of voter tampering was raised. As long as the Western media believed their own propaganda of an immanent victory for their candidate, the electoral process was described as highly competitive, with heated public debates and unprecedented levels of public activity and unhindered by public proselytizing. The belief in a free and open election was so strong that the Western leaders and mass media believed that their favored candidate would win. The Western media relied on its reporters covering the mass demonstrations of opposition supporters, ignoring and downplaying the huge turnout for Ahmadinejad. Worse still, the Western media ignored the class composition of the competing demonstrations the fact that the incumbent candidate was drawing his support from the far more numerous poor working class, peasant, artisan and public employee sectors while the bulk of the opposition demonstrators was drawn from the upper and middle class students, business and professional class. Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital few venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition's supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street activities, while Ahmadinejad's support drew on the majority of working youth and household women workers who would express their views at the ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics. A number of newspaper pundits, including Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, claim as evidence of electoral fraud the fact that Ahmadinejad won 63% of the vote in an Azeri-speaking province against his opponent, Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri. The simplistic assumption is that ethnic identity or belonging to a linguistic group is the only possible explanation of voting behavior rather than other social or class interests. A closer look at the voting pattern in the East-Azerbaijan region of Iran reveals that Mousavi won only in the city of Shabestar among the upper and the middle classes (and only by a small margin), whereas he was soundly defeated in the larger rural areas, where the re-distributive policies of the Ahmadinejad government had helped the ethnic Azeris write off debt, obtain cheap credits and easy loans for the farmers. Mousavi did win in the West-Azerbaijan region, using his ethnic ties to win over the urban voters. In the highly populated Tehran province, Mousavi beat Ahmadinejad in the urban centers of Tehran and Shemiranat by gaining the vote of the middle and upper class districts, whereas he lost badly in the adjoining working class suburbs, small towns and rural areas. The careless and distorted emphasis on 'ethnic voting' cited by writers from the Financial Times and New York Times to justify calling Ahmadinejad 's victory a 'stolen vote' is matched by the media's willful and deliberate refusal to acknowledge a rigorous nationwide public opinion poll conducted by two US experts just three weeks before the vote, which showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin even larger than his electoral victory on June 12. This poll revealed that among ethnic Azeris, Ahmadinejad was favored by a 2 to 1 margin over Mousavi, demonstrating how class interests represented by one candidate can overcome the ethnic identity of the other candidate (Washington Post June 15, 2009). The poll also demonstrated how class issues, within age groups, were more influential in shaping political preferences than 'generational life style'. According to this poll, over two-thirds of Iranian youth were too poor to have access to a computer and the 18-24 year olds "comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all groups" (Washington Porst June 15, 2009). The only group, which consistently favored Mousavi, was the university students and graduates, business owners and the upper middle class. The 'youth vote', which the Western media praised as 'pro-reformist', was a clear minority of less than 30% but came from a highly privileged, vocal and largely English speaking group with a monopoly on the Western media. Their overwhelming presence in the Western news reports created what has been referred to as the 'North Tehran Syndrome', for the comfortable upper class enclave from which many of these students come. While they may be articulate, well dressed and fluent in English, they were soundly out-voted in the secrecy of the ballot box. In general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil and chemical producing provinces. This may have be a reflection of the oil workers' opposition to the 'reformist' program, which included proposals to 'privatize' public enterprises. Likewise, the incumbent did very well along the border provinces because of his emphasis on strengthening national security from US and Israeli threats in light of an escalation of US-sponsored cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan and Israeli-backed incursions from Iraqi Kurdistan, which have killed scores of Iranian citizens. Sponsorship and massive funding of the groups behind these attacks is an official policy of the US from the Bush Administration, which has not been repudiated by President Obama; in fact it has escalated in the lead-up to the elections. What Western commentators and their Iranian prot?g?s have ignored is the powerful impact which the devastating US wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan had on Iranian public opinion: Ahmadinejad's strong position on defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition. The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity. The demography of voting reveals a real class polarization pitting high income, free market oriented, capitalist individualists against working class, low income, community based supporters of a 'moral economy' in which usury and profiteering are limited by religious precepts. The open attacks by opposition economists of the government welfare spending, easy credit and heavy subsidies of basic food staples did little to ingratiate them with the majority of Iranians benefiting from those programs. The state was seen as the protector and benefactor of the poor workers against the 'market', which represented wealth, power, privilege and corruption. The Opposition's attack on the regime's 'intransigent' foreign policy and positions 'alienating' the West only resonated with the liberal university students and import-export business groups. To many Iranians, the regime's military buildup was seen as having prevented a US or Israeli attack. The scale of the opposition's electoral deficit should tell us is how out of touch it is with its own people's vital concerns. It should remind them that by moving closer to Western opinion, they removed themselves from the everyday interests of security, housing, jobs and subsidized food prices that make life tolerable for those living below the middle class and outside the privileged gates of Tehran University. Amhadinejad's electoral success, seen in historical comparative perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral contests between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the populists have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and even Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have demonstrated an ability to secure close to or even greater than 60% of the vote in free elections. The voting majorities in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires. The consequences of the electoral victory of Ahmadinejad are open to debate. The US may conclude that continuing to back a vocal, but badly defeated, minority has few prospects for securing concessions on nuclear enrichment and an abandonment of Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas. A realistic approach would be to open a wide-ranging discussion with Iran, and acknowledging, as Senator Kerry recently pointed out, that enriching uranium is not an existential threat to anyone. This approach would sharply differ from the approach of American Zionists, embedded in the Obama regime, who follow Israel's lead of pushing for a preemptive war with Iran and use the specious argument that no negotiations are possible with an 'illegitimate' government in Tehran which 'stole an election'. Recent events suggest that political leaders in Europe, and even some in Washington, do not accept the Zionist-mass media line of 'stolen elections'. The White House has not suspended its offer of negotiations with the newly re-elected government but has focused rather on the repression of the opposition protesters (and not the vote count). Likewise, the 27 nation European Union expressed 'serious concern about violence' and called for the "aspirations of the Iranian people to be achieved through peaceful means and that freedom of expression be respected" (Financial Times June 16, 2009 p.4). Except for Sarkozy of France, no EU leader has questioned the outcome of the voting. The wild card in the aftermath of the elections is the Israeli response: Netanyahu has signaled to his American Zionist followers that they should use the hoax of 'electoral fraud' to exert maximum pressure on the Obama regime to end all plans to meet with the newly re-elected Ahmadinejad regime. Paradoxically, US commentators (left, right and center) who bought into the electoral fraud hoax are inadvertently providing Netanyahu and his American followers with the arguments and fabrications: Where they see religious wars, we see class wars; where they see electoral fraud, we see imperial destabilization. _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try bing_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090619/aaa8425a/attachment.htm From uwgdebate at gmail.com Fri Jun 19 19:53:13 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:53:13 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> 1) the article you cut and paste is not an editorial from Financial Times as your subject line claims. the opening quote is from the Financial Times, not the author of the article you copied. it's web article from James Petras that has been cut and pasted from rense.com (the date gave it away - that's how Rense does its articles) 2) this is not to disqualify James Petras. although rense pretty much "publishes" anyone on its site (sorta like edebate, in that respect), Petras is a widely published academic with his own website ( http://petras.lahaine.org/). he's very consistent - marxist tendencies, hater of US imperialism, definitely bothered by Israel. it's not shocking that he'd defend Ahmahdinejad against the West. i'm pretty sure that's worth bonus points toward tenure & promotion at Berkeley. it doesn't make his article wrong, just noting that this isn't exactly hot news. 3) when one filters out all the anti-imperialism tangents, the article you copied actually only responds to a single warrant that has been brought up as evidence of electoral fraud - voting in the Azeri province. unfortunately for Petras (and those who think this article is "smokin'"), he misses the actual substance of that evidence, mistakenly explaining how Ahmahdinejad racked up rural votes to offset bougie city slickers duped by coca-cola and blue jeans (or whatever is deemed capitalist these days) and western analysts are exaggerating ethnicity over class. but the abnormality cited as evidence of fraud is that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz in that province, something Petras doesn't even mention, let alone refute. again, Petras may be 110% correct about how the West is messed up, but his article supposedly exposing the "fraud hoax" is actually boilerplate lefty anti-Zionism that answers ONLY ONE of the items cited as evidence of fraud, and does so in a way that doesn't really answer the evidence that has been cited. 4) a recent essay from Juan Cole - http://juancole.com/2009/06/stealing-iranian-election.html - provides a fair summary of the things being cited as evidence of fraud. (one need not defend juan cole as a legit source to accept that this is a decent laundry list of what the fraud folks are citing as evidence, so no need to waste time discussing whether cole is just part of the evil cabal). in support of the notion that one need not be a toady for the US War Machine to believe that Petras is missing so caught up in blaming the big bad imperialists that he misses the larger point, here's a response from Isabel Rodr?guez - hardly a spokeswoman for the jackbooted thugs of capitalism - http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_56080.shtml hester On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Old Strega wrote: > *Iranian Elections - > The 'Stolen Elections' Hoax* > By James Petras > 6-18-9 "Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code > or mixed recreation. Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than > religion." Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009 Introduction There is > hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where > the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as > illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most > recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following > the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously > fabricating an 'electoral success' in Lebanon despite the fact that the > Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote. The recently > concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent > nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of > the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal > opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (3.2 million > votes). Iran's presidential election drew a record turnout of more than 80% > of the electorate, including an unprecedented overseas vote of 234,812, in > which HM won 111,792 to MA's 78,300. The opposition led by HM did not accept > their defeat and organized a series of mass demonstrations that turned > violent, resulting in the burning and destruction of automobiles, banks, > public building and armed confrontations with the police and other > authorities. Almost the entire spectrum of Western opinion makers, including > all the major electronic and print media, the major liberal, radical, > libertarian and conservative web-sites, echoed the opposition's claim of > rampant election fraud. Neo-conservatives, libertarian conservatives and > Trotskyites joined the Zionists in hailing the opposition protestors as the > advance guard of a democratic revolution. Democrats and Republicans > condemned the incumbent regime, refused to recognize the result of the vote > and praised the demonstrators' efforts to overturn the electoral outcome. > The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, the Israeli Foreign Office and the > entire leadership of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish > Organizations called for harsher sanctions against Iran and announced > Obama's proposed dialogue with Iran as 'dead in the water'. The Electoral > Fraud Hoax Western leaders rejected the results because they 'knew' that > their reformist candidate could not loseFor months they published daily > interviews, editorials and reports from the field 'detailing' the failures > of Ahmadinejad's administration; they cited the support from clerics, former > officials, merchants in the bazaar and above all women and young urbanites > fluent in English, to prove that Mousavi was headed for a landslide victory. > A victory for Mousavi was described as a victory for the 'voices of > moderation', at least the White House's version of that vacuous clich?. > Prominent liberal academics deduced the vote count was fraudulent because > the opposition candidate, Mousavi, lost in his own ethnic enclave among the > Azeris. Other academics claimed that the 'youth vote' based on their > interviews with upper and middle-class university students from the > neighborhoods of Northern Tehran were overwhelmingly for the 'reformist' > candidate. What is astonishing about the West's universal condemnation of > the electoral outcome as fraudulent is that not a single shred of evidence > in either written or observational form has been presented either before or > a week after the vote count. During the entire electoral campaign, no > credible (or even dubious) charge of voter tampering was raised. As long as > the Western media believed their own propaganda of an immanent victory for > their candidate, the electoral process was described as highly competitive, > with heated public debates and unprecedented levels of public activity and > unhindered by public proselytizing. The belief in a free and open election > was so strong that the Western leaders and mass media believed that their > favored candidate would win. The Western media relied on its reporters > covering the mass demonstrations of opposition supporters, ignoring and > downplaying the huge turnout for Ahmadinejad. Worse still, the Western media > ignored the class composition of the competing demonstrations the fact that > the incumbent candidate was drawing his support from the far more numerous > poor working class, peasant, artisan and public employee sectors while the > bulk of the opposition demonstrators was drawn from the upper and middle > class students, business and professional class. Moreover, most Western > opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran extrapolated their projections > from their observations in the capital few venture into the provinces, > small and medium size cities and villages where Ahmadinejad has his mass > base of support. Moreover the opposition's supporters were an activist > minority of students easily mobilized for street activities, while > Ahmadinejad's support drew on the majority of working youth and household > women workers who would express their views at the ballot box and had little > time or inclination to engage in street politics. A number of newspaper > pundits, including Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, claim as evidence > of electoral fraud the fact that Ahmadinejad won 63% of the vote in an > Azeri-speaking province against his opponent, Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri. The > simplistic assumption is that ethnic identity or belonging to a linguistic > group is the only possible explanation of voting behavior rather than other > social or class interests. A closer look at the voting pattern in the > East-Azerbaijan region of Iran reveals that Mousavi won only in the city of > Shabestar among the upper and the middle classes (and only by a small > margin), whereas he was soundly defeated in the larger rural areas, where > the re-distributive policies of the Ahmadinejad government had helped the > ethnic Azeris write off debt, obtain cheap credits and easy loans for the > farmers. Mousavi did win in the West-Azerbaijan region, using his ethnic > ties to win over the urban voters. In the highly populated Tehran province, > Mousavi beat Ahmadinejad in the urban centers of Tehran and Shemiranat by > gaining the vote of the middle and upper class districts, whereas he lost > badly in the adjoining working class suburbs, small towns and rural areas. > The careless and distorted emphasis on 'ethnic voting' cited by writers > from the Financial Times and New York Times to justify calling Ahmadinejad > 's victory a 'stolen vote' is matched by the media's willful and deliberate > refusal to acknowledge a rigorous nationwide public opinion poll conducted > by two US experts just three weeks before the vote, which showed Ahmadinejad > leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin even larger than his electoral victory > on June 12. This poll revealed that among ethnic Azeris, Ahmadinejad was > favored by a 2 to 1 margin over Mousavi, demonstrating how class interests > represented by one candidate can overcome the ethnic identity of the other > candidate (Washington Post June 15, 2009). The poll also demonstrated how > class issues, within age groups, were more influential in shaping political > preferences than 'generational life style'. According to this poll, over > two-thirds of Iranian youth were too poor to have access to a computer and > the 18-24 year olds "comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of > all groups" (Washington Porst June 15, 2009). The only group, which > consistently favored Mousavi, was the university students and graduates, > business owners and the upper middle class. The 'youth vote', which the > Western media praised as 'pro-reformist', was a clear minority of less than > 30% but came from a highly privileged, vocal and largely English speaking > group with a monopoly on the Western media. Their overwhelming presence in > the Western news reports created what has been referred to as the 'North > Tehran Syndrome', for the comfortable upper class enclave from which many of > these students come. While they may be articulate, well dressed and fluent > in English, they were soundly out-voted in the secrecy of the ballot box. In > general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil and chemical producing > provinces. This may have be a reflection of the oil workers' opposition to > the 'reformist' program, which included proposals to 'privatize' public > enterprises. Likewise, the incumbent did very well along the border > provinces because of his emphasis on strengthening national security from US > and Israeli threats in light of an escalation of US-sponsored cross-border > terrorist attacks from Pakistan and Israeli-backed incursions from Iraqi > Kurdistan, which have killed scores of Iranian citizens. Sponsorship and > massive funding of the groups behind these attacks is an official policy of > the US from the Bush Administration, which has not been repudiated by > President Obama; in fact it has escalated in the lead-up to the elections. > What Western commentators and their Iranian prot?g?s have ignored is the > powerful impact which the devastating US wars and occupation of Iraq and > Afghanistan had on Iranian public opinion: Ahmadinejad's strong position on > defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of > many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition. The great majority > of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, > the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its > faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad > than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged > youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity. > The demography of voting reveals a real class polarization pitting high > income, free market oriented, capitalist individualists against working > class, low income, community based supporters of a 'moral economy' in which > usury and profiteering are limited by religious precepts. The open attacks > by opposition economists of the government welfare spending, easy credit and > heavy subsidies of basic food staples did little to ingratiate them with the > majority of Iranians benefiting from those programs. The state was seen as > the protector and benefactor of the poor workers against the 'market', which > represented wealth, power, privilege and corruption. The Opposition's attack > on the regime's 'intransigent' foreign policy and positions 'alienating' the > West only resonated with the liberal university students and import-export > business groups. To many Iranians, the regime's military buildup was seen as > having prevented a US or Israeli attack. The scale of the opposition's > electoral deficit should tell us is how out of touch it is with its own > people's vital concerns. It should remind them that by moving closer to > Western opinion, they removed themselves from the everyday interests of > security, housing, jobs and subsidized food prices that make life tolerable > for those living below the middle class and outside the privileged gates of > Tehran University. Amhadinejad's electoral success, seen in historical > comparative perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral > contests between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the > populists have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most > recently, Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and even Lula da Silva > in Brazil, all of whom have demonstrated an ability to secure close to or > even greater than 60% of the vote in free elections. The voting majorities > in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national > security over alignments with military empires. The consequences of the > electoral victory of Ahmadinejad are open to debate. The US may conclude > that continuing to back a vocal, but badly defeated, minority has few > prospects for securing concessions on nuclear enrichment and an abandonment > of Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas. A realistic approach would be to > open a wide-ranging discussion with Iran, and acknowledging, as Senator > Kerry recently pointed out, that enriching uranium is not an existential > threat to anyone. This approach would sharply differ from the approach of > American Zionists, embedded in the Obama regime, who follow Israel's lead of > pushing for a preemptive war with Iran and use the specious argument that no > negotiations are possible with an 'illegitimate' government in Tehran which > 'stole an election'. Recent events suggest that political leaders in > Europe, and even some in Washington, do not accept the Zionist-mass media > line of 'stolen elections'. The White House has not suspended its offer of > negotiations with the newly re-elected government but has focused rather on > the repression of the opposition protesters (and not the vote count). > Likewise, the 27 nation European Union expressed 'serious concern about > violence' and called for the "aspirations of the Iranian people to be > achieved through peaceful means and that freedom of expression be respected" > (Financial Times June 16, 2009 p.4). Except for Sarkozy of France, no EU > leader has questioned the outcome of the voting. The wild card in the > aftermath of the elections is the Israeli response: Netanyahu has signaled > to his American Zionist followers that they should use the hoax of > 'electoral fraud' to exert maximum pressure on the Obama regime to end all > plans to meet with the newly re-elected Ahmadinejad regime. Paradoxically, > US commentators (left, right and center) who bought into the electoral fraud > hoax are inadvertently providing Netanyahu and his American followers with > the arguments and fabrications: Where they see religious wars, we see class > wars; where they see electoral fraud, we see imperial destabilization. > ------------------------------ > Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090619/dd759687/attachment.htm From uwgdebate at gmail.com Fri Jun 19 20:01:44 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:01:44 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> p.s. - here's an article from an Iranian that exposes the oversimplifications of Petras' claims about class in Iran as they relate to the elections and Ahmadinejad... *You Can't Keep a Good People Down * *Iranians in the Streets * By REZA FIYOUZAT More than a hundred years ago now, Iranians were as loudly as now present in the streets demanding constitutional governance, freedom from random harassment by the state and a legitimate representational system. In 1906, as a result of that national surge, demanding true legitimacy from the rulers, Iran established the first parliament on the Asian continent, and forced an absolutist monarchy into accepting a constitutional rule by a parliament chosen by the people. That parliamentary system, by 1920, had been overthrown by Reza Shah, and an absolutist dictatorship was reestablished, which in turn was overturned by the people by the close of 1940's, and by 1951 the people had regained their relative sovereignty. In 1953, that too was overthrown by a coup carried out by CIA against our popularly elected prime minister, Dr. Mossadegh, and the second phase of the Palhavi dictatorship ensued, which lasted until 1978. Ever since the establishment of theocracy in 1979, we have witnessed repeated occurrences of mass uprisings in Iran. The last major wave was in 1999, led by university students, and swiftly crushed by the government (at the time headed by a 'reformist', Khatami). So, throughout the twentieth century, as a nation we did not stop grappling with the hugely complex social problem of legitimacy of the state, as different dictatorships arose and established themselves as newer, more effective machineries of oppression, and as we struggled against them. That fight continues today. When reality happens in equally painful and delightful leaps, such as we are witnessing now, and as it speeds right past rigid minds standing by with gaping mouths, mouthing knee-jerk, reflexive thoughts not considered at all, we salute reality! And hope we can keep up. * * * One left-seeming analysis being presented about the election results in Iran is the 'class analysis', epitomized by a few articles that have appeared in recent days (no names necessary, since that makes things personal, and I'm trying to keep it political here). I even heard the 'class analysis' (sic.) used on BBC! BBC's approach was actually not too different from those presented by some on the U.S. left. Real class analysis looks for and explains *historical* and *materialist*trends in a society ('materialist' meaning here, containing real-social substance); all else is superficial journalism. Not taking into account Iran's complex social history at all, and amazingly enough not even considering the very context of a theocratic setup as relevant, superficial journalism's entire argument is constructed on a presupposition never examined: that Iran is just another regular country, with a generally democratic-looking system, with its own peculiar way of holding elections, which we must respect, run as best as they can (of course, they have problems, but who doesn't?); but, all in all, there's regular opportunity for people to express their choices, just like in the U.S. (and God know they have deep problems of their own with democracy). So, no matter how disappointed the losers in the Iranian elections, they simply 'should bite the bullet', and move on. At least eight people (some reportsfrom inside Iran, claim 32) have indeed taken bullets. These are peaceful, unarmed demonstrators, shot dead (and there are video clips to prove this, thanks to the resourcefulness of our people) by sharp shooters from windows overlooking streets where peaceful demonstrations were being attacked by plain-clothes government vigilantes breaking up massive spontaneous, again, peaceful demonstrations expressing outrage at an excessively oppressive machine that had just stolen their votes in broad daylight. Why the need for attacking peaceful demonstrations, if the elections were truly won cleanly? Why the need to arrest and detain hundreds of people, of political leaders and intellectuals of the reformist camp? Why the need to disrupt communications? But, I am digressing. Along with the 'bite the bullet' attitude, some analysis must be presented, of course, since we are writing a political piece. So, let's see what it is. It is claimed that, first of all, Ahmadinejad got exactly the same proportion of votes as he did last time, in 2005, when he beat Hashemi Rafsanjani. But, since that's the only historical reference looked up by lazy journalism, all the social changes that have happened between then and now lose their significance in the accounts of superficial observers. A crucial thing missed here is that back then too there were loud claims of vote rigging against Ahmadinejad, who had been greatly helped by the Revolutionary Guards' and the Basijs' disciplined mobilization for vote getting. Those complaints died out eventually. But, from right after the 2005 elections, it became clear to Iran observers that major political maneuvering had begun between, on the one hand, the elite siding with the powerful Hashemi Rafsanjani and, on the other, those siding with the conservatives aligned with Khamenei, whose front man is Ahmadinejad. In this year's elections, Hashemi Rafsanjani lent his political weight to the reformists, who (just like the Democrats in the U.S.) are the only ones with realistic, if not the best, chances of inspiring large participation in the elections. It was for these very reasons that the reformist factions knew very well that major vote rigging would be tried again. If it could be done twice in the U.S., it sure as hell could be done twice in Iran. And for these very reasons, for months before the election day, the reformists had studied well the procedures in place, looking for flaws, had found plenty, and had proposed remedies aplenty, all of which had been turned down. So, going into the ring, they knew they were stepping into a fixed match. Ahmadinejad's camp, sure enough, was prepared, both for the ballot-casting day, and for the lead-up. They used the first-ever, live TV debates between presidential candidates in Iran the same way a sensationalist lawyer would in some courtroom scene in a TV series. Picture a closing presented in a case looking bleakly headed south; lawyer strikes out by throwing a complete and utter Hail Mary pass; espousing the most astonishing stories, filled with accusations and innuendoes, muddying the water to the nth degree, making it all sound like he really didn't want to say any of this, but was forced to reveal the truth, no matter how rude, for justice must be served. Amen! And we saw how they conducted the actual 'elections'. (For those interested in facts: even Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, the most senior cleric in Iran, a huge, lifelong fan of theocracy, came out in defense of the opposition, stating that nobody in their right mind would believe the announced results.) To get back to the class analysis thing ... For the 'class' part of the analysis, it is stated that Ahmadinejad's constituency, beyond the ideological armed forces of Revolutionary Guards and the Basiji's, consists of the working class, the peasantry and the poor; in short, the way more numerous classes. In other words, in this highly simplistic picture, ALL the Iranian working classes, all the peasants, and all the poor were unanimously behind Ahmadinejad. This is a very improbable claim. Its TV version was backed by repeated loops of reportage by CNN and BBC type of news agencies, right before the elections, when their film crews were sent to a few rural spots that had benefited from the Ahmadinejad government's handouts, displaying enthusiasm for him. These scenes from a handful of villages, in a country whose rural population adds up to about 33% of 70 million people, are definitely not representative of the larger picture of rural Iran. The *real* rural Iran is beset by desperation, more than anything else, and most likely can't be bothered with any such niceties as 'elections' (Iran's rural population has historically been very deeply apolitical). Due to government mismanagement, consistent over the thirty years of this regime's existence, farming infrastructure has been deteriorating steadily, leading to a huge migration from the country to the city. In the past 30-year period, the urban-to-rural ratios have exactly reversed. During the same period, the population of Iran has grown very rapidly also; it literally doubled from 35 million to 70 million. Yet, another factor: all these demographic transformations were occurring in a country, whose government relies on the sale of oil as a main source of revenue (more than 50% of its income; I'll explain why this is important, below). Add another historical-transformational trend: with the rise of theocracy by 1979, and considering that the mullahs are tightly allied with the merchant (*bazaari*) classes, the overall stewardship of the national economy was transferred from the hands of the industrial to that of the commercial bourgeoisie. Consequently, commerce, buying and selling, instead of production, has become the more significant economic activity. Except for military (and related) industries, of course. There, successive governments have consistently invested well. But, just about all other branches of industrial capital, mostly private, have not had an easy time of developing; definitely not *nearly* as rapidly as the population growth coupled with rural-urban migration would require, in order to maintain a stable employment level and to have some, even if modest, economic growth rate. Remember that oil, as an industry, is not labor intensive at all; it is highly capital intensive. So, though it brings in the dough for the state, as an industry it doesn't employ a significant workforce. (In any event, most oil workers in Iran enjoy a very healthy tradition of leftist thinking and have proven their progressive mettle in many historical battles. You can bet they are not deluded on a mass scale.) The socio-historical trends mentioned above (the doubling of the population, plus the mass migration from rural to urban areas, plus a much lowered rate of development of labor-employing industries)- all add up to a huge number of buyers and sellers of lots of things, haggling constantly, hustling endlessly; and, much more importantly, this has led to endemically excessive rates of part-employment and underemployment, creating a situation in which millions of people must weave at least two, three (at times more) jobs, just to keep their head above water, just to make a living. All of which becomes much more painful under hellish inflation rates, which shot up rapidly during Ahmadinejad's rule. Now add to that already socially heady mix the insults thrown in by a highly intrusive dictatorship that claims to hold power and authority over your most private acts even, and what you get is a lot of very hard working people who can get really pissed off very easily, and very quickly. Do you see where this is going? Now, let's bring it back to the elections. The situation in Iran has changed dramatically in the four years of Ahmadinejad's presidency. The world in general has changed dramatically in four years. The economic situation in Iran has gotten far worse, not only because of Ahmadinejad's mismanagement (which has no doubt had its effects), but also intensified by all the above-mentioned trends, plus the effects of the sanctions, and all of these within a worldwide depression of the last two years. But, and this is important, the economic deterioration during Ahmadinejad's first term occurred in a time of very high oil income for the government, making it more difficult to explain away the economic troubles as general results of the world depression. In the *four* years of Ahmadinejad's presidency, Iranian state income was nearly *twice as much* (in oil revenues) as it was during Khatami's *eight *years. So, a majority of the Iranians were quite rightly very disillusioned with Ahmadinejad's mismanagement. No amount of radical sounding rhetoric can hide these things. No wonder then that he felt compelled to hand out potatoes to the abject poor, to avert starvation. But his sacks of potato, or insurance for the rural poor, as welcome and necessary and popular as they are (even if they didn't cover everybody in need), are mere Band-Aids on a shotgun wound after the horse was dead. * * * We come to the final element to be considered, when providing a 'class analysis' of the Iranian political life: The most class-conscious, the most politically active of the Iranian working classes, are by far the most anti-government. How do we know this? We know this because they invariably end up in jail. It is interesting that articles claiming to be presenting a 'class analysis' completely ignore the significance of all the jailed labor leaders in Iran, and ignore the anti-labor posture consistently displayed by all governments in Iran's modern history: that the current government is structurally anti-labor is well understood by those segments of Iran's working classes not ideologically in the service of the regime. Why else would the government bother imprisoning a mere bus driver, Mansoor Osanloo? (for his and others' info, see here) How much of a political threat can a bus driver be? Them be shaky foundations, indeed, that tremble at the sight of organized bus drivers. Osanloo is the head of the bus drivers' union in Tehran, and has been a political prisoner, in and out of jail (currently in) for the past five years. That's just one example. There are lots more (and you can read about some of them (in Farsi) here , and here; if you can't read Farsi, find an Iranian friend). The most organized of the working classes represent a significant portion of the class of people affected most deeply and painfully by a badly managed capitalist economy. This has political consequences. Vast numbers of Iranian working people have turned apathetic, and simply do not participate in the political machinations of the system. When they do participate in significant numbers, as was the case in these last elections, it is because they see a realistic chance for using the differences between the rulers, for opposing the establishment candidate, and perhaps winning some concessions from this oppressive system; demands that are likely to inspire participation among the lower middle classes and the middle classes. Incidentally, the so-called 'middle classes' are working classes. They are simply more likely to be the better educated, better paid part of the working classes. That's all. The fact that the word 'middle class' was invented by Americans to suppress the perception of actual existence of classes in North America is something to be studied in its own place, but, as somebody said once, "A rose is a rose by any name." So the most fundamental distinction to bear in mind is that those segments of the working classes who *do* participate in the electoral process in Iran are by no means representatives of a homogenized class, and thankfully cannot automatically be assumed as representing all the working classes, all the peasants and all the poor. Just like all other classes in Iran, the working classes are also divided in many ways: between believers (in theocracy) and secularists, between supporters of the system and opponents of the system, between the different camps of the system, and our working classes too contain large segments of non-participants and non-believers who occasionally like to show up and cast protest votes. And another thing. Just because somebody is from the working class (in any country) does not mean they are universal angels, and whatever they exhale is divine. Remember that the European fascists' most numerous support-base was among the working classes. And the American leftists should be well familiar with the phenomenon known as 'Reagan Democrats'; i.e., white working class people who voted against their class interest. * * * The one crucial thing to bear in mind is that these 'elections' would not be called elections by anybody in the American left, if those exact electoral procedures - complete with the allegiance to the Bible as the requirement to participate - were replicated in the U.S., overseen by a government run by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (yes, back from dead) and their amalgamated gang of the American televangelists, and their social support networks and vigilantes. If you can do the mental switch and still find that you have no problem participating in such Christian evangelist-conducted 'elections', then go ahead and call the Iranian 'elections' elections. Call it a horse, for all I care. The reality is that the situation in Iran has by now moved beyond the technicalities of the electoral procedures; people's move has forced the situation into one of a crisis of legitimacy for the regime. The Iranian people sensed a deep fracture within the ruling establishment - something that was clearly expressed in astonishing language and tone, in the televised-for-the-first time live debates between the candidates - and they have ceased their chance to use the divide between their rulers to their own advantage. The people may have taken to the streets under the excuse of the elections, and may have been encouraged by the rhetoric of the 'reformist' camp in favor of some breathing room in the suffocating political and cultural atmosphere imposed on them, but they have forced the debate further. They are openly, and in millions across the country, questioning the legitimacy of the establishment, represented at the moment by Ahmadinejad. The people, in short, have moved beyond Mousavi and the reformists, but are still willing to go along with the tactics formulated by reformist leaders; for the moment. We will see how things unfold. Most likely, a heavy hand is just around the corner, trying on some spiked gloves. For the time being, though, hundreds of thousands of people in Iran are opting not to 'bite the bullet' and move on, but to make a movement and, even, take bullets. A much more courageous stand that generates a lot more inspiration! Salute! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090619/b751a288/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Sun Jun 21 02:09:22 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 02:09:22 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times Message-ID: that and i've got a hunch gore won florida. =P ...clearly, 'the world was watching' then too. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090621/7d6845c8/attachment.htm From stefan.bauschard at gmail.com Sun Jun 21 09:38:42 2009 From: stefan.bauschard at gmail.com (Stefan Bauschard) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:38:42 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Camp Lectures Online Message-ID: <524839830906210738s3b289112n10023eae4fd3487a@mail.gmail.com> We have added seven free lectures on the poverty topic and related skills from the Emory National Debate Institute to Planet Debate http://www.planetdebate.com/media or www.planetdebate.com -- Lectures on the top line We have also indexed additional lectures from the Georgetown Debate Seminar. To view consolidated camp information to date, click to visit our camp blog post -- http://www.planetdebate.com/blogs/view/260 Our goal is to make at least 50 lectures from the summer available for free by August 1st. We also wish to add at least 50 lectures and lectures discussions for our subscribers. If you would like to make a contribution, please email me by responding to this message. Also, please consider supporting our site by purchasing a subscription or advertising package (subscription included with the advertising package). Advertisers & workshop partners receive banner ad displays, email blasts, listings on our Camp Poverty Topic Coverage page -- a page has had more than 1,200 views in less than a week. Across our site, 30-40,000 pages are viewed every day, and more than 27,000 files have been downloaded from our site since May 6, 2009. -- Stefan Bauschard President & Co-Founder, PlanetDebate.com Debate Coach, Harvard Debate Director of Debate, Lakeland Schools Director of Development & Operations, NFL National Tournament 2011 (c) 781-775-0433 (fx) 617-588-0283 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090621/a24128d4/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Sun Jun 21 18:20:34 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:20:34 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 1) hester has caught a grave error. i misread the citation of the introduction as a citation for the "smoking" article. i do thank you for the correction. the intention was not to misrepresent the source which is not my modus operandi or my record posting on edebate. 2) rense is one of the cites who ran the article but i believe it was first posted on the global research site which is not as loosy goosy as you portray rense. chossudovsky and other non-republican critics of the obama administration reside @ global research which is an excellent cite mined by rense. the original citation of the article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018 your mockery of rense is irrelevant. they will post anything like the evidence on the niger forgery that broke on edebate the first night of its electronic disclosure well before it was accepted by the mainstream media. that is the niger forgery evidence that eventually spawned into the kucinich debate petition put forward on the floor of the congress against rove (i can't remember if hester signed that petition full of complaints which rense had the courage to broadcast ahead of hester's preferred sources who are cautious and rational defining the mainstream herd but never blind). the rense source indict is a stupid cheapshot but, hey, if you are not a CNN soap opera obamafest love queen, then, perhaps alternative sources of information are risky posts. oh my god, rense is so bad. they posted articles on hillary's injury and her rejection of the settlements and many hard to find mainstream media critiques of obama which stroube fwds onto edebate. they'll post anything. you have tried to couple my mistake as indicative of the quality of rense to further undermine petras but come on. i made a mistake. you didn't properly trace the article either. you made a mistake. stroube is crazy unintentionally misrepresenting articles. rense is crazy posting anything including non-republican critiques of obama. petras is crazy because he's not a corporate ho like obama. genius. what about iran? curiously, here, you have little to say of relevance. 3) concerning iran, you sound like kissinger. given the '53 coup, i take all american groupthink conclusions about what really happened with a grain of salt. the mainstream media lens deserves question. a question pops up in a sea of agreement and hester is on the spot to police the situation. the growing concordance of government propaganda with corporate media outlets post-vietnam seems to be a novelty to michael kissinger of uwga debate. so, here again, muckraker relies on a source indict. petras is a red commie. so what? you only attack his analysis of the polls but do not defend the western media capitalist whores against his critiques. often a source indict heavy approach comes with a lot of dropped arguments and a deflection to a weaker angle, i.e. poll analysis. you're missing the US motivations for reinventing moussavi and scanty coverage of the election. obama can now merge wills with netanyahu and refuse to negotiate not flip flopping on his election promise. a) you have no answer to the predictable perspective of the western media sources based on their lack of exposure to much of iran beyond tehran: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018 Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital ? few venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition?s supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street activities, while Ahmadinejad?s support drew on the majority of working youth and household women workers who would express their views at the ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics. b) no answer to the demographic explanation of ahmadinejad's support: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018 In general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil and chemical producing provinces. This may have be a reflection of the oil workers? opposition to the ?reformist? program, which included proposals to ?privatize? public enterprises. Likewise, the incumbent did very well along the border provinces because of his emphasis on strengthening national security from US and Israeli threats in light of an escalation of US-sponsored cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan and Israeli-backed incursions from Iraqi Kurdistan, which have killed scores of Iranian citizens. Sponsorship and massive funding of the groups behind these attacks is an official policy of the US from the Bush Administration, which has not been repudiated by President Obama; in fact it has escalated in the lead-up to the elections. c) kissinger-esque, of course, you dropped this imperialism argument and by omission are underplaying president phosphorus's role in aiding ahmadinejad outside tehran where the western media sources won't go: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018 What Western commentators and their Iranian prot?g?s have ignored is the powerful impact which the devastating US wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan had on Iranian public opinion: Ahmadinejad?s strong position on defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition.The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity. 4) now, the moussavi turns. you remind me most of kissinger when you historically forget moussavi's reign as prime minister. you lack the critical ability to anticipate the potential danger of the western media promotion of moussavi. i must conclude that hester is smoking crack in obamaland with kissinger and the CFR. there is continuity with the '53 coup, bro. i expect another source indict on this card since hester believes moussavi is a liberator of the people not receiving a soft hand from the US imperial arm. mazal tov: In Iran, the heist is of the country and of minds. Chris Floyd of Empire Burlesque writes:Similarly, the Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi is universally depicted as a ?moderate.? Yet,as Professor As?ad AbuKhalil points out, when Moussavi was Iran?s prime minister under Ayatollah Khomeini, he ?presided over a regime far more oppressive than Ahmadinajad?s.? AbuKhalil?s take on the hypocrisy of the Western media coverage on Iran is worth quoting more fully: there is so much hypocrisy in the Western coverage and official reactions to the developments. Most glaring for me was the statement by the secretary-general of the UN who insisted on the respect of the will of the Iranian people. Would that US designate utter such words, say, about Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and other dictatorships that are approved by the US? ?I am in no way sympathetic to Moussavi. He is a man who suddenly discovered the virtues of democracy. When he was prime minister back in the 1980s, he presided over a regime far more oppressive than Ahmadinajad?s. And why has no Western media really commented on his rhetoric during his own campaign: the man kept saying that he wants a ?return? to the teachings of Khomeini. I in no way support a man who wants a ?return? to the teachings of Khomeini." endquote thank you, sir, for rectifying the error but thank you more for your naive defense of the mainstream media and the new strategies of soft power manipulation by president phosphorus. i understand hester is now a US imperialist who supports obama's war in afghanistan and official US propaganda that moussavi, the liberator, was screwed. i gather you also support obama's silence during the recent gaza raid. in line with moveon.org and other liberal hack groups is a good place to be when you've lost the critical edge. your post smells of a larger co-option. _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try bing_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090621/b2a4ff18/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Sun Jun 21 18:48:02 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:48:02 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] hester's next source indict Message-ID: omitted from subpoint 4 by mistake. http://warofillusions.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/the-iranian-soft-coup-under-the-microscope/ _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try bing_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090621/3d479961/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Mon Jun 22 10:16:57 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:16:57 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] which is worse, mike, dailykos or rense? Message-ID: obama faithful dailykos has yet to censor the petras article from its website: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/19/744717/-Possible-Iran-stolen-election-hoax what's your explanation given your statements about rense? i believe dailykos ran the niger forgery evidence as well but after rense posted that whistleblow and after stroube forwarded the niger forgery to edebate from rense when he was all over bush as he is now all over obama in the tradition of the comedian mort sahl. and i'm sure you've seen kissinger on the BBC using your poll analysis to shift the CFR strategy from a soft coup to a hard coup. that's kissinger call for regime change in iran evidence from the weekend. mike thinks it's totally coincidental despite the speed of the coming obama administration about face of policy (this is a crazy terrorist site from the middle east and i'm not sure about quoting it after the damage you did on rense) (the video's there too): http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/video-kissinger-threatens-regime-change-in-iran/ JUNE 20, 2009...10:57 PMVideo: Kissinger Threatens Regime Change In IranJump to CommentsTalking on BBC Newsnight Kissinger says that while the US will not intervene in the current crisis, if the coup fails and a popularly based government is not installed (ie the one he wants), then we may conclude that we must work for regime change in Iran from the outside.At the time Kissinger is making this statement, CIA and Mossad bringing acolored revolution in Iran to install Zionist puppet regime. end quote excuse me, have you heard of a "COORDINATED INTELLIGENCE ACTION"? perhaps that's what petras has exposed and what probably chomsky and other crazy sources will further highlight as the raison d'etre for the US media coverage of the iran election hoax. i hear the crack in obamaland rocks. tell me, mike, how does it smoke? _________________________________________________________________ Bing? brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it now. http://www.bing.com/search?q=restaurants&form=MLOGEN&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MLOGEN_Core_tagline_local_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090622/470ef1ea/attachment.htm From uwgdebate at gmail.com Mon Jun 22 12:21:11 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:21:11 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> actually, the laundry list by cole does answer most (if not) all the claims you say go unanswered. that Ahmadinejad did well in certain provinces is not a warrant for a)him winning the overall election or b)the irregularities in other provinces. Petras' article is shallow once one gets beyond the anti-imperialism crutch. i stand by that. it doesn't mean the rants about the west are wrong (or right), they just don't meet the burden of proving Ahmadinejad actually received a majority of the votes. here's a more comprehensive study that deals with the issue in more depth and, btw, supports the claim that the official results are fraudulent. http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/14234_iranelection0609.pdf and for the record, i'm explictly "dropping" all the moussavi silliness. one can believe that ahmadindejad didn't really get 63% of the vote without making any defense of any other candidate. the assumption that one must defend moussavi in order to challenge the official results is dumb. dumb claims don't require direct refutation. hester On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Old Strega wrote: > *1) hester has caught a grave error.** > * > *i misread the citation of the introduction as a citation for the > "smoking" article. i do thank you for the correction. the intention was > not to misrepresent the source which is not my modus operandi or my record > posting on edebate.* > * > * > *2) rense is one of the cites who ran the article but i believe it was > first posted on the global research site which is not as loosy goosy as you > portray rense. chossudovsky and other non-republican critics of the obama > administration reside @ global research which is an excellent cite mined by > rense. the original citation of the article:* > * > * > *http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018* > * > * > *your mockery of rense is irrelevant. they will post anything like the > evidence on the niger forgery that broke on edebate the first night of its > electronic disclosure well before it was accepted by the mainstream media. > that is the niger forgery evidence that eventually spawned into the kucinich > debate petition put forward on the floor of the congress against rove (i > can't remember if hester signed that petition full of complaints which rense > had the courage to broadcast ahead of hester's preferred sources who are > cautious and rational defining the mainstream herd but never blind).* > * > * > *the rense source indict is a stupid cheapshot but, hey, if you are not a > CNN soap opera obamafest love queen, then, perhaps alternative sources of > information are risky posts. oh my god, rense is so bad. they posted > articles on hillary's injury and her rejection of the settlements and many > hard to find mainstream media critiques of obama which stroube fwds onto > edebate. they'll post anything.* > * > * > *you have tried to couple my mistake as indicative of the quality of rense > to further undermine petras but come on. i made a mistake. you didn't > properly trace the article either. you made a mistake. stroube is crazy > unintentionally misrepresenting articles. rense is crazy posting anything > including non-republican critiques of obama. petras is crazy because he's > not a corporate ho like obama. genius. * > * > * > *what about iran? curiously, here, you have little to say of relevance.* > * > * > *3) concerning iran, you sound like kissinger.* > * > * > *given the '53 coup, i take all american groupthink conclusions about what > really happened with a grain of salt. the mainstream media lens deserves > question. a question pops up in a sea of agreement and hester is on the > spot to police the situation. the growing concordance of government > propaganda with corporate media outlets post-vietnam seems to be a novelty > to michael kissinger of uwga debate. so, here again, muckraker relies on a > source indict. petras is a red commie. so what? you only attack his > analysis of the polls but do not defend the western media capitalist whores > against his critiques. often a source indict heavy approach comes with a > lot of dropped arguments and a deflection to a weaker angle, i.e. poll > analysis. you're missing the US motivations for reinventing moussavi and > scanty coverage of the election. obama can now merge wills with netanyahu > and refuse to negotiate not flip flopping on his election promise.* > * > * > *a) you have no answer to the predictable perspective of the western media > sources based on their lack of exposure to much of iran beyond tehran:* > * > * > *http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018* > > Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran > extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital ? few > venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where > Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition?s > supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street > activities, while Ahmadinejad?s support drew on the majority of working > youth and household women workers who would express their views at the > ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics. > > *b) no answer to the demographic explanation of ahmadinejad's support:* > * > * > *http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018 > * > * > * > *In general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil and chemical producing > provinces. This may have be a reflection of the oil workers? opposition to > the ?reformist? program, which included proposals to ?privatize? public > enterprises. Likewise, the incumbent did very well along the border > provinces because of his emphasis on strengthening national security from US > and Israeli threats in light of an escalation of US-sponsored cross-border > terrorist attacks from Pakistan and Israeli-backed incursions from Iraqi > Kurdistan, which have killed scores of Iranian citizens. Sponsorship and > massive funding of the groups behind these attacks is an official policy of > the US from the Bush Administration, which has not been repudiated by > President Obama; in fact it has escalated in the lead-up to the elections. > ** > * > * > * > *c) kissinger-esque, of course, you dropped this imperialism argument and > by omission are underplaying president phosphorus's role in aiding **ahmadinejad > outside tehran where the western media sources won't go**:* > * > * > *http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018 > * > * > * > > *What Western commentators and their Iranian prot?g?s have ignored is the > powerful impact which the devastating US wars and occupation of Iraq and > Afghanistan had on Iranian public opinion: Ahmadinejad?s strong position on > defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of > many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition.* > > *The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that > national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social > welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better > defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats > supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life > styles over community values and solidarity.* > > * > * > > *4) now, the moussavi turns. you remind me most of kissinger when you > historically forget moussavi's reign as prime minister. you lack the > critical ability to anticipate the potential danger of the western media > promotion of moussavi. i must conclude that hester is smoking crack in > obamaland with kissinger and the CFR. there is continuity with the '53 > coup, bro. i expect another source indict on this card since hester > believes moussavi is a liberator of the people not receiving a soft hand > from the US imperial arm. mazal tov:* > > * > * > > *In Iran, the heist is of the country and of minds. Chris Floyd of Empire > Burlesque **writes* > *:* > > *Similarly, the Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi is > universally depicted as a ?moderate.? Yet,**as Professor As?ad AbuKhalil > points out,* > * when Moussavi was Iran?s prime minister under Ayatollah Khomeini, he > ?presided over a regime far more oppressive than Ahmadinajad?s.? AbuKhalil?s > take on the hypocrisy of the Western media coverage on Iran is worth quoting > more fully:* > > * > * > > *there is so much hypocrisy in the Western coverage and official reactions > to the developments. Most glaring for me was the statement by the > secretary-general of the UN who insisted on the respect of the will of the > Iranian people. Would that US designate utter such words, say, about Egypt, > Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and other dictatorships that are > approved by the US? ?I am in no way sympathetic to Moussavi. He is a man who > suddenly discovered the virtues of democracy. When he was prime minister > back in the 1980s, he presided over a regime far more oppressive than > Ahmadinajad?s. And why has no Western media really commented on his rhetoric > during his own campaign: the man kept saying that he wants a ?return? to the > teachings of Khomeini. I in no way support a man who wants a ?return? to the > teachings of Khomeini.**"** endquote* > > * > * > > *thank you, sir, for rectifying the error but thank you more for your > naive defense of the mainstream media and the new strategies of soft power > manipulation by president phosphorus. i understand hester is now a US > imperialist who supports obama's war in afghanistan and official US > propaganda that moussavi, the liberator, was screwed. i gather you also > support obama's silence during the recent gaza raid. in line with > moveon.org and other liberal hack groups is a good place to be when you've > lost the critical edge. your post smells of a larger co-option. * > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090622/cdd4a548/attachment.htm From uwgdebate at gmail.com Mon Jun 22 12:39:56 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:39:56 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] which is worse, mike, dailykos or rense? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906221039k6f971941re8eae14b9dd6cf11@mail.gmail.com> for the record, rense is among my bookmarks. it regularly has stuff on it that other sites don't cover. i find some of the articles repugnant, and others absurd, but it's still worth visiting for the coverage it devotes to issues that most everyone else ignores. as for which is worse, it depends on the metric for evaluating "worse." which is "worse" at publicizing crackpots that think to be jewish is to be innately evil? Rense which is "worse" at publicizing crackpots that think to be anti-Obama is to be innately evil? DailyKos which is "worse" in terms of being one-sided and not well-rounded in covering issues? DailyKos which is "worse" in terms of publicizing authors who routinely exaggerate relevant issues (disease, gov't secrecy, ETs) until they become jokes? Rense which site probably has the most visitors/contributors who smell their own farts for enjoyment? DailyKos, hands down UNLIKE Petras or DailyKos (or you, apparently), i didn't approach the Iranian elections with a preconceived notion of what *had to have happened*in order for my worldview (anti-Imperialism, pro-Obama, edebate irritant, or whatever) to be vindicated and then cherry pick data which confirms the worldview i repeat ad infinitum. i've read as many sources as i can get my eyes on, and imo, the evidence strongly supports the claim that the official results don't match how folks really voted. the rest of this crap that you keep throwing against the wall - mainstream media, Obama cult followers, WWKRTEF (Who Would Kissinger Rig The Election For) - is not intrinsic to the question of whether the powers that be in Iran announced false results to support the candidate they wanted to win (even though he didn't). it IS possible to believe that Ahmadinejad didn't win the election AND believe that Obama is a stooge for Western Imperialism whose only skill is teleprompter reading AND/OR the mainstream media masks how the US is worse than Ahamadinejad AND/OR K Affs coopt revolutionary spirit in intercollegiate debate. it's the folks who get trapped into thinking that accepting the first = you must deny the others who follow the same myopic logic of standard politics you claim to oppose. hester On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Old Strega wrote: > obama faithful dailykos has yet to censor the petras article from its > website: > > http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/19/744717/-Possible-Iran-stolen-election-hoax > > what's your explanation given your statements about rense? > > i believe dailykos ran the niger forgery evidence as well but after rense > posted that whistleblow and after stroube forwarded the niger forgery to > edebate from rense when he was all over bush as he is now all over obama in > the tradition of the comedian mort sahl. > > and i'm sure you've seen kissinger on the BBC using your poll analysis to > shift the CFR strategy from a soft coup to a hard coup. that's kissinger > call for regime change in iran evidence from the weekend. mike thinks it's > totally coincidental despite the speed of the coming obama administration > about face of policy (this is a crazy terrorist site from the middle east > and i'm not sure about quoting it after the damage you did on rense) (the > video's there too): > > > http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/video-kissinger-threatens-regime-change-in-iran/ > > JUNE 20, 2009...10:57 PMVideo: Kissinger Threatens Regime Change In IranJump > to Comments > > Talking on BBC Newsnight Kissinger says that while the US will not > intervene in the current crisis, if the coup fails and a popularly based > government is not installed (ie the one he wants), then we may conclude that > we must work for regime change in Iran from the outside. > > At the time Kissinger is making this statement, CIA and Mossad bringing acolored > revolution in Iran to install Zionist puppet regime. > > > > end quote > > > excuse me, have you heard of a "COORDINATED INTELLIGENCE ACTION"? perhaps > that's what petras has exposed and what probably chomsky and other crazy > sources will further highlight as the raison d'etre for the US media > coverage of the iran election hoax. i hear the crack in obamaland rocks. > tell me, mike, how does it smoke? > > > > > ------------------------------ > Bing? brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it > now. > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090622/82dd881b/attachment.htm From dave at miami.edu Mon Jun 22 13:10:14 2009 From: dave at miami.edu (Steinberg, David L) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:10:14 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Faculty position at Florida International Message-ID: This position has the potential to be a debate coaching position for the right applicant. Feel free to contact me about it. David L. Steinberg Director of Debate, Lecturer in Communication Studies University of Miami PO Box 248127 Coral Gables, FL 33124 FLW 3015 305-284-5553 204-385-5216 (fax) dave at miami.edu http://debate.miami.edu/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Speech Flyer.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 207309 bytes Desc: Speech Flyer.pdf Url : http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090622/9869148f/attachment.pdf From alfred.snider at uvm.edu Mon Jun 22 13:44:23 2009 From: alfred.snider at uvm.edu (Alfred Snider) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:44:23 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Worlds format tournament calendar Message-ID: <4A3FD107.3040907@uvm.edu> Again in 2009-10 I will try to put together a list of tournaments being held in the USA & Canada in the WUDC/Worlds/BP format. Please send invitations to me so I can post them. Find them at http://debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/usu/Invites/Invites.html Thanks, Tuna -- Alfred C. Snider aka Tuna Edwin Lawrence Professor of Forensics University of Vermont Huber House, 475 Main Street, UVM, Burlington, VT 05405 USA Lawrence Debate Union http://debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/LDU/ Global Debate Blog http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com Debate Central http://debate.uvm.edu 802-656-0097 office telephone 802-656-4275 office fax From oldstrega at hotmail.com Mon Jun 22 13:52:55 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:52:55 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 1) chathamhouse is not conclusive but speculative evidence. "problematic" is the operative word of the article. foul play is suspected by not proven. there is no smoking gun. only circumstantial evidence. why is the burden of proof against ahmadinejad with nothing but speculation possibly promoted by the CIA and the Mossad presented so far? accepting that burden of proof is arguably imperialist especially if the speculation was state sponsored and filtered through the media with obviously INCOMPLETE coverage. by the way, wink wink, chatham house is connected to the Rothschilds and the CFR. an iranian front man as author of the analysis creates the illusion of objectivity. you do remember, chalabhi. i think your source is worse than mine. 2) ****what if the poll analysis is largely bolstered by poor and scanty media coverage from tehran which opened the door for all of this speculation? your speculative evidence has little weight without the CNN soap opera reinventing moussavi while covering only the capital. EXPLAIN HOW THIS ARGUMENT IS SHALLOW? cole never even considers the US media coverage in his great article. DROPPED -- *** STAR *** -- http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018 Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital ? few venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition?s supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street activities, while Ahmadinejad?s support drew on the majority of working youth and household women workers who would express their views at the ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics. how is this claim from petras shallow? you're running, bro. what was your obamaland experience of the coverage? you saw great coverage of the whole country? you're running to chathamhouse interpretations of poll numbers from areas that were DELIBERATELY excluded by the US media and you don't even have the guts to recognize that exclusion. the US media coverage of the iran election sucked. the equivalent would be coverage of the US election from washington, d.c. video only. terrible. you're lining up with that the conclusions of that coverage and not answering the key arguments. 3) speculative claims of cheating don't answer since those claims convert into the impression automatic vote fraud only with the backdrop of INCOMPLETE coverage from tehran represented as a COMPLETE picture. the incomplete coverage showed a swell of support for moussavi in a single city which is now being "vindicated" by speculative claims of cheating which kissinger is using to demand another coup. why can't you recognize this obvious media critique by petras of the hocus pocus that creates the impression that tehran is all of iran or recognize that moussavi's support may have been over-represented regardless of how many people have been reported to have voted by iran? i know. petras had a preconceived idea of the election unlike all the fools watching amercian television who have been made to believe by an unbiased media with NO PRECONCEPTIONS directed from the government that moussavi, the liberator, won . i see. genius. those who critique the preconceptions and the sea of agreement from the major media outlets get to that point through preconceptions. thank you, tabula rasa. your brain is not a vat even though i'm impressed by how well you scanned all the sources that are agreeing with each other and how little you have searched for a critique of that manufactured consent. your proclaimed lack of preconceptions is un-becoming and i'm not sure which philosopher you want to mount in your defense. sorry, but objectivity moves, are in my book declarations of weakness, signs of backpedalling. and your definition of "preconceptionless" existence is? drum roll/... at least, your objectivity opens you to the possibility of reversing your position later when chomsky and others outline further details of this CIA/Mossad intervention in iranian politics. you're objective. i have a hunch. and if you remember, my hunch on bush and the iraq war was dead on and i went to great lengths with that hunch. i'm sure you understand my frustration with the co-option of that hunch by the new war party. it is difficult for counter-positions to emerge when the corporate media outlets most often toe the official line of the US gubment. the cracks in the armor can't compete with the empire in terms of speed in painting pictures. i'll take hunches or bogus rationality anyday. i'll risk-taking over insurance. 4) if your memory serves you well, your standards for analysis would have shown in the year 1953 that the CIA was not involved in the iran coup. objective scanning of 1953 media sources would have sided with absolving vice president nixon and the CIA of responsibility as they absolve brzezinski, kissinger and the CFR of responsibility, today. the people with hunches were right. given history and your professorial objectivity, i think you're jumping the gun on your blanket dismissal of petras' premise. 5) lastly, you grant the media reinvention of moussavi while pointing out that, in the abstract, this is not inconsistent with your argument that the election was stolen. however, the media who reinvented moussavi for naive american audiences are the same media who all agree that the election was stolen. what was the motivation for reinventing moussavi if not to demonize ahmadinejad and sound the drums for regime change? in the abstract, the two claims are necessarily tied but in practice many a critical mind can see how well moussavi the liberator jives with the promulgation of election result speculation. they work together so well as a coordinated strategy that is difficult to divorce them simply to keep alive speculation. you have separated what the US media has coupled. over time, i don't think that backpedal will hold water. i'll agree on one thing. you have to filter rense because there are many things which are of no interest or possibly offensive. at the end of the day, i side with free speech and the right of offensive voices to debate. another thing. daily kos is a hack site. i think we agree on more than this little spar tells. i'm very concerned with carving a space for critical views that are not mesmerized by obama and his administration's media tricks. in the aftermath of the bush administration, all the fainting made me a little ill. you know that i wouldn't have taken such liberties in responding if i didn't feel that your source jokes would have been interpreted with similar liberty. you put me in a difficult spot but now we're discussing iran. D _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090622/0d2a3322/attachment.htm From jmgreen at ksu.edu Mon Jun 22 14:39:38 2009 From: jmgreen at ksu.edu (Justin Green) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:39:38 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Unofficial Potential Job at K-State and Thanks Message-ID: <5a6e2a80906221239i4e25d489g7f23dd7c87fdbf74@mail.gmail.com> On behalf of KSU Debate - Let me send out a warm-felt thank you to Jeff Roberts and Halli Tripe who are heading to UCO next year. Their work-hard attitude and yet jovial nature will serve as an example for our debaters well into the future. You both will be missed. As a more personal aside - I don't think anyone at KSU will be able to look at a pack of Red Bull or Camel Lights, or pass by Pat's without thinking of you :) Our department chair is in the process of filing the paperwork for this job - we are likely to act quickly if it becomes a possibility. Potential Job - Assistant Director of Debate at Kansas State University Pay: ~$32,000 - not very negotiable Educational Requirements: Masters in Comm usually preferred, Masters in another discipline as relevant to Business and Professional speaking and/or JD might be considered Preferred Qualifications:College Teaching and Debate Coaching experience - TEVALS of teaching are much appreciated Benefits: Health, small amount of life insurance and retirement after one year Teaching Duties: Teach 3 sections of Business and Professional Speaking per semester - on Tuesday/Thursday Debate Coaching Duties: Work with the team during the week, assist in research efforts, listen/actively participate in practice speeches/debates, travel fairly extensively to all types of tournaments, serve as person in charge when director doesn't attend - very little paperwork Disqualifications: you will only work with "x" type of debater (experienced, inexperienced, K, policy, etc), you want to party with debaters at their house, you will not be friendly to office mates who do not participate in debate, you are upset you are not teaching another more exciting class, you find yourself whining or complaining more than 50% of the time, this is one of multiple jobs you would have Improving your chances: If you have specialties in types/styles of arguments and love teaching debate to everyone. Non-Factors: Desire to be an academic scholar, published materials, or even a PhD. Congrats for you, but it does not matter for the job. The major drawback to this job - This is a 1-year temporary appointment. If the candidate performs well, it is extremely unlikely we would ask them to leave, however - it will likely be a targetted hire meaning you would likely have to re-apply for the job next year. There are no guarantees in the long-run. Why KSU and Manhattan? - Competitive/Fun Debate Squad - 10 incoming debaters 12 returning - we graduated no seniors and plan to vie for competitive success at CEDA and the NDT as well as the Novice and JV ranks. We had 4 teams break at CEDA last year - they all return - we expect an even better showing there and at the NDT. We will be at Gonzaga, Harvard, Wake, Kentucky, UNLV, Northwestern as well as up and down the I-35 corridor. - Quality coaches to work with - Sarah Snider, Natalie Pennington, and announcing the new star briefly from Pittsburg and more recently West Georgia aka WGLF - JOE KOEHLE (woop!) - (and the crowd goes wild). - A family atmosphere department - everybody is real nice hear - I mean nice - sometimes sickeningly so, but they genuinely mean it - A great town - Live, work, shop, and celebrate all while walking from your relatively inexpensive apartment. So you are interested? Please email or call me (703..855..6177) very soon and let me know of your interest and further questions. If you have a resume, cover letter and letters of rec already done - then send them along. if not - then just let me know you are interested. On behalf of KSU Debate, Justin Green Director of Debate From stefan.bauschard at gmail.com Mon Jun 22 23:42:40 2009 From: stefan.bauschard at gmail.com (Stefan Bauschard) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:42:40 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Camp updates, lectures, Damien, yellow belt Message-ID: <524839830906222142g750a60a0m7e5a806c242de12c@mail.gmail.com> **Thirteen free* *video* lectures from this summer available online...more coming (though not all for free...invest in a subscription). *Stay abreast of summer developments with our Poverty Topic Blog ( http://www.planetdebate.com/blogs/view/260)...more than 1, 700 page views already...an impressive amount of work is in the pipeline.... *Follow us on twitter -- text follow planetdebate to 40404 (requires free twitter account activation). *You can also get our updates by subscribing via a newsreader at our home page *Damien won NFLS (http://www.planetdebate.com/blogs/view/273) Check out our finals photo album (http://www.planetdebate.com/photos/gallery/126) *My son Ryan has advanced to yellow belt! -- Stefan Bauschard President & Co-Founder, PlanetDebate.com Debate Coach, Harvard Debate Director of Debate, Lakeland Schools Director of Development & Operations, NFL National Tournament 2011 (c) 781-775-0433 (fx) 617-588-0283 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/a785ef7d/attachment.htm From malgorthewarrior at hotmail.com Tue Jun 23 12:23:45 2009 From: malgorthewarrior at hotmail.com (M G) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:23:45 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] rense v dailykos Message-ID: rense http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0qICvnkQmM dailykos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLpx_yioYik _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/fbf719d2/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Tue Jun 23 13:00:59 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:00:59 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] iran: another classic "colored revolution"? Message-ID: the story is developing. petras is hardly alone. remember, hester grants that the US media turned moussavi into something he is not. hard to believe that the US media got moussavi wrong but the stolen election right. big mistake by hester: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22875.htm Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ?Color Revolution?? By Paul Craig Roberts June 20, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Terhan. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events. The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don?t see through this trick. As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri?s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians. There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs' lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money. In my opinion, Ahmadinejad's attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs. Commentators are "explaining" the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad's win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government. On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: ?The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert ?black? operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.? On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: ?Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.? A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would ?be a ?last option? after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.? On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: ?Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country?s religious leadership.? The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine. It requires total blindness not to see this. Daniel McAdams has made some telling points.http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/027782.html For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that ?there?s talk of a ?green revolution? in Tehran.? How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ?green revolution? prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests. Timmerman goes on to write that ?the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ?color? revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.? Timmerman?s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is ?a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.? _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try_bing_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/42ec3d44/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Tue Jun 23 13:53:43 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:53:43 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] thoughts on caucus Message-ID: segal is a super-sharp fellow from st. mark's before emory. i believe he went into lobbying against tuna fishing after law school. lost him thereafter. my number one wish on my caucus wish list is that the caucus include some inclination to re-include public debate in the process of policy-making at the federal level. what happens on the floor of the congress simply does not gather the attention of the american people as the presidential elections do. important heads up debate format debates only happen in this country on prime time television once every 4 years. this is sad especially because the presidential debates only include prospective policies based on promises which have a habit of being broken or modified, i.e. there is a lot of posturing in the presidential debates telling the public what polls show they want to hear. CSPAN fails to bring public debate to the public. congressional debate (which may lack focus for audiences) or some alternative needs to be more visible through a new form of debate television programming with content decisions divorced from the private sector. this approach could bring the blogosphere to a new level of impact. these bills are long with inclusions and additions on top of the meat. the people who are represented in congress don't even know what they say much less the best arguments for and against or the possibly better positions that were excluded. we live in a world of spin with tiny enclaves of meaningful public debate that directly impacts policy votes. obama has shown a willingness to mimic bush and ram through bills citing immanent crisis and executive authority ("I won!" the stupidest line of his presidency) at the expense of public debate. his transparency ideas do not go far enough and seem by design to more promote the image of open government than open government. transparency without vigorous public debate is not transparency. we can not rely on the executive branch to reign in executive power post-cheney as senator byrd has demonstrated in his objections to obama-czar phenomenon. another problem with debate in this country is lobbyists. with populism back in vogue, more candidates are anti-lobbyist but they don't want to tell the whole story about the role of lobbyists in policy formation which includes the expenditure of a lot of money to frame policy debates before they happen. think-tanks are almost exclusively tied to special interests and years in advance of policy decisions they flood the hill with the main ideas that shape those bills down to the key phrases and talking points for the spin package. think-tank-heads are increasingly filling white house posts. any meaningful speech and debate caucus will challenge the stranglehold of think-tanks on public debate by asking questions about what debate really is or could be. _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try_bing_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/dd1c1e75/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Tue Jun 23 15:20:42 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:20:42 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] friedman chimes in on iran Message-ID: some more smoking cards not allowed in the mainstream media from george friedman today -- not on rense yet. more on that *** point *** hester ran from about extrapolation of conclusions based on terrible western media coverage: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/a_flawed_election_or_a_crushed_revolution/ This is also what happened in Iran this week. The global media, obsessively focused on the initial demonstrators ? who were supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?s opponents ? failed to notice that while large, the demonstrations primarily consisted of the same type of people demonstrating. Amid the breathless reporting on the demonstrations, reporters failed to notice that the uprising was not spreading to other classes and to other areas. In constantly interviewing English-speaking demonstrators, they failed to note just how many of the demonstrators spoke English and had smartphones. The media thus did not recognize these as the signs of a failing revolution. Later, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke Friday and called out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they failed to understand that the troops ? definitely not drawn from what we might call the ?Twittering classes,? would remain loyal to the regime for ideological and social reasons. The troops had about as much sympathy for the demonstrators as a small-town boy from Alabama might have for a Harvard postdoc. Failing to understand the social tensions in Iran, the reporters deluded themselves into thinking they were witnessing a general uprising. But this was not St. Petersburg in 1917 or Bucharest in 1989 ? it was Tiananmen Square. In the global discussion last week outside Iran, there was a great deal of confusion about basic facts. For example, it is said that the urban-rural distinction in Iran is not critical any longer because according to the United Nations, 68 percent of Iranians are urbanized. This is an important point because it implies Iran is homogeneous and the demonstrators representative of the country. The problem is the Iranian definition of urban ? and this is quite common around the world ? includes very small communities (some with only a few thousand people) as ?urban.? But the social difference between someone living in a town with 10,000 people and someone living in Tehran is the difference between someone living in Bastrop, Texas and someone living in New York. We can assure you that that difference is not only vast, but that most of the good people of Bastrop and the fine people of New York would probably not see the world the same way. The failure to understand the dramatic diversity of Iranian society led observers to assume that students at Iran?s elite university somehow spoke for the rest of the country. Tehran proper has about 8 million inhabitants; its suburbs bring it to about 13 million people out of Iran?s total population of 70.5 million. Tehran accounts for about 20 percent of Iran, but as we know, the cab driver and the construction worker are not socially linked to students at elite universities. There are six cities with populations between 1 million and 2.4 million people and 11 with populations of about 500,000. Including Tehran proper, 15.5 million people live in cities with more than 1 million and 19.7 million in cities greater than 500,000. Iran has 80 cities with more than 100,000. But given that Waco, Texas, has more than 100,000 people, inferences of social similarities between cities with 100,000 and 5 million are tenuous. And with metro Oklahoma City having more than a million people, it becomes plain that urbanization has many faces. end quote next, vote fraud WAS NOT necessary for victory. http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/a_flawed_election_or_a_crushed_revolution/ We continue to believe two things: that vote fraud occurred, and that Ahmadinejad likely would have won without it. Very little direct evidence has emerged to establish vote fraud, but several things seem suspect... Mousavi persuasively detailed his fraud claims Sunday, and they have yet to be rebutted. But if his claims of the extent of fraud were true, the protests should have spread rapidly by social segment and geography to the millions of people who even the central government asserts voted for him. Certainly, Mousavi supporters believed they would win the election based in part on highly flawed polls, and when they didn?t, they assumed they were robbed and took to the streets. But critically, the protesters were not joined by any of the millions whose votes the protesters alleged were stolen. In a complete hijacking of the election by some 13 million votes by an extremely unpopular candidate, we would have expected to see the core of Mousavi?s supporters joined by others who had been disenfranchised. On last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, when the demonstrations were at their height, the millions of Mousavi voters should have made their appearance. They didn?t. We might assume that the security apparatus intimidated some, but surely more than just the Tehran professional and student classes posses civic courage. While appearing large, the demonstrations actually comprised a small fraction of society. _________________________________________________________________ Bing? brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it now. http://www.bing.com/search?q=restaurants&form=MLOGEN&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MLOGEN_Core_tagline_local_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/f75bca72/attachment.htm From drmosbornesq at gmail.com Tue Jun 23 15:40:35 2009 From: drmosbornesq at gmail.com (bandana martin) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:40:35 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] TRAGIC NEWS REGARDING JOSEPH CARVER Message-ID: <39c09a80906231340h5670fd9cs153255c62ec19365@mail.gmail.com> he cant cut cards. but apparently he thinks he can cut a record. his music project will be releasing their debut record this summer and you can listen to a few rough tracks at this link: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=479665042 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/65359505/attachment.htm From markcronan at yahoo.com Tue Jun 23 17:38:12 2009 From: markcronan at yahoo.com (Mark Cronan) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:38:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [eDebate] Will Strader Message-ID: <63593.17113.qm@web51809.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Anyone know where I can locate Will Strader, formerly of University of Utah (a professor there I believe, who ran at least one tournament there)? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/d4252bf4/attachment.htm From uwgdebate at gmail.com Tue Jun 23 20:19:42 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:19:42 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906231819i71dc55a9x6e8413d64892a766@mail.gmail.com> 1) i'm doing my best to properly respect this conversation, reading all the linked articles and really trying to understand all the various perspectives. (i'm also swamped at work) thus, my responses are sometimes a bit delayed. 2) my entry into this debate was a criticism of the petras article, not a defense of western media or moussavi, dismissing the claims (implied and otherwise) made by petras that ahmadinejad is innocent and its only Western press that are corrupt and biased. my claim for shallowness is just that: petras, without any personal experience in Iran, *assumes* that any challenge to the Supreme Leader's premature sign-off on election results which don't match previous elections (something that petras was factually wrong about) must be wrong because the West is saying it as a fraudulent outcome. imo, he makes the same mistake of which he condemns dupes of imperialism. keep in mind, Iranian State TV is reporting that officials are admitting fraud, just dickering over how much occurred: "Iran's Guardian Council has admitted that the number of votes collected in 50 cities surpass the number of those eligible to cast ballot in those areas. The council's Spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, who was speaking on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Channel 2 on Sunday, made the remarks in response to complaints filed by Mohsen Rezaei -- a defeated candidate in the June 12 Presidential election. "Statistics provided by Mohsen Rezaei in which he claims more than 100% of those eligible have cast their ballot in 170 cities are not accurate -- the incident has happened in only 50 cities," Kadkhodaei said." in other words, the disagreement is now not a question of whether multiple sides were playing fast and loose with the integrity of elections, but whether those shenanigans altered the outcome. 3) unlike petras, the george friedman article is solid. for one, it's nuanced. he admits the results may be fraudulent and recognizes (unlike petras) that there aren't really any "good guys" in this contest. he definitely makes a good argument as to why even though fraud was likely, Ahmadinejad would have won anyway. but even friedman makes some awkward moves in causal reasoning. for example, he says, "Mousavi persuasively detailed his fraud claims Sunday, and they have yet to be rebutted. But if his claims of the extent of fraud were true, the protests should have spread rapidly [but haven't]." This reasoning has at least two flaws. first, he creates an artificially & arbitrarily short timeframe by which to judge whether revolution is spreading. it's been less than two weeks since the election. the 1979 revolution took more than 12 months from the time it began in 1978. to claim that because the uprising hasn't spread at the speed of light is evidence that Ahmadinejad has majority support is spurious. second, he admits that threats of repression could deter potential uprisings, but then just sort of dismisses that as a a reason why the other masses haven't joined in. but those threats are exactly what would deter the kinds of voters [conservative, attracted to claims of piety] that would be cowed by basij. 4) also, why does george friedman - editor-in-chief for Stratfor, global intelligence player - getting a free pass in the source quals debate? couldn't his arguments be given the same suspicious eye that "mainstream media" are held to? i'm not saying it a disqualifier, but it does seem a bit selective to say that "western media" are biased, but not even account for the possibility that a media conglomerate that relies on "security analysis" might have a reason to shade the debate a certain way that favors their own interests. 5) speaking of that bias, the weakness of the "CIA exports revolution" claims (including the article by Roberts) is that it assumes a waaaay oversimplified version of what the West thinks is in its best interests. as many commentators have noted, US neo-cons' thirst for war with Iran is helped - not hurt - by an Ahmadinejad victory. it's a lot easier to sell imperialist adventures to the american public if there's an easily identifiable enemy. and Ahmadinejad has been the poster-boy for that - from his denial of the h'caust to his oddly naive claims about homosexuality in Iran. thus, there's *at least *as good a chance that US imperialists would benefit from news stories which portray the Iranian public as solidly backing the "evil" (by Western accounts) Ahmadinejad. the trial balloons for military responses against Iran (whether by the US or Israel) have always been airstrikes, not infantry. and that matters b/c it answers the rebuttal that fomenting fake revolution in Iran would justify US intervention. ONLY if that intervention is troops on the ground, NOT air strikes that cause civilian collateral damage - the only way to sell this latter option is to depict the Iranian people as unworthy of humane consideration. but the coverage by Western media has done just the opposite. in other words, which scenario plays out best for imperialist interests is much more complicated (and even contradictory) than the "CIA is faking a rev" claims assume. p.s. - yes, we do agree on several items in this discussion. i'm trying to leave those untended to in order to focus on the points where we may diverge. On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Old Strega wrote: > 1) chathamhouse is not conclusive but speculative evidence. > "problematic" is the operative word of the article. foul play is suspected > by not proven. there is no smoking gun. only circumstantial evidence. > why is the burden of proof against ahmadinejad with nothing but > speculation possibly promoted by the CIA and the Mossad presented so far? > accepting that burden of proof is arguably imperialist especially if the > speculation was state sponsored and filtered through the media with > obviously INCOMPLETE coverage. * > * > *by the way, wink wink, chatham house is connected to the Rothschilds and > the CFR. an iranian front man as author of the analysis creates the > illusion of objectivity. you do remember, chalabhi. i think your source > is worse than mine. > * > 2) ****what if the poll analysis is largely bolstered by poor and scanty > media coverage from tehran which opened the door for all of this > speculation? your speculative evidence has little weight without the CNN > soap opera reinventing moussavi while covering only the capital. > > EXPLAIN HOW THIS ARGUMENT IS SHALLOW? cole never even considers the US > media coverage in his great article. DROPPED -- *** STAR *** -- > > http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018 > > Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran > extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital ? few > venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where > Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition?s > supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street > activities, while Ahmadinejad?s support drew on the majority of working > youth and household women workers who would express their views at the > ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics. > > how is this claim from petras shallow? you're running, bro. what was > your obamaland experience of the coverage? you saw great coverage of the > whole country? you're running to chathamhouse interpretations of poll > numbers from areas that were DELIBERATELY excluded by the US media and you > don't even have the guts to recognize that exclusion. the US media > coverage of the iran election sucked. the equivalent would be coverage of > the US election from washington, d.c. video only. terrible. you're > lining up with that the conclusions of that coverage and not answering the > key arguments. > > 3) speculative claims of cheating don't answer since those claims convert > into the impression automatic vote fraud only with the backdrop of > INCOMPLETE coverage from tehran represented as a COMPLETE picture. the > incomplete coverage showed a swell of support for moussavi in a single city > which is now being "vindicated" by speculative claims of cheating which > kissinger is using to demand another coup. > > why can't you recognize this obvious media critique by petras of the hocus > pocus that creates the impression that tehran is all of iran or recognize > that moussavi's support may have been over-represented regardless of how > many people have been reported to have voted by iran? > > i know. petras had a preconceived idea of the election unlike all the > fools watching amercian television who have been made to believe by an > unbiased media with NO PRECONCEPTIONS directed from the government that > moussavi, the liberator, won . i see. genius. those who critique the > preconceptions and the sea of agreement from the major media outlets get to > that point through preconceptions. thank you, tabula rasa. your brain > is not a vat even though i'm impressed by how well you scanned all the > sources that are agreeing with each other and how little you have searched > for a critique of that manufactured consent. your proclaimed lack of > preconceptions is un-becoming and i'm not sure which philosopher you want to > mount in your defense. sorry, but objectivity moves, are in my book > declarations of weakness, signs of backpedalling. and your definition of > "preconceptionless" existence is? drum roll/... > > at least, your objectivity opens you to the possibility of reversing your > position later when chomsky and others outline further details of this > CIA/Mossad intervention in iranian politics. you're objective. i have a > hunch. and if you remember, my hunch on bush and the iraq war was dead on > and i went to great lengths with that hunch. i'm sure you understand my > frustration with the co-option of that hunch by the new war party. it is > difficult for counter-positions to emerge when the corporate media outlets > most often toe the official line of the US gubment. the cracks in the > armor can't compete with the empire in terms of speed in painting pictures. > i'll take hunches or bogus rationality anyday. i'll risk-taking over > insurance. > > 4) if your memory serves you well, your standards for analysis would have > shown in the year 1953 that the CIA was not involved in the iran coup. > objective scanning of 1953 media sources would have sided with absolving > vice president nixon and the CIA of responsibility as they absolve > brzezinski, kissinger and the CFR of responsibility, today. the people > with hunches were right. > > given history and your professorial objectivity, i think you're jumping the > gun on your blanket dismissal of petras' premise. > > 5) lastly, you grant the media reinvention of moussavi while pointing out > that, in the abstract, this is not inconsistent with your argument that the > election was stolen. however, the media who reinvented moussavi for naive > american audiences are the same media who all agree that the election was > stolen. > > what was the motivation for reinventing moussavi if not to demonize ahmadinejad > and sound the drums for regime change? in the abstract, the two claims are > necessarily tied but in practice many a critical mind can see how well > moussavi the liberator jives with the promulgation of election result > speculation. they work together so well as a coordinated strategy that is > difficult to divorce them simply to keep alive speculation. you have > separated what the US media has coupled. over time, i don't think that > backpedal will hold water. > * > * > *i'll agree on one thing. you have to filter rense because there are > many things which are of no interest or possibly offensive. at the end of > the day, i side with free speech and the right of offensive voices to > debate. another thing. daily kos is a hack site. * > * > * > *i think we agree on more than this little spar tells. * > * > * > *i'm very concerned with carving a space for critical views that are not > mesmerized by obama and his administration's media tricks. in the > aftermath of the bush administration, all the fainting made me a little ill. > you know that i wouldn't have taken such liberties in responding if i > didn't feel that your source jokes would have been interpreted with similar > liberty. you put me in a difficult spot but now we're discussing iran. > * > ------------------------------ > D > > ------------------------------ > Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/60c0eae2/attachment.htm From uwgdebate at gmail.com Tue Jun 23 20:22:09 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:22:09 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] rense v dailykos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906231822g4e62b6et44c4d96678a02e91@mail.gmail.com> yeah, this pretty much sums up my earlier post. excellent use of video as argument, malgor! hester On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 1:23 PM, M G wrote: > rense > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0qICvnkQmM > > > dailykos > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLpx_yioYik > > > > > > ------------------------------ > Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. See how. > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090623/fac18df8/attachment.htm From lacyjp at wfu.edu Wed Jun 24 02:03:36 2009 From: lacyjp at wfu.edu (JP Lacy) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:03:36 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? Message-ID: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> Thanks to Whitman & Hardy's hard work proving it works, who is planning to go paperless next year? Wake is planning to. We are stealing Hardy's work to make it happen. The health care savings alone will pay for it:) -- JP From rickydeck at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 03:04:19 2009 From: rickydeck at gmail.com (Ricky Deck) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:04:19 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? In-Reply-To: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> References: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <6ae7c1540906240104y41a8c83en489e29c5229bbce6@mail.gmail.com> JMU is slowly transitioning to Paperless.... Don't quote me on this but I was told by some coaches at Liberty they're on their way to go Paperless as well as Mary Washington On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 3:03 AM, JP Lacy wrote: > > Thanks to Whitman & Hardy's hard work proving it works, who is planning > to go paperless next year? > > Wake is planning to. We are stealing Hardy's work to make it happen. > > The health care savings alone will pay for it:) > > -- JP > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/5b26c0f7/attachment.htm From lacyjp at wfu.edu Wed Jun 24 03:05:36 2009 From: lacyjp at wfu.edu (JP Lacy) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:05:36 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? In-Reply-To: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> References: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <4A41DE50.40708@wfu.edu> I know a bunch of you are on the fence. You probably plan to try it & see if it will work for next season, (or the next.) If you're in that boat, post your worries to eDebate! We need as much collaboration as possible to help get rid of paper. -- JP ps-If anyone hates the whole paperless thing, you should say so! JP Lacy wrote: > Thanks to Whitman & Hardy's hard work proving it works, who is planning > to go paperless next year? > > Wake is planning to. We are stealing Hardy's work to make it happen. > > The health care savings alone will pay for it:) > > -- JP > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > > > From jarrod.atchison at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 09:40:48 2009 From: jarrod.atchison at gmail.com (Jarrod Atchison) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:40:48 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless Message-ID: Trinity is going paperless next year thanks to the amazing work of Hardy, Whitman, and Denver. The key for us was securing the third laptop per team. ~Jarrod From EMarlow at uco.edu Wed Jun 24 10:08:46 2009 From: EMarlow at uco.edu (Eric Marlow) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:08:46 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? In-Reply-To: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> References: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <18B8F2010B91E144BC6EB64508D71013071A0BDB10@EXCHANGE.uco.local> UCO is going to be taking the middle road this year. We plan on limiting each team to one tub as a first step in the transition to paperless. After looking at our baggage fee costs and copying budget this year, we decided this transition was a great way to decrease our costs and extend our travel budget further. Peace Marlow -----Original Message----- From: edebate-bounces at www.ndtceda.com [mailto:edebate-bounces at www.ndtceda.com] On Behalf Of JP Lacy Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 2:04 AM To: Edebate Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? Thanks to Whitman & Hardy's hard work proving it works, who is planning to go paperless next year? Wake is planning to. We are stealing Hardy's work to make it happen. The health care savings alone will pay for it:) -- JP _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate **Bronze+Blue=Green** The University of Central Oklahoma is Bronze, Blue, and Green! Please print this e-mail only if absolutely necessary! **CONFIDENTIALITY** -This e-mail (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information. Any unauthorized disclosure or use of this information is prohibited. From schuelbe at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 10:17:26 2009 From: schuelbe at gmail.com (Beth Schueler) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:17:26 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <58fced380906240817g11982975sd28c502d9aa02921@mail.gmail.com> Thanks are also due to Jim Hanson for pushing the paperless issue despite debater reluctance over the years. Thanks! Beth On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 10:40 AM, Jarrod Atchison wrote: > Trinity is going paperless next year thanks to the amazing work of > Hardy, Whitman, and Denver. The key for us was securing the third > laptop per team. > > ~Jarrod > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/32e96522/attachment.htm From jddtfl at yahoo.com Wed Jun 24 10:52:09 2009 From: jddtfl at yahoo.com (David Trigaux) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:52:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? Message-ID: <683769.10815.qm@web51311.mail.re2.yahoo.com> USF St. Pete has considered the paperless route many times for the obvious savings it presents to a small team like us. However, the largest obstacle that we face is that we don't have the funds to acquire laptops in the first place. the majority of our debaters have their own laptops, but most aren't very reliable, to be frank, and a 3rd laptop for each team is a real stretch.?It ends up being a trade off between going to tournaments, or buying laptops.?We drive to most tournaments, so shipping tubs hasn't killed us. Has anyone found a good method?for acquiring laptops en masse cheaply, or perhaps found a business willing to donate a few? ? -David --- On Wed, 6/24/09, JP Lacy wrote: From: JP Lacy Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? To: "Edebate" Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 3:03 AM Thanks to Whitman & Hardy's hard work proving it works, who is planning to go paperless next year? Wake is planning to. We are stealing Hardy's work to make it happen. The health care savings alone will pay for it:) -- JP _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/13a1a699/attachment.htm From asymonds at asu.edu Wed Jun 24 10:55:51 2009 From: asymonds at asu.edu (Adam Symonds) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:55:51 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? Message-ID: Arizona State will also be switching to the paperless model. We've secured many of the third/viewing laptops by asking team members and alums to donate their old laptops. Thanks to Whitman for proto-typing this macro-based system in Word, and thanks to Jim for answering my numerous questions =) -- Adam Symonds Director of Forensics Arizona State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/9bc0f371/attachment.htm From carrolltondebate at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 11:35:41 2009 From: carrolltondebate at gmail.com (Joseph Carver) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:35:41 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it?Carrollton is! Message-ID: Probably not the respondent you were looking for but Carrollton Sacred Heart converted fully to paperless in May. I believe we are the first high school to convert but others have contacted me and are interested or in the process. If we were not the first my apologies And thanks to Ozzie for his vocal indifference to my band. For those on the West Coast, I will be opening some dates for Five AM in August. Back to summer break.. Joe Carver On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Adam Symonds wrote: > Arizona State will also be switching to the paperless model. We've secured > many of the third/viewing laptops by asking team members and alums to donate > their old laptops. Thanks to Whitman for proto-typing this macro-based > system in Word, and thanks to Jim for answering my numerous questions =) > > -- > Adam Symonds > Director of Forensics > Arizona State University > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/d584ca15/attachment.htm From velcrowe at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 11:46:20 2009 From: velcrowe at gmail.com (Chris Crowe) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:46:20 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? Message-ID: <623f2fe20906240946j7359e1d6lb7a355622c1f3d04@mail.gmail.com> Mostly a question for Whitman folk, but have any kids flowed on their laptops while working under the paperless system? I was wondering how difficult/cumbersome it would be to switch back and forth between your flow and the cards on the laptop while keeping your place on both. -Crowe -- Christopher Crowe University of Wyoming -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/3f6466be/attachment.htm From gfrappier at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 12:13:37 2009 From: gfrappier at gmail.com (Glen Frappier) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:13:37 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? In-Reply-To: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> References: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <7a803e390906241013o6b9e922dk4dcb0b9f0bc73ddd@mail.gmail.com> Gonzaga will be making the shift to paperless. We are also using a version of the Whitman template (and by version i mean the whitman template with the header changed) at the GDI this summer. Many of our faculty are planning on incorporating elements of the paperless system into their labs. glen On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:03 AM, JP Lacy wrote: > > Thanks to Whitman & Hardy's hard work proving it works, who is planning > to go paperless next year? > > Wake is planning to. We are stealing Hardy's work to make it happen. > > The health care savings alone will pay for it:) > > -- JP > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/52af3db9/attachment.htm From charrigan at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 12:14:02 2009 From: charrigan at gmail.com (Casey Harrigan) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:14:02 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? In-Reply-To: <623f2fe20906240946j7359e1d6lb7a355622c1f3d04@mail.gmail.com> References: <623f2fe20906240946j7359e1d6lb7a355622c1f3d04@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Georgia will be paperless in 09/10, using the Whitman model. Extra thanks to Hardy for his troubleshooting help so far. ch On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Chris Crowe wrote: > Mostly a question for Whitman folk, but have any kids flowed on their > laptops while working under the paperless system? I was wondering how > difficult/cumbersome it would be to switch back and forth between your flow > and the cards on the laptop while keeping your place on both. > > -Crowe > > -- > Christopher Crowe > University of Wyoming > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -- Casey Harrigan Associate Director of Debate University of Georgia 123 Terrell Hall Athens, GA 30605 (o) 706 542 9420 (c) 706 207 4753 harrigan at uga.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/ebe17845/attachment.htm From cramhelwich at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 13:10:14 2009 From: cramhelwich at gmail.com (David Cram Helwich) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:10:14 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? In-Reply-To: <7a803e390906241013o6b9e922dk4dcb0b9f0bc73ddd@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> <7a803e390906241013o6b9e922dk4dcb0b9f0bc73ddd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <52ace93c0906241110j677fb086od0cd29b1d9c1c5a9@mail.gmail.com> We're practicing with it this summer, with the plan of most of our teams being paperless (or at least, less paper) by Sept.. I am committed to it, even over the howls of debaters. We will also be 3-4K richer. Thanks to Hardy for the macros, and to Jim for being stubborn. dch umn On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Glen Frappier wrote: > Gonzaga will be making the shift to paperless. We are also using a version > of the Whitman template (and by version i mean the whitman template with the > header changed) at the GDI this summer. Many of our faculty are planning on > incorporating elements of the paperless system into their labs. > > glen > > > > > > > On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:03 AM, JP Lacy wrote: > >> >> Thanks to Whitman & Hardy's hard work proving it works, who is planning >> to go paperless next year? >> >> Wake is planning to. We are stealing Hardy's work to make it happen. >> >> The health care savings alone will pay for it:) >> >> -- JP >> _______________________________________________ >> eDebate mailing list >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >> > > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/640ac64e/attachment.htm From andy.edebate at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 13:21:52 2009 From: andy.edebate at gmail.com (Andy Ellis) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:21:52 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9368bc9b0906241121obb35947s5176b487cc4cfcce@mail.gmail.com> ? For paperless people do all of your debaters have relable laptops? On 6/24/09, Jarrod Atchison wrote: > Trinity is going paperless next year thanks to the amazing work of > Hardy, Whitman, and Denver. The key for us was securing the third > laptop per team. > > ~Jarrod > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -- Sent from my mobile device From Jacob.Thompson at unlv.edu Wed Jun 24 14:08:40 2009 From: Jacob.Thompson at unlv.edu (Jacob.Thompson at unlv.edu) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:08:40 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm really glad that JP started this thread. We've been slowly working on going paperless at UNLV, but we have not made a lot of progress... This might just be the impetus we need to complete the transition. Jake Jacob Thompson, Ph.D. Director, Sanford I. Berman Debate Forum Assistant Professor In Residence Greenspun College of Urban Affairs Department of Communication Studies University of Nevada, Las Vegas 4505 Maryland Parkway Box 45052 Las Vegas, NV 89154-4502 office (702) 895-3474 fax (702) 895-4805 cell (702) 809-9670 Rebel Debate on the web: www.unlv.edu/orgs/debate -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/0bf61ebb/attachment.htm From leslapatopolous at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 14:16:49 2009 From: leslapatopolous at gmail.com (Les Lapatopolous) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:16:49 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] WHY PAPERLESS DEBATING RULES Message-ID: Paperless debating is awesome! Here's why! 1. If you hate it, you can wreck it easier than debating with a tub. Drop the laptop. Spill your bad tournament coffee on it. Accidentally drop the tubs you're stacking into a podium onto the screen. Congrats- you just essentially destroyed the other team's tubs. 2. Install a keylogger or backdoor on that bad boy during prep time, and point it at your favorite server. Bam! Now you know not only how shitty the cards that JP cuts for his teams are -- but you have all of the evidence Wake carries around. If you're real crafty, you'll also bug the mic so you can hear the other team prep near their laptop, hear the other team debate in other rounds, and maybe even catch them talking shit in their hotel room! 3. Log the evidence laptop into Instant Messenger before you give it back to the other team. Then when they start their spew down of cards, IM them with O HAI DID U NOES U R ON INTERNETS? Kinda hard to read cards with all them pop-ups I bet. I love paperless debating. Nothing will more directly allow me as a debater to fuck with your evidence and your tubs as much as paperless debating does. Keep on truckin, especially because all the judges in this activity are too technologically inept to figure out any of the last 12 times I stole all of Whitman's evidence. Les Lapatopolous -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/aa2b9e82/attachment.htm From gonza310 at msu.edu Wed Jun 24 14:29:14 2009 From: gonza310 at msu.edu (Joshua Gonzalez) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:29:14 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <82297668-AE2C-4108-B17E-D584CE72D28A@msu.edu> Here's a better question - is there anybody that is vehemently opposed to paperless debate (I will take as a given complaints by debaters regarding transitioning)? J On Jun 24, 2009, at 9:40 AM, Jarrod Atchison wrote: > Trinity is going paperless next year thanks to the amazing work of > Hardy, Whitman, and Denver. The key for us was securing the third > laptop per team. > > ~Jarrod > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > From gonza310 at msu.edu Wed Jun 24 14:32:03 2009 From: gonza310 at msu.edu (Joshua Gonzalez) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:32:03 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] WHY PAPERLESS DEBATING RULES In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Of course, if you wanted all of Wake or Whitman's evidence, you could send a cite request, but that wouldn't fulfill your goal of being a trolling ass clown. J On Jun 24, 2009, at 2:16 PM, Les Lapatopolous wrote: > Paperless debating is awesome! Here's why! > > 1. If you hate it, you can wreck it easier than debating with a > tub. Drop the laptop. Spill your bad tournament coffee on it. > Accidentally drop the tubs you're stacking into a podium onto the > screen. Congrats- you just essentially destroyed the other team's > tubs. > > 2. Install a keylogger or backdoor on that bad boy during prep > time, and point it at your favorite server. Bam! Now you know not > only how shitty the cards that JP cuts for his teams are -- but you > have all of the evidence Wake carries around. If you're real > crafty, you'll also bug the mic so you can hear the other team prep > near their laptop, hear the other team debate in other rounds, and > maybe even catch them talking shit in their hotel room! > > 3. Log the evidence laptop into Instant Messenger before you give > it back to the other team. Then when they start their spew down of > cards, IM them with O HAI DID U NOES U R ON INTERNETS? Kinda hard > to read cards with all them pop-ups I bet. > > I love paperless debating. Nothing will more directly allow me as a > debater to fuck with your evidence and your tubs as much as > paperless debating does. Keep on truckin, especially because all > the judges in this activity are too technologically inept to figure > out any of the last 12 times I stole all of Whitman's evidence. > > Les Lapatopolous > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate From andy.edebate at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 14:34:44 2009 From: andy.edebate at gmail.com (Andy Ellis) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:34:44 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: <82297668-AE2C-4108-B17E-D584CE72D28A@msu.edu> References: <82297668-AE2C-4108-B17E-D584CE72D28A@msu.edu> Message-ID: <9368bc9b0906241234r310ae9d5v5993e28d0aeb34eb@mail.gmail.com> I am not vehemetly opposed but if I where coaching I'd definitly coach students to resist the norming of it BA(l)mn On 6/24/09, Joshua Gonzalez wrote: > Here's a better question - > > is there anybody that is vehemently opposed to paperless debate (I > will take as a given complaints by debaters regarding transitioning)? > > J > > On Jun 24, 2009, at 9:40 AM, Jarrod Atchison wrote: > >> Trinity is going paperless next year thanks to the amazing work of >> Hardy, Whitman, and Denver. The key for us was securing the third >> laptop per team. >> >> ~Jarrod >> _______________________________________________ >> eDebate mailing list >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >> > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -- Sent from my mobile device From catspathat at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 16:09:14 2009 From: catspathat at gmail.com (Abers) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:09:14 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: <9368bc9b0906241234r310ae9d5v5993e28d0aeb34eb@mail.gmail.com> References: <82297668-AE2C-4108-B17E-D584CE72D28A@msu.edu> <9368bc9b0906241234r310ae9d5v5993e28d0aeb34eb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I don't really like it based on the debates I've had though most of my concerns haven't been deal breakers with anyone else I've talked to (Glen handles our money situation though so i can understand how it might be more desirable if it means more teams can go to more tournaments). The reasons here are some concerns I have/believe the community will have to face if we adopt a (mostly) paperless debating system. (1.) Longer debates -- maybe not the most devastating thing ever but rounds will most certainly go longer with everyone shuffling evidence, loading programs, and various computer glitches/crashes. 10-20 or even 25-30 extra minutes per round on a 4 round day adds up. (2.) Evidence comparison -- there's something to be said for having evidence on separate pieces of paper that you can put over to the side to talk about later in cross-x, or to bring up in a speech that just seems very difficult to replicate w/ paperless debate. The team who's not giving the speech can really only look at one piece of the opponents evidence at a time (two i guess if you look over their shoulder but then there's people with huge shoulders like shultz so you can't even count on that). (3.) Evidence in general -- paperless debate requires a very good sense of time and how much stuff you can actually read since (as far as i know at least) you have to provide all the evidence for your speech ahead of time. Since providing to little likely means wasted seconds flipping word docs around looking for more stuff to read, there's a pretty strong incentive for debaters to overestimate how much evidence they're going to read. While this is really a minor inconvenience for the paperless team giving the speech (just means you might show some evidence that you don't end up reading) it's a huge pain in the ass for the other team as they frantically flip through Word trying to decipher which evidence was read and which was not. I think this problem could be reduced significantly if the community decided to more strongly err against the '10 cards = one good card' equation but *say la v*. (I guess also if there were a more reliable way to transfer evidence as you go along that might resolve this issue too) (4.) You need three laptops -- you do, you can't really assume everyone has a laptop that you can jump cards onto and it seems like it's difficult to have 1 team with 1 laptop leaving only one person to deal with the evidence at a time. I'd be curious to see the cost breakdown for starting a debate team w/ 3 laptops per team as compared to traditional paper evidence. Again, I think many of the cost issues could be resolved by an overall reliance on less and longer evidence On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Andy Ellis wrote: > I am not vehemetly opposed but if I where coaching I'd definitly coach > students to resist the norming of it BA(l)mn > > On 6/24/09, Joshua Gonzalez wrote: > > Here's a better question - > > > > is there anybody that is vehemently opposed to paperless debate (I > > will take as a given complaints by debaters regarding transitioning)? > > > > J > > > > On Jun 24, 2009, at 9:40 AM, Jarrod Atchison wrote: > > > >> Trinity is going paperless next year thanks to the amazing work of > >> Hardy, Whitman, and Denver. The key for us was securing the third > >> laptop per team. > >> > >> ~Jarrod > >> _______________________________________________ > >> eDebate mailing list > >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > > eDebate mailing list > > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > > > > -- > Sent from my mobile device > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/ddc49796/attachment.htm From catspathat at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 16:09:50 2009 From: catspathat at gmail.com (Abers) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:09:50 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: References: <82297668-AE2C-4108-B17E-D584CE72D28A@msu.edu> <9368bc9b0906241234r310ae9d5v5993e28d0aeb34eb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Dat last post was from; Abe Corrigan (gonzaga) On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Abers wrote: > I don't really like it based on the debates I've had though most of my > concerns haven't been deal breakers with anyone else I've talked to (Glen > handles our money situation though so i can understand how it might be more > desirable if it means more teams can go to more tournaments). The reasons > here are some concerns I have/believe the community will have to face if we > adopt a (mostly) paperless debating system. > > (1.) Longer debates -- maybe not the most devastating thing ever but rounds > will most certainly go longer with everyone shuffling evidence, loading > programs, and various computer glitches/crashes. 10-20 or even 25-30 extra > minutes per round on a 4 round day adds up. > > (2.) Evidence comparison -- there's something to be said for having > evidence on separate pieces of paper that you can put over to the side to > talk about later in cross-x, or to bring up in a speech that just seems very > difficult to replicate w/ paperless debate. The team who's not giving the > speech can really only look at one piece of the opponents evidence at a time > (two i guess if you look over their shoulder but then there's people with > huge shoulders like shultz so you can't even count on that). > > (3.) Evidence in general -- paperless debate requires a very good sense of > time and how much stuff you can actually read since (as far as i know at > least) you have to provide all the evidence for your speech ahead of time. > Since providing to little likely means wasted seconds flipping word docs > around looking for more stuff to read, there's a pretty strong incentive for > debaters to overestimate how much evidence they're going to read. While this > is really a minor inconvenience for the paperless team giving the speech > (just means you might show some evidence that you don't end up reading) it's > a huge pain in the ass for the other team as they frantically flip through > Word trying to decipher which evidence was read and which was not. I think > this problem could be reduced significantly if the community decided to more > strongly err against the '10 cards = one good card' equation but *say la v > *. (I guess also if there were a more reliable way to transfer evidence as > you go along that might resolve this issue too) > > (4.) You need three laptops -- you do, you can't really assume everyone has > a laptop that you can jump cards onto and it seems like it's difficult to > have 1 team with 1 laptop leaving only one person to deal with the evidence > at a time. I'd be curious to see the cost breakdown for starting a debate > team w/ 3 laptops per team as compared to traditional paper evidence. Again, > I think many of the cost issues could be resolved by an overall reliance on > less and longer evidence > > > > On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Andy Ellis wrote: > >> I am not vehemetly opposed but if I where coaching I'd definitly coach >> students to resist the norming of it BA(l)mn >> >> On 6/24/09, Joshua Gonzalez wrote: >> > Here's a better question - >> > >> > is there anybody that is vehemently opposed to paperless debate (I >> > will take as a given complaints by debaters regarding transitioning)? >> > >> > J >> > >> > On Jun 24, 2009, at 9:40 AM, Jarrod Atchison wrote: >> > >> >> Trinity is going paperless next year thanks to the amazing work of >> >> Hardy, Whitman, and Denver. The key for us was securing the third >> >> laptop per team. >> >> >> >> ~Jarrod >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> eDebate mailing list >> >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >> >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >> >> >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > eDebate mailing list >> > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >> > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >> > >> >> -- >> Sent from my mobile device >> _______________________________________________ >> eDebate mailing list >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >> > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/3b435d93/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Wed Jun 24 16:25:04 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:25:04 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: <2e0f7ba70906231819i71dc55a9x6e8413d64892a766@mail.gmail.com> References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906231819i71dc55a9x6e8413d64892a766@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: hats off to hester. watch this crazy debater gone bad act. 1) is ahmadinejad a good guy? of course, not. but that fact or impression is what is part of what is being leveraged to insinuate that fraud = stolen election. the idea that some fraud may have been committed but that ahmadinejad's massive support in non-elite tehran, on the border where security is key, in the oil provinces where mousavi wanted to privatize and in rural areas where ahmadinejad's campaign against corruption is extremely popular, that this massive support was cut out of the TV picture through selective coverage. this support crushed mousavi rather handily. americans wanted the good guy that they were seeing on TV to win but that good guy has an arguably worse record responsible for mass executions and an iran-contra culprit which sets him up beautifully to be a US asset in the region who received funds from the Project for Democracy and the CIA for regime change. obama is in bed with the reagan iran-contra people in iran trying to undermine the regime in an effort to accomplish big picture policy aims in the region which are the same old policy aims of the bush administration: http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001546.htm As President Obama offered perhaps his strongest rhetorical support to date for opposition protesters in Iran, CQ offered a look back at the former 1980's prime minister turned accidental reformer, Mir-Hossain Mousavi. In 1983, Mousavi, CQ reported, ''had to be aware" of Iranian-sponsoredattacks on the United States in Lebanon, including the devastating barracks bombing that killed 241 Marines in Beirut. As it turns out, Mousavi was also intimately involved in another of Ronald Reagan's disastrous encounters with Iran just three years later. When Reagan sent a cake, a Bible and U.S. weapons to Tehran as part of the Iran-Contra scheme, then-Prime Minister Mousavi was there to receive them...As the November 1987 report of the Congressional committeesinvestigating the Iran-Contra affair detailed, the McFarlane delegation was to meet with a now familiar cast of characters in Iran, including Mir-Hossein Mousavi. because ahmadinejad is the more recent evil iran leader in the spotlight, americans are vulnerable to claims that he's a bigger cheater than mousavi. there is no smoking gun fraud evidence that travels the distance to reach the threshold of a stolen election. at this point, that is purely speculation and the illusion has been manufactured through media tricks. the burden of proof should go the other way to demonstrate mousavi had a base of support other than the affluent in tehran to even challenge ahmadinejad. poll analysis is weak in a vacuum when it isn't combined with demographic political analysis. that's why petras and friedman are superior. 2) george friedman quals are good enough. his parents are holocaust survivors so his argument about mousavi getting crushed should not be taken as ahmadinejad = good. rather, he makes the persuasive case why mousavi didn't win. his vast knowledge of the region could not make him the least bit sympathetic to mousavi, the liberator, like the average american. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Friedman George Friedman is an American political scientist and author. He is the founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the private intelligence corporation Stratfor. He has authored several books, including The Next 100 Years, America's Secret War, The Intelligence Edge, and The Future of War. George Friedman is Chief Executive of STRATFOR, a private global intelligence firm he founded in 1996. Prior to joining the private sector, Friedman spent almost twenty years in academia, teaching political science at Dickinson College. During this time he also regularly briefed senior commanders in the armed services as well as the Office of Net Assessments, SHAPE Technical Center, the U.S. Army War College, National Defense University and the RAND Corporation on security and national defense matters. 3) i disagree with your speculation about there having not been enough time yet for a revolution to pick up momentum. i think the hope was that a movement would quickly spread to other groups than mousavi's meager base of support in the wake of the election. i think the hope was to oust ahmadinejad with a minimal investment of CIA funds because there are no other viable options. as in past orchestrated coups like the '53, these things have to happen quick. they were hoping the "secret letter" which could easily turn out to be fake from secretary of the interior claiming was mousavi won would sway ahmadinejad's supporters and the protests would extend beyond tehran. didn't happen. protests are on the wane giving credence to mousavi's limited base. ahmadenijad will consolidate power arguably stronger and has time to provide the smoking gun evidence on mousavi's links to the US and british. the soft coup could backfire big time. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14082 if the plan had worked, obama's negotiations with mousavi would have given the foreign policy victory he needs given the dire uncertainty of the afghanistan campaign. he almost has to capture bin laden to get victory there. netanyahu is not going to stop settlements on the ground no matter what he entertains at the bargaining table. north korea is on the brink of firing missile at hawaii. in 2012, obama will be painted as suave but weak. frankly, he has no focus. the bush bad whines are the only focus he ever had. the muslim world speech despite its appeal to our hearts puts obama in a difficult position where he may get nothing accomplished in the middle east. his policy does not jive. if he's so genuine, why did he say nothing about the gaza raid the most recent israeli excessive use of force prior to the speech. he's on an imperial crusade in afghanistan and is not pulling out of iraq in the way said he would before election. hard to make believe your really sensitive to israeli atrocities when you remain silent during the gaza raid like a deer in the headlights. ground forces which are an imperial presence will not all be withdrawn. many of the ones that will are getting a rest with their families before being redeployed to afghanistan to redirect the imperial presence in the region which undermines our foreign policy goals. i think obama is desperate. he may not be able to prove any tangible result in afghanistan (his big brzezinski idea) before 2012 and he doesn't have the experience to lead on foreign policy where he is being bombarded by conflicting interests. he needs a breakthrough. the mousavi trick didn't work. now, there aren't many options for iran. negotiation definitely won't happen. airstrikes on nuclear facilities won't knock out their capability. iran is unlikely to provoke a war that US doesn't have the military capacity to fight. overall, bad policy decision by obama to try the soft coup. we are worse off with iran and ahmadinejad is laughing. there is no focus to the obama foreign policy. the afghan war is going to kill him on deficit spending. 4) there are many points of convergence between petras and friedman most notably their demographic explanation of ahmadinejad's base of support is almost identical. their thesis is almost identical. petras is more bold in his presentation claiming a hoax but friedman gives the same argument in defense of the hoax without calling it a hoax. it will be interesting to see if petras gives more concessions to vote fraud as he follows up. _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try_bing_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/414f15f1/attachment.htm From hallbrad at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 16:42:22 2009 From: hallbrad at gmail.com (Brad Hall) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:42:22 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: References: <82297668-AE2C-4108-B17E-D584CE72D28A@msu.edu> <9368bc9b0906241234r310ae9d5v5993e28d0aeb34eb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I actually think that #1 is moot (or a benefit to paperless debating) -- while the points made by "Abers" are fair, there will be reduced time in: a) finding that missing card that ends up under a tub and had to be printed off again anyway, b) judges that use computers can all look at the cards at the same time. This seems minor now, but consider the length of elim days, particularly at the NDT when there are 5-7 judge panels. It is often difficult to get too far into the decisionmaking process without reading some key pieces of evidence, a process that can be sped up by putting it on a jump drive/printing multiple copies. The other big time saver: not having to move tubs between buildings. For example, at the Texas tournament, you won't have to push your tubs up that giant hill in between the business school and the six pack (which I'm pretty sure is named after Chris Thiele). This is a giant pain -- borrowing carts, finding the cart Burshteyn stole from you, moving to the building, looking for an elevator, carrying your tubs up the stairs, etc. This should significantly speed up debates and ensure they start on time (Harris excepted, of course). #2 and #3 are dependent on the specifics of when teams exchange cards, etc, the details of which I don't know, so (unlike my decisions) I won't act like I know what I'm talking about. I would think it prudent to carry a small laptop printer for special circumstances such as a curmudgeonly judge. #4 is true on the need for three laptops, but not having to print/copy files, ship/check tubs, rent larger/extra vans, buy supplies like carts and printer ink, should make this a cost saver when you consider the rapidly falling price of laptops. At best, it's moot and quality of life should be improved by not having to move tubs and file/refile evidence (which I hear is a pain but never personally experienced). One very minor concern: if you transfer the cards to the other team pre-speech, how frequently do debaters forget to "mark" the card on the other team's e-copy? Say la v indeed, Brad On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Abers wrote: > >> I don't really like it based on the debates I've had though most of my >> concerns haven't been deal breakers with anyone else I've talked to (Glen >> handles our money situation though so i can understand how it might be more >> desirable if it means more teams can go to more tournaments). The reasons >> here are some concerns I have/believe the community will have to face if we >> adopt a (mostly) paperless debating system. >> >> (1.) Longer debates -- maybe not the most devastating thing ever but >> rounds will most certainly go longer with everyone shuffling evidence, >> loading programs, and various computer glitches/crashes. 10-20 or even 25-30 >> extra minutes per round on a 4 round day adds up. >> >> (2.) Evidence comparison -- there's something to be said for having >> evidence on separate pieces of paper that you can put over to the side to >> talk about later in cross-x, or to bring up in a speech that just seems very >> difficult to replicate w/ paperless debate. The team who's not giving the >> speech can really only look at one piece of the opponents evidence at a time >> (two i guess if you look over their shoulder but then there's people with >> huge shoulders like shultz so you can't even count on that). >> >> (3.) Evidence in general -- paperless debate requires a very good sense of >> time and how much stuff you can actually read since (as far as i know at >> least) you have to provide all the evidence for your speech ahead of time. >> Since providing to little likely means wasted seconds flipping word docs >> around looking for more stuff to read, there's a pretty strong incentive for >> debaters to overestimate how much evidence they're going to read. While this >> is really a minor inconvenience for the paperless team giving the speech >> (just means you might show some evidence that you don't end up reading) it's >> a huge pain in the ass for the other team as they frantically flip through >> Word trying to decipher which evidence was read and which was not. I think >> this problem could be reduced significantly if the community decided to more >> strongly err against the '10 cards = one good card' equation but *say la >> v*. (I guess also if there were a more reliable way to transfer evidence >> as you go along that might resolve this issue too) >> >> (4.) You need three laptops -- you do, you can't really assume everyone >> has a laptop that you can jump cards onto and it seems like it's difficult >> to have 1 team with 1 laptop leaving only one person to deal with the >> evidence at a time. I'd be curious to see the cost breakdown for starting a >> debate team w/ 3 laptops per team as compared to traditional paper evidence. >> Again, I think many of the cost issues could be resolved by an overall >> reliance on less and longer evidence >> >> >> >> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Andy Ellis wrote: >> >>> I am not vehemetly opposed but if I where coaching I'd definitly coach >>> students to resist the norming of it BA(l)mn >>> >>> On 6/24/09, Joshua Gonzalez wrote: >>> > Here's a better question - >>> > >>> > is there anybody that is vehemently opposed to paperless debate (I >>> > will take as a given complaints by debaters regarding transitioning)? >>> > >>> > J >>> > >>> > On Jun 24, 2009, at 9:40 AM, Jarrod Atchison wrote: >>> > >>> >> Trinity is going paperless next year thanks to the amazing work of >>> >> Hardy, Whitman, and Denver. The key for us was securing the third >>> >> laptop per team. >>> >> >>> >> ~Jarrod >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> eDebate mailing list >>> >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >>> >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >>> >> >>> > >>> > _______________________________________________ >>> > eDebate mailing list >>> > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >>> > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >>> > >>> >>> -- >>> Sent from my mobile device >>> _______________________________________________ >>> eDebate mailing list >>> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >>> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >>> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -- Brad Hall hallbrad at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/99d91d44/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Wed Jun 24 17:15:58 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:15:58 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] esam al-amin article on iran Message-ID: the analysis of chatham house and cole rely on arguably racist assumptions. http://www.counterpunch.org/amin06222009.html It is true that Mousavi has an Azeri background. But the CPO poll mentioned above, and published before the elections, noted that ?its survey indicated that only 16 per cent of Azeri Iranians will vote for Mr. Mousavi. By contrast, 31 per cent of the Azeris claim they will vote for Mr. Ahmadinejad.? In the end, according to official results, the election in that region was much closer than the overall result. In fact, Mousavi won narrowly in the West Azerbaijan province but lost the region to Ahmadinejad by a 45 to 52 per cent margin (or 1.5 to 1.8 million votes). However, the double standard applied by Western news agencies is striking. Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern in his native state of South Dakota in the 1972 elections. Had Al Gore won his home state of Tennessee in 2000, no one would have cared about a Florida recount, nor would there have been a Supreme Court case called Bush v. Gore. If Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards had won the states he was born and raised in (South and North Carolina), President John Kerry would now be serving his second term. But somehow, in Western newsrooms Middle Eastern people choose their candidates not on merit, but on the basis of their ?tribe.? The fact that minor candidates such as Karroubi would garner fewer votes than expected, even in their home regions as critics charge, is not out of the ordinary. Many voters reach the conclusion that they do not want to waste their votes when the contest is perceived to be between two major candidates. Karroubi indeed received far fewer votes this time around than he did in 2005, including in his hometown. Likewise, Ross Perot lost his home state of Texas to Bob Dole of Kansas in 1996, while in 2004, Ralph Nader received one eighth of the votes he had four years earlier. Some observers note that when the official results were being announced, the margin between the candidates held steady throughout the count. In fact, this is no mystery. Experts say that generally when 3-5 per cent of the votes from a given region are actually counted, there is a 95 per cent confidence level that such result will hold firm. As for the charge that ballots ran out and some people were turned away, it is worth mentioning that voting hours were extended four times in order to allow as many people as possible the opportunity to vote. But even if all the people who did not vote, had actually voted for Mousavi (a virtual impossibility), that would be 6.93 million additional votes, much less than the 11 million vote difference between the top two candidates. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/8f518b15/attachment.htm From jmgreen at ksu.edu Wed Jun 24 18:03:22 2009 From: jmgreen at ksu.edu (Justin Green) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:03:22 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Official Job Announcement - Kansas State University ADOD Message-ID: <5a6e2a80906241603w6de28c6eif3b4a195c8ffa0b@mail.gmail.com> Assistant Director of Debate/Instructor Kansas State University is offering an instructor/ADOD position in the Speech Communication Division for the 2009-10 school year, with the possibility of renewal. Duties will include teaching a variety of undergraduate service courses to primarily juniors and seniors: small group communication, business and professional speaking, and/or interpersonal communication as well as serving as an assistant debate coach for the debate team. This will entail traveling with the team, judging, listening to practice speeches/debates, leading research efforts, and assisting in the administration of the program. The individual must be willing to work with all experience levels (Novice, JV, Open) and non-traditional students. Candidates must have their M.A. or J.D. completed before the Fall 2009 semester begins. Collegiate teaching and coaching experience is preferred. The salary is competitive. An MA in Communications is preferred, but not required. Candidates must submit two letters of recommendation, a vita/resume and a letter of application to Justin Green, SCTD, Nichols 129, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506 and/or to jmgreen at ksu.edu Screening of applicants will begin as soon as possible. Kansas State University is an equal opportunity employer. KSU actively seeks diversity among its employees. BEYOND THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT The debate team receives substantial support directly from the President. We have a roster of 28 debaters to start next year across all three divisions and lost no seniors among our top Varsity teams. We are a diverse squad in appearance, background, argument choices, and speaking styles. We like our coaching staff to reflect this. If you like coach a certain set of arguments, we have debaters for you. We are a squad who seeks both to win and have fun debating. If you are not interested in either of the two, please don't apply.Success as a debater is a plus, but a demonstrated commitment to effective coaching is far more desirable. For those of you who don't know, Manhattan, KS is a phenomenal place to live. Housing is cheap. Aggieville with many eating and drinking establishments offers entertainment across the street from the school. It is very possible to walk to the school, entertainment, and home. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have further questions. Justin Green on behalf of the Kansas State Debate Squad From oldstrega at hotmail.com Wed Jun 24 20:43:45 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:43:45 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] PSYOPS twitter angle on the soft coup Message-ID: admittedly, the sources do not yet meet hester's standards but the stoking of the street protest to attempt a speedy revolution may have involved new sophisticated mobile phone PSYOPS. the twitter angle is being twisted to create the impression that iranians want to become more like americans. the quality of the sources won't matter on these cards if the facts hold up. we've come along way from airmail leaflets but not really. 1) http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/ Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.3. ?IranElection? was each of their most popular keyword4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran?s election.I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect at Change_For_IranI decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.JPost actually ran a story about 3 people ?who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.? Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.JPost, a major news organization, promoted these three Twitterers who went on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? (who benefits). 2) http://www.sott.net/articles/show/187377-The-CIA-and-the-Iranian-experiment-From-Mossadegh-to-Ahmadinejad In July 2008, after the exchange of prisoners and remains between Israel and Hezbollah, robots placed tens of thousands of calls to Lebanese mobile phones. A voice speaking in Arabic was warning against participating in any resistance activity and belittled Hezbollah. The Lebanese minister of telecommunications, Jibran Bassil [9], files a complaint to the UN against this blatant violation of the country's sovereignty [10]. Following the same approach, tens of thousands of Lebanese and Syrians received an automatic phone call in October 2008 to offer them 10 million dollars for any information leading to the location and freeing of Israeli prisoners. People interested in collaborating were invited to call a number in the UK [11]. This method has now been used in Iran to bluff the population, to spread shocking news and to channel the resulting anger. First, SMS were sent during the night of the counting of the votes, according to which the Guardian Council of the Constitution (equivalent to a constitutional court) had informed Mir-Hossein Mousavi of his victory. After that, the announcing of the official results - the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with 64 % of cast votes - seemed like a huge fraud. However, three days earlier, M. Mousavi and his friends were considering a massive victory of M. Ahmadinejad as certain and were trying to explain it by unbalanced campaigns. Indeed the ex president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was detailing his grievances in an open letter. The US polling institutes in Iran were predicting a 20 points lead for M. Ahmadinejad over M. Mousavi [12]. M. Mousavi victory never seemed possible, even if it is probable that some fraud accentuated the margin between the two candidates. Secondly, Iranian citizens were selected or volunteered on the Internet to chat on Facebook or to subscribe to Twitter feeds. They received information - true or false - (still via SMS) about the evolution of the political crisis and the ongoing demonstrations. These anonymous news posts were spreading news of gun fights and numerous deaths which to this day have not been confirmed. Because of an unfortunate calendar overlap, Twitter was supposed to suspend its service for a night to allow for some maintenance of its systems. The US State Department intervened to ask them to postpone it [13]. According to the New York Times, these operations contributed to spread defiance in the population [14]. Simultaneously, in a new type of effort, the CIA is mobilizing anti-Iranian militants in the United States and in the United Kingdom to increase the chaos. A Practical Guide to revolution in Iran was distributed to them, which contains a number of recommendations, including: - set Twitter accounts feeds to Tehran time zone; - centralize messages on the following Twitter accounts @stopAhmadi, #iranelection and #gr88 ; - official Iranian State websites should not be attacked. ? Let the US military take care of it ? (sic). When applied, these recommendations make it impossible to authenticate any Twitter messages. It is impossible to know if they are being sent by witnesses of the demonstrations in Tehran or by CIA agents in Langley, and it is impossible to distinguish real from false ones. The goal is to create more and more confusion and to push Iranians to fight amongst themselves. Army general staffs everywhere in the world are closely following the events in Tehran. They are trying to evaluate the efficiency of this new subversion method in the Iranian experimental field. Evidently, the destabilization process worked. But it is unclear if the CIA will be able to channel demonstrators to do what the Pentagon has renounced to do, and what they do not want to do themselves : to change the regime and put an end to the Islamic revolution. _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try_bing_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090624/e666e11f/attachment.htm From spoon_22 at hotmail.com Wed Jun 24 22:34:53 2009 From: spoon_22 at hotmail.com (Aaron Hardy) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:34:53 +0000 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? In-Reply-To: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> References: <4A41CFC8.2040607@wfu.edu> Message-ID: Excited to see how many schools are switching -- thanks for all the questions and feedback so far, and please keep them coming. I've also heard from several other college programs who haven't posted, as well as at least 3 more nationally competitive high school programs. Updated version of the paperless manual is also in the works and should be posted soon. Quick responses to questions/comments: David -- "Any place to get cheap laptops?" Nothing particular, but keep in mind that the system requirements are pretty low -- people that have contacted me recently have said they're doing well with refurbished laptops for $200 a piece. Crowe -- "Flowing on the laptop?" I think that 2 of our 14 debaters currently flow on their laptop. I've recommended to most of my students that they flow on paper because I think they debate better in general -- but it's certainly possible to do both on the computer. How cumbersome people find it is probably just a function of tech saavy and practice. One suggestion for those with slightly larger screens has been to set up your desktop to show two columns of the flow on the left side of the screen, and keep the speech document to the right so you can see both at the same time. Basically, it's doable but probably won't be standard practice for us... Andy -- "Reliable laptops?" Some more than others, certainly -- Jim or I do a tech inspection the day before we leave for any tournament to avoid problems when we get there, and we have a few extra old team laptops at the squadroom for contingencies. So far, we've made do -- but yes, it's a concern. Abe -- "Several concerns" I think Brad already dealt with these concerns, just a couple additional comments: 1) Longer debates -- I think the debates are net shorter, if anything. Easily the number one time waster for debates I judge is waiting for a team to find their evidence in the piles of crap on, under, and around the table. The minimal time spent waiting to jump files doesn't actually make the debate take longer, it just happens at a spot in the debate where people aren't used to waiting. 2) Evidence comparison -- There are certainly differences, but I think they're pretty surmountable with practice. Being able to put stars next to blocks you want to CX about, or making effective use of the viewing computer takes time to adjust to, but most of my debaters say they now find it easier to run a CX (for example) during all-paperless practice debates than they did with paper. 3) Extra Cards -- You're correct that this falls under "minor inconvenience" for the paperless team -- my debaters just put a few extra cards at the bottom of their speech doc. As for the "frantically flipping," I think this is substantially less annoying than trying to decipher the spilled stacks of paper off the podium or locating the 2NC link wall before the 2AR. 4) Cost comparison = not close. In a world of $250 laptops, it's easy to outfit a team for less than $1000. Even if those only lasted 2 years, that's $500/year. That's less than baggage fees for one team for a year. That's less than the difference between renting a minivan instead of a full-size car at just a couple of tournaments. Even if printing costs are 2 cents a page, do the math on what it takes to print even a single ream of paper. The most conservative conceivable estimate puts paperless way, way ahead. Tu veux rire? Brad -- "Marking cards?" So far, my debaters have been pretty conscientious about marking ev on the viewing computer they mark during the speech -- and usually they verbally announce "marked" or something when they stop short during a card so a team who is (theoretically) following along can do it themselves as well. hardy > Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:03:36 -0400 > From: lacyjp at wfu.edu > To: edebate at ndtceda.com > Subject: [eDebate] Paperless -- Who is doing it? > > > Thanks to Whitman & Hardy's hard work proving it works, who is planning > to go paperless next year? > > Wake is planning to. We are stealing Hardy's work to make it happen. > > The health care savings alone will pay for it:) > > -- JP > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try_bing_1x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/ef02e1f5/attachment.htm From kel1773 at msn.com Wed Jun 24 23:01:38 2009 From: kel1773 at msn.com (Kelly Young) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:01:38 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless--who is doing it? Message-ID: Greetings-- For those interested in flowing and using the Speech.doc at the same time, a feature that will be in Windows 7, Aerosnap, allows you to easily snap windows to the side of the screen to take up 1/2 of the screen. I use to easily open, close and keep 2 documents open at the same time. While it's in Windows 7, XP and Vista users can watch a demo video and get a beta at http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/11/29/aerosnap-free-download-to-enable-windows-7-aero-snap-features-in-xp-and-vista/ Kelly Kelly M. Young, Ph.D. Director of Forensics/ Assistant Professor Communication Department Wayne State University 585 Manoogian Hall Detroit, MI 48201 (313) 577-2953 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/cbd1fe10/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Thu Jun 25 08:16:52 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:16:52 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial Message-ID: old rakia accuses of old strega of "western cynicism at its worst": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr77kAuDHOI _ http://groups.myspace.com/zizekversuscolbert http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2246377316 _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/d82d7b23/attachment.htm From andy.edebate at gmail.com Thu Jun 25 12:26:54 2009 From: andy.edebate at gmail.com (Andy Ellis) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:26:54 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless--who is doing it? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9368bc9b0906251026y620fd8d0scd2b9499f03be4ee@mail.gmail.com> I think the paperless thing is really more of an issue for the folks that carry more than one or two tubs. For those folks that have a few expandos I don't see much use.my concern though is that what is good for those folks may not be good for everybody. I guess my concern is sorta that the donated or refurbished or old third laptop is really only for show and is not that useful to non laptop using debaters. If you don't normally use a laptop and aren't in the practice of doing it in rounds I'm not sure you should have to try to figure it out in the round. At the end of the day I think there is a cost to carrying 6 tubs and that cost should be shouldered by the people choosing to debate that way not the opponents who have no choice in the matter On 6/25/09, Kelly Young wrote: > > Greetings-- > For those interested in flowing and using the Speech.doc at the same time, a > feature that will be in Windows 7, Aerosnap, allows you to easily snap > windows to the side of the screen to take up 1/2 of the screen. I use to > easily open, close and keep 2 documents open at the same time. > While it's in Windows 7, XP and Vista users can watch a demo video and get a > beta at > http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/11/29/aerosnap-free-download-to-enable-windows-7-aero-snap-features-in-xp-and-vista/ > > > Kelly > Kelly M. Young, Ph.D. > > Director of Forensics/ > > Assistant Professor > > Communication Department > > Wayne State University > > 585 Manoogian Hall > > Detroit, MI 48201 > > (313) 577-2953 > > -- Sent from my mobile device From uwgdebate at gmail.com Thu Jun 25 12:37:53 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:37:53 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] PSYOPS twitter angle on the soft coup In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906251037k17fe0fddp878d06b56908319@mail.gmail.com> agreed on the false sense of awareness/public participation that new media technologies can create. i also think OS' skepticism regarding the use of Twitter in this particular case is warranted. and the reason why this is a significant issue is due to the ways in which is creates a false sense of awareness. in the past, we didn't feel certain about what was happening because we weren't there to experience it for ourselves. today, that fact hasn't changed, but suddenly, because a website posts twitter messages on the subject, we are easily convinced that the revolution is unfolding before us, when really, we have no idea who is passing along the info, nor what their agenda is. personal video technology (camera phones, camcorders) only avoids part of that problem, as we've already learned that people are posting old video images claiming them to be real-time insights. hester p.s. - my standards aren't *that *high :^) On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 9:43 PM, Old Strega wrote: > admittedly, the sources do not yet meet hester's standards but the stoking > of the street protest to attempt a speedy revolution may have involved new > sophisticated mobile phone PSYOPS. the twitter angle is being twisted to > create the impression that iranians want to become more like americans. > the quality of the sources won't matter on these cards if the facts hold up. > we've come along way from airmail leaflets but not really. > 1) > http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/ > > Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the > Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets > alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and > even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did > successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such > as Mashable and > TechCrunch and > even made its way to mainstream news media sites. > > Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? > I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. > In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted > for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some > striking similarities - > > 1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th. > 2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles. > 3. ?IranElection? was each of their most popular keyword > 4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in *ENGLISH*. > 5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo > 6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their > friends were *EACH OTHER*. > > Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED > with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with > an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created > with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion > as to the legitimacy of Iran?s election. > > I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi > @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran > > I decided to do a google search for > 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up > was JPost (Jerusalem > Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper. > > JPost actually ran a story about 3 people ?who joined the social network > mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.? *Why would a > news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours > earlier? Is that newsworthy?* JPost was the first (and only to my > knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers. > > JPost, a major news organization, promoted these three Twitterers who went > on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost > so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers > claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? > (who benefits). > > 2) > http://www.sott.net/articles/show/187377-The-CIA-and-the-Iranian-experiment-From-Mossadegh-to-Ahmadinejad > > In July 2008, after the exchange of prisoners and remains between Israel > and Hezbollah, robots placed tens of thousands of calls to Lebanese mobile > phones. A voice speaking in Arabic was warning against participating in any > resistance activity and belittled Hezbollah. The Lebanese minister of > telecommunications, Jibran Bassil [9], > files a complaint to the UN against this blatant violation of the country's > sovereignty [10 ]. > Following the same approach, tens of thousands of Lebanese and Syrians > received an automatic phone call in October 2008 to offer them 10 million > dollars for any information leading to the location and freeing of Israeli > prisoners. People interested in collaborating were invited to call a number > in the UK [11 ]. > > This method has now been used in Iran to bluff the population, to spread > shocking news and to channel the resulting anger. > > First, SMS were sent during the night of the counting of the votes, > according to which the Guardian Council of the Constitution (equivalent to a > constitutional court) had informed Mir-Hossein Mousavi of his victory. After > that, the announcing of the official results - the re-election of Mahmoud > Ahmadinejad with 64 % of cast votes - seemed like a huge fraud. However, > three days earlier, M. Mousavi and his friends were considering a massive > victory of M. Ahmadinejad as certain and were trying to explain it by > unbalanced campaigns. Indeed the ex president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was > detailing his grievances in an open letter. The US polling institutes in > Iran were predicting a 20 points lead for M. Ahmadinejad over M. Mousavi [ > 12 ]. M. Mousavi > victory never seemed possible, even if it is probable that some fraud > accentuated the margin between the two candidates. > > Secondly, Iranian citizens were selected or volunteered on the Internet to > chat on Facebook or to subscribe to Twitter feeds. They received information > - true or false - (still via SMS) about the evolution of the political > crisis and the ongoing demonstrations. These anonymous news posts were > spreading news of gun fights and numerous deaths which to this day have not > been confirmed. Because of an unfortunate calendar overlap, Twitter was > supposed to suspend its service for a night to allow for some maintenance of > its systems. The US State Department intervened to ask them to postpone it [ > 13 ]. According to the > New York Times, these operations contributed to spread defiance in the > population [14] . > > Simultaneously, in a new type of effort, the CIA is mobilizing anti-Iranian > militants in the United States and in the United Kingdom to increase the > chaos. A Practical Guide to revolution in Iran was distributed to them, > which contains a number of recommendations, including: > > - set Twitter accounts feeds to Tehran time zone; > - centralize messages on the following Twitter accounts @stopAhmadi, > #iranelection and #gr88 ; > - official Iranian State websites should not be attacked. ? Let the US > military take care of it ? (sic). > > When applied, these recommendations make it impossible to authenticate any > Twitter messages. It is impossible to know if they are being sent by > witnesses of the demonstrations in Tehran or by CIA agents in Langley, and > it is impossible to distinguish real from false ones. The goal is to create > more and more confusion and to push Iranians to fight amongst themselves. > > Army general staffs everywhere in the world are closely following the > events in Tehran. They are trying to evaluate the efficiency of this new > subversion method in the Iranian experimental field. Evidently, the > destabilization process worked. But it is unclear if the CIA will be able to > channel demonstrators to do what the Pentagon has renounced to do, and what > they do not want to do themselves : to change the regime and put an end to > the Islamic revolution. > > > > ------------------------------ > Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/9da589fb/attachment.htm From andy.edebate at gmail.com Thu Jun 25 13:02:53 2009 From: andy.edebate at gmail.com (Andy Ellis) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:02:53 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] PSYOPS twitter angle on the soft coup In-Reply-To: <2e0f7ba70906251037k17fe0fddp878d06b56908319@mail.gmail.com> References: <2e0f7ba70906251037k17fe0fddp878d06b56908319@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9368bc9b0906251102m425c69aev188a3f77a30420a1@mail.gmail.com> Not to mention all the things adboe can do to create the feel of revolution. Photoshop for the amenijad rallies and a potentially fake neda video being two examples On 6/25/09, michael hester wrote: > agreed on the false sense of awareness/public participation that new media > technologies can create. i also think OS' skepticism regarding the use of > Twitter in this particular case is warranted. and the reason why this is a > significant issue is due to the ways in which is creates a false sense of > awareness. in the past, we didn't feel certain about what was happening > because we weren't there to experience it for ourselves. today, that fact > hasn't changed, but suddenly, because a website posts twitter messages on > the subject, we are easily convinced that the revolution is unfolding before > us, when really, we have no idea who is passing along the info, nor what > their agenda is. personal video technology (camera phones, camcorders) only > avoids part of that problem, as we've already learned that people are > posting old video images claiming them to be real-time insights. > > hester > > p.s. - my standards aren't *that *high :^) > > On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 9:43 PM, Old Strega wrote: > >> admittedly, the sources do not yet meet hester's standards but the >> stoking >> of the street protest to attempt a speedy revolution may have involved new >> sophisticated mobile phone PSYOPS. the twitter angle is being twisted to >> create the impression that iranians want to become more like americans. >> the quality of the sources won't matter on these cards if the facts hold >> up. >> we've come along way from airmail leaflets but not really. >> 1) >> http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/ >> >> Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the >> Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and >> retweets >> alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and >> even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did >> successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such >> as Mashable and >> TechCrunch >> and >> even made its way to mainstream news media sites. >> >> Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? >> I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the >> information. >> In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted >> for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had >> some >> striking similarities - >> >> 1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th. >> 2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their >> profiles. >> 3. ?IranElection? was each of their most popular keyword >> 4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in *ENGLISH*. >> 5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo >> 6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of >> their >> friends were *EACH OTHER*. >> >> Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED >> with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people >> with >> an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were >> created >> with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion >> as to the legitimacy of Iran?s election. >> >> I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - >> @StopAhmadi >> @IranRiggedElect >> @Change_For_Iran >> >> I decided to do a google >> search >> for >> 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up >> was >> JPost >> (Jerusalem >> Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper. >> >> JPost actually ran a story about 3 people ?who joined the social network >> mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.? *Why would a >> news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER >> hours >> earlier? Is that newsworthy?* JPost was the first (and only to my >> knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers. >> >> JPost, a major news organization, promoted these three Twitterers who >> went >> on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost >> so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers >> claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? >> (who benefits). >> >> 2) >> http://www.sott.net/articles/show/187377-The-CIA-and-the-Iranian-experiment-From-Mossadegh-to-Ahmadinejad >> >> In July 2008, after the exchange of prisoners and remains between Israel >> and Hezbollah, robots placed tens of thousands of calls to Lebanese mobile >> phones. A voice speaking in Arabic was warning against participating in >> any >> resistance activity and belittled Hezbollah. The Lebanese minister of >> telecommunications, Jibran Bassil >> [9], >> files a complaint to the UN against this blatant violation of the >> country's >> sovereignty [10 ]. >> Following the same approach, tens of thousands of Lebanese and Syrians >> received an automatic phone call in October 2008 to offer them 10 million >> dollars for any information leading to the location and freeing of Israeli >> prisoners. People interested in collaborating were invited to call a >> number >> in the UK [11 ]. >> >> This method has now been used in Iran to bluff the population, to spread >> shocking news and to channel the resulting anger. >> >> First, SMS were sent during the night of the counting of the votes, >> according to which the Guardian Council of the Constitution (equivalent to >> a >> constitutional court) had informed Mir-Hossein Mousavi of his victory. >> After >> that, the announcing of the official results - the re-election of Mahmoud >> Ahmadinejad with 64 % of cast votes - seemed like a huge fraud. However, >> three days earlier, M. Mousavi and his friends were considering a massive >> victory of M. Ahmadinejad as certain and were trying to explain it by >> unbalanced campaigns. Indeed the ex president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was >> detailing his grievances in an open letter. The US polling institutes in >> Iran were predicting a 20 points lead for M. Ahmadinejad over M. Mousavi [ >> 12 ]. M. Mousavi >> victory never seemed possible, even if it is probable that some fraud >> accentuated the margin between the two candidates. >> >> Secondly, Iranian citizens were selected or volunteered on the Internet to >> chat on Facebook or to subscribe to Twitter feeds. They received >> information >> - true or false - (still via SMS) about the evolution of the political >> crisis and the ongoing demonstrations. These anonymous news posts were >> spreading news of gun fights and numerous deaths which to this day have >> not >> been confirmed. Because of an unfortunate calendar overlap, Twitter was >> supposed to suspend its service for a night to allow for some maintenance >> of >> its systems. The US State Department intervened to ask them to postpone it >> [ >> 13 ]. According to the >> New York Times, these operations contributed to spread defiance in the >> population [14] . >> >> Simultaneously, in a new type of effort, the CIA is mobilizing >> anti-Iranian >> militants in the United States and in the United Kingdom to increase the >> chaos. A Practical Guide to revolution in Iran was distributed to them, >> which contains a number of recommendations, including: >> >> - set Twitter accounts feeds to Tehran time zone; >> - centralize messages on the following Twitter accounts @stopAhmadi, >> #iranelection and #gr88 ; >> - official Iranian State websites should not be attacked. ? Let the US >> military take care of it ? (sic). >> >> When applied, these recommendations make it impossible to authenticate any >> Twitter messages. It is impossible to know if they are being sent by >> witnesses of the demonstrations in Tehran or by CIA agents in Langley, and >> it is impossible to distinguish real from false ones. The goal is to >> create >> more and more confusion and to push Iranians to fight amongst themselves. >> >> Army general staffs everywhere in the world are closely following the >> events in Tehran. They are trying to evaluate the efficiency of this new >> subversion method in the Iranian experimental field. Evidently, the >> destabilization process worked. But it is unclear if the CIA will be able >> to >> channel demonstrators to do what the Pentagon has renounced to do, and >> what >> they do not want to do themselves : to change the regime and put an end to >> the Islamic revolution. >> >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? >> now >> >> _______________________________________________ >> eDebate mailing list >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >> > -- Sent from my mobile device From oldstrega at hotmail.com Thu Jun 25 13:46:59 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:46:59 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] ans sanchez: zizek is a boob Message-ID: you are way late to the debate. that utube zizek is awful. it takes him 10 minutes to make like 2 arguments maybe. you get the sense he has an a-critical audience of fawning students based on his cocky delivery and their little prompted laughs. 1) mousavi the liberator. the boob has talked to people in the mousavi camp and they insist that mousavi is not a liberal, market reformer. whooo. good source on mousavi's true intentions, hearsay from people in his camp. from here, in complete ahistorical fashion typical of a boob, we get the most flaming defense of mousavi in publication. "mousavi is authentically engaged in the promotion of authentic democratic islam." or something close to that. thank you, zizek the boob, for failing to mention the massacres for which mousavi was responsible during the most repressive years of iran's history. thank you, zizek the boob, for failing to mention, mousavi's connection to reagan, ghorbanifar, and iran contra. what's his deal? why is the boob so interested in helping western media sources reinvent a dictator? my only guess for his motivation is links to soros and east european CIA election meddling. let me guess zizek was a universal intellectual on georgia, ukraine and bulgaria during their color revolutions influenced by the CIA. sanchez, you're late. hester backed off mousavi = good because he's no boob. hester knows that mousavi = bad not mean adhaminejad = good. but thank you because now i think edebate now knows that zizek is not very well informed on iran even though he speaks as a universal intellectual proclaiming the rise of "authentic islamic democracy" by a former reactionary dictator (possibly installed by the famous october surprise). if actually discussing mousavi historical role as prime minister during the greatest repression in its history is "western cynicism", oh sanchez then i don't want to tell you how poor you are at debate. 2) his discussion of the stealing of the election is equally awful. voter turnout jumped from the normal 60% to 85%. this is indisputable proof that the election was stolen. this is the worst mathematical case of speculation that the election was stolen i have seen made. the least complete case which further shows to me what dupes his students are. he goes for the anecdote that mousavi lost his home town which esam al-amin has already demonstrated is RACIST LOGIC. americans like gore and kerry can lose their home state but we have an indubitably stolen election when mousavi loses his hometown. as esam al-amin says this assumes that rural iranians don't have the rational decisionmaking power to vote for the candidate they think is best and that they vote on "tribal" lines. ZIZEK IS A TOTAL BOOB. juan cole and chatham house also make this stupid argument but zizek is supposed a critically aware intellectual. this a contradiction in his speech where is he talking about "authentically democratic islam" and then reverting to the likelihood of less sophisticated iranians only possibly voting for the home team. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/dd9a5ae0/attachment.htm From ajhawk2 at ku.edu Thu Jun 25 14:50:17 2009 From: ajhawk2 at ku.edu (Jennings, Andrew Joseph) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:50:17 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless Message-ID: <5AEAA61062779A46A0A9A3BC298FE1B50532A204@MAILBOXONE.home.ku.edu> I always wondered why teams who were reluctant to switch couldn't just print off what they were going to read prior to their speech. It solves the whole marking cards problem and makse sure no dinglehead would cheat and look at a new advantage before the other team read it. Obvi teams could still just read it off the computer if they wanted to- maybe just a way to get other teams on board for this. From oldstrega at hotmail.com Thu Jun 25 15:05:00 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:05:00 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] hammond expands picture of soft coup Message-ID: the full article is worth reading for the discussion of the national endowment for democracy, the office of iranian affairs, and US covert operations in iran. this card which concludes the article smokes and couldn't make a guy with a hunch mo happier: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14095 The New York Times also observed that ?Not only is it hard to be sure that what appears on Twitter is accurate, but some Twitterers may even be trying to trick you.? An example cited is that of fabricated posts purporting to be from ABC News reporter Jim Sciutto.[64]In that case, Sciutto said, the Iranian government attempted ?to turn technology against the protesters. Officials have started a number of fake opposition pages on Twitter, which are tweeting propaganda and misleading information.?[65]Sciutto offered no evidence that it was actually the Iranian government that was responsible for Twittering in his name, but then, of course, it is easy to accept that the Iranian government is using Twitter to spread misinformation simply as a matter of faith. And yet, despite the great amount of false or unsubstantiated claims made by apparent supporters of the opposition, there?s reluctance on the part of the mainstream media and bloggers to attribute to it the word ?propaganda?, much less to suggest that there might have been a coordinated effort by anti-regime groups or foreign intelligence services to spread misinformation or foment unrest.Evgeny Morozov, a blogger for Foreign Policy and a fellow at the Open Society Institute, questioned the ?Twitter revolution? in an op-ed for the Boston Globe. He pointed out that ?social media could do wonders when it comes to making many people aware of government?s abuse or the venue of a rally?, but ?organizing protests is quite different from publicizing them; the former requires absolute secrecy, that latter one strives for the opposite.??However tempting it might be to attribute the Iranian protests to the power of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media,? Morozov added, ?we should be extremely careful in our conclusions, especially given that the evidence we are working with is extremely sparse.?[66]Morozov also told the Washington Post that it ?is not at all certain? that Twitter ?has helped to organize protests?, but ?in terms of involving the huge Iranian diaspora and everyone else with a grudge against Ahmadinejad, it has been very successful.?During a live discussion with readers, he observed that many posters had listed their location as Tehran in ?solidarity? and that the Iranian diaspora was highly active in using social media. He also pointed out that it isn?t known whether a person with an Iranian sounding name posting content Farsi about events in Tehran was actually ?in Tehran or, say, Los Angeles?.[67]When Twitter Inc scheduled maintenance for the website, the U.S. asked the company to postpone the work so the service would not be interrupted as it was being used to rally people into the streets to protest the election. ?One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter,? a senior State Department official told reporters. ?They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to.?[68]Iran shortly thereafter summoned the Swiss ambassador, who also represents U.S. interests in the country since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations after the 1979 revolution, to complain about American interference in Iranian affairs.[69]One might be tempted to argue that the strategy for regime change implemented under the Bush administration that including funding for propaganda, support for Iranian dissident groups, and backing for anti-regime militants and terrorists has changed under the new administration of President Barack Obama. There is no evidence, many have pointed out, of U.S. meddling in the Iranian election.But then, neither is there any clear indication that Obama ever revoked the policy strategy implemented under Bush. The most likely scenario is that Obama has put the military option favored by some in the Bush administration on the back burner in favor of other means to carry out a change of regime in Iran.Whatever the case may be, given the record of U.S. interference in the state affairs of Iran and clear policy of regime change, it certainly seems possible, even likely, that the U.S. had a significant role to play in helping to bring about the recent turmoil in an effort to undermine the government of the Islamic Republic. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/18abee40/attachment.htm From trebrovick at comcast.net Thu Jun 25 15:57:54 2009 From: trebrovick at comcast.net (Tripp Rebrovick) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:57:54 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: <5AEAA61062779A46A0A9A3BC298FE1B50532A204@MAILBOXONE.home.ku.edu> References: <5AEAA61062779A46A0A9A3BC298FE1B50532A204@MAILBOXONE.home.ku.edu> Message-ID: <9bdf06180906251357g4cc3db6co5640b94ed5cb49ac@mail.gmail.com> I want to echo what Jennings said: I would never be able to read cards off of a computer effectively (for example, I can't even imagine giving a 2ac against 9 off on a computer when the decision of what cards to read and how many is made on the fly), but just printing out the speech before you start seems completely easy. For each tournament, a team would need: a) one printer, b) no more than one ream of paper, c) maybe one small expando to put a 1ac and some 1nc shells (stuff that would be printed out several times anyway). That's about it. It seems like a perfectly reasonable middle ground, and solves the biggest "in-round" debate concerns like the one's Jennings' mentioned (marking evidence, cross-x about un-underlined parts of the card, and it also prevents teams from looking ahead) but it ALSO solves the problem of a major meltdown of the computer *during *the speech. Also: there is no need for a viewing computer (and that money could be saved to buy the printer), and, perhaps, only one computer would be needed per team, if that was necessary. Sure, sometimes both partners might really need the computer, but that seems true of files anyway, and obviously it would be a team preference. Sure it's not entirely paperless, but it's a pretty big step. My thoughts, tripp On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Jennings, Andrew Joseph wrote: > > I always wondered why teams who were reluctant to switch couldn't just > print off what they were going to read prior to their speech. It solves the > whole marking cards problem and makse sure no dinglehead would cheat and > look at a new advantage before the other team read it. Obvi teams could > still just read it off the computer if they wanted to- maybe just a way to > get other teams on board for this. > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/53e6229c/attachment.htm From ermocito at gmail.com Thu Jun 25 16:29:01 2009 From: ermocito at gmail.com (Eric Morris) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:29:01 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: <9bdf06180906251357g4cc3db6co5640b94ed5cb49ac@mail.gmail.com> References: <5AEAA61062779A46A0A9A3BC298FE1B50532A204@MAILBOXONE.home.ku.edu> <9bdf06180906251357g4cc3db6co5640b94ed5cb49ac@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6bd35ee10906251429i4a4bc50dgfbc96c18ec85467a@mail.gmail.com> If I were debating in the present, I would downsize my tubs and have a high percent of my files paperless. Whether to expect others to do so is a different question. Thus, while I agree with Tripp and Jennings that this suggestion is a form of middle ground, I might have missed the post about why squads who aren't yet planning to move to paperless NEED to make moves to 'meet in the middle'. Are there advocates of paperless making arguments that other squads have an affirmative duty (not merely an invitation) to follow the trend? Ermo p.s. I think it's fine to request that judges be supportive of paperless and not backlash. I'm asking instead if paperless advocates feel that actually transitioning to paperless is some sort of a duty or expectation. On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Tripp Rebrovick wrote: > I want to echo what Jennings said: > I would never be able to read cards off of a computer effectively (for > example, I can't even imagine giving a 2ac against 9 off on a computer when > the decision of what cards to read and how many is made on the fly), but > just printing out the speech before you start seems completely easy. > > For each tournament, a team would need: a) one printer, b) no more than one > ream of paper, c) maybe one small expando to put a 1ac and some 1nc shells > (stuff that would be printed out several times anyway). That's about it. > > It seems like a perfectly reasonable middle ground, and solves the biggest > "in-round" debate concerns like the one's Jennings' mentioned (marking > evidence, cross-x about un-underlined parts of the card, and it also > prevents teams from looking ahead) but it ALSO solves the problem of a major > meltdown of the computer *during *the speech. > > Also: there is no need for a viewing computer (and that money could be > saved to buy the printer), and, perhaps, only one computer would be needed > per team, if that was necessary. Sure, sometimes both partners might really > need the computer, but that seems true of files anyway, and obviously it > would be a team preference. > > Sure it's not entirely paperless, but it's a pretty big step. > > My thoughts, > tripp > > On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Jennings, Andrew Joseph wrote: > >> >> I always wondered why teams who were reluctant to switch couldn't just >> print off what they were going to read prior to their speech. It solves the >> whole marking cards problem and makse sure no dinglehead would cheat and >> look at a new advantage before the other team read it. Obvi teams could >> still just read it off the computer if they wanted to- maybe just a way to >> get other teams on board for this. >> _______________________________________________ >> eDebate mailing list >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >> > > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/ca994d7d/attachment.htm From andy.edebate at gmail.com Thu Jun 25 16:36:04 2009 From: andy.edebate at gmail.com (Andy Ellis) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:36:04 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: <9bdf06180906251357g4cc3db6co5640b94ed5cb49ac@mail.gmail.com> References: <5AEAA61062779A46A0A9A3BC298FE1B50532A204@MAILBOXONE.home.ku.edu> <9bdf06180906251357g4cc3db6co5640b94ed5cb49ac@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9368bc9b0906251436k31c1d278tc93a71ae9020b800@mail.gmail.com> This is a good compromise that avoids most of my concern On 6/25/09, Tripp Rebrovick wrote: > I want to echo what Jennings said: > I would never be able to read cards off of a computer effectively (for > example, I can't even imagine giving a 2ac against 9 off on a computer when > the decision of what cards to read and how many is made on the fly), but > just printing out the speech before you start seems completely easy. > > For each tournament, a team would need: a) one printer, b) no more than one > ream of paper, c) maybe one small expando to put a 1ac and some 1nc shells > (stuff that would be printed out several times anyway). That's about it. > > It seems like a perfectly reasonable middle ground, and solves the biggest > "in-round" debate concerns like the one's Jennings' mentioned (marking > evidence, cross-x about un-underlined parts of the card, and it also > prevents teams from looking ahead) but it ALSO solves the problem of a major > meltdown of the computer *during *the speech. > > Also: there is no need for a viewing computer (and that money could be saved > to buy the printer), and, perhaps, only one computer would be needed per > team, if that was necessary. Sure, sometimes both partners might really need > the computer, but that seems true of files anyway, and obviously it would be > a team preference. > > Sure it's not entirely paperless, but it's a pretty big step. > > My thoughts, > tripp > > On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Jennings, Andrew Joseph > wrote: > >> >> I always wondered why teams who were reluctant to switch couldn't just >> print off what they were going to read prior to their speech. It solves >> the >> whole marking cards problem and makse sure no dinglehead would cheat and >> look at a new advantage before the other team read it. Obvi teams could >> still just read it off the computer if they wanted to- maybe just a way to >> get other teams on board for this. >> _______________________________________________ >> eDebate mailing list >> eDebate at www.ndtceda.com >> http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate >> > -- Sent from my mobile device From spoon_22 at hotmail.com Thu Jun 25 18:05:46 2009 From: spoon_22 at hotmail.com (Aaron Hardy) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:05:46 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Paperless In-Reply-To: <9bdf06180906251357g4cc3db6co5640b94ed5cb49ac@mail.gmail.com> References: <5AEAA61062779A46A0A9A3BC298FE1B50532A204@MAILBOXONE.home.ku.edu> <9bdf06180906251357g4cc3db6co5640b94ed5cb49ac@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A4402CA.1040503@hotmail.com> To quickly answer Ermo -- I definitely qualify as an "advocate of paperless"...but for my part (and Whitmans), I (and we) don't think there's any affirmative obligation at all to switch. Seems like a decision entirely up to each team to make on their own. People have been very accommodating with our foray into the paperless world, and we intend on returning the favor for whatever configuration other teams decide on. My hope is that the full array of options people try out help the community at large learn from each other's experience. Jennings/Tripps comment is very similar to a backchannel I recently received asking about printers -- a couple thoughts reposted from that exchange: I think that it could certainly work for some people, and it's obviously each team's perogative -- I'd be curious to hear how well it works for teams that try it. For our part, we considered the printer route pretty extensively and decided against it for several reasons: a) The logistics of each team carrying a printer are significantly more of a hassle than one spare laptop per team. A laptop fits in a backpack, a printer doesn't. The ones small enough to carry print like 10 pages a minute and have to replace cartridges every couple hundred pages. Even with the perfect printer, it requires locating boxes of paper, toner, etc...for every tournament, which is a hassle I'm glad to have left behind. b) Printers just aren't very reliable -- even less so than computers, and they hold up to travel abuse very poorly. We had a hard time keeping one team printer working, full of ink, and not jammed when we used paper -- I'd hate to try it with seven. Basically, I think it severely exacerbates "meltdown risk" which is more easily solved by having a backup of the speech on your partners computer before you start. c) The jumping/viewing process sometimes eats a little bit of prep time that can annoy judges -- I'm pretty confident that the tech problems inherent in printing have the potential to be way, way more annoying. d) It's pretty intangible but we kinda just like the fact that we don't still have one foot in the paper door... Specific issues that have been mentioned: "I don't like reading off the computer" -- Fair enough. Most of my students say they don't really notice the difference anymore. I also think that the 9 off 2AC is actually easier to give once you get used to it. There is a definite learning curve -- but then paperless affords a bunch of shortcuts that let you put together a speech much quicker than you can with multiple expandos. Most of the Whitman debaters expressed this same concern, and are now of the opinion that the actual speech process is easier on the computer. Printing also doesn't really solve the "I need to take up extra cards to decide on the fly" problem unless you're printing dozens of extra pages, slowing the process down even more. I think one ream of paper for an entire tournament is extremely optimistic... "Other In-Round concerns" -- I don't think these are that big a deal, or have turned out to be a benefit to paperless with practice. Happy to comment more in-depth on any specific concerns... hardy Tripp Rebrovick wrote: > I want to echo what Jennings said: > > I would never be able to read cards off of a computer effectively (for > example, I can't even imagine giving a 2ac against 9 off on a computer > when the decision of what cards to read and how many is made on the > fly), but just printing out the speech before you start seems > completely easy. > > For each tournament, a team would need: a) one printer, b) no more > than one ream of paper, c) maybe one small expando to put a 1ac and > some 1nc shells (stuff that would be printed out several times > anyway). That's about it. > > It seems like a perfectly reasonable middle ground, and solves the > biggest "in-round" debate concerns like the one's Jennings' mentioned > (marking evidence, cross-x about un-underlined parts of the card, and > it also prevents teams from looking ahead) but it ALSO solves the > problem of a major meltdown of the computer /during /the speech. > > Also: there is no need for a viewing computer (and that money could be > saved to buy the printer), and, perhaps, only one computer would be > needed per team, if that was necessary. Sure, sometimes both partners > might really need the computer, but that seems true of files anyway, > and obviously it would be a team preference. > > Sure it's not entirely paperless, but it's a pretty big step. > > My thoughts, > tripp > > On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Jennings, Andrew Joseph > > wrote: > > > I always wondered why teams who were reluctant to switch couldn't > just print off what they were going to read prior to their speech. > It solves the whole marking cards problem and makse sure no > dinglehead would cheat and look at a new advantage before the > other team read it. Obvi teams could still just read it off the > computer if they wanted to- maybe just a way to get other teams on > board for this. > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate From uwgdebate at gmail.com Thu Jun 25 19:13:49 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:13:49 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906231819i71dc55a9x6e8413d64892a766@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906251713l7bb86961recc37809e37dac4b@mail.gmail.com> sorry to group a bunch of this debate, but between listening to some old michael jackson, rip, and watching the nba draft, i really need to condense some of this discussion: 1) jack provides a defendable scenario of how western media has jumped the gun on the election fraud claims. goes to show that being hyperskeptical can be useful, and elections in the mideast seem particularly well-suited to analysis where suspicion is presumptive. i'm not convinced the election wasn't fraudulent (guess i kinda fall closer to friedman than petras on that point), but i also diverge from friedman in whether the abnormalities that did occcur affected the outcome. as an example of a scenario that attempts to synthesize some of our disagreements, it's not outlandish to think that the CIA/imperialists duped the Iranian public into supporting Moussavi, who really did win the election, but is still a bad dude. 2) jack's denouncement of the western media's myth of moussavi as reformer is spot on. *at best*, he's a politician that saw which way the winds were blowing (young people in Iran want change) and decided to play to the audience and may end up getting swept up in the momentum and be a faux reformer. more likely, he's exploiting western naivete and is no more liberatory than ahmadinejad. 3) i'm most intrigued by the analysis of obama's foreign policy agenda in #3. it's because i never really bought into the "moussavi is different" that i wasn't persuaded the US would gain much by him being president. as i noted in my last post, ahmadinejad as the archetypal villain seems to make the best option for US hardliners who want war against Iran. i hadn't considered this "obama needs a foreign policy victory" angle. definitely something i'll be thinking about as i continue to follow the situation. hester On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Old Strega wrote: > hats off to hester. watch this crazy debater gone bad act. > 1) is ahmadinejad a good guy? of course, not. but that fact or > impression is what is part of what is being leveraged to insinuate that > fraud = stolen election. the idea that some fraud may have been committed > but that ahmadinejad's massive support in non-elite tehran, on the border > where security is key, in the oil provinces where mousavi wanted to > privatize and in rural areas where ahmadinejad's campaign against corruption > is extremely popular, that this massive support was cut out of the TV > picture through selective coverage. this support crushed mousavi rather > handily. americans wanted the good guy that they were seeing on TV to win > but that good guy has an arguably worse record responsible for mass > executions and an iran-contra culprit which sets him up beautifully to be a > US asset in the region who received funds from the Project for Democracy and > the CIA for regime change. > > obama is in bed with the reagan iran-contra people in iran trying to > undermine the regime in an effort to accomplish big picture policy aims in > the region which are the same old policy aims of the bush administration: > > http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001546.htm > > As President Obama offered > perhaps his strongest rhetorical support to date for opposition protesters > in Iran, CQ offered > a look back at the former 1980's prime minister turned accidental reformer, > Mir-Hossain Mousavi. In 1983, Mousavi, CQ reported, ''had to be aware" of > Iranian-sponsoredattacks on the United States in Lebanon, > including the devastating barracks bombing that killed 241 Marines in > Beirut. As it turns out, Mousavi was also intimately involved in another of > Ronald Reagan's disastrous encounters with Iran just three years later. When > Reagan sent a > cake, a Bible and U.S. weapons to Tehran as part of the Iran-Contra scheme, > then-Prime Minister Mousavi was there to receive them...As the November > 1987 report of the Congressional committeesinvestigating > the Iran-Contra affair detailed, the McFarlane delegation was to meet with a > now familiar cast of characters in Iran, including Mir-Hossein Mousavi > . > > > because ahmadinejad is the more recent evil iran leader in the spotlight, > americans are vulnerable to claims that he's a bigger cheater than mousavi. > > there is no smoking gun fraud evidence that travels the distance to reach > the threshold of a stolen election. at this point, that is purely > speculation and the illusion has been manufactured through media tricks. > the burden of proof should go the other way to demonstrate mousavi had a > base of support other than the affluent in tehran to even challenge > ahmadinejad. poll analysis is weak in a vacuum when it isn't combined with > demographic political analysis. that's why petras and friedman are > superior. > > 2) george friedman quals are good enough. his parents are holocaust > survivors so his argument about mousavi getting crushed should not be taken > as ahmadinejad = good. rather, he makes the persuasive case why mousavi > didn't win. his vast knowledge of the region could not make him the least > bit sympathetic to mousavi, the liberator, like the average american. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Friedman > > *George Friedman* is an American > political scientist and > author. He is the founder, chief intelligence officer, > financial overseer, and CEO of the private intelligence corporation > Stratfor . He has authored several > books, including *The Next 100 Years > *, *America's Secret War > *, *The Intelligence Edge*, and *The Future of War*. > George Friedman is Chief Executive of STRATFOR, > a private global intelligence firm he founded in 1996. Prior to joining the > private sector, Friedman spent almost twenty years in academia, teaching > political science at Dickinson College. During this time he also regularly > briefed senior commanders in the armed services as well as the Office of Net > Assessments, SHAPE Technical Center, > the U.S. Army War College, > National Defense University and the RAND Corporation on > security and national defense matters. > > 3) i disagree with your speculation about there having not been enough time > yet for a revolution to pick up momentum. i think the hope was that a > movement would quickly spread to other groups than mousavi's meager base of > support in the wake of the election. i think the hope was to oust > ahmadinejad with a minimal investment of CIA funds because there are no > other viable options. as in past orchestrated coups like the '53, these > things have to happen quick. they were hoping the "secret letter" which > could easily turn out to be fake from secretary of the interior claiming was > mousavi won would sway ahmadinejad's supporters and the protests would > extend beyond tehran. didn't happen. protests are on the wane giving > credence to mousavi's limited base. ahmadenijad will consolidate power > arguably stronger and has time to provide the smoking gun evidence on > mousavi's links to the US and british. the soft coup could backfire big > time. > > http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14082 > > if the plan had worked, obama's negotiations with mousavi would have given > the foreign policy victory he needs given the dire uncertainty of the > afghanistan campaign. he almost has to capture bin laden to get victory > there. netanyahu is not going to stop settlements on the ground no > matter what he entertains at the bargaining table. north korea is on the > brink of firing missile at hawaii. in 2012, obama will be painted as suave > but weak. frankly, he has no focus. the bush bad whines are the only > focus he ever had. the muslim world speech despite its appeal to our > hearts puts obama in a difficult position where he may get nothing > accomplished in the middle east. his policy does not jive. if he's so > genuine, why did he say nothing about the gaza raid the most recent israeli > excessive use of force prior to the speech. he's on an imperial crusade in > afghanistan and is not pulling out of iraq in the way said he would before > election. hard to make believe your really sensitive to israeli atrocities > when you remain silent during the gaza raid like a deer in the headlights. > ground forces which are an imperial presence will not all be withdrawn. > many of the ones that will are getting a rest with their families before > being redeployed to afghanistan to redirect the imperial presence in the > region which undermines our foreign policy goals. > > i think obama is desperate. he may not be able to prove any tangible > result in afghanistan (his big brzezinski idea) before 2012 and he doesn't > have the experience to lead on foreign policy where he is being bombarded by > conflicting interests. he needs a breakthrough. the mousavi trick > didn't work. now, there aren't many options for iran. negotiation > definitely won't happen. airstrikes on nuclear facilities won't knock out > their capability. iran is unlikely to provoke a war that US doesn't have > the military capacity to fight. overall, bad policy decision by obama to > try the soft coup. we are worse off with iran and ahmadinejad is laughing. > there is no focus to the obama foreign policy. the afghan war is going > to kill him on deficit spending. > > 4) there are many points of convergence between petras and friedman most > notably their demographic explanation of ahmadinejad's base of support is > almost identical. their thesis is almost identical. petras is more bold > in his presentation claiming a hoax but friedman gives the same argument in > defense of the hoax without calling it a hoax. it will be interesting to > see if petras gives more concessions to vote fraud as he follows up. > > > > > ------------------------------ > Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/36d5de02/attachment.htm From hansonjb at whitman.edu Thu Jun 25 18:56:37 2009 From: hansonjb at whitman.edu (Jim Hanson) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:56:37 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] debate coach opportunity, korea Message-ID: <525D0FC62E744800BCAFF48DD735CFBD@whitman.edu> JC Learning, who I and Matt Taylor are working with, is looking to hire as soon as possible. Give it some thought. JCLearning Job Description 1.Responsilities ? Create debate work books for students(We Provide basic Materials) ? Daily class planning ? Grades, attendance, deportment and other record keeping ? Grading and preparation of homework and exams ? Preparations of regular written student evaluations ? Attendance at faculty meetings, workshops, events 2. Qualifications ? 4-year degree from accredited university or college required; relevant degree perferred ? Experience as a Debater ? Experience coaching debate teams required ? Debate competition awards preferred 3. Requirements ? Be eligible for a work visa ? Be a native English speaker (First Language is English) ? No criminal record ? Be able to commit to a one year contract 4.Compensation. Employee shall receive a Base Salary for teaching approximately 30 hours per week, or in any event, no more than 120 hours of teaching per month at the Institute. Teaching hour in excess of 120 per month will be considered and compensated as Overtime. a.Base Salary. negotiable, min $28,000. (varied according to the teaching Experience) b.Overtime Pay negotiable c.Housing will be provided--a one room studio style apartment. 5 minute by Walk d.We offer visa and also air fee from US to South Korea, Pick up at Inchon Int?l Airport. 3.Hours. Employee shall be available for work from 1 to 10 including one hour break, Monday through Friday, and on Saturday when requested. Send your CV to Justin Yang at justin at jclearn.com and to Jim Hanson at hansonjb at whitman.edu ========================== JC Learning Co., Ltd. Justin Yang , ??? Chief Strategy Officer, ?????? 82 10 2940 2464 Justin at jclearn.com ========================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/0e6975ad/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Thu Jun 25 21:57:13 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:57:13 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] "the emergence of an authentically emancipatory democratic Islam" Message-ID: i wasn't engaging in debate, jack, merely linking you to a video. your tendency toward personal attack is a weakness: for example, if those attending the zizek lecture didn't laugh, then you'd use that against him just as readily. so it's not surprising you drop his arguments: does mousavi support further nationalization or not?, you don't answer. yet i suppose we can skip that, for the heart of the matter has little to do with mousavi and everything to do with the people dying in the streets. what zizek referred to as "western cynicism at its worst"' was to ignore the role of the people - the uprising of the allegedly fundamentalist poor. this is "the deep distrust of the iranian people" reflected in your own position, is zizek's main contention. i won't vouch for zizek's sources, and i'm not certain or uniquely knowledgeable about any of this. still, my hunch is that you're twisting the facts to fit neatly into the box of herman and chomsky's 'propaganda model'. pro-iranain protesters does not = pro-mousavi. what we need now is unqualified expressions of solidarity. if that's what old strega labels as adopting the role of a 'universal intellectual', then zizek should be happy to consider himself one - as was foucault when he spoke positively of the '79 revolution, no? _ I had come to invite to the Islamic Revolution as it was, and to the Islamic Republic as it should be. I was not eloquent in this invitation, but the noble message of [original 1979] Revolution was so pleasant, even coming from my inadequate expressions, that it excited the younger generation, a generation that had not seen those times and felt a distance between themselves and this great inheritance, and reconstructed scenes only seen during in the times of the [Iranian Revolution] movement and the Holy Defense [the Iran-Iraq war]. The spontaneous movement of the people chose the color green as its symbol. I confess that I followed them in this matter. And the generation that was accused of being far from religious roots, arrived at Takbir among its slogans and leaned against "Victory Comes from God and an Opening is Around", "O Husayn" and the name of Khomeini to prove that this fine tree brings similar fruit whenever it bears fruit. Nobody had taught them these slogans except the Innate Teacher [God]. So unfair are those whose little interests makes them call this miracle of the Islamic Revolution fabricated by foreigners and a "velvet revolution". : http://elections.7rooz.com/englishnews/Mousavi%27s_statement_number_5_to_Iranian_people _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090625/19f66bba/attachment.htm From andy.edebate at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 00:44:59 2009 From: andy.edebate at gmail.com (Andy Ellis) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:44:59 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] The best article on any topic Message-ID: <9368bc9b0906252244m5c57a323g31ad6d0b83258a99@mail.gmail.com> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8118257.stm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090626/4be21fa0/attachment.htm From sailorferrets at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 11:07:47 2009 From: sailorferrets at gmail.com (joe leeson-schatz) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:07:47 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Problems with Paperless Message-ID: While I like the idea of paperless debating and cutting down on wasteful printing, there are at least two problems with it that have yet to be addressed by the conversation going on. The first is the debaters who chose to go paperless and their willingness to clearly show to the opposing team what they actually read. I have judged, and have had teams debate against others, who decided it was okay to jump someone a 300 page file of which they read 6 cards from, didn't mark which cards they read, and wouldn't take their own prep time to point out which of the cards they read either. This happened even after requesting that the cards read be clearly identified. This means that the team debating against the paperless team had to either give up cross-x to figure it out, use their own prep time, screw it and never look at the evidence, or has to be amazing at quickly searching through a full file. When people read off paper this is not the case. While there is a few cards that may be on the same page that isn't read, generally people "x" em while reading, or point it out quickly. I have not seen this same willingness on the part of the paperless teams I have witnessed. There should be an imperative that teams reading off a laptop copy-paste the cards they PLAN on reading into a separate doc file and then jump that to the other team and NOT the entire file of answers of which they plan to read less than 25%. If people skip a card because of time it's easy and quick to tell the other team. This, unfortunately, is not what I've witnessed thus far. The second problem is for novice debate. I have found that novices have a harder time organizing, reading, and actually working with their evidence when it's all electronic instead of on paper. We have all our backfiles electronically that debaters can access and use but require our novices at minimum to print those files they plan on using. Comparing the work and knowledge done with paper files vs. electronic files, novices do way more work on their paper files, marking them with notes, going over them, and preparing them. Electronically, I'm lucky to get stuff underlined. While this may be an issue of the work ethic of the debater, it is not so entirely. The ability to comprehend what's read off a monitor vs. paper drops significantly after about 20-30 minutes of work and the ability to correctly check over grammar and context drops as well. There are several studies that show how concentration drops significantly when work is done exclusively through a monitor. As someone who does 95+% of their work on the computer I'm normally not an advocate of the "reading off a monitor is tough" argument. However, I have seen a big difference in the internalization of arguments within my novices based upon whether they read the file on paper or on the computer. I have also caught incredibly grammatically incorrect sentences of mine in academic papers when proof reading on paper even after several computer-based revisions. None of this precludes debating off the computer. However, if everything went paperless it could hurt the development of novices who could better get into the activity with paper files to begin looking over. The third problem is still access. While there's talk of getting a third laptop or a printer for each team from the University it doesn't solve the problem of people with no personal computer, which would make it impossible to read off one and give one to another team. Even if they still decided to stay on paper when debating people who are not on paper they have to learn quickly on how to retrieve the needed information, which is magnified by the first problem I identify. People who use computers less are less apt to use them efficiently in a debate round. The frustration of going from one laptop keyboard to the next is enough for me since I'm sure when I want to hit the down arrow I'll end up hitting page down or some other key in a different place. I can fix that mistake. Most people can. But people without much access to laptops will have a greater problem. Even if it's a not a big one, debate is a game of seconds. We say "09" or just "9" instead of "2009" to save seconds. If reading all the evidence off a laptop causes the opponents to give up as much time as reducing "2009" to "9" then it creates a further competitive disadvantage beyond the already existing inequalities in debate ESPECIALLY when the other team doesn't clearly mark the cards they've read. In short, I think moving in a paperless direction is a good idea. However, it needs to be done in a way that doesn't further the competitive gaps that already exist in debate as well as in a way that doesn't make it harder for new debaters to enter into the community. The middle ground people are talking about some of these problems but not all because it still enables team to jump their entire heg file read Khalizad and think they've met their burden of giving the other team the evidence they read. This is clearly not the case. joe leeson-schatz director of debate at binghamton university campaigns coordinator of the binghamton/vestal vegan association From oldstrega at hotmail.com Fri Jun 26 12:56:40 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:56:40 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] sanchez on crack Message-ID: i find a lot similarities between my position on edebate (where i have a classroom of fawning students who believe everything i say and laugh at all my jokes) and zizek the boob. my point about zizek's founding of mousavi's democratic spirit around the question of whether or not he's a market reformist liberal or not IS THAT MOUSAVI WAS AN EXECUTIONER OF IRANIANS AND THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS AT BEIRUT, dipshit. that's all you have to answer in your next post and should have in your last post. you're acting like zizek, dipshit. in big time denial. we need the big mousavi democratic conversion story about how he met allah on the road and all the sudden he changed from a mass murderer to the great islamic hope for democracy. the real story, crackboy, is that he has been reinvented through a-historical media coverage including that u-tube crap. it's not the poor in the rural areas marching, dipshit, the soft coup didn't make it past the affluent getting twitters from langley and tel aviv. stop your lying. that's why it's fading fast. twitter didn't spillover. foucault was interested in the iranian revolution mostly because of the will of the people in discarding a US installed coup dictator. the problem of your little argument --- mousavi is the shah in this case and it's not a revolution. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090626/95f1ebb9/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Fri Jun 26 14:04:58 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:04:58 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: <2e0f7ba70906251713l7bb86961recc37809e37dac4b@mail.gmail.com> References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906231819i71dc55a9x6e8413d64892a766@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906251713l7bb86961recc37809e37dac4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: regarding obama's need for a foreign policy victory, it might seem early but the path of his speaking engagements shows he's already stumping. the caricature of suave but weak is already taking shape and the administration feels the need to combat that image before it sticks. north korea is not helping. will the vote fraud evidence ever reach the threshold of definitive theft? right now, many people believe the election was stolen without such evidence. the only answer i know for that is the media coverage which is obviously "partial" in more than one meaning of that word. 1) if the coverage had included the rural areas where ahmadinejad is popular, would as many people believe that minor evidence of fraud is significant enough to deem the election stolen? 2) if the coverage had included mousavi's biographical details of repression and murder and not emphasized his wife, would as many people believe that minor evidence of fraud is significant enough to deem the election stolen? with a good guy in the picture, it is even easier assume that the bad guy cheated him. i think you're getting too much lyrical mileage out of the idea that "the winds are changing" in iran. yes, for the students in tehran but there is no evidence of such a movement achieving critical mass. there are protests but not enough protests to reflect a majority of iranians across the entire nation upset about the outcome of the election. you're back to using the extrapolation of the election fraud results to a stolen election. we have no demographic proof of the changing winds. just there was fraud which means more than the majority voted for mousavi. this anti-demographic approach relies heavily on protest coverage from tehran to create the impression that "the winds are changing". more complete coverage may have dispelled the myth. i will conclude with another missing anecdote in the press which further demonstrates the movement never reached critical mass--- mousavi's defeat in the debates: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23745.html Like much of the Western media, most American ?Iran experts? overstated Mir Hossein Mousavi?s ?surge? over the campaign?s final weeks. More important, they were oblivious ? as in 2005 ? to Ahmadinejad?s effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. American ?Iran experts? missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with his three opponents ? especially his debate with Mousavi.Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the debates, the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad?s provocatively impressive performance and Mousavi?s desultory one had boosted the incumbent?s standing. Ahmadinejad?s charge that Mousavi was supported by Rafsanjani?s sons ? widely perceived in Iranian society as corrupt figures ? seemed to play well with voters. Similarly, Ahmadinejad?s criticism that Mousavi?s reformist supporters, including Khatami, had been willing to suspend Iran?s uranium enrichment program and had won nothing from the West for doing so tapped into popular support for the program ? and had the added advantage of being true.More fundamentally, American ?Iran experts? consistently underestimated Ahmadinejad?s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; most polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce results of questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday?s election by a Western organization that was transparent about its methodology ? a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 ? found Ahmadinejad running 20 points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done well while Mousavi did poorly. Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:13:49 -0400 Subject: Re: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times From: uwgdebate at gmail.com To: oldstrega at hotmail.com; edebate at ndtceda.com sorry to group a bunch of this debate, but between listening to some old michael jackson, rip, and watching the nba draft, i really need to condense some of this discussion: 1) jack provides a defendable scenario of how western media has jumped the gun on the election fraud claims. goes to show that being hyperskeptical can be useful, and elections in the mideast seem particularly well-suited to analysis where suspicion is presumptive. i'm not convinced the election wasn't fraudulent (guess i kinda fall closer to friedman than petras on that point), but i also diverge from friedman in whether the abnormalities that did occcur affected the outcome. as an example of a scenario that attempts to synthesize some of our disagreements, it's not outlandish to think that the CIA/imperialists duped the Iranian public into supporting Moussavi, who really did win the election, but is still a bad dude. 2) jack's denouncement of the western media's myth of moussavi as reformer is spot on. at best, he's a politician that saw which way the winds were blowing (young people in Iran want change) and decided to play to the audience and may end up getting swept up in the momentum and be a faux reformer. more likely, he's exploiting western naivete and is no more liberatory than ahmadinejad. 3) i'm most intrigued by the analysis of obama's foreign policy agenda in #3. it's because i never really bought into the "moussavi is different" that i wasn't persuaded the US would gain much by him being president. as i noted in my last post, ahmadinejad as the archetypal villain seems to make the best option for US hardliners who want war against Iran. i hadn't considered this "obama needs a foreign policy victory" angle. definitely something i'll be thinking about as i continue to follow the situation. hester On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Old Strega wrote: hats off to hester. watch this crazy debater gone bad act. 1) is ahmadinejad a good guy? of course, not. but that fact or impression is what is part of what is being leveraged to insinuate that fraud = stolen election. the idea that some fraud may have been committed but that ahmadinejad's massive support in non-elite tehran, on the border where security is key, in the oil provinces where mousavi wanted to privatize and in rural areas where ahmadinejad's campaign against corruption is extremely popular, that this massive support was cut out of the TV picture through selective coverage. this support crushed mousavi rather handily. americans wanted the good guy that they were seeing on TV to win but that good guy has an arguably worse record responsible for mass executions and an iran-contra culprit which sets him up beautifully to be a US asset in the region who received funds from the Project for Democracy and the CIA for regime change. obama is in bed with the reagan iran-contra people in iran trying to undermine the regime in an effort to accomplish big picture policy aims in the region which are the same old policy aims of the bush administration: http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001546.htm As President Obama offered perhaps his strongest rhetorical support to date for opposition protesters in Iran, CQ offered a look back at the former 1980's prime minister turned accidental reformer, Mir-Hossain Mousavi. In 1983, Mousavi, CQ reported, ''had to be aware" of Iranian-sponsoredattacks on the United States in Lebanon, including the devastating barracks bombing that killed 241 Marines in Beirut. As it turns out, Mousavi was also intimately involved in another of Ronald Reagan's disastrous encounters with Iran just three years later. When Reagan sent a cake, a Bible and U.S. weapons to Tehran as part of the Iran-Contra scheme, then-Prime Minister Mousavi was there to receive them...As the November 1987 report of the Congressional committeesinvestigating the Iran-Contra affair detailed, the McFarlane delegation was to meet with a now familiar cast of characters in Iran, including Mir-Hossein Mousavi. because ahmadinejad is the more recent evil iran leader in the spotlight, americans are vulnerable to claims that he's a bigger cheater than mousavi. there is no smoking gun fraud evidence that travels the distance to reach the threshold of a stolen election. at this point, that is purely speculation and the illusion has been manufactured through media tricks. the burden of proof should go the other way to demonstrate mousavi had a base of support other than the affluent in tehran to even challenge ahmadinejad. poll analysis is weak in a vacuum when it isn't combined with demographic political analysis. that's why petras and friedman are superior. 2) george friedman quals are good enough. his parents are holocaust survivors so his argument about mousavi getting crushed should not be taken as ahmadinejad = good. rather, he makes the persuasive case why mousavi didn't win. his vast knowledge of the region could not make him the least bit sympathetic to mousavi, the liberator, like the average american. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Friedman George Friedman is an American political scientist and author. He is the founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the private intelligence corporation Stratfor. He has authored several books, including The Next 100 Years, America's Secret War, The Intelligence Edge, and The Future of War. George Friedman is Chief Executive of STRATFOR, a private global intelligence firm he founded in 1996. Prior to joining the private sector, Friedman spent almost twenty years in academia, teaching political science at Dickinson College. During this time he also regularly briefed senior commanders in the armed services as well as the Office of Net Assessments, SHAPE Technical Center, the U.S. Army War College, National Defense University and the RAND Corporation on security and national defense matters. 3) i disagree with your speculation about there having not been enough time yet for a revolution to pick up momentum. i think the hope was that a movement would quickly spread to other groups than mousavi's meager base of support in the wake of the election. i think the hope was to oust ahmadinejad with a minimal investment of CIA funds because there are no other viable options. as in past orchestrated coups like the '53, these things have to happen quick. they were hoping the "secret letter" which could easily turn out to be fake from secretary of the interior claiming was mousavi won would sway ahmadinejad's supporters and the protests would extend beyond tehran. didn't happen. protests are on the wane giving credence to mousavi's limited base. ahmadenijad will consolidate power arguably stronger and has time to provide the smoking gun evidence on mousavi's links to the US and british. the soft coup could backfire big time. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14082 if the plan had worked, obama's negotiations with mousavi would have given the foreign policy victory he needs given the dire uncertainty of the afghanistan campaign. he almost has to capture bin laden to get victory there. netanyahu is not going to stop settlements on the ground no matter what he entertains at the bargaining table. north korea is on the brink of firing missile at hawaii. in 2012, obama will be painted as suave but weak. frankly, he has no focus. the bush bad whines are the only focus he ever had. the muslim world speech despite its appeal to our hearts puts obama in a difficult position where he may get nothing accomplished in the middle east. his policy does not jive. if he's so genuine, why did he say nothing about the gaza raid the most recent israeli excessive use of force prior to the speech. he's on an imperial crusade in afghanistan and is not pulling out of iraq in the way said he would before election. hard to make believe your really sensitive to israeli atrocities when you remain silent during the gaza raid like a deer in the headlights. ground forces which are an imperial presence will not all be withdrawn. many of the ones that will are getting a rest with their families before being redeployed to afghanistan to redirect the imperial presence in the region which undermines our foreign policy goals. i think obama is desperate. he may not be able to prove any tangible result in afghanistan (his big brzezinski idea) before 2012 and he doesn't have the experience to lead on foreign policy where he is being bombarded by conflicting interests. he needs a breakthrough. the mousavi trick didn't work. now, there aren't many options for iran. negotiation definitely won't happen. airstrikes on nuclear facilities won't knock out their capability. iran is unlikely to provoke a war that US doesn't have the military capacity to fight. overall, bad policy decision by obama to try the soft coup. we are worse off with iran and ahmadinejad is laughing. there is no focus to the obama foreign policy. the afghan war is going to kill him on deficit spending. 4) there are many points of convergence between petras and friedman most notably their demographic explanation of ahmadinejad's base of support is almost identical. their thesis is almost identical. petras is more bold in his presentation claiming a hoax but friedman gives the same argument in defense of the hoax without calling it a hoax. it will be interesting to see if petras gives more concessions to vote fraud as he follows up. Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090626/eb911488/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Fri Jun 26 15:20:19 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:20:19 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] is bin laden in iran? if so, is the afghan war frivolous? Message-ID: opening salvo, but the whole article is worth reading. the thesis is worth consideration that the US doesn't want bin laden alive because he will tell all he was in iran since 2003 wreaking further havoc on a discombobulated intelligence bureaucracy trying to regain its image after the 9/11 failure. the thesis, also, undermines one of the major objectives of obama's plan to surgically remove the al-qaeda leadership from the afghan-pakistani border. http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Bin_Laden_terrorist_Iran/2009/04/03/199385.html Friday, April 3, 2009 10:44 AM By: Kenneth R. TimmermanArticle Font Size Osama bin Laden?s passion for falcon hunting may have come close to doing him in two years ago, when an American falconer working with a Tajik smuggler and a team of former special forces operators planned to kidnap the fugitive terrorist during a hunt in northeastern Iran, according to one of the people involved in the scheme.The plan was scuttled when FBI officials in Boston threatened to arrest members of the snatch team for violating the Neutrality Act ? even though the State Department has been running a ?Rewards for Justice? program offering private citizens up to $25 million for information leading to bin Laden?s capture or arrest, says Alan Parrot, who was in on the plot.?Several FBI agents provided our information about Osama bin Laden?s activities and whereabouts in Iran to their hierarchy,? says Parrot, the CEO of the Union for the Conservation of Raptors, a U.S.-based conservation group that works to combat falcon smuggling.?But when they received no response, they turned around and threatened to arrest us if we continued to plot to kidnap bin Laden on U.S. territory,? Parrot told Newsmax.Parrot initially contacted the FBI after an informant in the former Soviet Union and Afghanistan identified a local smuggler who told him he had met bin Laden by accident during a smuggling foray into Iran in November 2004.As Parrot and his associates grilled the informant, they learned that he was a personal friend of the smuggler, and could lead them to him so they could evaluate his information.Parrot initially took that information to the FBI, the CIA, and to other U.S. government agencies, but got no response. He shared information with then-Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, an old family friend. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090626/8b61a0f3/attachment.htm From uwgdebate at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 16:19:40 2009 From: uwgdebate at gmail.com (michael hester) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:19:40 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906231819i71dc55a9x6e8413d64892a766@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906251713l7bb86961recc37809e37dac4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2e0f7ba70906261419j67a98ab9qe6bb6f11c0284be5@mail.gmail.com> i may have misspoke with "winds of change" imagery. what i meant to argue was that the age demographics in Iran lead to momentum for change, not that such "change" is anything like what the West wants or projects onto the populace (some polls indicate 85% of the population wants the bomb, something current media coverage glosses over big time). in saying that the slant toward a younger demographic increases calls for change, i'm realying more on the stereotype of youth agitating for control over their own exciting story. for example, i do think that the masses of youth taking to the streets see this as a chance to participate in the kind of revolutionary zeal their elders have been telling stories about all their lives. for an adult born in 1984 or a young adult born in 1992, Iran can seem kinda boring/stifling compared to the upheaval that occured during their parents and older relatives lives before they were born. now they see an opportunity to take part in street riots, act out against authority, etc. and a helluva lot are jumping on it. where i agree with you is on the oversimplified assumption that because young people are taking to the streets, therefore Iranians want neoliberal democracy. calls for reform doesn't = calls to be like America or behave like Americans want us to. heck, they may tear the whole thing down and replace it with an administration even more hell bent on having a nuclear arsenal to deter Israel. in other words, i mean "change" in the energetic sense, not in any particular political direction. and i do think the age divide has implications that are distinct from the city/rual distinction used to explain support for Ahmadinejad where we may disagree is that i don't think this *whole* thing is just a smoke-and-mirrors western media production. even if the CIA and its ilk have been instigating protests (and i agree that's fairly easy to assume based on the historical record), that doesn't mean there isn't *also *a LOT of pent up anger with the current regime (or whatever the hell else teen angst and rising expextations are directed against) that is part of this too. while it has to be 51% to win an election, if 35% of the populace is upset, that can still cause a regime serious headaches. the unrest may have catalyzed around the elections (or been lit afire by western propagandistic efforts to foment revolt), but the longer it goes on, the more it becomes about issues larger than one election. hester p.s. - i thought the friedman article talked about the debates. at this point the coverage is kinda running together, but i do recall reading one analyst note that while outsiders thought moussavi did well, folks inside Iran said Ahmadinejad definitely did better from the Iranian public's perspective. (different from, but reminiscent of the kennedy/nixon debate perspectives, maybe?) On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Old Strega wrote: > regarding obama's need for a foreign policy victory, it might seem early > but the path of his speaking engagements shows he's already stumping. the > caricature of suave but weak is already taking shape and the administration > feels the need to combat that image before it sticks. north korea is not > helping. > > will the vote fraud evidence ever reach the threshold of definitive theft? > right now, many people believe the election was stolen without such > evidence. the only answer i know for that is the media coverage which is > obviously "partial" in more than one meaning of that word. > > 1) if the coverage had included the rural areas where ahmadinejad is > popular, would as many people believe that minor evidence of fraud is > significant enough to deem the election stolen? > > 2) if the coverage had included mousavi's biographical details of > repression and murder and not emphasized his wife, would as many people > believe that minor evidence of fraud is significant enough to deem the > election stolen? with a good guy in the picture, it is even easier assume > that the bad guy cheated him. > > i think you're getting too much lyrical mileage out of the idea that "the > winds are changing" in iran. yes, for the students in tehran but there is > no evidence of such a movement achieving critical mass. there are > protests but not enough protests to reflect a majority of iranians across > the entire nation upset about the outcome of the election. > > you're back to using the extrapolation of the election fraud results to a > stolen election. we have no demographic proof of the changing winds. just > there was fraud which means more than the majority voted for mousavi. this > anti-demographic approach relies heavily on protest coverage from tehran to > create the impression that "the winds are changing". more complete > coverage may have dispelled the myth. > > i will conclude with another missing anecdote in the press which further > demonstrates the movement never reached critical mass--- mousavi's defeat in > the debates: > > http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23745.html > > Like much of the Western media, most American ?Iran experts? overstated Mir > Hossein Mousavi?s ?surge? over the campaign?s final weeks. More important, > they were oblivious ? as in 2005 ? to Ahmadinejad?s effectiveness as a > populist politician > and campaigner. American ?Iran experts? missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived > by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with his > three opponents ? especially his debate with Mousavi. > > Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated > privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the > debates, the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad?s provocatively > impressive performance > and Mousavi?s desultory one had boosted the incumbent?s standing. > Ahmadinejad?s charge that Mousavi was supported by Rafsanjani?s sons ? > widely perceived in Iranian society as corrupt figures ? seemed to play well > with voters. > > > Similarly, Ahmadinejad?s criticism that Mousavi?s reformist supporters, > including Khatami, had been willing to suspend Iran?s uranium enrichment > program and had won nothing from the West > for doing so tapped into popular support for the program ? and had the > added advantage of being true. > > More fundamentally, American ?Iran experts? consistently underestimated > Ahmadinejad?s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; > most polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce > results of questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday?s > election by a Western organization that was transparent about its > methodology ? a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based > Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 ? found Ahmadinejad running 20 points > ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised debates in > which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done well while > Mousavi did poorly. > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:13:49 -0400 > Subject: Re: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times > From: uwgdebate at gmail.com > To: oldstrega at hotmail.com; edebate at ndtceda.com > > > sorry to group a bunch of this debate, but between listening to some old > michael jackson, rip, and watching the nba draft, i really need to condense > some of this discussion: > > 1) jack provides a defendable scenario of how western media has jumped the > gun on the election fraud claims. goes to show that being hyperskeptical can > be useful, and elections in the mideast seem particularly well-suited to > analysis where suspicion is presumptive. i'm not convinced the election > wasn't fraudulent (guess i kinda fall closer to friedman than petras on that > point), but i also diverge from friedman in whether the abnormalities that > did occcur affected the outcome. as an example of a scenario that attempts > to synthesize some of our disagreements, it's not outlandish to think that > the CIA/imperialists duped the Iranian public into supporting Moussavi, who > really did win the election, but is still a bad dude. > > 2) jack's denouncement of the western media's myth of moussavi as reformer > is spot on. *at best*, he's a politician that saw which way the winds were > blowing (young people in Iran want change) and decided to play to the > audience and may end up getting swept up in the momentum and be a faux > reformer. more likely, he's exploiting western naivete and is no more > liberatory than ahmadinejad. > > 3) i'm most intrigued by the analysis of obama's foreign policy agenda in > #3. it's because i never really bought into the "moussavi is different" that > i wasn't persuaded the US would gain much by him being president. as i noted > in my last post, ahmadinejad as the archetypal villain seems to make the > best option for US hardliners who want war against Iran. i hadn't considered > this "obama needs a foreign policy victory" angle. definitely something i'll > be thinking about as i continue to follow the situation. > > hester > > On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Old Strega wrote: > > hats off to hester. watch this crazy debater gone bad act. > 1) is ahmadinejad a good guy? of course, not. but that fact or > impression is what is part of what is being leveraged to insinuate that > fraud = stolen election. the idea that some fraud may have been committed > but that ahmadinejad's massive support in non-elite tehran, on the border > where security is key, in the oil provinces where mousavi wanted to > privatize and in rural areas where ahmadinejad's campaign against corruption > is extremely popular, that this massive support was cut out of the TV > picture through selective coverage. this support crushed mousavi rather > handily. americans wanted the good guy that they were seeing on TV to win > but that good guy has an arguably worse record responsible for mass > executions and an iran-contra culprit which sets him up beautifully to be a > US asset in the region who received funds from the Project for Democracy and > the CIA for regime change. > > obama is in bed with the reagan iran-contra people in iran trying to > undermine the regime in an effort to accomplish big picture policy aims in > the region which are the same old policy aims of the bush administration: > > http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001546.htm > > As President Obama offered > perhaps his strongest rhetorical support to date for opposition protesters > in Iran, CQ offered > a look back at the former 1980's prime minister turned accidental reformer, > Mir-Hossain Mousavi. In 1983, Mousavi, CQ reported, ''had to be aware" of > Iranian-sponsoredattacks on the United States in Lebanon, > including the devastating barracks bombing that killed 241 Marines in > Beirut. As it turns out, Mousavi was also intimately involved in another of > Ronald Reagan's disastrous encounters with Iran just three years later. When > Reagan sent a > cake, a Bible and U.S. weapons to Tehran as part of the Iran-Contra scheme, > then-Prime Minister Mousavi was there to receive them...As the November > 1987 report of the Congressional committeesinvestigating > the Iran-Contra affair detailed, the McFarlane delegation was to meet with a > now familiar cast of characters in Iran, including Mir-Hossein Mousavi > . > > > because ahmadinejad is the more recent evil iran leader in the spotlight, > americans are vulnerable to claims that he's a bigger cheater than mousavi. > > there is no smoking gun fraud evidence that travels the distance to reach > the threshold of a stolen election. at this point, that is purely > speculation and the illusion has been manufactured through media tricks. > the burden of proof should go the other way to demonstrate mousavi had a > base of support other than the affluent in tehran to even challenge > ahmadinejad. poll analysis is weak in a vacuum when it isn't combined with > demographic political analysis. that's why petras and friedman are > superior. > > 2) george friedman quals are good enough. his parents are holocaust > survivors so his argument about mousavi getting crushed should not be taken > as ahmadinejad = good. rather, he makes the persuasive case why mousavi > didn't win. his vast knowledge of the region could not make him the least > bit sympathetic to mousavi, the liberator, like the average american. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Friedman > > *George Friedman* is an American > political scientist and > author. He is the founder, chief intelligence officer, > financial overseer, and CEO of the private intelligence corporation > Stratfor . He has authored several > books, including *The Next 100 Years > *, *America's Secret War > *, *The Intelligence Edge*, and *The Future of War*. > George Friedman is Chief Executive of STRATFOR, > a private global intelligence firm he founded in 1996. Prior to joining the > private sector, Friedman spent almost twenty years in academia, teaching > political science at Dickinson College. During this time he also regularly > briefed senior commanders in the armed services as well as the Office of Net > Assessments, SHAPE Technical Center, > the U.S. Army War College, > National Defense University and the RAND Corporation on > security and national defense matters. > > 3) i disagree with your speculation about there having not been enough time > yet for a revolution to pick up momentum. i think the hope was that a > movement would quickly spread to other groups than mousavi's meager base of > support in the wake of the election. i think the hope was to oust > ahmadinejad with a minimal investment of CIA funds because there are no > other viable options. as in past orchestrated coups like the '53, these > things have to happen quick. they were hoping the "secret letter" which > could easily turn out to be fake from secretary of the interior claiming was > mousavi won would sway ahmadinejad's supporters and the protests would > extend beyond tehran. didn't happen. protests are on the wane giving > credence to mousavi's limited base. ahmadenijad will consolidate power > arguably stronger and has time to provide the smoking gun evidence on > mousavi's links to the US and british. the soft coup could backfire big > time. > > http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14082 > > if the plan had worked, obama's negotiations with mousavi would have given > the foreign policy victory he needs given the dire uncertainty of the > afghanistan campaign. he almost has to capture bin laden to get victory > there. netanyahu is not going to stop settlements on the ground no > matter what he entertains at the bargaining table. north korea is on the > brink of firing missile at hawaii. in 2012, obama will be painted as suave > but weak. frankly, he has no focus. the bush bad whines are the only > focus he ever had. the muslim world speech despite its appeal to our > hearts puts obama in a difficult position where he may get nothing > accomplished in the middle east. his policy does not jive. if he's so > genuine, why did he say nothing about the gaza raid the most recent israeli > excessive use of force prior to the speech. he's on an imperial crusade in > afghanistan and is not pulling out of iraq in the way said he would before > election. hard to make believe your really sensitive to israeli atrocities > when you remain silent during the gaza raid like a deer in the headlights. > ground forces which are an imperial presence will not all be withdrawn. > many of the ones that will are getting a rest with their families before > being redeployed to afghanistan to redirect the imperial presence in the > region which undermines our foreign policy goals. > > i think obama is desperate. he may not be able to prove any tangible > result in afghanistan (his big brzezinski idea) before 2012 and he doesn't > have the experience to lead on foreign policy where he is being bombarded by > conflicting interests. he needs a breakthrough. the mousavi trick > didn't work. now, there aren't many options for iran. negotiation > definitely won't happen. airstrikes on nuclear facilities won't knock out > their capability. iran is unlikely to provoke a war that US doesn't have > the military capacity to fight. overall, bad policy decision by obama to > try the soft coup. we are worse off with iran and ahmadinejad is laughing. > there is no focus to the obama foreign policy. the afghan war is going > to kill him on deficit spending. > > 4) there are many points of convergence between petras and friedman most > notably their demographic explanation of ahmadinejad's base of support is > almost identical. their thesis is almost identical. petras is more bold > in his presentation claiming a hoax but friedman gives the same argument in > defense of the hoax without calling it a hoax. it will be interesting to > see if petras gives more concessions to vote fraud as he follows up. > > > > > ------------------------------ > Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now > > > > ------------------------------ > Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. Check > it out. > > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090626/ea209c20/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Fri Jun 26 18:24:31 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:24:31 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] anti-strategic political spirituality Message-ID: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2009-June/079051.html _ revolution occurs when the a-historical shows up in history. moments of these sort are often inaccurately conceptualized as manifestations of 'the will of the people' or even as the dictates of a single leader. you can't reduce the history of world war II to the decisions of four or five men; you can't reduce the history of the civil rights movement to the names martin luther king jr. or malcolm x - why attempt to reduce this struggle to the name mousavi? by "that u-tube crap", are you insensitively referring to the deaths of protesters at the hands of the current regime? there's been 17 or 19 official deaths, perhaps scores more unreported thanks to the media blackout. the boston massacre was five people. what more, how can you criticize western media outlets and not say a a word about the government which is not allowing them to report on the events? "that's why [the protests are] fading fast. twitter didn't spillover." or, you know, the mass use of lethal police repression might be a contributing factor too, no? _ "At the dawn of history, Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam. Its administrators staffed the caliphate. But from this same Islam, it derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power. In this will for an 'Islamic government', should one see a reconciliation, a contradiction, or the threshold of something new?" : http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html "Last summer the Iranians said: 'We are ready to die by the thousands in order to get the Shah to go.' Today, it is the Ayatollah who says: 'Let Iran bleed so that the revolution may be strong.' There is a strange echo between these phrases which link them to one another. Does the horror of the second condemn the ecstasy of the first? Some movements are irreducible: those in which a single man, a group, a minority or a complete people asserts that it will no longer obey and risks its life before a power which is considered unjust. ... Since the man who revolts is, thus, 'outside of history' as well as in it, and since life and death are at stake, we can understand why revolts have easily been able to find their expression and their mode of performance in religious themes: the promises of the beyond, the return of time, the waiting for the savior or the empire of the last days, the indisputable reign of good. When the particular religion has permitted, these themes have furnished throughout the centuries not an ideological cloak but the very way to live revolts. ... Certain people will say that revolt has found itself colonized in Realpolitik. ... There was a striking discovery for the person who searched in Iran not for the profound reasons behind the movement but for the manner in which it was being lived, and who tried to comprehend what went on in the minds of the men and women who were risking their lives. Their hunger, their humiliations, their hatred of the regime and their will to overthrow it were registered on the borders of heaven and earth in a history which was dreamed of as being as much religious as political. ... Religious Iranians want to authenticate their regime with meanings that the revolt possessed This is something completely different from those who disqualify the revolt because there is a government of mullahs. In one case as in the other, there is a fear: fear of that which took place last autumn in Iran, an example which world has not given for a long time. It is exactly due to this that there is the necessity to bring out the irreducible element in such a movement. It is an element that is profoundly threatening for every despotism, today's as it was for yesterday's. Is there or is there not a reason to revolt? Let?s leave the question open. There are revolts and that is a fact. It is through revolt that subjectivity (not that of great men but that of whomever) introduces itself into history and gives it the breath of life. A delinquent puts his life into the balance against absurd punishments; a madman can no longer accept confinement and the forfeiture of his rights; a people refuses the regime which oppresses it. This does not make the rebel in the first case innocent, nor does it cure in the second, and it does not assure the third rebel of the promised tomorrow. ... One does not have to maintain that these confused voices sound better than the others and express the ultimate truth. For there to be a sense in listening to them and in searching for what they want to say, it is sufficient that they exist and that they have against them so much, which is set up to silence them. A question of morality? Perhaps. A question of reality? Certainly. All the disenchantments of history amount to nothing: it is due to such voices that the time of men does not have the form of an evolution, but precisely that of a history. These days intellectuals do not have a very good 'press'. I believe that I can employ the word in a rather precise sense. Thus, this is not the time to say that one is not an intellectual. If I were to do so, I would provoke smiles,. I am an intellectual. If someone asked me how I conceive what I am doing, I would respond with a contrast. The strategist is the man who says: 'What does it matter? Such death, such a cry, such a revolt in the context of the great necessity of the whole? Or, on the other hand, what difference does such a general principle make for the particular situation in which we find ourselves?' I am totally indifferent to whether the strategist is a politician, an historian, a revolutionary, a partisan of the Shah or of the Ayatollah. My ethic is the inverse of the one suggested by these questions. It is 'anti-strategic': to be respectful when something singular arises, to be intransigent when power offends against the universal. A simple choice, but a difficult work. It is always necessary to watch out for something, a little beneath history, that breaks with it, that agitates it; it is necessary to look, a little behind politics, for that which ought to limit it, unconditionally. After all, it is my work. I am neither the first nor the only one to be doing it. But I have chosen to do it." : http://madrasa.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/is-it-useless-to-revolt/ _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090626/5a180514/attachment.htm From stefan.bauschard at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 23:20:12 2009 From: stefan.bauschard at gmail.com (Stefan Bauschard) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:20:12 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Clash of Civs -- jon sharp, Big Jim, Ross, Roger -- all on the K Message-ID: <524839830906262120i38141903m3d0edf5c687f6eb3@mail.gmail.com> Big Jim -- The Cap K http://www.planetdebate.com/media/view/98 jon -- Foucault & Biopower http://www.planetdebate.com/media/view/99 Roger -- Answering the K (Pt1) http://www.planetdebate.com/media/view/101 Roger -- Answering the K (Pt2) http://www.planetdebate.com/media/viewVideo/102 Ross -- Capitalism Good -- 2hours! http://www.planetdebate.com/media/viewVideo/103 27 lectures from this summer already available! -- http://www.planetdebate.com/media -- Stefan Bauschard President & Co-Founder, PlanetDebate.com Debate Coach, Harvard Debate Director of Debate, Lakeland Schools Director of Development & Operations, NFL National Tournament 2011 (c) 781-775-0433 (fx) 617-588-0283 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090627/08df779c/attachment.htm From antonucci23 at gmail.com Sat Jun 27 04:21:55 2009 From: antonucci23 at gmail.com (Michael Antonucci) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:21:55 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Georgetown Debate Seminar Lectures and Files Message-ID: <4a71966c0906270221l41f36913vc8446bc7012b075f@mail.gmail.com> Almost all lectures, lots of speeches, practice round ballots and a fair number of files available through our central portal: http://georgetowndebateseminar.blogspot.com/ and associated Wiki: http://georgetowndebateseminar.wikispaces.com/ Special thanks to Lucy Zhu, who has expended a huge amount of effort recording and uploading (in addition to her extensive teaching duties.) I think Stefan may be improving some of our formatting. Thanks for that, too! -- Michael Antonucci Debate Coach Georgetown University Mobile: 617-838-3345 Office: 202-687-4079 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090627/604d12f3/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Sat Jun 27 07:02:24 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:02:24 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Clash of Civs -- jon sharp, Big Jim, Ross, Roger -- all on the K Message-ID: some critical notes, http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=992958 _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live?: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_BR_life_in_synch_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090627/3a2e9e01/attachment.htm From spurlockdown at gmail.com Sat Jun 27 12:39:53 2009 From: spurlockdown at gmail.com (Christopher Spurlock) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:39:53 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] Reflections on Loon Lake Message-ID: <1a78d380906271039j303b4936pbcacfec498bbb58@mail.gmail.com> The first Call of the Loon is in the books.? Since we were a little secluded, I want to let everyone know just how amazing this little camp was. First of all, I want to give some thanks: Jackie ? He worked so hard on this.? From generating engaging critical strategy ?lectures,? to waking up at 5am to make breakfast, to building campfires?. Not to mention the massive amount of time going into setting up the camp?. Jackie rocked this out. Nicole ? I can?t thank you enough for setting this all up.? Everyone owes her a HUGE thanks for letting us into this place that means so much to her and her family.? The preparations for these things sometimes go unnoticed or underappreciated.? Seriously, Nicole stressed for months for that amazing week we spent there ? and it paid off in a big way! Toni ? Special thanks to Toni for keeping us on track and helping with every aspect whether it was helping small groups or letting us in on the secrets of critical debating and an amazing performance of a unique kind of ?yoga.? :) Vince ? I had a great time hanging with you.? My queer theory library is about to increase massively in size and quality.? Your help and expertise was exactly what I needed to become a better debater and a better advocate.? That shit was hot, man. Nader ? The things you did at Long Beach inspired me to debate in college.? It was an honor to be able to work with you ? so many productive conversations, so many new perspectives.? You are the shit. I can?t thank you enough. There are many more thanks I could go through but suffice it to say that everyone at the Loon were amazing and helped me as a person and as a debater. Now that thanks are out of the way it?s time to hype the camp.? I can?t express how fucking cool this was.? Not only are we on a lake, able to go out on boats and kayaks, hike up mountains, drink fresh spring water and eat 3 AWESOME home cooked meals per day, but we also got one of the most valuable ?alternative? debate experiences that have ever been offered. The ?structure? was great: We had a large group discussion in the mornings (starting on Indian time) and then in the afternoon/evening we had smaller groups.? These groups were entirely generated by the students attending.? This is one of the best parts of the loon that I have never experienced at any other camp: flexibility.?? There is no template for alternative debate styles ? so we adapted to what the students needed and wanted.? And when we got burnt out on debate, it was kayak time. For those who think that there wouldn?t be any argument production: every camper produced a 1AC and a 1NC.? For such a small camp, that?s a hell of a lot of arguments.? And as most critical teams know, people often don?t even catch up if you build a strategic 1A/1N. I could go on and on, but if you are interested in attending the camp next year, be sure to talk to me or one of the other Loons.? This was the best debate camp experience I?ve ever had the pleasure of being part of. Special thanks also go to all of the Loons.? Your diverse perspectives made me both laugh and cry over that amazing week and I am changed from it.? You were all phenomenal ? I couldn?t have asked for a better group. Thank you so much and I hope to see you all next year at Loon Lake! Spurlock ---P.S. Atomic Balls 1NC FTW! From kkuswa at richmond.edu Sat Jun 27 13:27:08 2009 From: kkuswa at richmond.edu (Kuswa, Kevin) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:27:08 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Reflections on Loon Lake In-Reply-To: <1a78d380906271039j303b4936pbcacfec498bbb58@mail.gmail.com> References: <1a78d380906271039j303b4936pbcacfec498bbb58@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0212E622749FDB4EA3A538AF1F4ECC4F01A9378D3A@UREXCHANGESCC.richmond.edu> I would echo this from the UR debater who attended--from what I heard from Ashley it was the most amazing interaction with debate and the community she's ever had. Huge thanks to jackie, nicole, and everyone else involved. AWESOME! kevin ________________________________________ From: edebate-bounces at ndtceda.com [edebate-bounces at ndtceda.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Spurlock [spurlockdown at gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2009 1:39 PM To: edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: [eDebate] Reflections on Loon Lake The first Call of the Loon is in the books. Since we were a little secluded, I want to let everyone know just how amazing this little camp was. First of all, I want to give some thanks: Jackie ? He worked so hard on this. From generating engaging critical strategy ?lectures,? to waking up at 5am to make breakfast, to building campfires?. Not to mention the massive amount of time going into setting up the camp?. Jackie rocked this out. Nicole ? I can?t thank you enough for setting this all up. Everyone owes her a HUGE thanks for letting us into this place that means so much to her and her family. The preparations for these things sometimes go unnoticed or underappreciated. Seriously, Nicole stressed for months for that amazing week we spent there ? and it paid off in a big way! Toni ? Special thanks to Toni for keeping us on track and helping with every aspect whether it was helping small groups or letting us in on the secrets of critical debating and an amazing performance of a unique kind of ?yoga.? :) Vince ? I had a great time hanging with you. My queer theory library is about to increase massively in size and quality. Your help and expertise was exactly what I needed to become a better debater and a better advocate. That shit was hot, man. Nader ? The things you did at Long Beach inspired me to debate in college. It was an honor to be able to work with you ? so many productive conversations, so many new perspectives. You are the shit. I can?t thank you enough. There are many more thanks I could go through but suffice it to say that everyone at the Loon were amazing and helped me as a person and as a debater. Now that thanks are out of the way it?s time to hype the camp. I can?t express how fucking cool this was. Not only are we on a lake, able to go out on boats and kayaks, hike up mountains, drink fresh spring water and eat 3 AWESOME home cooked meals per day, but we also got one of the most valuable ?alternative? debate experiences that have ever been offered. The ?structure? was great: We had a large group discussion in the mornings (starting on Indian time) and then in the afternoon/evening we had smaller groups. These groups were entirely generated by the students attending. This is one of the best parts of the loon that I have never experienced at any other camp: flexibility. There is no template for alternative debate styles ? so we adapted to what the students needed and wanted. And when we got burnt out on debate, it was kayak time. For those who think that there wouldn?t be any argument production: every camper produced a 1AC and a 1NC. For such a small camp, that?s a hell of a lot of arguments. And as most critical teams know, people often don?t even catch up if you build a strategic 1A/1N. I could go on and on, but if you are interested in attending the camp next year, be sure to talk to me or one of the other Loons. This was the best debate camp experience I?ve ever had the pleasure of being part of. Special thanks also go to all of the Loons. Your diverse perspectives made me both laugh and cry over that amazing week and I am changed from it. You were all phenomenal ? I couldn?t have asked for a better group. Thank you so much and I hope to see you all next year at Loon Lake! Spurlock ---P.S. Atomic Balls 1NC FTW! _______________________________________________ eDebate mailing list eDebate at www.ndtceda.com http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate From oldstrega at hotmail.com Sat Jun 27 14:09:49 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:09:49 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] smoking iran editorial -- financial times In-Reply-To: <2e0f7ba70906261419j67a98ab9qe6bb6f11c0284be5@mail.gmail.com> References: <2e0f7ba70906191753t452642e0se8eb84acdfc09209@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906191801j39c8dbb7w189ec8ea62786c8b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906221021v4027bda9wd07580250f3a684b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906231819i71dc55a9x6e8413d64892a766@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906251713l7bb86961recc37809e37dac4b@mail.gmail.com> <2e0f7ba70906261419j67a98ab9qe6bb6f11c0284be5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: i think we're coming to an end on this thread. mucho appreciando. 1) a new article describing the extreme difficulty of the vote fraud (best documented by the Rothschild sitting Chatham House) without there being hundreds of 1000s of witnesses. the absence of interviews with vote fraud witnesses means that the western media is shrouding the rather transparent iranian election system in mystery as if it were zimbabwe or something. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20090626/was-iranian-election-stolen.htm If this information is near accurate, it would appear that large scale fraud is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without creating an extensive trail of evidence. Indeed, if this election was stolen, there must be tens of thousands of witnesses -- or perhaps hundreds of thousands - to the theft. Yet there are no media accounts of interviews with such witnesses.Is it possible that, in most of the country, the procedures outlined above - followed in previous elections - were abruptly abandoned, with ballot boxes whisked away before anyone could count them at the precinct level? Again, many of the more than 700,000 people involved in the electoral process would have been witnesses to such a large-scale event. Given the courage that hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated in taking to the streets, we would expect at least some to come forward with information on what happened.Rostam Pourzal, an Iranian-American human rights campaigner, told me that it is common knowledge in Iran that these are the election procedures and that they were generally followed in this election. Professor Marandi concurred, and added: "There's just no way that any large-scale or systematic fraud could have taken place." 2) your most recent position is the most compelling to me so far given the weakness of every, single western media angle on the election. the only problem i can see is that ahmadinejad won by the same margin of victory last time. but then again, the protests were not there. the interesting question becomes: will the movement ever reach critical mass in the future and swell beyond the students and educated? probably not, if the US remains at war on both borders and national security remains the dominant political issue in iran. sanctions will strengthen the hardliners. 3) another turn -- blowback -- obama and US gov't pretense that the election was stolen undermine diplomacy and weaken the position of the opposition groups misrepresenting them as disenfranchised: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20090626/was-iranian-election-stolen.htm But from the point of view of promoting more normal relations between the United States and Iran, avoiding a military conflict, and bringing stability to the region, the truth as to the more narrow question of whether the election was procedurally fraudulent may be relevant. If in fact the election was not stolen, and Washington (and Europe) pretend that it was, this can contribute to a worsening of relations. It will give further ammunition to hard-liners in Iran, who are portraying the whole uprising as a conspiracy organized by the West. (It doesn't help that the Obama administration hasn't announced an end to the covert operations that the Bush administration was carrying out within Iran). More importantly, it will boost hardliners here - including some in the Obama administration - who want to de-legitimize the government of Iran in order to avoid serious negotiations over its nuclear program. That is something that we should avoid, because a failure to seriously pursue negotiations now may lead to war in the future. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090627/79da7868/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Sat Jun 27 15:47:18 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:47:18 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] frankly, sanchez is stupid and never was a debater of note Message-ID: because 20 people have died, we need to believe zizek that mousavi is authentic islamic democracy. you're a fool and you suck. where's your mousavi good to back up zizek? there is none because you're helter skelter and you're running to the next bullshit. don't worry. nobody expects you to defend you being yourself an asshole on foucault and invoking his iranian writings solely for the sake of appearing critical. because you can't. the death of 20 people is a nice mawkish appeal but it has nothing to do with any of the debating going on here. i'm not the president. i won't make an official statement mourning their deaths. i never made the argument ahmadinejad=good or iran gov't=perfect. the deaths don't prove significant vote fraud or a stolen election. the deaths are at least partially attributable to the stoking discontent by foreign speculation on a rigged outcome. given a predictable crackdown, why stoke? first you invoke foucault's coverage of the iranian revolution to counter my documented statements that this "uprising" is the manipulation of discontent by the CIA and mossad with money, misinforming media and twitter. " if that's what old strega labels as adopting the role of a 'universal intellectual', then zizek should be happy to consider himself one - as was foucault when he spoke positively of the '79 revolution, no? " and, then, when i cite the key concept from foucault's iran writings, you ramble in your helter skelter critical discourse which reflects your helter skelter knowledge of foucault and other primary sources. your statement: "moments of these sort are often inaccurately conceptualized as manifestations of 'the will of the people' or even as the dictates of a single leader." i'll be real simple for a real stupid person. the political will makes sense as a concept in practical terms, NOT A WORD GAME FUCKFACE, when an entire population (NOT 30% PARTIALLY BACKED BY IMPERIALISTS), evicts a imperially installed dictator like the shah. the political will means the convergence of many disparate groups into a single purpose. in iran, that will achieved its goal and a revolution happened. to compare, mousavi and this movement to that is a bit premature and historically lax. anti-imperialism post-gandhi has forged the strongest political wills yet. the current movement lacks that will and US imperial meddling and presence in neighboring countries actually feeds the hardliners. so the situation is, in part, reverse. another aspect of the political will in iran was the religious dimension. i'm glad my only debate notoriety wasn't on edebate like sanchez. i get the sense you are an exhibitionist. you expected hester to treat me like i'm treating you. you waited and then you jumped in out of jealousy. problem is you have nothing to say. here's one of the many quotes from foucault on the iranian political will of the late 70s which is the key concept you indicted in your last post. HAVE YOU EVER READ THIS OR ARE YOU JUST THE BIGGEST FAKE EVER? http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html I do not feel comfortable speaking of Islamic government as an "idea" or even as an "ideal." Rather, it impressed me as a form of "political will." It impressed me in its effort to politicize structures that are inseparably social and religious in response to current problems. It also impressed me in its attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090627/daad3582/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Sat Jun 27 19:31:13 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:31:13 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] for the unnoteworthy 35% Message-ID: i wasn't a debater of note, that much is true. but really, jack, i know lots of successful debaters who don't share your penchant for personal attack and who are smart enough to recognize when fomenting anger hurts the possibility of any engagement. there's no excuse for your outbursts. calm down, be civil, and educate "a real stupid person". "because 20 people have died, we need to believe zizek that mousavi is authentic islamic democracy." a., it's very likely that more than 20 people have died, and by most accounts, they were murdered while peacefully protesting. courage in the face of brutality is still a virtue among leftists, is it not? or is the only virtue an indefatigable cynicism that declares 'more of the same' while other people are taking bullets? as opposed to that, i'll prefer 'mawkish' any day. b., you continually drop the argument which i was kind enough to put an equal sign in just for you: "pro-iranian protesters does not = pro-mousavi." what's authentically democratically islamic is the movement of the people, not the leader who will be judged by how well he honors that movement. thousands of people chose to go into the streets despite what you coldly refer to as "a predictable crackdown". every demonstration is not only about what's at issue in the demonstration but about the right to demonstrate as such. this simple priority should precede all other considerations, before we breathe a word about possible foreign meddling (which even given all your sources, still sounds a bit paranoiac to me). c., zizek is irrelevant. we need to believe our own eyes. and i cited foucault to show that he would not default to your cynicism, that he paid the utmost attention to the irreducible moment in protest when the a-historical yearning breaks through the wall of history. "the deaths don't prove significant vote fraud or a stolen election." no, they don't. they prove that people aren't permitted to assemble to criticize in public what they perceive to be significant vote fraud and a stolen election. ...do you stand by the guardian council, jack? do you stand on their assessment that while there were irregularities, none were significant enough to affect the outcome of the election? and do you oppose the call for an independent arbitration panel to certify the results? since hester is not 'a jealous exhibitionist whose only debate notoriety is on edebate', you should re-read what he wrote to you on friday: "where we may disagree is that i don't think this *whole* thing is just a smoke-and-mirrors western media production. even if the CIA and its ilk have been instigating protests (and i agree that's fairly easy to assume based on the historical record), that doesn't mean there isn't *also *a LOT of pent up anger with the current regime (or whatever the hell else teen angst and rising expextations are directed against) that is part of this too. while it has to be 51% to win an election, if 35% of the populace is upset, that can still cause a regime serious headaches. the unrest may have catalyzed around the elections (or been lit afire by western propagandistic efforts to foment revolt), but the longer it goes on, the more it becomes about issues larger than one election." you responded to this with a question, "will the movement ever reach critical mass in the future and swell beyond the students and educated?" let us agree to hope. _ p.s., you've been critical of the obama administration's interferences; do you similarly disappove of the state department's request to twitter that it not shut down monday for routine maintaince so that people in iran could continue to use the service to organize protests and spread information? _ "Is there or is there not a reason to revolt? Let?s leave the question open. There are revolts and that is a fact. It is through revolt that subjectivity (NOT THAT OF GREAT MEN BUT THAT OF WHOMEVER) introduces itself into history and gives it the breath of life. [A] people refuses the regime which oppresses it. This does not assure the rebel of the promised tomorrow. One does not have to maintain that these confused voices express the ultimate truth. For there to be a sense in listening to them and in searching for what they want to say, it is sufficient that they exist and that they have against them so much, which is set up to silence them." _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090627/88b93b99/attachment.htm From spoon_22 at hotmail.com Sun Jun 28 00:14:25 2009 From: spoon_22 at hotmail.com (Aaron Hardy) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:14:25 -0700 Subject: [eDebate] Problems with Paperless In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A46FC31.5070001@hotmail.com> Just a couple comments re: Joe's well-placed concerns: 1) Not giving what was actually read -- What you're describing is obviously totally unacceptable. If you're describing a Whitman team from this past year, please backchannel me so I know who's head to crack. If not, it's certainly the type of thing anyone should feel comfortable both chastising my debaters for openly and asking me to deal with (harshly) post-facto should it happen in the future. Your suggestion for how this process should be done (jumping just the expected cards) is exactly how my teams have been instructed to do it -- apologies if they deviated from that at any point. 2) Novices -- To be honest, Whitman does not have a large (read, existent) novice contingent, although some of our inexperienced high school debaters come pretty close -- so I admit that I can't speak very directly to these concerns. But, from working with the least experienced parts of my team and with some high school novices learning paperless, I'd say my experience so far has run in the opposite direction. Even just from teaching at high school debate camps, I think the jump in technological sophistication for the average 18 year old has skyrocketed in the past five years. Certainly, the younger students on my team are on average much better at using a laptop and quickly digesting electronic info than most of my older students. Obviously, that's not a fair comparison -- because you're saying that those novices still do net better with paper than a laptop. That very well may be true -- but I still remain optimistic that it's an arena where they can pretty quickly adapt or be taught to use a system when just starting debate that they can be just as comfortable with as scissors and tape. Maybe printing some files for novices to use in drills and make notes on to help them internalize arguments helps bridge this gap? I certainly agree that reading off a monitor for a long time can be tiring -- I frequently wish I could go back to doing exclusively book work. 3) Access -- Even if debaters don't have a personal laptop, I still think the economics work out in favor of paperless. If the university has to provide 3 laptops per team, it could feasibly cost in the ballpark of $750 to outfit a team. Those laptops can pretty reasonably last 2-3 years, perhaps longer. I think it's difficult to assume that you can travel a team with paper for less than $400 per year. If keyboards differ or people aren't good at typing, it's just a skill they have to learn -- probably not that much different than learning how to keep 4 tubs filed and organized, and more likely to be a skill 18 year olds have a jump on... best, hardy joe leeson-schatz wrote: > While I like the idea of paperless debating and cutting down on > wasteful printing, there are at least two problems with it that have > yet to be addressed by the conversation going on. > > The first is the debaters who chose to go paperless and their > willingness to clearly show to the opposing team what they actually > read. I have judged, and have had teams debate against others, who > decided it was okay to jump someone a 300 page file of which they read > 6 cards from, didn't mark which cards they read, and wouldn't take > their own prep time to point out which of the cards they read either. > This happened even after requesting that the cards read be clearly > identified. This means that the team debating against the paperless > team had to either give up cross-x to figure it out, use their own > prep time, screw it and never look at the evidence, or has to be > amazing at quickly searching through a full file. When people read off > paper this is not the case. While there is a few cards that may be on > the same page that isn't read, generally people "x" em while reading, > or point it out quickly. I have not seen this same willingness on the > part of the paperless teams I have witnessed. There should be an > imperative that teams reading off a laptop copy-paste the cards they > PLAN on reading into a separate doc file and then jump that to the > other team and NOT the entire file of answers of which they plan to > read less than 25%. If people skip a card because of time it's easy > and quick to tell the other team. This, unfortunately, is not what > I've witnessed thus far. > > The second problem is for novice debate. I have found that novices > have a harder time organizing, reading, and actually working with > their evidence when it's all electronic instead of on paper. We have > all our backfiles electronically that debaters can access and use but > require our novices at minimum to print those files they plan on > using. Comparing the work and knowledge done with paper files vs. > electronic files, novices do way more work on their paper files, > marking them with notes, going over them, and preparing them. > Electronically, I'm lucky to get stuff underlined. While this may be > an issue of the work ethic of the debater, it is not so entirely. The > ability to comprehend what's read off a monitor vs. paper drops > significantly after about 20-30 minutes of work and the ability to > correctly check over grammar and context drops as well. There are > several studies that show how concentration drops significantly when > work is done exclusively through a monitor. As someone who does 95+% > of their work on the computer I'm normally not an advocate of the > "reading off a monitor is tough" argument. However, I have seen a big > difference in the internalization of arguments within my novices based > upon whether they read the file on paper or on the computer. I have > also caught incredibly grammatically incorrect sentences of mine in > academic papers when proof reading on paper even after several > computer-based revisions. None of this precludes debating off the > computer. However, if everything went paperless it could hurt the > development of novices who could better get into the activity with > paper files to begin looking over. > > The third problem is still access. While there's talk of getting a > third laptop or a printer for each team from the University it doesn't > solve the problem of people with no personal computer, which would > make it impossible to read off one and give one to another team. Even > if they still decided to stay on paper when debating people who are > not on paper they have to learn quickly on how to retrieve the needed > information, which is magnified by the first problem I identify. > People who use computers less are less apt to use them efficiently in > a debate round. The frustration of going from one laptop keyboard to > the next is enough for me since I'm sure when I want to hit the down > arrow I'll end up hitting page down or some other key in a different > place. I can fix that mistake. Most people can. But people without > much access to laptops will have a greater problem. Even if it's a not > a big one, debate is a game of seconds. We say "09" or just "9" > instead of "2009" to save seconds. If reading all the evidence off a > laptop causes the opponents to give up as much time as reducing "2009" > to "9" then it creates a further competitive disadvantage beyond the > already existing inequalities in debate ESPECIALLY when the other team > doesn't clearly mark the cards they've read. > > In short, I think moving in a paperless direction is a good idea. > However, it needs to be done in a way that doesn't further the > competitive gaps that already exist in debate as well as in a way that > doesn't make it harder for new debaters to enter into the community. > The middle ground people are talking about some of these problems but > not all because it still enables team to jump their entire heg file > read Khalizad and think they've met their burden of giving the other > team the evidence they read. This is clearly not the case. > > joe leeson-schatz > director of debate at binghamton university > campaigns coordinator of the binghamton/vestal vegan association > _______________________________________________ > eDebate mailing list > eDebate at www.ndtceda.com > http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate > > > From oldstrega at hotmail.com Sun Jun 28 13:33:42 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:33:42 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] frankly, sanchez is stupid and never was a debater of note Message-ID: unnoteworthy 35% -- thank you for the appropriate simile between your miserable debate career where your voice was hardly heard and the voices of the protesters in iran. you're not an exhibitionist. you're a professional rhetorician. excuse me, for my grave error in labeling you. i don't find it surprising given that you never learned to debate well that you would resort to rules keeping. perhaps, there is a place in the obama administration for you to write parking tickets. your indignation deserves a pat on the butt. if you can't make a simile right, then why the hell not enforce the absolute standards of ethical debate discourse. next, thank you for granting that the protesters represent the side who lost the election. that's the 35%. those protesters would be in a much better position if they were not being portrayed by obama and the media as disenfranchised (a technical term which means they won the election but it was stolen). US imperialism and meddling, by your own admission of 35%, is reinforcing the hardliner crackdown. you don't have to answer the question: why is obama and the CIA stoking the discontent and misrepresenting the losing 35% as winners? in a situation of less misinformation, the iranian regime would possibly be less repressive. i do expect you, as you probably did in the 2NR and 2AR when you were losing competitive debates, to drop your arguments and come up with something new like the "noteworthy 51%". i'm sure you were mesmerized by all your losing decisions when the judges told you that's BAD STRATEGY. sanchez, the walking red herring. in your last post, you said that "zizek was irrelevant". not good enough, pissboy. YOUR POST OF ZIZEK WAS MORE IRRELEVANT. zizek says in the video that doubts about mousavi the murderer are examples of western cynicism. zizek frames the movement as a mousavi movement. zizek frames mousavi as a representative of authentic islamic democracy. the obvious question outside your pissboy world is: why did you post the zizek video in the first place if zizek is irrelevant and you can't explain why you posted it? cry, cry, whine, whine, maudlin "because zizek was honoring the moment of truth like foucault did that these protesters represent in defiance of a repressive regime". he's not just honoring the moment of truth, with loose mathematical analysis, looser than any other, he claims the election was stolen. remember the racist claim you dropped before, the azeris didn't vote for the azeri. what's wrong with obama's intervention to keep twitter open when twitter was set to close for maintenance (as the tears roll down his cheeks)? if you had been following the debate that you tried to get your name in on, then you would know that the alleged origin of the twitter accounts that produced 30,000 twitters in the days following june 13th is israel. obama wanted to keep open a misinformation and discontent stoking conduit to the protests. this is a kind of psychological warfare, the mossad has been practicing recently in lebanon and gaza. just backtrack, pissboy, and make the case for zero US involvement in destabilizing iran despite no evidence that obama discontinued bush's heavily funded program to destabilize. another irrelevant argument which you need to own is your recent denouncement of the "political will" which when pointed out that it was foucault's main concept in his iran writings, you ducked for cover. pissboy, the outcome of the thread is predictable. you will keep trying to distract to more irrelevant angles and will keep getting called out but eventually you will drop all your arguments and leave the thread having made no contribution. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090628/05627c94/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Sun Jun 28 20:11:35 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:11:35 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] in defense of the jon sharp video Message-ID: edebate's pissboy needs reprieve from iran. i read his c-x forum critique of the jon sharp lecture on biopolitics. the link he provided to edebate is here: http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=992958 i found the sharp video well above average for handling foucault as a topic of debating (infinitely better than pissboy's zizek evangelical video on iran). there has been for some time difficulty in migrating a great thinker, who entered academic debates but did not write primarily for contest round debates, to the debate arena which sharp addresses with skill. the introduction to sharp's lecture is great for both novice and advanced debaters in this regard. the many-foucaults hypothesis is most helpful. not only does foucault himself change his theoretical assumptions over the course of his life but the experience of any SERIOUS foucault student is one of many changes in their understanding. to be sure, this has much to do with the scope of foucault's research in so many areas across philosophy, law, medicine, the classics, modern literature, and the social sciences to name a few. all of us start way behind foucault when we start reading his interdisciplinary analyses. the task of keeping up with foucault and digging into all the areas of knowledge which he has examined is daunting and possibly not achievable in a lifetime for those with other interests. as thinkers take foucault seriously and study not only foucault but the sources from which he draws his indices and starts to make connections to the historical debates he is commenting upon, then it is inevitable that their understanding of foucault will shift and change often. i believe that this process helps the aspiring thinker realize the depth of foucault's brilliance. a common mistake is to think that foucault is not prompting you to corroborate his investigations with his sources. a big mistake made by critique teachers and debaters of the past is to stop with foucault and not feel their way into the historical places he insinuates. here, the many-foucaults hypothesis ventures into terra incognita. for example, foucault did the same with marx. not stopping with marx but looking at how marx formed his theories from his sources. you could call it walking among giants. foucault can be a helpful tool for debaters to enhance other elements of critical thinking they gain from debate training. foucault does not think like a think-tank espousing policy x. in many cases, foucault is concerned with the theoretical underpinnings that limit the ability of policymakers to create new options. i think sharp touched this angle when he spoke on the death penalty. many times policy assumptions are older and more outdated than we think because we have not done the legwork to understand their legacy. the many-foucaults hypothesis is a great place to start. debaters can recognize the limitations of their introductory attempts to grasp a great thinker and still proceed with confidence. the same debaters can expect to learn immensely from foucault debates since elements of foucault they have never encountered will constantly emerge from the now vast knowledge set of the community. not to mention the divergence of interpretations of foucault who is a subject of academic debate. i don't understand why this well-crafted starting point was attacked by edebate's pissboy who says: "i've never found it 'hard to extract a consistent position' from foucault's writings." apparently, pissboy's unified foucault centralizes the interpretation down to the main influence of marx and das kapital which is to use an obama phrase "patently false". pissboy says: "nowhere in the preface does jon point out the elephant in the room - foucault's relationship to marxism. i don't think he even mentions marx in the first 16 minutes. yet one can understand much of what foucault was doing as applying marx's das kapital to other areas - psychiatry, the human sciences, sexuality, and so on." i think pissboy is not very well read in foucault and more of a word game artist than a thinker who uses his surface readings to seemingly have something to say about everything. hence, his concern with sharp's use of "structuralism" and "positivism" which become obstacles to seeing the quality of sharp's communication in the lecture. he does not consider sharp's knowledge of his audience and knowledge of the limitations of coverage in hour and a half. here, in the important quotation known to all foucault thinkers of note, foucault relegates marx below other more essential influences. expect pissboy to pick up sticks and come with a new red herring after this crushing revelation. goodnight, herostratus, you're a fraud. the importance of nietzsche and heidegger is related to the many-foucaults hypothesis. nietzsche and heidegger both went through many transformations. seeing those before he started along his path enabled foucault to see what was in store and easily change realizing that belongs to the trade. In his final interview prior to hospitalization, May 29, 1984, published in Les Nouvelles litt?raires under the title ?The Return of Morality,? Foucault makes the following admission: "Heidegger has always been for me the essential philosopher. I began [my philosophical studies] by reading Hegel, then Marx, and I started to read Heidegger in 1951 or 1952; and in 1953 or 1952, I no longer remember, I read Nietzsche. I still have here the notes that I took on Heidegger during the time I read him ? I have tons of notes --, and they are quite more important than the notes I took on Hegel or Marx. All of my philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidegger. But I recognize that Nietzsche gained the upper hand. I am not sufficiently familiar with Heidegger; I am practically unfamiliar with Being and Time, nor the recently edited things [Gesamtausgabe]. My familiarity with Nietzsche is better than that which I have of Heidegger. Yet, it stands that my reading of Nietzsche and Heidegger has been a fundamental experience for me. It is probable that if I had not read Heidegger, I would not have read Nietzsche. I had tried to read Nietzsche in the fifties, but Nietzsche by himself said nothing to me! Nietzsche and Heidegger together [however], that was the philosophical shock! But I never wrote anything on Heidegger, and I never wrote on Nietzsche except for one very short article; they are nevertheless the two authors that I have read most. pissboy had the opportunity to point out sharp's omission of nietzsche and heidegger but he didn't. pissboy chose a lesser omission. why? because pissboy is a foucault dilettante ready to now come out with a new distraction and some mawkish tears for his poor position in the world. do you realize pissboy that foucault endorsed the stoic right to suicide? you may want to do further research on foucault's position on that controversial issue instead of wasting our time with more of your sheit. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live?: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_BR_life_in_synch_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090628/558b7ec0/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Sun Jun 28 23:49:35 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:49:35 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] the jon sharp video Message-ID: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2009-June/079066.html _ thanks for your polite and well-reasoned comments, jack. slight modification: since i wasn't 'attacking' john sharp's lecture, it requires no 'defense'. it's a fine introduction as far as they go. i merely wrote to qualify the running together of structuralism and positivism, as well as not permit popular notions like 'there are many foucaults' and 'foucault's okay with contradiction' to distract us from the seriousness and rigor involved in his historical studies. despite appearances, his work is remarkably consistent, and we'll agree, still full of emancipatory potential. thanks for pointing out that the 'many foucaults'-thesis may help students "recognize the limitations of their introductory attempts to grasp a great thinker and still proceed with confidence". that was something i failed to appreciate. i especially enjoyed the self-referential parts of jon's lecture - 'the teacher is the one at the front of the class, facing all of you...'. on marx and foucault. as late as 1972, this alleged post-marxist is still saying things like this (in conversation with deleuze), "[A]s soon as we struggle against exploitation, the proletariat not only leads the struggle but also defines its targets, its methods, and the places and instruments for confrontation... if the fight is directed against power, then all those on whom power is exercised to their detriment, all who find it intolerable, can begin the struggle on their own terrain and on the basis of their proper activity (or passitivity). In engaging in a struggle that concerns their own interests, whose objectives they clearly understand and whose methods only they can determine, they enter into a revolutionary process. They naturally enter as allies of the proletariat, because power is extercised the way it is in order to maintain capitalist exploitation. They genuinely serve the cause of the proletariat by fighting in those places where they find themelves oppressed. Women, prisoners, conscripted soldiers, hospital patients, and homosexuals have now begun a specific struggle against the particularized power, the constraints and controls, that are exerted over them. Such struggles are actually involved in the revolutionary movement to the degree that they are racial, uncompromising and nonreformist, and refuse any attempt at arriving at a new disposition of the same power with, at best, a change of masters. And these movements are linked to the revolutionary movement of the proletariat to the extent that they fight against the controls and constraints which serve the same system of power." ('intellectuals and power'. language, counter-memory, practice. page 216.) we'd certainly dig in vain to find speeches like this coming from hegel or nietzsche or heidegger; none of them sought to revitalize or update the concept of the proletariat for revolutionary anti-capitalist struggle. when dreyfus and rabinow define foucault's concept of 'bio-power' as "the increasing ordering in all realms under the guise of improving the welfare of the individual and the population" (beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, page xxvi), or when they write that to "the genealogist this order reveals itself to be a strategy, with no one directing it and everyone increasingly enmeshed in it, whose only end is the increase of power and order itself", we're right to detect nietzsche's historical method and catch hints of heidegger's concept of 'standing-reserve', but is there a more apt parallel than adorno's notion of our living in 'the administered world'? "This bio-power was without question an indispensable element in the development of capitalism; the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of phenomena of population to economic processes. ... If the development of the great instruments of the state, as institutions of power, ensured the maintenance of production relations, the rudiments of anatomo- and bio-politics, created in the eighteenth century as techniques of power present at every level of the social body and utilized by very diverse institutions (the family and the army, schools and the police, individual medicine and the administration of collective bodies), operated in the sphere of economic processes, their development, and the forces working to sustain tehm. They also acted as factors of segregation and social hierarchization, exerting their influence on the respective forces of both these movements, guaranteeing relations of domination and effects of hegemony. The adjustment of the accumulation of men to that of capital, the joining of the growth of human groups to the expansion of productive forces and the differential allocation of profit, were made possible in part by the exercise of bio-power in its many forms and modes of application. The investment of the body, its valorization, and the distributive managements of its forces were at the time indispensable. (history of sexuality, volume one. 1978. pages 140-1.) a couple communists of some repute put it even simpler: "A disciplinary society is thus a factory-society", footnoting that, "Foucault's primary theoretical concerns are that discipline is deployed through institutional architectures, that the power of discipline is located not in some central source but in the capillary formations at its point of exercise, and that the subjectivities are produced by internalizing discipline and enacting its practices. This is all equally valid for our consideration here. Our primary focus, however, is on how the practice and relationships of disciplinarity that originated in the factory regime came to invest the entire social terrain as a mechanism of both production and government, that is, as a regime of social production." (empire, page 453). jack's already on record mapping the legacy of marx's das kapital and the frankfurt school on foucault's work. http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2002-May/041401.html http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2001-November/036329.html http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2001-September/034100.html -- adding to that, i'd merely cite from those two big chapters in volume 1: chapter 10 on 'the working day', chapter 15 on 'machinery and large-scale industry'.... "To this end, and for 'extripating idleness, debauchery and excess', promoting a spirit of industry, 'lowering the price of labour in our manufactories, and easing the lands of the heavy burden of poor's rates', our 'faithful Eckart' of capital proposes the well-tried method of locking up workers who become dependent on public support (in one word paupers) in 'an ideal workhouse'. Such an ideal workhouse must be made a 'House of Terror', and not an asylum for the poor 'where they are to be pleantifully hed, warmly and decently clothed, and where they do but little work'. ... The 'House of Terror' for paupers, onyl dreamed of by the capitalist mind in 1770, was brought into being a few years later in the shape of a gigantic 'workhouse' for the industrial worker himself. It was called the factory. And this time the ideal was a pale shadow compared with the reality." (ben fowkes translation, pages 388-9.) we're not far from the panopticon here - an ideal diagram of power that's realized unevenly in various institutions and practices. marx: "These 'small thefts' of capital from the workers' meal-times and recreation times are also described by the factory inspectors as 'petty pilferings of minutes', 'snatching a few minutes' or, in the technical language of the works, 'nibbling and cribbling at meal-times'... *'Moments are the elements of profit'*" (page 352). foucault: "[I]t is a question of extracting, from time, ever more available moments and, from each moment, ever more useful forces. This means that one must seek to intensify the use of the slightest moment, as if time, in its very fragmentation, were inexhaustible or as if, at least by an ever more detailed internal arrangement, one could tend towards an ideal point at which one maintained maximum speed and maxium efficiency" (discipline and punish, page 154). another major cross-application is 'calculated leniency', which jon partially approaches when he say that 'agency/choice are rewards given to subjects who demonstrate that they can act responsibly'. marx: "Even the lightening of the labor becomes an instrument of torture, since the machine does not free the worker from the work, but rather deprives the work itself of all content. ...The technical subordination of the work to the uniform motion of the instruments of labor, and the peculiar composition of the working group, consisting as it does of individuals of both sexes and all ages, gives rise to a barrack-like discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory, and brings previously mentioned labor of superintendence to its fullest development, thereby dividing the workers into manual laborers and overseers, into the private soldiers and the N.C.O.s of an industrial army. ... *The overseer's book of penalties replaced the slave-driver's lash*." (pages 548-50.) ...or the time-table for juvenile delinquents replaced the draw-and-quartering of criminals. anyway, i could go on. basically, we are in the panoptic machine which is also a capitalist machine, and the political ramifications were attended to more by foucault and marx than various other german idealists. i'll contribute some further notes on the lecture in question on cross-x.com shortly. i'm sure there's some mistakes in what's above and i thank respondents for the opportunity to flesh out these ideas in conversation. my only solace at being a pissboy poser/word-game artist is the knowledge that one day, if i work really hard and take his kind suggestions to heart, i could be as erudite and respected a figure in debate as jack stroube. =P _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090628/6e073fe0/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Mon Jun 29 01:41:26 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:41:26 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] in defense of the jon sharp video Message-ID: pissboy refuses to withdraw his "elephant in the room" -- marx -- despite being shown that marx is not the elephant in the room. your comments that sharp had not even mentioned marx, oh my gosh, in the first 16 minutes of his lecture were STUPID comments. i don't know why you broadcast them loud and clear as a complaint about sharp's lecture. "not mentioning in the first 16 minutes" rhetorically creates the impression that the lecture has underplayed THE major influence on foucault and might not be very good. i have no problem defending a well above average critique lecture against STUPID comments. you distract to foucault's mentioning the proletariat and exploitation in a quotation. doesn't matter when you have claimed "marx = elephant in the room". given other more important influences claimed by foucault, your comment on the sharp video was STUPID and probably should be retracted. marx is the gerbil in the room that the doctor pulled out yo ass last night. yes, i have used marx to leverage a foucault interpretation that would be problematic for proprietary critique evidence on planet debate and other places. apparently, my critique was fairly effective since at least some information there is no longer proprietary. but again, your comment on the sharp video was STUPID and probably should be retracted. you say: " we're right to detect nietzsche's historical method and catch hints of heidegger's concept of 'standing-reserve', but is there a more apt parallel than adorno's notion of our living in 'the administered world'?" you're totally misrepresenting foucault who says without equivocation: "Nietzsche and Heidegger together [however], that was the philosophical shock! But I never wrote anything on Heidegger, and I never wrote on Nietzsche except for one very short article; they are nevertheless the two authors that I have read most." why are trying to diminish the impact of that statement? why slight this important death-bed clarification? nietzsche's historical method and hints of heidegger's concept of 'standing-reserve" are STUPID ways of characterizing a "PHILOSOPHICAL SHOCK", of characterizing the "the two authors i have read the most". in his last phase, because of lackeys like pissboy, foucault distanced himself from the panopticon and explored the practices of the self. the panopticon had been over-emphasized as an ideal of mechanistic, determinism creating the illusion of radical servitude on par with the leviathan. whereas foucault saw his protests as acts of defiance refusing to accept overarching super-structures as determinative, the academics globbed onto the picture of radical un-freedom. living in the panopticon is mostly living in a world of abstractions -- a world of abstractions that have become so solidified that they seem real. living in a world of intellectual abstractions is a disembodied experience. it is difficult to theorize for people like sanchez who have come to love abstractions like the panopticon. foucault knew this from the start seeing the depravity of theoretical nietzsche interpretations. regimentation of the body enhances the dominance of abstraction. this should not be misread as a disavowal of the panopticon but its meaning as construed by pissboy as something "kafkesque". the openness of the study of disciplinary power to such interpretations required another theoretical port of entry. foucault goes back to ancient greece and the formation of the free subject through ascetism or self-restraint. the panopticon was deemed not the best place to start. the military division of space and time conjoined with the regimentation of the body never was final. since the renaissance, resistance in the form of acrobatics, dance, mime and the commedia dell'arte had proliferated in pockets throughout europe forever changing western art. becoming free ultimately can not be reduced to possessing juridical rights. this is the legacy of foucault that runs back through nietzsche to burckhardt. nietzsche's silent language of gesture picked up by heidegger is nothing abstract. it is no coincidence that many of these artistic groups had been criminalized since they were viewed as threats to the pious bodies of christians, the organized bodies of societies, and the lazy pissboy bodies of the academies. the emergence of disciplinary society includes a great amount of law against theaters not overtly mentioned by foucault in his histories but hinted at in his fundamental relationship to nietzsche and heidegger. foucault explains on his death-bed that belonging to this tradition allows one to not say the most important things. marx was not much one for the life of the arts as a form of resistance to socio-economic coercion of the body. marx did outline the coercion of the workplace through surveillance and, for this, he was commended, but with regards to the 'how' of resistance marx was an abject failure. marx's theoretical limitations and lack of literary ability are symptoms. nietzche's literary mastery is a breath of fresh air after marx. adorno's theory is not a fix. marx believed in the demagogic channeling of resistance into mass movements of revolution to overthrow the state and the utopian workplace. foucault questioned the need to form political parties and the need for revolution. foucault never completely distanced himself from political protests but he did distance himself from the panopticon by starting elsewhere with --- how one makes one's own body oneself --. this last step opens the opportunity to un-learn the panoptic organization of the body. the panoptic organization of the body relies in part on a theoretical top-heavy existence exemplified by pissboy. how to make life a work of art? pissboy's abstract existence is not the answer. at the end of the day, an understanding of the panopticon in theoretical terms is not necessary for a marcel marceau to defy the regimentation of his body but practicing in a tradition that recovers "lost knowledges" does allow marcel marceau to defy regimentation. at the end of the day, the theoretical explanation of the panopticon may be counterproductive. foucault was an artist from the beginning and realized that what was productive for himself may have proven unproductive for others less aesthetically inclined. i'm not sure how much this tangent "defends sharp's video" but, unlike, sanchez i bet he can forge connections from this insight. mime and her sisters are no doubt some of the "lost knowledges" which secretly raised nietzsche's writing to unspoken heights and are implied by foucault's turn back to the practices of the self. debate as a communication activity should be interested in gradually integrating these "lost knowledges" as tools for defying physical regimentation in the academic world. studies of the cross-training of renaissance orators in theatrical disciplines like the commedia dell'arte have already been broached. debate is behind the curve. all the talk in nietzsche's the will to power about physiology and training are indirect hints picked up by foucault. for me, connecting foucault's last phase to nietzsche and burckhardt's book on the renaissance has been fundamental in more fully grasping the political defiance involved in becoming a force of an artist. i believe firmly that nietzsche never saw hope in political resistance to the panopticon and foucault later converged with nietzsche on the point of intensive artistic training as the primary space of physical autonomy understood by the greeks and the renaissance as a culture but not so by the moderns. this realization of mine in no way goes back on the necessity of forming linkages between theory and practice or critiques of apolitical foucauldians. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live?: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_BR_life_in_synch_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090629/7a4f9075/attachment.htm From stefan.bauschard at gmail.com Mon Jun 29 01:50:55 2009 From: stefan.bauschard at gmail.com (Stefan Bauschard) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:50:55 -0400 Subject: [eDebate] Six new lectures, all kinds of new stuff Message-ID: <524839830906282350j253638bbi972a9da35df59708@mail.gmail.com> Six new lectures, including three from UNT's Mean Green workshops. http://www.planetdebate.com/media I think that is 33 that have been uploaded to PD, plus all of the G-Town lectures that are indexed with the rest at http://www.planetdebate.com/blogs/view/260 If you have lectures you'd like to share, simply load them into Drop Box ( getdropbox.com) -- free up to 2 gigs -- and share a video folder with me. I'll download them, delete them, and have them uploaded within a few hours (maybe less). A lot of other new stuff was added today. Check out our home page -- planetdebate.com -- Stefan Bauschard President & Co-Founder, PlanetDebate.com Debate Coach, Harvard Debate Director of Debate, Lakeland Schools Director of Development & Operations, NFL National Tournament 2011 (c) 781-775-0433 (fx) 617-588-0283 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090629/cac256f4/attachment.htm From Roy.Eno at utsa.edu Mon Jun 29 11:12:59 2009 From: Roy.Eno at utsa.edu (Roy Eno) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:12:59 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] New Coach for UTSA Message-ID: <7CE039ACB3DF9645B48718D2FDB21DCAD73FE2@opal1604.UTSARR.NET> Hello debate folks--I am pleased to announce that Chris Crowe from the University of Wyoming will be joining Philip DiPiazza as an assistant coach here at UTSA. All of us are most excited to host Chris' migration south--thanks to Matt Stannard and the Wyoming debate community (of which I was a member during my last year of high school) for encouraging so many solid members of the college debate world! Best wishes! Skip Eno -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090629/78b761f8/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Mon Jun 29 20:52:36 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:52:36 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] dance dance revolution Message-ID: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2009-June/079068.html _ yes, i suppose it's pretty stupid to judge harshly an introductory lecture on foucault for failing to mention marx in the first 36 minutes (especially when jon doesn't cite nietzsche or heidegger either in that time). i've also been unable to watch after the 36 minute-mark to see if he ever does. for those interested, i have appended some more notes to jon's lecture here: http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1734006 -- i am in complete disagreement, however, that the "knowledge of his audience" (stroube's coded language for 'dumb high school kids') ought to compel us to overlook errors: structuralism and positivism are terms which designate differing methods and 'the repressive hypothesis' used in jon's lecture does not match with foucault's usage in 'the history of sexuality'. playing "fast and loose" (jon's term) with foucault is more acceptable among audiences more familiar with foucault, but less so among those less familiar. ...however, it is funny to hear stroube change his tune - or learn some new steps rather. see, several years ago, he was content to cudgel us all with foucault's alleged 'critique of heidegger'. then i stood accused of "miss[ing] the critique of heidegger big time", whereas now i'm accused of the exact opposite, of diminishing his importance, because i pointed out the simple fact that heidegger wouldn't subscribe, as foucault did, to proletarian anti-capitalist struggle. nevertheless, i acknowledge that heidegger is ever-present in his absence from foucault's work - despite how fraught with risk such a statement is in terms of abeting possible misreadings. foucault left a lot unsaid: he suspended a lot of his own assumptions and refrained from talking about some of the subjects we had grown used to 'universal intellectuals' weighing in on. the realm of foucault's 'unsaid' reverberates, for me, with heidegger. when others attack foucault for not giving us a normative basis to resist cruelties he criticizes (e.g., nancy fraser; i.e., 'he never says why disciplinary power is bad'), i tend to bring up concepts like heidegger's 'the silent call of conscience', even though it's not explicit in foucault's writings. the job of a good critic is often making explicit what an author leaves implicit. (that said, i am a bit skeptical of any and all 'death-bed clarifications'. sometimes they're honest, but often times people say things in their last moments which have little bearing on how they actually lived their lives, or in this case, the work they published. had he retracted all his writing and declared himself a worshipper of ayn rand, it wouldn't have made one iota of difference to the feats achieved in his work. ...recall that 'the author' was dead long before foucault the man died.) anyway, back to marx. foucault makes a "presumptuous comparison", "What did Marx do when in his analysis of capital he came across the problem of the workers' misery? He refused the customary explanation which regarded this misery as the effect of a naturally rare cause of a concerted theft. And he said substantially: given what capitalist production is, in its fundamental laws, it cannot help but cause misery. Capitalism's raison d'etre is not to starve the workers but it cannot develop without starving them. Marx replaced the denunciation of theft by the analysis of production. Other things being equal, that is approximately what I wanted to say. It is not a matter of denying sexual misery, nor is it however one of explaining it negatively by a repression. The entire problem is to grasp the positive mechanism which, producing sexuality in this or that fashion, results in misery." that's from stroube's citation here: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2001-September/034100.html - right after the bit about the critical importance of the frankfurt school. and that just seems to me to be a very timely and concrete in which to introduce foucault's work, especially given the topic under consideration deals with poverty ...was really all i meant to say. i'm sorry for adopting an unwarrantedly hyperbolic tone. more support from stroube's past - foucault in 1978, "[I]n the matter of political imagination, one must recognize that we live in a very poor world. When we search from where this poverty advances onto the socio-political map of the twentieth century, it seems to me, in spite of everything, that Marxism plays an important role. This is why I deal with Marxism. You understand then that the theme: "How do we finish with Marxism?", which has served, in a certain way as a guiding thread to the question which you have posed, is equally fundamental for my reflection. One thing is determining: that Marxism has contributed and contributes to the impoverishment of the political imagination, this is our point of departure. Your argument starts with the idea that we must distinguish Marx, on the one hand, and Marxism, on the other hand, as the object we must get rid of. I am in complete agreement with you. I do not find it very pertinent to finish with Marx, himself. Marx is an indubitable being, a person who has expressed without error certain things, that is to say an undeniable being as much as an historical event: by definition one cannot delete such an event. Just like, for example, the naval battle of the Japan sea, off Tsushima, is an event which really happened. Marx is a fact which we can not delete: to transcend him, that would be as much lacking in sense as to deny the naval battle of the Japan sea." after citing this quotation, stroube writes, "The argument you dropped is that Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari agree with Marx on certain indubitable truths about capitalism like labor exploitation and work coercion ... Marx "expressed without error certain things". However, Marxism is problematic and big part of that is what it has in common with ... a near total absence of "political imagination" to the point of na?ve pride and glee impotence." ...and subsequently, "our map drops interpretative derrida and heidegger to make previously unforged in debate connections between foucault, deleuze, guattari, burroughs, gysin, habermas, the frankfurt school...this is the activist turn in -- self-reflexive critique." ah, the good ol' days. ...i'm not sure about the 'there are many foucaults'-thesis, but as for the 'there are many stroubes'-thesis, i'm well on board. stroube writes: "foucault distanced himself from the panopticon". .......................................................................................when? the rest of your response grasps at straws. making a deleuzian comparison between foucault's ideal diagram of power called 'the panopticon' and marx's 'ideal workhouse' called the factory (deleuzian because both are 'dispositifs') does not commit me to being some academic lost in abstractions. mentioning that both focus on capitalism's/panopticism's effect on everyday temporality does not commit me to a determinism-imbued reading of either. i could have been more attentive to and supportive of your advocacy that debate as an activity recuperate 'lost knowledges' had you been in a better mood. (but i guess you're not looking for an interlocuter as much as a strawman.) cheer up, champ. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090629/7f655895/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Mon Jun 29 22:17:21 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:17:21 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] not easy being green Message-ID: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2009-June/079065.html _ getting more difficult to pick out any actual arguments among all the vitriol. stroube: "resort to rules keeping... enforce the absolute standards of ethical debate discourse..." ...so you're against civility now? you do realize we're having a conversation, and that there probably are strings of words both of us could write which would effectively end it. so if we both feel the conversation is worth participating in (by our actions, we both do), then we're also implicitly agreeing not to type those strings of words. that's not even technically a matter of 'enforcing rules', but of acknowledging certain minimal norms of discourse. civility is composed in the lines two self-respecting people agree not to cross in order to keep a conversation going. using hester's figure of 35% in the subject-heading grants nothing about the election being non-fraudulent. "Iranian elections are neither free nor fair. Because the Islamic Republic has never allowed independent election monitoring, it is impossible to ascertain whether elections have been held without fraud. There are reasons, however, to question the veracity of the Iranian government's election figures, which do not always add up." : http://www.iranrights.org/english/document-604.php that's why mousavi's call for an independent body to look at the numbers is a radical one. i'm sure you know better than to reduce a political movement to its nominal leader; the composition of the social forces should matter as much or more as the name of the honcho in charge. and when we saw the protests, there were lots of people besides 'twittering-students'. so why did the protests wane? here's the middle east media research institute's guess: "In attempt to quell the protests, which were mostly peaceful, the Iranian regime has employed brutal violence. IRGC and Basij units, some of them in plainclothes, used both cold weapons (clubs and knives) and live fire against the protestors. In addition to employing violence against the demonstrators in the streets, the security forces also raided student dorms, especially in Tehran; arrested protesters, political activists, journalists and intellectuals; and persecuted owners of homes from which the call of "Allah Akbar" was heard in the nights. The heads of the regime made threats against anyone who participated in the demonstrations, blocked websites and media outlets supportive of the protest movement, and waged a media campaign against this movement by describing the protestors and their leaders as hostile elements collaborating with Iran's enemies." the heartless cynicism with which stroube has commented upon this event demonstrates an ideological blindness to this irreducible moment of protest. "...and when a secret policeman tried to stop us filming, the crowd turned on him and chased him away..." : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHT8-ps64w @2:03s stroube: "zizek says in the video that doubts about mousavi the murderer are examples of western cynicism. zizek frames the movement as a mousavi movement." your position is much stronger than one would assume from your reversion to serial misrepresentation. what zizek referred to as "western cynicism at its worst" was the knee-jerk misrecognition of the irreducible event as just another pro-western market-reformer supported by the u.s.a. and israel; he is not referring to legitimate doubts we may entertain about mousavi as a candidate. zizek did say that mousavi was 'the best side of islamists' and i won't go that far. yet one link in stroube's complicated internal link scenario (which invariably ends at the doorstep of the white house) is that mousavi is a pro-market neoliberal. to quote a news-magazine which knows a little something about being pro-market, "[Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mousavi] have starkly different views on the economy, for instance. Rafsanjani has called for economic liberalization, while Mousavi's state-centered economic development policy and nationalization of private enterprises and introduction of ration cards during the war earned him the name 'the Coupon Prime Minister.' ... As a supporter of the private sector, Khamenei loathed Mousavi's leftist economic policies during the 1980s." : http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/17/iran-election-khamenei-opinions-contributors-mir-hossein-mousavi.html one of the points zizek makes is that the mere specter of authentically political islam pisses off both traditional islamists (e.g., ayatollah ali khamenei) and western liberals (e.g., jack stroube). what the old guard percieves as a legitimate threat the old leftists percieve as more imperialist influence, and so they join together to paint any resistance as pro-western. this brings us to the wedge foucault drove through the dominant intrepretations of '79, "When Iranians speak of Islamic government; when, under the threat of bullets, they transform it into a slogan of the streets; when they reject in its name, perhaps at the risk of a bloodbath, deals arranged by parties and politicians, they have other things on their minds than these formulas from everywhere and nowhere. They also have other things in their hearts. I believe that they are thinking about a reality that is very near to them, since they themselves are its active agents. It is first and foremost about a movement that aims to give a permanent role in political life to the traditional structures of Islamic society. An Islamic government is what will allow the continuing activity of the thousands of political centers that have been spawned in mosques and religious communities in order to resist the shah's regime. I was given an example. Ten years ago, an earthquake hit Ferdows. The entire city had to be reconstructed, but since the plan that had been selected was not to the satisfaction of most of the peasants and the small artisans, they seceded. Under the guidance of a religious leader, they went on to found their city a little further away. They had collected funds in the entire region. They had collectively chosen places to settle, arranged a water supply, and organized cooperatives. They had called their city Islamiyeh. The earthquake had been an opportunity to use religious structures not only as centers of resistance, but also as sources for political creation. This is what one dreams about when one speaks of Islamic government." : http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html pro-iranian protesters does not = pro-mousavi pro-iranian protesters does not = pro-mousavi pro-iranian protesters does not = pro-mousavi pro-iranian protesters does not = pro-mousavi pro-iranian protesters does not = pro-mousavi _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090629/12b205d9/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Tue Jun 30 00:02:19 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:02:19 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] gerbil in the room Message-ID: is it necessary to discuss marx to give a good lecture on foucault? no. is it of the utmost importance to mention marx in a lecture on foucault? no. since some of marx's theory permeates foucault, is it possible to discuss marx without direct mention of his name? pointing out that a lecturer failed to mention marx in the first 16 minutes of a lecture on foucault is STUPID. you're not even going to attempt to defend your statement. off to the races distracting here and there but at the end of day not much to say. 1 argument -- 1 argument -- can you answer it? try...i know it's so difficult. saying the names marx and foucault alot DOESN'T ADDRESS the questioning of your commentary, lil kid. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090630/38c7c648/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Tue Jun 30 00:21:15 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:21:15 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] ans gerbil on iran Message-ID: you're impossible to debate. you're slimy. you're a prick. you have fun being one. you cry when you get called names for being evasive. you're prick for the sake of being a prick. you refuse to answer arguments. you appear incapable. you're going to push this on and on with evasion after evasion but i'm done because you're terrible and wasting my time. after many posts demanding WHY CAN'T YOU ANSWER A BASIC QUESTION you finally try to answer. that's an asshole. you don't know how to debate well. that's why you didn't do well at any tournaments. i don't care about being friendly to people like you. i have no respect for your intelligence. why should i? not only can you not debate but you refuse to learn. how many lines of argumentation are we going to go through on iran where YOU DROP COMPLETELY THE ROLE OF THE CIA AND THE MOSSAD? only a really stupid person would keep "debating" without answering that. every statement you just made has already been defeated 10 times over by the US imperialism turns on psychologically manipulating the protesters. all you are doing is adding confusion. that's annoying beyond. you do have a chance to answer the CIA involvement in the coup. i've tried 10 times now to get you to but if you chose to do so, then either your sincerity or your intelligence must be in serious question. i've tried every time but you refuse to answer and you just spew irrelevant arguments that are all completely SUBSUMED. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has ever-growing storage! Don?t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090630/9402ba93/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Tue Jun 30 00:49:44 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:49:44 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] in defense of the sharp on structuralism Message-ID: combining your quotation where foucault claims he has been mistakenly labeled a structuralist and the quotation below, i agree with sharp about foucault changing his positions throughout his career sometimes reversing his previous position. inconsistency is not a bad thing unless one is a logician and even then. this is one example. your commentary on the sharp video has the stench of "word games". structuralism like positivism is perhaps indefinable despite your simple definitions. A really useful 1967 interview 'La philosophie structuraliste permet de diagnistiquer ce qu'est <>' (Dits et ecrits, Vol I, pp. 580-4)discusses some of these points. I don't think this is available in English, but happy to stand corrected. A rough translation of a key quotation: "What I have tried to do, is to introduce the analyses of a structuralist style into those areas where they haven't penetrated until now, that is to say into the domain of the history of ideas, the history of connaissances,the history of theory. In this way, I have been brought to analyse in terms of structure the birth of structuralism itself" (DE I, 583) you oversimplify everything i've seen you say. good luck making that quote into a totally 100% consistent foucault. and lastly as i goodbye, FUCK YOU LIL PRICK. _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090630/9c5ad151/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Tue Jun 30 04:40:20 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:40:20 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] goebbels versus gerbils: whose side are you on? Message-ID: last post to stroube if not responded to with a modicum of cogency; sorry if the exchange is an annoyance to innocent bystanders... i admitted my stupidity in judging jon's lecture harshly for not citing marx earlier on, and apologized for an 'unwarranted hyperbolic tone' - so keep up, old man. on structuralism. for foucault to cop to adopting 'a structuralist style' *is* consistent with his self-characterization to dreyfus and hubert: "he agreed that he was never a structuralist but that perhaps he was not as resistant to the seductive advances of structuralist vocabulary as he might have been." : http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1733654&postcount=9 neither jive with the contention that foucault began his career as a typical or conventional structuralist thinker - a mischaracterization no less mistaken for being regrettably popular. on iran. any 'basic questions' i failed to answer would have to be put to me again, as i'm under the impression i've dealt with all of them. i couldn't have 'completely dropped the role of the c.i.a. and mossad', for instance, as those arguments weren't directly addressed to me. stroube: "...the CIA involvement in the coup..." are you talking 1953? stroube: "...US imperialism turns on psychologically manipulating the protesters..." since my deficient intelligence has clearly become an issue, i'll cite znet - a source for which stroube is almost certainly more respectful: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21820 .goodnight, sweet prince. _ Iran and Leftist Confusion June 29, 2009 By Reese Erlich When I returned from covering the Iranian elections recently, I was surprised to find my email box filled with progressive authors, academics and bloggers bending themselves into knots about the current crisis in Iran. They cite the long history of U.S. interference in Iran and conclude that the current unrest there must be sponsored or manipulated by the Empire. That comes as quite a shock to those risking their lives daily on the streets of major Iranian cities fighting for political, social and economic justice. Some of these authors have even cited my book, The Iran Agenda, as a source to prove U.S. meddling. Whoa there, pardner. Now we're getting personal. The large majority of American people, particularly leftists and progressives, are sympathetic to the demonstrators in Iran, oppose Iranian government repression and also oppose any U.S. military or political interference in that country. But a small and vocal number of progressives are questioning that view, including authors writing for Monthly Review online, Foreign Policy Journal, and prominent academics such as retired professor James Petras. They mostly argue by analogy. They correctly cite numerous examples of CIA efforts to overthrow governments, sometimes by manipulating mass demonstrations. But past practice is no proof that it's happening in this particular case. Frankly, the multi-class character of the most recent demonstrations, which arose quickly and spontaneously, were beyond the control of the reformist leaders in Iran, let alone the CIA. Let's assume for the moment that the U.S. was trying to secretly manipulate the demonstrations for its own purposes. Did it succeed? Or were the protests reflecting 30 years of cumulative anger at a reactionary system that oppresses workers, women, and ethnic minorities, indeed the vast majority of Iranians? Is President Mahmood Ahmadinejad a "nationalist-populist," as claimed by some, and therefore an ally against U.S. domination around the world? Or is he a repressive, authoritarian leader who actually hurts the struggle against U.S. hegemony? Let's take a look. But first a quick note. As far as I can tell none of these leftist critics have actually visited Iran, at least not to report on the recent uprisings. Of course, one can have an opinion about a country without first-hand experience there. But in the case of recent events in Iran, it helps to have met people. It helps a lot. The left-wing Doubting Thomas arguments fall into three broad categories. 1. Assertion: President Mahmood Ahmadinejad won the election, or at a minimum, the opposition hasn't proved otherwise. Michael Veiluva, Counsel at the Western States Legal Foundation (representing his own views) wrote on the Monthly Review website: "[U.S. peace groups] are quick to denounce the elections as ?massively fraudulent' and generally subscribe to the ?mad mullah' stereotype of the current political system in Iran. There is a remarkable convergence between the tone of these statements and the American right who are hypocritically beating their chests over Iran's ?stolen' election. http://monthlyreview.org/mrzine/veiluva190609.html Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, James Petras wrote: "[N]ot a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count. During the entire electoral campaign, no credible (or even dubious) charge of voter tampering was raised." http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1781&more=1&c=1 Actually, Iranians themselves were very worried about election fraud prior to the vote count. When I covered the 2005 elections, Ahmadinejad barely edged out Mehdi Karoubi in the first round of elections. Karoubi raised substantive arguments that he was robbed of his place in the runoff due to vote fraud. But under Iran's clerical system, there's no meaningful appeal. So, as he put it, he took his case to God. On the day of the 2009 election, election officials illegally barred many opposition observers from the polls. The opposition had planned to use text messaging to communicate local vote tallies to a central location. The government shut down SMS messaging! So the vote count was entirely dependent on a government tally by officials sympathetic to the incumbent. I heard many anecdotal accounts of voting boxes arriving pre-stuffed and of more ballots being printed than are accounted for in the official registration numbers. It seems unlikely that the Iranian government will allow meaningful appeals or investigations into the various allegations about vote rigging. A study by two professors at Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, took a close look at the official election results and found some major discrepancies. For Ahmadinejad to have sustained his massive victory in one third of Iran's provinces, he would have had to carry all his supporters, all new voters, all voters previously voting centrist and about 44% of previous reformist voters. http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/14234_iranelection0609.pdf Keep in mind that Ahmadinejad's victory takes place in the context of a highly rigged system. The Guardian Council determines which candidates may run based on their Islamic qualifications. As a result, no woman has ever been allowed to campaign for president and sitting members of parliament were disqualified because they had somehow become un-Islamic. The constitution of Iran created an authoritarian theocracy in which various elements of the ruling elite could fight out their differences, sometimes through elections and parliamentary debate, sometimes through violent repression. Iran is a classic example of how a country can have competitive elections without being democratic. 2. Assertion: The U.S. has a long history of meddling in Iran, so it must be behind the current unrest. Jeremy R. Hammond writes in the progressive website Foreign Policy Journal: "[G]iven the record of U.S. interference in the state affairs of Iran and clear policy of regime change, it certainly seems possible, even likely, that the U.S. had a significant role to play in helping to bring about the recent turmoil in an effort to undermine the government of the Islamic Republic. http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/06/23/has-the-u-s-played-a-role-in-fomenting-unrest-during-irans-election/ Eric Margolis, a columnist for Quebecor Media Company in Canada and a contributor to The Huffington Post, wrote: "While the majority of protests we see in Tehran are genuine and spontaneous, Western intelligence agencies and media are playing a key role in sustaining the uprising and providing communications, including the newest electronic method, via Twitter. These are covert techniques developed by the US during recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that brought pro-US governments to power." http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/seeing-through-all-the-propaganda-about-iran.aspx Both authors cite numerous cases of the U.S. using covert means to overthrow legitimate governments. The CIA engineered large demonstrations, along with assassinations and terrorist bombings, to cause confusion and overthrow the parliamentary government of Iran' Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. The U.S. used similar methods in an effort to overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002. (For more details, see my book, Dateline Havana: The Real Story of US Policy and the Future of Cuba.) http://p3books.com/datelinehavana/ Hammond cites my book The Iran Agenda and my interview on Democracy Now to show that the Bush Administration was training and funding ethnic minorities in an effort to overthrow the Iranian government in 2007. All the arguments are by analogy and implication. Neither the above two authors, nor anyone else of whom I am aware, offers one shred of evidence that the Obama Administration has engineered, or even significantly influenced, the current demonstrations. Let's look at what actually happened on the ground. Tens of millions of Iranians went to bed on Friday, June 12, convinced that either Mousavi had won the election outright or that there would be runoff between him and Ahmadinejad. They woke up Saturday morning and were stunned. "It was a coup d'etat," several friends told me. The anger cut across class lines and went well beyond Mousavi's core base of students, intellectuals and the well-to-do. Within two days hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating peacefully in the streets of Tehran and other major cities. Could the CIA have anticipated the vote count, and on two days notice, mobilized its nefarious networks? Does the CIA even have the kind of extensive networks that would be necessary to control or even influence such a movement? That simultaneously gives the CIA too much credit and underestimates the independence of the mass movement. As for the charge that the CIA is providing advanced technology like Twitter, pleaaaaaase. In my commentary carried on Reuters, I point out that the vast majority of Iranians have no access to Twitter and that the demonstrations were mostly organized by cell phone and word of mouth. http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/author/reeseerlich/ Many Iranians do watch foreign TV channels via satellite. A sat dish costs only about $100 with no monthly fees, so they are affordable even to the working class. Iranians watched BBC, VOA and other foreign channels in Farsi, leading to government assertions of foreign instigation of the demonstrations. By that logic, Ayatollah Khomeini received support from Britain in the 1979 revolution because of BBC radio's critical coverage of the despotic Shah. Frankly, based on my observations, no one was leading the demonstrations. During the course of the week after the elections, the mass movement evolved from one protesting vote fraud into one calling for much broader freedoms. You could see it in the changing composition of the marches. There were not only upper middle class kids in tight jeans and designer sun glasses. There were growing numbers of workers and women in very conservative chadors. Iranian youth particularly resented President Ahmadinejad's support for religious militia attacks on unmarried young men and women walking together and against women not covering enough hair with their hijab. Workers resented the 24 percent annual inflation that robbed them of real wage increases. Independent trade unionists were fighting for decent wages and for the right to organize. Some demonstrators wanted a more moderate Islamic government. Others advocated a separation of mosque and state, and a return to parliamentary democracy they had before the 1953 coup. But virtually everyone believes that Iran has the right to develop nuclear power, including enriching uranium. Iranians support the Palestinians in their fight against Israeli occupation, and they want to see the U.S. get out of Iraq. So if they CIA was manipulating the demonstrators, it was doing a piss poor job. Of course, the CIA would like to have influence in Iran. But that's a far cry from saying it does have influence. By proclaiming the omnipotence of U.S. power, the leftist critics ironically join hands with Ahmadinejad and the reactionary clerics who blame all unrest on the British and U.S. 3. Assertion: Ahmadinejad is a nationalist-populist who opposes U.S. imperialism. Efforts to overthrow him only help the U.S. James Petras wrote: "Ahmadinejad's strong position on defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition...." "Ahmadinejad's electoral success, seen in historical comparative perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral contests between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the populists have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez of Venezuela, [and] Evo Morales in Bolivia." http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1781&more=1&c=1 Venezuela's Foreign Ministry wrote on its website: "The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela expresses its firm opposition to the vicious and unfounded campaign to discredit the institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, unleashed from outside, designed to roil the political climate of our brother country. From Venezuela, we denounce these acts of interference in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while demanding an immediate halt to the maneuvers to threaten and destabilize the Islamic Revolution." http://www.mre.gob.ve/Noticias/A2009/comunic-092.htm >From 1953-1979, the Shah of Iran brutally repressed his own people and aligned himself with the U.S. and Israel. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran brutally repressed its own people and broke its alliance with the U.S. and Israel. That apparently causes confusion for some on the left. I have written numerous articles and books criticizing U.S. policy on Iran, including Bush administration efforts to overthrow the Islamic government. The U.S. raises a series of phony issues, or exaggerates problems, in an effort to impose its domination on Iran. (Examples include Iran's nuclear power program, support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and support for Shiite groups in Iraq.) During his past four years in office, Ahmadinejad has ramped up Iran's anti-imperialist rhetoric and posed himself as a leader of the Islamic world. That accounts for his fiery rhetoric against Israel and his denial of the Holocaust. (Officially, Ahmadinejad "questions" the Holocaust and says "more study is necessary." That reminds me of the creationists who say there needs to be more study because evolution is only a theory.) As pointed out by the opposition candidates, Ahmadinejad's rhetoric about Israel and Jews has only alienated people around the world and made it more difficult for the Palestinians. But in the real world, Ahmadinejad has done nothing to support the Palestinians other than sending some funds to Hamas. Despite rhetoric from the U.S. and Israel, Iran has little impact on a struggle that must be resolved by Palestinians and Israelis themselves. So comparing Ahmadinejad with Chavez or Evo Morales is absurd. I have reported from both Venezuela and Bolivia numerous times. Those countries have genuine mass movements that elected and kept those leaders in power. They have implemented significant reforms that benefitted workers and farmers. Ahmadinejad has introduced 24% annual inflation and high unemployment. As for the position of Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez, they are simply wrong. On a diplomatic level, Venezuela and Iran share some things in common. Both are under attack from the U.S., including past efforts at "regime change." Venezuela and other governments around the world will have to deal with Ahmadinejad as the de facto president, so questioning the election could cause diplomatic problems. But that's no excuse. Chavez has got it exactly backward. The popular movement in the streets will make Iran stronger as it rejects outside interference from the U.S. or anyone else. This is no academic debate or simply fodder for bored bloggers. Real lives are at stake. A repressive government has killed at least 17 Iranians and injured hundreds. The mass movement may not be strong enough to topple the system today but is sowing the seeds for future struggles. The leftist critics must answer the question: Whose side are you on? _ Freelance foreign correspondent Reese Erlich covered the recent elections in Iran and their aftermath. He is the author of The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis. (Polipoint Press) http://p3books.com/theiranagenda/ _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090630/aaeba836/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Tue Jun 30 11:06:47 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:06:47 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] gerbil needs glasses Message-ID: 1) you force people to point out how you drop the key argument over and over. your initial strategy is to ignore the drop as if it doesn't matter. then, when the opponent collapses down to pointing out the drop as their only argument, then you finally answer it. rather be goebbels than a friendly fascist w bogus pretense. again, the only conclusion from your style is that you are either: INSINCERE OR STUPID. i'm not going to answer because it caters to your asshole prickness. great, after dropping the soft coup 10 times you finally answered it. my answer is FUCK YOU and explain why it took you so long to answer it. 2) the structuralism card goes beyond admission of vocabulary. OPEN YOUR EYES, LIL PRICK, STOP BEING A FUCKING ASSHOLE: "What I have tried to do, is to introduce the analyses of a structuralist style into those areas where they haven't penetrated until now, that is to say into the domain of the history of ideas, the history of connaissances,the history of theory." "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE"========="INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE"INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE 3) WHY DO YOU HOLD THE STUPIDEST POSITION EVER? foucault never changed his mind about himself once. frankly, your consistent foucault who never opposes himself is wallpaper. are you really as fucking stupid as you keep pretending to be? no, you're an asshole being an asshole for the sake of it and then pretending to be the innocent one. FUCK YOU!!! _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090630/5b2f7937/attachment.htm From eldredge_edebate at hotmail.com Tue Jun 30 13:40:44 2009 From: eldredge_edebate at hotmail.com (Judson Eldredge) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:40:44 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] gerbil needs glasses In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Control yourself, man! What is so important about this that it requires spewing this kind of venom? (Don't answer that) Take a deep breath, calm down, and realize that you can be happy, not angry, about being a part of a community that is willing to engage you about ideas most of the rest of the world would find boring and unimportant and not even bother to comment on. Then take another deep breath. Seriously. Peace, Jud From: oldstrega at hotmail.com To: edebate at ndtceda.com Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:06:47 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] gerbil needs glasses 1) you force people to point out how you drop the key argument over and over. your initial strategy is to ignore the drop as if it doesn't matter. then, when the opponent collapses down to pointing out the drop as their only argument, then you finally answer it. rather be goebbels than a friendly fascist w bogus pretense. again, the only conclusion from your style is that you are either: INSINCERE OR STUPID. i'm not going to answer because it caters to your asshole prickness. great, after dropping the soft coup 10 times you finally answered it. my answer is FUCK YOU and explain why it took you so long to answer it. 2) the structuralism card goes beyond admission of vocabulary. OPEN YOUR EYES, LIL PRICK, STOP BEING A FUCKING ASSHOLE: "What I have tried to do, is to introduce the analyses of a structuralist style into those areas where they haven't penetrated until now, that is to say into the domain of the history of ideas, the history of connaissances,the history of theory." "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE"========= "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE" INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE 3) WHY DO YOU HOLD THE STUPIDEST POSITION EVER? foucault never changed his mind about himself once. frankly, your consistent foucault who never opposes himself is wallpaper. are you really as fucking stupid as you keep pretending to be? no, you're an asshole being an asshole for the sake of it and then pretending to be the innocent one. FUCK YOU!!! Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090630/861fc9da/attachment.htm From oldstrega at hotmail.com Tue Jun 30 15:39:32 2009 From: oldstrega at hotmail.com (Old Strega) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:39:32 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] gerbil needs glasses In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: can you honestly say gerbil doesn't deserve it? angry words don't always portray angry mind. i'm very happy to be part of this community but vehemently opposed to gerbil's way of deliberately confusing everything. gerbil thinks it's funny and cool. gerbil needs to go back inside the anus from the doctor removed him. From: eldredge_edebate at hotmail.com To: oldstrega at hotmail.com; edebate at ndtceda.com Subject: RE: [eDebate] gerbil needs glasses Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:40:44 -0500 Control yourself, man! What is so important about this that it requires spewing this kind of venom? (Don't answer that) Take a deep breath, calm down, and realize that you can be happy, not angry, about being a part of a community that is willing to engage you about ideas most of the rest of the world would find boring and unimportant and not even bother to comment on. Then take another deep breath. Seriously. Peace, Jud From: oldstrega at hotmail.com To: edebate at ndtceda.com Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:06:47 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] gerbil needs glasses 1) you force people to point out how you drop the key argument over and over. your initial strategy is to ignore the drop as if it doesn't matter. then, when the opponent collapses down to pointing out the drop as their only argument, then you finally answer it. rather be goebbels than a friendly fascist w bogus pretense. again, the only conclusion from your style is that you are either: INSINCERE OR STUPID. i'm not going to answer because it caters to your asshole prickness. great, after dropping the soft coup 10 times you finally answered it. my answer is FUCK YOU and explain why it took you so long to answer it. 2) the structuralism card goes beyond admission of vocabulary. OPEN YOUR EYES, LIL PRICK, STOP BEING A FUCKING ASSHOLE: "What I have tried to do, is to introduce the analyses of a structuralist style into those areas where they haven't penetrated until now, that is to say into the domain of the history of ideas, the history of connaissances,the history of theory." "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE"========= "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE "INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE" INTRODUCE THE ANALYSES OF A STRUCTURALIST STYLE 3) WHY DO YOU HOLD THE STUPIDEST POSITION EVER? foucault never changed his mind about himself once. frankly, your consistent foucault who never opposes himself is wallpaper. are you really as fucking stupid as you keep pretending to be? no, you're an asshole being an asshole for the sake of it and then pretending to be the innocent one. FUCK YOU!!! Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that?s right for you. Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. See how. _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail?. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd_062009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/attachments/20090630/73713602/attachment.htm From let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com Tue Jun 30 19:14:47 2009 From: let_the_american_empire_burn at hotmail.com (Kevin Sanchez) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:14:47 -0500 Subject: [eDebate] the big lie Message-ID: _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009