PFDebate

November 2009 Topic Announced

by PFDebate LLC on October 1, 2009

Resolved: Failed nations are a greater threat to the United States than sta­ble nations.

{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }

Mike October 1, 2009 at 7:34 am

sweet

tpeters October 1, 2009 at 8:06 am

Con­sid­er­ing the flury of dis­cus­sion about coun­ter­plans recently, I think this is a topic where coun­ter­plans (what­ever they are in PF) won’t work.

I like that the topic is put as a state­ment of fact (greater threat or not) rather than a state­ment of pol­icy. My gut reac­tion was, “Really???” Then I started think­ing. Iran and North Korea would prob­a­bly not be con­sid­ered “failed nations,” but they are def­i­nitely threats. But “failed nations” (I’m going to have to fig­ure out what that phrase means) would pro­vide the type of envi­ron­ment that grows ter­ror­ists and desta­bi­lize regions. Hmmmm.

PFDebate LLC October 1, 2009 at 8:15 am

Here is a list of failed states:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Failed_States_Index

PFDebate LLC October 1, 2009 at 8:19 am

And don’t for­get that Chomsky’s Failed States argues that the U.S. is becom­ing a failed state.

PFDebate LLC October 1, 2009 at 9:16 am

After we are fin­ished with this giant meat­ball of a topic in Novem­ber, why don’t we kick back and debate some­thing a lit­tle more nar­row in Decem­ber like the NBA’s social media guide­lines. :-)

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4520907&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines

Snarf October 1, 2009 at 9:26 am

ATTN Tpeters — 

Iran, Soma­lia, N. Korea, Pak­istan, are all “fail[ing] states” on the list Bob provided.

Laos, China, Saudi Ara­bia, Syria, Jor­dan, Israel and the West Bank are all at the “warning”/brink of being a failed state.

List of com­pletely sus­tain­able states? Ire­land, Canada, Lux­em­bourg, Aus­tria, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Den­mark, Ire­land, Switzer­land, Swe­den, Fin­land, and Norway.

I think if you added ALL of those sta­ble coun­tries up, you don’t have even close to the risk of EVEN ONE of the fol­low­ing:
–an Indo-Pak nuclear war,
–North Korean nuclear strike,
–Chi­nese strike on Tai­wan,
–Israel shut­ting Gaza up with a few nukes.

And those are only the most obvi­ous flash­points made worse by the eco­nomic downturn.

Oh and I for­got Iran.

This topic is really, really lame.

PFDebate LLC October 1, 2009 at 9:31 am

I think a lot of it will come down to where you draw the line between failed and sta­ble. Is it the 38 under Alert or the 131 that are under Alert and Warning?

If you draw it at alert, you can try to com­pare the threat from the alert states to Rus­sia, China, etc.

Jason October 1, 2009 at 10:46 am

My ini­tial research this morn­ing sug­gests while there is a debate about the failed state frame­work, there is lit­tle advo­cacy sug­gest­ing that non-failed states are a big­ger threat. Another PF topic with silly ground…

Snarf October 1, 2009 at 10:47 am

I dis­agree with the “lets look at it by spe­cific coun­try” idea — we should be talk­ing about failed states in the­ory, not in specific.

Snarf October 1, 2009 at 10:56 am

IMPACT TURNING FTW

Ter­ror­ism good anyone?

PFDebate LLC October 1, 2009 at 10:57 am

I can imag­ine cases that dis­cuss both the gen­eral con­cept and examples.

Snarf October 1, 2009 at 11:08 am

I can too, which both­ers me.

196 coun­tries? 1 month of research? Impos­si­ble research burden?

Blair October 1, 2009 at 5:21 pm

any­one have some def­i­n­i­tions that they would like to con­tribute for fiailed nations

Bob October 1, 2009 at 6:18 pm

well, i do think that this is a good topic if only for the fact that it leaves less room for meta-debate

R-Man October 1, 2009 at 11:07 pm

what a hor­ri­ble topic. just like BRIC. the topic com­mit­tee should be disbanded…we should all just vote on NFL online on a polll.…

Adam Jacobi October 2, 2009 at 9:54 am

Greet­ings everyone,

Just in case you didn’t know, the NFL has a free resource direc­tory to get PF debaters started on research… http://www.forensicsonline.net/forum/local_links.php?catid=52

Adam Jacobi
NFL Coor­di­na­tor of Pro­grams & Education

Snarf October 2, 2009 at 3:08 pm

Then the Com­puter Sci­ences debaters will write a recur­sive algo­rithm that lets them vote 200,000 times for what­ever topic they desire.

But agreed, the topic is cowpoop.

R-Man October 2, 2009 at 10:07 pm

They could sim­ply limit ur IP address to one vote. Or they could send a bal­lot via email to team coaches and just let them vote

Snarf October 3, 2009 at 12:40 pm

Oh that’s right. I for­got that com­puter sci­ence hadn’t invented ways around IP address lim­it­ing, like prox­ies. Or mutat­ing IP algorithms.

I guess the team coaches thing could work. Send me an email at R-Man’sTeamCoach@gmail.com and I’ll vote. Oh wait — I’m not R-Man’s Team Coach. Whoops — I guess that since email clients invented magic, they’ll know what the real team coach’s address is. Or that the team even exists.

Jason Kline October 4, 2009 at 7:12 pm

This month’s topic was spon­sored by the Stan­ley Foun­da­tion. I would rec­om­mend vis­it­ing their web­site for resources.

Sunshine Talahaki October 6, 2009 at 4:48 am

I don’t think it’s a bad topic at all, folks. I’m excited to read up on it :]

Shawns October 6, 2009 at 2:55 pm

I think that we should look at the indi­vid­ual nations that threaten us

C.J. October 6, 2009 at 3:27 pm

this topic makes no since b/c there are more press­ing issues than this to debate

Trever October 8, 2009 at 1:50 pm

i Love this topic

C.J. October 11, 2009 at 6:29 pm

this topic is point­less because i n my oppion cap­i­tal­ism itself means they are failed and so does com­mu­nism social­ism is the only sound option

Snarf October 14, 2009 at 6:44 pm

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

For­tu­nately, nat­ural selec­tion has a way of rid­ding itself of peo­ple that dumb.

<3

C.J. October 19, 2009 at 12:36 pm

unfor­tu­nately cap­i­tal­ists are still here

Wild Bill deb8r October 22, 2009 at 10:55 am

Well there are sev­eral points of view to con­sider when debat­ing this issue, one the idea of nat­ural selec­tion is based off pre-conceptions of moral­ity that can only be deter­mined by social col­lab­o­ra­tions, and not indi­vid­ual assump­tions. Also, cap­i­tal­ists regimes are the only counter-aparatists that allow for net ben­e­fits in the realm of inter­na­tional pol­i­tics. THEREFORE YOU HAVE TO AFFIRM.

Maddie October 25, 2009 at 3:45 pm

Well it’s bet­ter than last months..

Erika October 27, 2009 at 1:40 pm

I’m in des­per­ate need of help.

I have a tour­na­ment com­ing up soon that will use this topic… but i’ve got noth­ing on it yet.

My cases are blank.

Can some­one give me ideas for contentions?

steven November 4, 2009 at 3:19 pm

Sta­ble nation such as china and india threaten the econ­omy of the United States: out­sourc­ing jobs, etc

Leave a Comment

Copyright © 2009 PFDebate LLC