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Michigan 7 week juniors

Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

MEDICAL PEACE CORPSIELECTRONIC PEACE CORPS NEGATIVE

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Counterplan vs medical peace corps
medical peace corps/electronic peace corps negative............................. ........................................................................................ 1
Inc global health service counterplan shell .............................................................................................................................. 2
lnc global health sewice counterplan shell ................................................................................................................................ 3
global health corps solves soft power .............................................................................................................................................. 4
.
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global health corps solves disease ............................ ..............................................................................................................5
global health corps solves disease ................................................................................................................................................... 6
global health corps solves terrorism.............................................................................................................................................. 7
global health service can recruit adequate personnel ................................................................................................................. 8
medical peace corps solvency answers-ddi version ...................................................................................................................... 9
medical peace corps solvency answers-ddi version ....................... . ....................................................................................... 10
geek corps counterplan 1nc ....................................................................................................................................................... 1 1
geek corps 2nc solvency..,,,........... . .................................................................................................................................... 12
geek corps 2nc solvency ............................................................................................................................................................. 1 3
geek corps 2nc solvency ................................................................................................................................................................. 14
geek corps 2nc solvency ............................................................................................................................................................ 15
geek corps 2nc solvency ..............................................................................................................................................................16
at: electronic peace carps solves the need for regutar peace corps ......................... . ................................................................17
world corps cp solvency .............:..................................................................................................................................................18
I nc independent agency net benefits ....................................................................................................................................... 19
Inc independent agency net benefits ........................................................................................................................................ 20
1 nc skilled volunteers bad net benefit ............................................................................................................................................. 21
bureaucratizationextensions .......................................................................................................................................................... 22
Politicizationlinks ....................................................................................................................................................................... 23
Politicization Uniqueness ............................................................................................................................................................... 24
politicization impacts: Independence Key to solvency ............................................................................................................... 25
extensions: skilled volunteers bad .......................... . . .................................................................................................................26
extensions: skilled volunteers bad ............................................................................................................................................. 27
extensions: skilled volunteers bad ............................................................................................................................................. 28
at: permutation--d o both........................................................................................................................................................... 29
politics links: expanding the mandate costs political capital....................................................................................................... 30
existing numbers of the peace corps solves development......................................................................................................... 31
existing informationtechnology training solves ............................................................................................................................32
at: internet key to singularitylartificial intelligence ........................................................................................................................ 33
at: internet key to singularitylartificial intelligence ......................................................................................................................... 34
at: internet key to singularitylartificial intelligence .................................... ....................................................................................... 35
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xt 1: no qual~f~cations ....... . .......................................................................................................................................................... 36
xt 5: no singularity ............................................................................ .........................................................................................37
xt: 6-7: extinction ............................................................................................................................................................................. 38
xt 6-7: extinction .......................................................................................................................................................................... 39
xt 6-7: extinction ..........................................................................................................................................................................40
disad outweighs artificial intelligence .............................................................................................................................................. 41
electronic peace corps key to solve disease and poverty...............................................................................................................42
electronic peace corps solves disease, environment, agriculture............................................................................................. 43
electronic peace corps key to telecommunications..................................................................................................................... 44
electronic peace corps solves: development ................. ;....................................................................... :........................................45
electronic peace corps key to literacy ...................................................................................................................................... 46
libraries key to democracy .............................................................................................................................................................. 47
at: geek corps counterplan............................................................................................................................................................48
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace Corps/Electronic Peace Corps neg

I 1NC GLOBAL HEALTH SERVICE COUNTERPLAN SHELL I


Counterplan Text:

The United States federal government should create and fund the United States Global Health Service outside of the Peace
Corps with numbers of personnel equivalent to the number the plan provides the Peace Corps.

The counterplan solves-a Global Health Service would leverage skilled medical personnel to fight disease globally

lnstitute of Medicine, 05 ("lnstitute of Medicine news: Human resource crisis in HIVIAIDS,4/20,


http://www.rnedicalnewstodav.comlmedicaln3119)

The federal uovernment should create and fund an umbrella organization called the United States Global Health Service (GHS)
to mobilize the nation's best health care professionals and other experts to help combat HlVlAlDS in hard-hit African, Caribbean,
and Southeast Asian countries, says a new report from the lnstitute of Medicine of the National Academies. Full-time, salaried
professionalswould make up the orqanization's pivotal "service corps," workinq side by side with other colleaques alreadv on the
ground to urovide medical care and druq therapy to affected populationswhile offering local counterparts training and assistance in clinical,
technical, and managerial areas. The proposal'sgoal is to build the capacity of targeted countries to fight the pandemic over the long run. The dearth of qualified
health care workers in many low-income nations is often the biggest roadblock in mounting effective responses to public health needs. In January 2003
President Bush announced the President's Emergency Plan for AlDS Relief (PEPFAR),which is directed at 15 countries that are home to half of the world's HIV-
infected people. PEPFAR's "2-7-10"goals are to treat 2 million infected people with antiretroviraltherapy, prevent 7 million new HIV infections, and care for 10
million people who are infectedwith HIV or affectedby it. This comprehensive, five-year strategy is part of the United States LeadershipAgainst HIVIAIDS,
Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, which Congress passed in 2003. Among other measures, the legislation calls for a pilot program to test how U.S. health care
professionals and others with technical expertise could help meet the "2-7-10"goals through public service abroad. The federal Office of the U.S. Global AlDS
Coordinator asked the Institute of Medicine to study options for placing such workers in the 15 focus countries. "In addition to this ~ r o ~ o s Corps
e d of
hiqhlv skilled health and management professionals, the Global Health Service would also have five other components. The
individuals servinq in all of these prourams would constitute a critical driving force to carry out the president's plan -- and to build
the developina world's capacity to control HIVIAIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria over time," said study committee chair Fitzhugh Mullan,
contributingeditor of the journal HEALTH AFFAIRS, and clinical professor ol pediatrics and public health, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
"They would multiply essential skills and services, offering both concrete assistance and hope. In our interconnected world, such work benefits us all."
CREATING THE UNITED STATES GLOBAL HEALTH SERVICE
Today HIVIAIDS is one of the world's greatest health crises, the report emphasizes. Nearly 40 million people are infected with HIV, and 95 percent of them live in
resource-poor countries. About 6 million HIV-infectedpeople in these areas need antiretroviraltreatment now. PEPFAR has provided such drug therapy in the 15
focus countries: Botswana, Cote d'lvoire, Ethiopia. Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam,
and Zambia. However, a shortage of workers to administer medication and provide essential support could ultimatelythwart PEPFARs efforts. Preventing and
treating HlVlAlDS in these developing nations will require unprecedentedhealth systems and human resource initiatives. GHS should be based in the
federal aovernment, but private aqencies should also ~ l a s~pportinp v roles, the report says. Furthermore, an international advisory committee
should be established to provide input on the development, ongoing operation,and evaluation of the proposedservice. In the first year, 150 U.S. health
professionalsshould be selected for the GHS setvice corps and deployed based on several criteria, including specific priorities that have been identified by each
country's health ministly in conjunction with federal PEPFAR teams already on the ground; the availabilityof people with the required skills; and the readiness of
institutionstohost corps participants.Thev would beassiqned for at least two years to proqrams or aeoaraphic areas where thev could
have the areatest impact. Participants'ability to help combat the spread of malaria and tuberculosis --which often ovedap HIV infections in the developing
world - would also be considered. On the whole, the initial cost of the GHS is estimated at about $100 million annually, or roughly 3 percent of PEPFAR's current
budget. About $35 million of this would be for the setvice corps, the report says. Another component of the GHS would be a fellowshio Droaram,
'which should offer competitive awards of $35,000annuallv for skilled professionals who want to make a difference overseas butare
stymied by financial and logistialbarriers.Fellowswouldprovide heanh care, taking, ottechniealassistance in a PEPFAR locus country tor at least one year, the report says. GHS ~ I Swould
O
include a loan-re~avlllentprOaram for student debt. Any paticipants who sewe in a forus country auld erase $25.000 of higher.educatmn debt for each year01 setvce completed,
- - - -- --,- - - -
. .u u s. Rivpn
. rennrl
the . . haaw
.. . the health orofessionalsonen carrv. this incent~vewould emand the werall owl d candidates.
- - .,student&t- - . load that
BROAC C3LABO:4TON NEEDED
Smooth, cu nc trande.s of ~a.entd2eope to me targeted natmns vm~bbe vlal. the nmmdee said. To :nrt end, Mlequate f~naingwoud w needed to foster imova:rve lolpteln panrershps oeaeell relwm~i:
lased cn :re Lnted 3ratt.s dnd ir PEPFAR mntries. Such01 era aPrargemen.s,mlran as I ~ m nq'
~nstr~ltons n can stltr!yl.leo nstitnona vorkforces n1 hoscountres 2y Dnvidlngstat' to I II vacancies and lo
Education and training
bler specialbed trainlng and development opprtunlies. Parblers could h h d e hosplah, univenlies, nongovernmentalaganizatnns, and pubic health agencies.
offered bv all GHS participants should encompass not only clinical and technical skills, but also manauement of finances, social
services, and human resources. Developinq effective new ways to deliver health care in impoverished reqions should also be a
w, the reptt notes. Ehcatiin systems and health care infrastructurein developing countriesare onen weak and understafled. In addition, skilled health professionalsfrequently accept job oflers from
wealthy countries that are experencingtheir om shortages af heatlh care wohers But h e shotfall is dramatically worse in the developingworkl. Few African nations, lor example, have more than one doctor per
5,WO people, without an increase in the number of physicians,nurses, technictans, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals,expanding ffie scope of antiretroviral drug therapy tor HlVlAlDS would only
exacerbate these personnelchallenges.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I 1NC GLOBAL HEALTH SERVICE COUNTERPLAN SHELL I


THECOUNTERPLAN WlLL IMPROVE US PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND SOLVE DISEASE; ITS MODELED ON THE PEACE CORPS
Reiffel, 05 (Lex, Visiting Fellow at the Global Economy and Development Center of the Brookings Institution, REACHING OUT:
AMERICANS SERVING OVERSEAS, 12/27,
http:Ilwww.brookinqs.edulviewslpa~ers/20051207rieffel,pdf)

Global Health Corps. The majority leader of the Senate, Bill Frist. introduced a bill in April2005 to establish a Global Health
Corps (GHC) with three purposes: (a) improve the health, welfare, and development of communities in select foreiqn countries
and regions; (b) advance US public diulomacv in such locations: and (c) provide individuals in the United States with the
o~~ortunitv to serve such communities. In his speech introducting the bill, Senator Frist evoked the spir~tof the Peace Corps
when it was founded and stressed its public diplomacy role.7 The bill provides for the establishment of an office within the
Departmentof Health and Human Services and authorizes auvropriations as necessary to implement the GHC. The scale of
the GHC has not been spelled out in the bill, but is suggested by a provision in the bill calling for the Secretary for Health and
Human Services to designate at least 500 employees of the Public Health Service as GHC volunteers, including 250 employees
who would be deployable to anywhere in the world on 72 hours notice. Other Federal emplovees and Peace Corps volunteers
could be designated as GHC volunteers toqether with trained health care professionals and practit~onersfrom the private sector.
All GHC volunteers would be required to complete up to six months of comprehensive basic training. They would serve
overseas without remuneration but would eniov the protection of volunteers servinq domesticallv under federal proqrams. The
bill authorizes budget funding of travel costs for all volunteers but not for in-country expenses (per diem). While not including
any specific limitations on length of service, the GHC appears designed primarily to operate through short-term (a few weeks or
months) assignments. No price tag has been attached to this proposal yet, but ~thas the character of the Freedom Corps and
other "bare bones" Bush Administration initiatives. Coincidentally, the Institute of Medicine (a component of the National
Academy of Sciences) released a report proposinq the creation of a Global Health Service (GHS) to work on the qlobal
campaiqn to address the HIVtAIDS epidemic.8 The chairman of the panel that produced the report, Fitzhugh Mullan, described
it as "a Peace Corps for healthV.9 In contrast lo the GHC, the GHS is deslgned to encourage longer and more productive
periods of senlice overseas. Initially, the GHS might have 150 members who would be government employees and would be
assigned to one of the 15 countries targeted under the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The main
component, however, would be the emplovment of 1,000 experienced health professionalsto work abroad under one-vear
fellowships for $35,000 in remuneration. Another component would allow newly trained health professionalsto earn $25,000to
pay off education loans in return for a year of work abroad. These components imply a program in the range of $50-100 million.
Importantly, GHS members would not work in the field for US Government agencies but would work for philanthropic or
academic NGOs. The GHS proposal has not yet been reflected in any legislative proposals. Given the pressure to hold the
line on federal spending, most recently associated with the costs of reconstructionafter Hurricane Katrina, it seems unlikely that
funds will be appropriated in FY 2006 or FY 2007 for any form of the GHC or GHS proposal. Nevertheless thev illustrate the
conlinuino Dower of the Peace Corps model for overseas service and reflect the practical difficulties of using the Peace Corps to
address new foreign policy priorities of the United States.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpsiElectronic Peace Corps neg

I GLOBAL HEALTH CORPS SOLVES SOFT POWER 1


Global health corps solves disaster relief, disease, and acts as diplomacy tool
New Kerala, 05 (Feb 8, "Senator Bill Frist Proposes New Global Health Corps Proposed After Tsunami,"
http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/2028211 .html) (Anshu)

A US senator who has iust returnedfrom tsunami-hit Asia met several Indian American phvsicians to discuss proposals that
include the establishment of a Global Health Corps bv the US, mSenate Majority Leader Bill Frist met with the physicians in
Florida at an informal brunch, said Vijayendra Vijayanagar, chair of the Indian American Republican Council and a cardiologist in
Fort Lauderdale, m"llve visited destroyed towns in Sudan and Afghanistan and seen deep, grinding poverty in Uganda and
Kenya. The challenges the world's aid-qivinq nations face in South Asia will prove iust as difficult to overcome as those I
witnessed in these troubled places," said Frist (a Republican from Tennessee) testifying at the Commerce Committee's hearing
on tsunami relief efforts, mFrist was in Sri Lanka last month where in a helicopter fliaht over the island, he said he witnessed 'a
scene of unendina devastation".mA doctor by profession, Frist noted that the major issue after the tsunami was health and that
despite the massive influx of aid, many people still lacked medicines and clean water, mHe put forward three interrelated
pro~osalsto tackle thls - making clean water a major priority in US development programmes; makinq medical assistance a vital
tool of public diplomacv bv establishino the "Global Health Corps" like the Peace Corps; and leveraging private dollars to develop
water ~nfrastructurearound the world. UHe wants the Global Health Corps to have a much broader mission as a "vital
component" of public diplomacv in US foreiqn pol~cvefforts. [ilNCorpsmembers would serve as shinnina examples of the
American peoples' charity and qoodwill. Its members would serve for the qood of humanity and, in so doing, these doctors,
nurses, technicians and scientists would become ambassadors of peace."
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace Corps/Electronic Peace Corps neg

I GLOBAL HEALTH CORPS SOLVES DISEASE I


US Global Health Service should be created to deal with HIVIAIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria
Fitzhugh Mullen, professor of pediatrics and public health at George Washington University, 4/19/05 (~nstitute01 Medicine, "Healers
Abroad: Americans Respondingto the Human ResourcesCrisis in HIVIAIDS," htip:ilwww8.nat~nalacademies.orglonpinewsinewsitem,aspx?RecordlD=l1270,
Vanee Vines, Senior Media Relations Officer, Christine Stencel, Media Relations Officer, Chris Dobbins, Media Relations Assistant, Office of News and Public
Information) (Anshu)

WASHINGTON -- The federal qovernment should create and fund an umbrella orqanization called the United States Global
Health Service (GHS) to mobilize the nation's best health care professionals and other experts to help combat HIVIAIDS in hard-
hit African, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian countries, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine of the National
Academies. Full-time, salaried professionals would make up the or~anization'spivotal "service corps." workinq side bv side with
other colleaques alreadv on the qround to ~rovidemedical care and druq therapv to affected populations while offerina local
counterparts trainina and assistance in clinical, technical, and manaqerial areas. The proposal's qoal is to build the capacity of
tarqeted countries to fiqht the pandemic Over the l 0 n ~run. The dearth of qualified health care workers in many low-~nwmenations is often the biggest roadblockin mounting
effeclve responses to publ~chealth needs. In January 2003 President Bush announced the President'sEmergencyPlan lor AlDS Reliei (PEPFAR), wh~chis dlrected at 15 countresthat are home to half Of the
world's HIV-inieoted people. PEPFARs "2.7.10'goals are lo treat 2 mllllon infected people with amiretmvlral therapy, prevent 7 million new HIV infections, and care for 10 million people who are infected with HIV or
affected by it. This comprehensive,live-yearstrategyis part of the United States Leadership Against HIVIAIDS,Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, rhich Congress passed in 2003. Among other measures, the legSlat10n
calls for a p~lotprogram to test how U.S. health care professionalsand others wlh technical expertise could help meet the '2-7-10'goalsthrovgh public service abroad. The federal Office of the U.S. G o k l AlDS
Coordinator asked the Insmute of Medicine to study optonsfor placing such workers in the 15 tocuscwntries. 'h addition to m ~ proposed
s corps of highly skilled health and managementprofessionals, the
Global Health Service would also have five other components. The individuals servinq in all of these programs would constitute a
-
critical drivinq force to carry out the president'splan -- and to build the developinq world's caoacitv to control HIVIAIDS,
tuberc~Iosis,and malaria over time.' saidstudy committee chair Fihhugh Mullan, wnlributing editor oithe journal Health Iliain, and clinical professor of pediatrics and publ~chealh, George
Washington Unhiersity, Washington, D.C. 'They would multiply essential skills and services, otfering both conaete assistance and hope. In our interconnectedworld, such work benefits us all.''
Creating the United States Global Health Service
Todav HIV/AIDS is one of the world's qreatest health crises, the report emphasizes. Nearlv 40 million people are infected with
HIV, and 95 percent of them live in resource-poor countries. About 6 million HIV-infectedpeople in these areas need
antiretroviral treatment now. PEPFAR has provided such drug therapy in the 15 focus countries: Botswana, Cote d'lvoire,
Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, and
Zambia. However, a shortage of workers to administer medication and provide essential support could ultimately thwart
PEPFAR's efforts. Preventing and treatinq HIVtAIDS in these developinq nations will require unprecedented health svstems and
human resource initiatives. GHS should be based in the federal qovernment, but private aqencies should also plav supporting
roles,the report says. Furthermore, an international advisory committee should be established to provide input on the
development, on go in^ operation, and evaluation of the proposed service. In the first vear, 150 U.S. health professionals should
be selected for me GHS sewice corps and deployed based on severai crteria, ncluding speclic priorities that have been identified by each country's health minlsiy in conjunct~onwith federal PEPFAR teams
already on the ground: the availability of people with the required skills; and the readrness of insfitutiansto host mrps paicipants. They would be assisned for at least tW0 Veal's to
programs or Qeoqrauhicareas where thev could,have the qreatest impact. Participants' ability to help combat the spread of
malaria and tuberculosis -- which often overlap HIV infections in the developing world --would also be considered. On the whole,
the initial cost of the GHS is estimated at about $100 million annually, or rouqhly 3 percent of PEPFAR's current budqet. About
$35 million of this would be for the service corps, the report says. Another component of the GHS would be a fellowship
program, which should offer competitive awards of $35,000 annually for skilled professionals who want to make a difference
overseas but are stvmied by financial and loqistical barriers. Fellows would provide health care, traininq, or technical assistance
in a PEPFAR focus countrv for at least one vear, the report says. GHS also would include a loan-repavmentproqram for student
debt. Anv participants who serve in a focus country could erase $25,000 of hiuher-educationdebt for each vear of service
completed, the report says. Given the heavy student-debt load that health professionals often carry, this incentive would expand
the overall pool of candidates.
Broad CollaborationNeeded
adequate fundinq would be needed to foster i n n ~ ~ a t i ~ e ,
Smooth, quick transfers 01talented people tothe targeted natiom would be v~tal,t k mmmittee said. TOthat end,
long-term ~artnershipsbetween relevant institutions based in the United States and in PEPFAR countries. Such bilateral
arranqements, known as "twinninq," can strenathen institutional work forces in host countries by providina staff to fill vacancies
and to offer specialized traininq and development opportunities. Partners could include hospitals, universities, nongovernmental
organizations, and public health agencies.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I GLOBAL HEALTH CORPS SOLVES DISEASE I


Global Health Services solves AiDS
Washington Post, 4120105 ("Global Health Corps Proposed to Fight AIDS," David Brown, staff writer, Lexis) (Anshu)
The federal ~overnmentshould create a corps of phvsicians, nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians and computer s~ecialistsand
deplov them in the hard-hit countries targeted by Bush administration'sfive-year, $1 5 billion global AlDS proqram, accordingtoa
panel 01 experts. That was Meidea outSned yesterday by a group asked to wme up wlth specrfic suggeslions on how to create one of the key manpower components of Me admnistration's ambitious AlDS plan.
The proposed Global Health Service (GHS) would be an overseas cousin of the domestic one that sends medical workers to
isolated or underserved parts of the county, according to Fitzhugh Mullan, a former U.S. Public Health Service physician who
chaired the panel. "It would be a Peace Corps for health," Muilan said yeslerday. The setvice would ofsroptions including three-year stints by qualified lederal employees
and one-vear comoettivelvawarded fellovshtps.The service would also serve as a clearinqhouse of information where health care professionalscwld learn about oveneas opportunities, public and private. The
W r e of i l e Glooe AICS ~ ~ o r c 1 1 a6:: olne Slate I.epa-rrer. sa 2 . 15re., ewllJ tne rs11:ite d Med c ne repol. A spokesman said l o oecision nas oeen made1.1nL3 whdl, ilany. pans ol t would be adopteo, 01
anciirt eat5 s.on *rc J j be reowed W-I e Ihe pard. xrvened by I 10Inslu:e 01 'dejcme, ackrowleogd r uamed to credle a ner 3rard' af J S. Jwrseas E N 3e dmed pnlnarl y al';mcg A DS, 11JCOno!
''It is ~trateqica~~y
important, it is svmbolicallv important, but it is not inherently the solution,"
offerthe idiaas a magic bullet against the pandemic.
Mullan said. But, he said, GHS would contribute to the ultimate aoal of heleinu foreiqn nationals fiqht AlDS in their own countries.
The law mating the Presidenl's Emergency Plan for AIDS Rel~el{PEPFAR) calls for the creatlon of a "pilot program lor the placement ol health care protessionals in overseas areas severely alfected by HIVIAIDS,
tuberculosis and mabria.' Varbvs organizations Ofler American doctorsand nurses chancesto workoverseas in places of need. For many, the length 01 time is short, ohen three months and sometimes as little as
Wcueeks. m e GHS bows to make it easier for American medical workers to work abroad for longer and more useful periods. Ina 199-
page report. 'ieaie~Ak.oac. Aner :ans R3spondi g lc It: i - ~ n a nRes:.a? CS IS
I n H VIAIZS.' the para pnp3sej an in? a Globa l e a :h Service > J , c ~ 31 1st ~ e r r o c-hey
~ . a3L j oe grvernmerll dlnuoyess
who would be sent to one ol the 15 tarnet countries in PEPFAR -- 12 nations 01subSaharan Afr~ca.~ l u Hatti
s and Guvana n the Caribbean and Vietnam ln Swtheast Asia-and would work there lor three years,
primarilyasadvisen andhainwsto heaithministriesandorganizationn. Inaddition, the plan envisions about 1,000 people from various health fields receivinq
fellowships to work abroad for at least one year for $35,000. While the stipend would be less than what a person's reaular iob
pays, the proqram would be designed to make motivated people believe they can afford to interrupt their career for such work.
I d e a l l v , - think thts gives them [the employees] some leverage that they never had before.' said AndreJacques
Neusy, the director01!he Center for Global Healihat New York University schwl at Medicme. A third COmpOnent would provide money to newly trained phvsicians,
nurses and other health professionals to pav back school loans. One year of work in an approved overseas AlDS prouram would
earn $25,000 in loan repayment. The minimum commitment would be two years. The federal qovernment would not find a iob or
provide a salan, for people seekina to work abroad throuqh this mechanism. Instead, the health workers woutd be emploved by
orqanizations, such as charities and academic institutions, with operations overseas. Christina~oiyah.28,whoisin hersewnd yearat the tJniverstyof
Malyland School of Medolne, said 'debt payment is essential' for many people ike her who want to work in the developng world but feel hey cannot aflord to.

The Global Health Corps would solve US international image and disease; its modeled on the Peace
Corps
Citizens for Global Solutions in 05 ("FRIST INTRODUCES GLOBAL HEALTH CORPS LEGISLATION,"
http:/lwww.qlobalsolutions.orqIhill/in the beltway12005alin the beltway intro healthcorps.htm1 May 2)

On April 29, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) introduced leuislation to create a U.S. Global Health Corps. The bill, co-
sponsored by Senafors Richard Durbin (D-IL), Mike DeWine (R-OH), and Richard Lugar (R-IL), aims to serve foreign populations
with health crises and promote goodwill towards Americans. The leaislation could not have been introduced at a more crucial
-
time. World public opinion of the U.S. is at an all-time low and millions of preventable deaths from disease, malnutrition, and
sanitation problems are seriously disrupting stability and economic development in poor countries. Last year, AIDS, tuberculosis,
and malaria together killed over 6 million people, a number that has grown every year in the last 2 decades. Over 2.4 billion of
the world's 6.1 billion people lack access to basic sanitation, leaving them vulnerable to a host of other serious illnesses.
Economists and security experts agree that strategic investments in basic health and sanitation would give poor people a much-
needed boost to lift themselves out of poverty, as well as improve international security by keeping states away from the brink of
collapse and failure. The Global Health Corns, which would be modeled on the Peace Corps created in 1960 bv President John
F. Kennedy. would stronqlv serve U.S. interests. By promot~nqhealth worldw~de,the Global Health C o r ~ woulds brinq American
generositv and com~assioninto public view. "Within our borders there exists a vast reservoir of talent, knowledge, and
compassion that can help heal our alobal neiqhbors." Frist said. "And bv sharinq these talents with reaions in need, we can
spread health and healinu while bolster~nqour nation's image throuqhout the world." The Corps would provide critical dental
care, san~tat~on,clean water, and health care traininu, as well as disease surveillance services to some of the world's most
underserved populations.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace Corps/Electronic Peace Corps neg

I GLOBAL HEALTH CORPS SOLVES TERRORISM I


A Global Health Corps could solve disease and terrorism
Bill Frist, 2/7/06 ("Corps Diplomacy: A Healthy Approach,", National Review,
http:liwww.nationalreview.com/comment/ffO749.asp) (Anshu)

Thus, I'd like to see the president support, and the Conqress pass, a bipartisan bill I wrote last vear to establish a low-cost,
volunteer-drivenoraanitation focused on public health -a Global Health Corns. The Corps would combine experienced
doctors, nurses, and technicians with those who sign up based on a passion to serve and a willingness to learn. OOnl desperately
poor nations that lack even the most fundamental medical facilities. Coros volunteers could save lives bv showino people the
importance of clean water, sanitation, and first aid. Because it would rely on committed volunteers rather than full-time
employees, it would allow us to deal with these problems w~thoutbusting the budget. Some volunteers would work in areas with
chronic problems and others would stand readv to deploy to places that experience crises. They would serve anvwhere from
davs, to weeks to months. Using syringes and pills rather as their weapons, they would help those on need and simultaneously
advance our campaign against terrorists. Simply fund~ngelaborate programs can only get us so far. We need to demonstrate
our commitment to health on a more personal level. And, based on my experience, I believe that a qroup of American medical
volunteers committed to workinq abroad to help others could provide us with an important and cost-efficient weapon in
the war on terror.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

GLOBAL HEALTH SERVICE CAN RECRUIT ADEQUATE PERSONNEL


The GHS proposal includes an incentive: $35,000 a year for two years of service
The Wall Street Journal, 05 (April 20, "Panel Suggests a "Peace corps" to fight AIDS,"
http:llwww.globalhealthsciences,ucsf.edulnewslpadianwallst,aspx) (Anshu)

To fill the yawning doctor qap in manv AIDS-stricken countries, a medical advison, board is callinq for the creation of an AlDS
"Peace Cows" to send U.S. doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health-care workers abroad to treat patients and train
caregivers. Access to cheap generic AlDS drugs has exploded in recent years, but a critical shortaqe of health-care workers has
stymied the PrOareSSof manv treatment PrOqramS. The Instituteof Mdicine, an affiliate of me NationalAcademy of Sciences in Washington. D.C., proposed launchingwhat h calls
the U.S. Global Health Service in its report 'Heaiers Abroad: Amencans Responding tome Human Resources Crisis in HIVIAIDS.' Fohugh Mullen, professor of pediatrics and public health at George Washington
University and the report's aulhor, sald the Global Healh Service eventually could reach more muntries and treat more Ran just AIDS. 'The Global Health S e ~ c eIS a vehicle of Amerlcan compassion that's long
overdue,' he sad. !Ialso is 'a strategically important way to use cur health care sector.' Envisionedunder the proposal is a ~elecfCorps of 150 AIDS phvsicians and other
specialists, who would qive two years of service as federal emplovees in exchanqe for $225,000 in salarv and benefits for the
period. Additional fellowships, perhaps 100 to start with, would be available to early and rnidcareer professionals, pavinq $35,000
in exchanqe for a vear of service. And a debt-for-serviceplan would offer an initial 100 qraduates of medical school and other
health-caretraininq loan repavments of as much as $25,000 a vear for two years of service. "Twinning" partnerships would send
U.S. professionals to fill in for local health-careworkers who receive training outside their native country. The State Department's
Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator requested the report. Certain aspects. such as loan reoavment, would require leqislation,
Dr. Mullen said, but leqislation probably wouldn't be needed to send health workers overseas. -1tthe administrationt ~ ~ k t h i s s e r iwilhin ~ ~ ~ayearor
~y,
two you could have a substantial pari of this n the field.' he said. A spokeswoman for the Global AIDS Coordinator RandaiiTobas sad officials were poringover the !OM report and Iwas premature to givea
timetable for action. "Since we requested this repori and on a short timeframe, we celtainly wdl waste no time reviewing as findings.' she said. In a separate move yesterday, Senate Majority Leader 0111Frist, a
Tennessee Republican, introduceda bii to mobilize U.S. dmton, nurses and other health profess~onals abroad. The Global Health Corps Act ol2005 would sirnib* deploy a mix of both doctors as federal
employees, plus private-sectorheaith-careprofessionalsas volunteers. His program, which wouidnl be limited to AlDS treatment,wouid fall under the Deparlmentof Health and Human Services. l h e IOM proposal.
at least at lirst, would focus on the 15 countries receiving the hon's share ot aid available under the Presidents Emergency Program lor AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, a State Deparlment program. Some internatonalhealth
workers, wh~lecalling the proposal a postive step, expressed concern that the program would be limited to those countries and not available more widely. The I 5 Peplar countries that the Global Heaiih Service
would
~- ~ idtialiv
~,~ -~
tametare Botswana. lvorv Coast. Ethiooia. Guwna. Hati. Kenya. Mozambiaue. Namibia. Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzanla, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia. Peter Piot, drector of the Joint United
ha2ons C.ograrrne cn t.!VtA DS, kr3;n as J~AIDS,cal1eu-f.r FruooAl 'vkcore anc :mcly' D J,rge'Jinn: ~ tnc do lrteers hork In teans eo bCily. He Sam Ihe ccms sh0u.j oe rlred to wader p3 ci.obiectwcs.
10. B X J ~ J C to cnsuz hesth.care workers n poor collntr es get cecer wdgfs. The recnrmel'of lhe oeuebpirg *orlJ's coct3r$t9 oencr.pay8r.g lots in N o ~ tAmer , ca enfl E ~ r o contnbut~s
p 13 Ine brafnd . I~m the
deve1op:ng wo~lc.'lmt it a 01 amnird Dr..' Plot sac 'nat w? t,en sern n,.rses aIJ jman :o' ll s1o.s n Allca trar nade >ern empPec t y o ~ .c:r~ltncnt
r polales!' Vancj 'aolan, zssoniate flirmor 51 the Glooal
desrh Sc er:es Prcgrar at Ire -3ver:: ty ol Cal Ioma j a r Fanciscn. s?d Pcpfar tsc ' rn..la fxarfrbate rfIre n c'meaic; pelsorn? in s m e c>~nirlesn l ham bv ADS. 'Zoroabwe s tla n r g n,rses. docto's
anr nlie: heilh-care WCKE.S 'she sad, aro Ine Pewly mnted womes mg'ate ?en d m 'J Zarnlr~aal'l Ro'r~ana.t uec by Peptar t.nds ano p'oqrams'ley lack at hone. Imp emenl cg tie 'EDOrtS prJp3sals woda
cojl ~ b o $100s n I on a yeart:. the lust veer, or aboit 3% of Peplar's b~aqel.A b c ~$35 t ni icn o' this w o d~ go :omar? .Jramg 'Ie eltz corps r suoseqJcrn: years, i' tho l ~ l l b ect
r lelloasnlp alc 1 ~ : m -
repayment recipients rose to, say, I,WDfrom too, the oost could rise to $140million a year, the reporl'sauthors aid. Among the report's dherlindings: Few African nations have more than
one general doctor for even, 5,000 people. Rampinq up AlDS treatment stretches their already-thin human resources. Rwanda
has one physician for even/ 53,374 people: Mozambique has one for 41,060,

THE GHS PROPOSAL WOULD OFFER ADEQUATE INCENTIVES TO RECRUIT ENOUGH PERSONNEL
The Lancet 05 ("A US Led Peace Corps for Health," Apr 30-Mav 6,2005.Vo1.365, Iss. 9470; pg. 1516, 1 pgs)

Nearly 45 years later, but at a rather more decent hour, a "Peace Corps for Health" was ~roposed.On April 19, the US Institute
of Medicine published Healers abroad: Americans respondina to the human resource crisis in HIVIAIDS, which outlines a
proposal to send US health-care professionals to 15 countries hard-hit bv HIV/AIDS. These 15 countries, in Africa, the
Caribbean, and southeast Asia, are the focus of the President's Emerqency Plan for AlDS Relief (PEPFAR). The core of the
prouosed Global Health Service (GHS) is a small qrouo of full-time US health professionals (150 in the first year) who would
work alonqside local providers, aiminq to bolster those countries' abilities to fiqht AIDS, tuberculosis. and malaria. GHS
participants would provide clinical services, traininq, and help in technical and management areas identified as priorities bv each
country's health ministry and local PEPFAR teams. In addition to the senior-leadershipcore, a fellowship programme would
provide opportunities for professionals in their early or mid-careers.As an incentive, participants could receive education-loan
repavments of up to US$25 000 for evew vear of service thev complete.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I MEDICAL PEACE CORPS SOLVENCY ANSWERS-DDI VERSION I


THEIR TARNOFF EVIDENCE IS NEGATIVE-HE CONCLUDES INCREASING NUMBERS IS IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE OF POOR MANAGEMENT
PRACTICES, AND THAT THE PROBLEM ISN'T SKILLED PROFESSIONAL DOCTORS-ITS MISMANAGEMENTBY PROFESSIONAL EXECUTIVES
Tarnoff, 05 (Curt, Specialist in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, The Peace Corps: Current
Issues", CRS Report for Congress, 10/19, http:l/ncseonline.orglNLEiCRSreporlslO50RS2l168.pdf)

Program and Management Issues. Members of Congress appear to have been concerned that even an increase in the size of
the Peace Corw more modest than that oriqinallv envisioned miqht exacerbate existina weaknesses or create strains in its
operations. Both House and Senate legislationin the 108th Congress stressedthe importanceto Peace Corps's effectiveness of improved strategic planning
and H.R. 4060. the House bill that addressed security issues, called for a report on the extent to which work assignments are well-developed and volunteers are
suitable for them. No matter the outcome of the expansion effort, Congress may continue to pay particular attention to how the agency addresses recruitment,
programming, and support of volunteers. The recruitment of volunteers with appropriate skills and willingness to live in unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable
conditions is essential to the overall mission of the Peace Corps. A substantial spike in applicants and those expressing interest in applying since September
11 has made it easier for the Peace Corps to meet its recruitment goals. In FY2004, 148,216 people expressed an interest in the Peace Corps (up from 94,463
in FYZOOl), 13,249 actually applied (8,897 in FY2001),and 3,811 became trainees (3,191 in FY2001). The aaencv, however, while adept at
recruitins qeneralists and providing them with sufficient training to carry out useful assignments, has not emphasized the
provision of hiahlv skilled professionals, such as doctors, agronomists, or engineers, which, many argue, more accurately reflects the current
needs of developing countries. Weighed against this view is the belief that the Peace Corps is an agency of public diplomacy as much as it is a development
organization, and personal interaction, and demonstration of U.S. values is as important as providing technical expertise. TO accommodate more
hiqhlv skilled personnel. the Peace Corps miaht have to chanae many existina practices, includinq methods of recruitment,
trainina, nroarammina, and perhaps even terms of service. The Peace Corps has been criticized in the past for providing.
inadequate proarammins and sup~ortof volunteers. This view was reflected in a 1990 Government Accountability Off ice
(m) investigation (Peace Corps: Meeting the Challenges of the 1990s, May 1990, NSIAD-90-122). It noted that some
volunteers had little or nothing to do or had spent six or more months developinq their own assiunments, without benefit of site
visits bv Peace Corps staff. The GAO attributed the proqrammina problem to a failure of planning, evaluation, and monitoring
SyS~emS.Since then, the Peace Corps maintains that it has addressed these weaknesses with systematic approaches to project development, annual
project reviews, and increased opportunities for site visits and volunteer feedback. However, incidents ~ ~ ~ q e s tpoor
i n qproqramminq and staff
support still occur, although their frequency and depth is not known, and, one siqn of volunteer dissatisfaction-the attrition
rate - remains arguably hiqh at 30.5% (2002).

THEIR STENCEL AND VINES SOLVENCY EVIDENCE IS NEGATIVE EVIDENCE-IT IS A STAFF REPORT ON THE INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE'S
RECOMMENDATION OF THE GLOBAL HEALTH SERVICE--IT JUST EQUATES THE GLOBAL HEALTH SERVICE AS A PROGRAM SIMILAR TO THE
PEACE CORPS
Stencel and Vines, 05 (Christine and Vance, "A Peace Corps f o r Global Health", I n focus magazine,
htt~://infocusmaaazine.orq/5.2/hs alobal health service.html) (Note: t h i s is t h e entire article)

Every day, 14,000people across the world contract HIV and another 8,500 die from AIDS. The global effort that's necessary to combat the rapid spread of
HlVlAlDS has no precedent. The volume of trained health care workers and support personnel needed to provde lifelong care for people with an incurable
disease far surpasses what was needed to tackle smallpox, polio, or any other previous public health crlsk. Nothinq less than a Peace Corps-scale
continqent of health care professionals and other experts should be mobilized to plan, carrv out, and sustain a campaian aaainst
the disease, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The report envisions a new Global Health Service with a pivotal
"service corps" amOnQits many ek?ments -- a cadre of full-time, salaried clinicians, educators, and managers who travel overseas to work with other
U.S. colleagues already in place and local counterparts in running treatment and prevention programs for HlVlAlDS as well as malaria and tuberculosis, diseases
which often overlap with and are exacerbated by HIV/AIDS. Some 150 U.S. health professionals should be selected in the first year of the program for
assignments lasting at least two years in hard-hit African, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian countries. Corps members would help train local professionals in
addition to conducting hands-on treatment of patients or other activities. Of course, the skilled professionals who are promising recruits for the service corps may
have tens of thousands of dollars in debt remaining from their education and professionaltraining, or mortgages, career commitments, and other ties that can
make it difficult for them to travel abroad for an extended period. To encourage participation,incentivessuch as competitive salaries, a fellowship program
offeringawards of $35,000 annually, and a scholasmc toan repayment program that would provide $25,000 lor each completed year of service in the corps should
be used to expand the pool of candidates. These initiatives could mobilize thousands of health personnelto work abroad, providing desperatety needed expertise
in countries beset by critical shortages of doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals.There is only one physicianfor every 30,000 people in
Mozambique and one nurse for every 5,000 Ugandans. Rwanda has just 11 pharmacists. "The dearth of qualified and trained workers in many low-income
nations Dresents the sinale areatest obstacle to stemming the spread of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis,"said study chair Fitzhugh Mullan. "Members of the
--
Global ~ e a l t hService cLrpHwould offer both concrete assistance and hope for these nations by multiplyingessential skills and services.' O Christine Srencel
& Vanee Vines
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace Corps/Electronic Peace Corps neg

I MEDICAL PEACE CORPS SOLVENCY ANSWERS-DDI VERSION I


THEIR DAYTON DAILYNEWS EVIDENCE ISN'T ABOUT THE PLAN-AT DESCRIBES THE LACK OF PROFESSIONAL MANAGERS IN THE PEACE
CORPS AS IT RELATES TO SAFETY CONCERNS-NOT ONLY CAN THEY NOT ACCESS THIS EVIDENCE, IT PROVES THEY CAN'T SOLVE THEIR AFF
Dayton Daily News, 03 (editorial, "Peace Corps mission begs reassessment", 1111,
(This is the entire article)
http:l/www.daytondailynews.comlproject~contenffproject~peacecorpsldaily/l101corps.html)

The Peace Corps' prestige and standing with the American public are grounded in the agency's image of youthful idealism. But
the mystique doesn't square with the agency's performance in the field. Indeed, the aaencv has ieouardized its mission bv
neqlectina its volunteers - a svstemic failure of lonq-standinathat goes to the heart of the Peace Corps' intearity. The problems
can't be ignored - especially in light of President George W. Bush's goal to double the number of volunteers during the next
several years. Image and reality are so wildly out of alignment Congress should reappraise the agency from top to bottom. In
response to this week's Dayton Daily News' series "Casualties of Peace," U.S. Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine have
requested that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee schedule hearings. The aoal should be to strenuthen the corns by
focusinq its mission and ensurino it adeuuatelv prepares and protects volunteers. Throughout its more than 40-year history, the
Peace Corps has occupied a singular place in America's foreign service that's unconventional and inspiring. Peace Corps
personnel aren't careerists learned in foreign affairs; they're citizen volunteers recruited to bring an American presence to remote
lands and provide humanitarian aid during two-year tours. The volunteers represent the United States as citizens, seeking to
build good will abroad as ordinary Americans living among and working with the indigenous people. For tens of thousands, the
Peace Corps has provided an unsurpassed sense of achievement and wonderment. Most cherish the experience. But obiective
measurements of the aaencv's ~erformancehave revealed serious flaws, virtuallv since the aaencv's inception. The problems
have a common theme: Chronic lack of discipline in oraanization and accountabilitv in operations. In their stories this week,
Dayton Daily News reporters describe disturbing accounts of young volunteers being posted in remote and dangerous parts of
~ -

thiworld -often alone - with little orientation, inadequate training and almost no supervision. These aren't aberrations.
Officials charged with assessing Peace Corps management and security during the past decade attest to that. What the agency
must do to turn this situation around is well understood (and was recorded as early as 1978, in Keeping Kennedy's Promise: The
Peace Corps' Unmet Hope of the New Frontier, a remarkable account of agency dysfunction during its first 15years that
continues to this day). Reform means ~rofessionalizinaPeace Corus manaqement and operations abroad. Concrress, for
instance, must require the aaencv to improve and implement specific standards for volunteer traininq, orientation and securitf -
standards that are commensurate with the complexities and risks of different foreign posts. The agency ethos of young
generalists serving as volunteers has real value. But for volunteers to remain safe, and their service to amount to more than
make-work, thev must be supported by hiqhlv aualified hands abroad. Professionafizina the Peace Corus manaqement in this
wav will be expensive, and require the apencv to be more selective in where it sends volunteers. But an ideal that cuts corners
and endangers its people isn't worlh pursuing, much less expanding.

(their Time Magazine evidence is the only card that supports their plan: and it doesn't say medical service corps is key
to recruitment, it says creating new slots is key to recruitment)-here's their ev:

A medical service corps inside the peace corps is key t o recruitment and overall peace corps
effectiveness
Time Magazine, 11/05, "Give Bush his due f o r his efforts o n AIDS, Former President Bill Clinton said
today", http://www.time.com/time/2005/globalhealth/pressreleases/l10205~Clinton.pdf

Clinton endorsed "Medical Peace Corps": The Peace Corps should start a medical division to fight global disease, Clinton said.
"We should maybe create a medical service corps inside the peace corps," Clinton said. "We could make it part of the service."
Clinton said the Peace Corps could provide more positions for health workers, noting that Americorps, which puts people into
service in poor areas of the US., deployed 400,000 Americans into service in the last ten years - many more times than the
Peace Corps did because the Corps didn't provide enough positions. "If you create the slots, people will fill them," he said.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I GEEK CORPS COUNTERPLAN 1NC I


The United States federal government should fund the Geek Corps sufficiently to expand its numbers of personnel up to an
equivalent to the number the plan provides for the Peace Corps, and to expand the Geek Corps to an equivalent number of
countries that the Peace Corps operates in.

THE GEEK CORPS WILL ACCEPT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR EXPANSION


Rieffel2003 (Lex, non resident Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, The Peace Corps in a Turbulent World, October 27,
http://www,brookings.edu/viewslpapers/rieffel20031015.pdf)

Another federallv supported proqram that sends volunteers overseas is the International Executive Service Corps. t recruits
business experls, mostly for short-term assignments, to help businesses in developing countries with specific technical or managerial problems. Established in
1964 and funded in part by USAID, the IESC has a roster of 12,000 volunteers (mostly retired, hence the nickname Paunch Corps) and offices in more than 55
countries. The Geek Coras, saecializina in computer skills and other hiah-tech specialties, is a division of IESC.18

Expanding public-private partnerships for global technology development solves the case
Harold Raveche, president of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., 1999 ("Peace Corps Needs to Go High-Tech for
lnternet Age" http://peacecorpsonline.orglmessageslmessages/2629/3935.html)

MMuch has been written about the technolo~vaap between the rich and poor in America. But it's nothina compared with the
technoloqv canyonthat separates the United States and other developed nations from places like Banaladesh, most of Africa
and India. OOPerhaps the new dotcom world needs a wake-up call, or a crowbar, to redirect it to serve mankind in nobler ways than it does now. LONewton
Minow, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, was right: We've taken the revolutionary advancement of television and created a vast
wasteland, a video world devoted to our pleasures and appetites. Are we taking the lnternet world and making an even bigger wasteland? DLetk get serious
about how we use this new technology. If we raise standards, we can redesign cyberspace with content that provides more services to those in need.
can we bridqe the technoloqv breach between the haves and the have-nots and create an lnternet to help countries like
Bangladesh? [owe could start with incentives to entrepreneurs to develop educational software. There is a wsh to wire every American
school so students can have lnternet access, but precious little is being done to provide software for educational programs. UTThere'smuch more profi in other
activities like on-line retailing. In fact, on-line pornography outfits have more sophisticated software than even university-leveleducational programs. ffiwhv not
start a private foundation. with e-commerce ahilanthropists' arovidinq incentives to Banqladeshi software develo~ersto fund
educational software? [OThe private sector and the U.S. aovernment could establish a sort of national technoloqv corps to
develop lnternet technoloqy for nations like Banqladesh. This public-privatepartnership would motivate entrepreneurs to help
Banqladesh and other struqqlinq countries become part of the lnternet business world. @Membersof this "tech corps" could serve a
year or two in another countly, developing an infrastructurefor lnternet commerce that would promote greater capabilities for tech-based business. mThese
young adults would provide these countries with the bare essentials of technoloqv, much as Peace Corps volunteers did with
aaricultural in the 1960s. mBut these programs won't be rehashes of the "pie in the sky' giveaway programs of the 1960s. mWith the enormous wealth
being created in the dotcom world and the federal surplus (created in part by e-commerce profits), there is enough in the federal budget for such international
outreach. mBut it requires leaders in the private and federal sectors who understand the growing worldwide economic gap as well as visionaries to see what can
be done to close it. mWhy not make this an issue in the upcoming presidentialelection? Certainly this would be much more substantial than asking candidates if
they know the names of foreign leaders. Waking a difference worldwide will take a willingness by Americans to share part of their great prosperity (again,
generated by the New Economy and ecommerce). [Hllf Americans do not make international economic development a mai0r issue, the aaD
with countries like Banqladesh will surely widen to the point where revolution, war and famine are sure to erupt. [OSuch scourqes
have alreadv ended up at our doorster, in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda, and more will certainlv follow. 0a is in our enlightened self-
interest to share our technological know-how and wealth. The thousands of Bangladeshi kids sleeping on curb sides at night deserve a sliver of our good fortune.

There's zero solvency deficit according t o their l a c authors


David H. Rothman, author of Networld! and other tech-related books, 1996 ("It's Time to Consider an Electronic Peace Corps!"
http:/lpeacecorpsonline.orglmessages/messagesl2629/3934.htmI)

A real EPC does not exist. But it could. Already the basic plan has won support from such people as Roger Nicholson,former worldwide training
director of the Peace Corps; Arthur C. Clarke, father of the communications satellite; and conservativecolumnist William F. Buckley Jr., who was keen on the
idea as far back as 1984 ("a concrete proposal available to anyone mnning for president of the United States-or for re-election").m h e EPC concept is simple:
muse cellular radio technology, computers, and other electronics to speed up the flow of technical and medical information from countly to country and within
countries. The EPC could be part of the exist in^ Peace Corps or else be an independent agency. Other nations, moreover, might
want to start their own. IHere is how the EPC could help fight the hypothetical epidemic and otherwise aid the Third World.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I GEEK CORPS 2NC SOLVENCY 1


Geekcorps are the best organization t o promote technology in developing countries-the Peace Corps development
model fails.
Nicholas Thompson, Markle Fellow at the New America Foundation,2002. ("Geekcorps tries the dot-com model in Africa"
http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/1008328.html)

CCRA, Ghana - If you're a Generation-X computer programmerwith free time, some cash, and a hankering to change the world, the Geekcorps wants you. If you
can tolerate open sewers and meandering goats, so much the better. Based in Amherst, Mass., the nonprofit Geekcoms sends vounq computer
profyrammers to technoloqv startup ~0mpanie~ in Ghana. The geeks live in the capital of this bustling West African nation, and volunteer in four-
month shilts, passing on their skills and helping the companies grow. As its name implies, Geekcorps is looselv based on the Peace CO~DS. But
Geekcorps hasn't just traded shovels for motherboards. The seeks want to tty something rare for Americans who trek to Africa
lo help - boostina the ~rivatesector. To these geeks - whose idols wrote code instead of marching on Washington -development comes from
doing well, not just from doing good. The Peace Corps' focus on buildinq schools, bridges and the like is admirable, but not enouqh,
they say. "The Peace Corps has had the same development model for 40 vears. Either thev're not doina it verv well here or it's
not the right model," said Stophe Landis, who now runs Geekcorps' Accra office. The organization was founded in February 2000 by Ethan
Zuckerman, a young programmer based in North Adams, Mass., who earned millions in the dot-corn boom and wanted to do something to help a country that he
had v~sitedto study drumming. The organization, which is partnered with the US Agency for InternationalDevelopment, has a few Geeks in Bulgaria, Armenia
and Lebanon, but Ghana is its heart. So far, about 35 Geeks have passed through the program. The working cond~tionsare exciting if not easy: Earning $100 a
week in a very poor country with lotsof malar~a,not a lot of roads, and a technology sector that seems to be booming as the rest of the economy spins around.
Not surprisingly, the corps attracts volunteers who are ambitious and adventurous. Jonathan Wong, for example, cashed out of a gmphics-
design company he cofounded in Toronto and applied to Geekcorps because he wanted to see more of the world. Now, he's working for a company called Skao
x is packed with high technology - ~acintoshG4s, printing presses, and scanners - much of it donated by a Danish foreihaid organization. But the
~ r a i h i th&
phone hasn't worked for weeks, the power goes off all the time, and a giant machine called an image setter takes up nearly an entire room without anyone
knowing how to work it. "We plugged it in a few months ago and it started smoking," Wong said. "We've been too scared to plug it in ever since." Because Skao
Graphix fills a growing economic niche in Ghana, the company has plenty of jobs right now, but it can't fill many of them -which may not be surprising given
Ghana's dilapidatedhigher-educationsystem and that few people in the country have familiarity with project management or even computers. Wong is
essentially running the company now since no one else has much experience and the president just took off tor a few weeks on unknown business. "It's kind of
like Peter Pan now, with all these kids running around," he said. And the inexperience of the staff shows. Skao recently delivered business cards to a company
six months late and printed 30 stacks ol brochures for a company that wanted 300. "In a couple of years, we'll either be really big, or we won't exist at all," Wong
said. Wong's main task is to train a young woman named Dzazior Adanu in graphics programs such as Photoshop and Adobe Illustiator. Adanu works 1Bhour
days and said that she truly enjoys her work at Skao. On a recent morning, she was making an identificationcard for patients at Ghana's Planned Parenthood.
She also said that Wong has taught her so much that she wants three more Geekcorps members to pin the company. But Adanu also demonstrates what Accra
office manager Landis calls Geekcorps' biggest problem: Now that she's been trained, Adanu wants to leave Ghana and earn money elsewhere, defeating
Geekcorps' original goal of building capabilities in Ghana. At $130 a month, her salary is good for a country with a yearly per-capita income of less than $400, but
she knows that she could earn vastly more in America. Plus, Skao's office wouldn't pass muster in the United States.. Since there's no running water, employees
have to carry buckets from a tap in a house next door every time they want lo flush the toilet. Still, even as nlanv C O I T I P ~ ~fold ~ ~ and
S Skao
Graphics sputters, Ghana's information-technoloavindustry is arowinq fast. Four years ago, there was one Internetcafe in Accra where
members of the public could surf the Web over lunch. Today, there are 200 and a good outfielder could throw a baseball from Geekcorps headquarters through
the windows of at least a half-dozen. Meanwhile, computer schools are churnina out vouna araduates who want to found their own
companies and much of the rest of the c o u n t ~is qettina mechanized- even if sometimes through rickety computersthatneed plastic covers to
keep the Northern dust out. The military hospital outside of Accra has a networked computer connected to the lnternet through fiber-optic lines in every room.
"Ghana is seen as just another place in Africa, that continent with jungles. But there are cities here with iust as many opportunities as cities in
the United States, " Landis said. "Ghanaians are strivinq to have this be iust one other country that competes with other
counfries, and that's what we want to help with." Although most of the neighbors don? know Geekcorps exists, much less how to pronounce i t m
group already has assisted with some of Ghana's most important technoloaical innovations. One "geek" helped set up a wireless system
for one of Africa's largest Internet service providers in order to help bring the Internet to rural communities. Another helped develop payroll and inventory
management applications for Ghana's largest sofiware company - while working out of a shipping container. Other geeks in Ghana with Wong right now have
found more success. Christian Skogh works for a rapidly growing software company called Rancard Solutions, whose chief executive officer, Kofi Dadzie,sounds
like a Yahoo! executive in 1996, talking confidently of expanding from eight employees to 5,000 within a couple of years. John McNamara has helped train
Alrican programmers for a growing software company called Persol that helps Ghanaian companies with tasks such as inventory management. According to
Persol's CEO, Michael Quarshire, "Geekcorpsis really plugged in and they help us fill a gap. Education is poor here and they have a lot to teach us." Other
nonprofits also send experts to the developing world like Geekcorps, but Geekcorps stands alone in promoting hiqh I e c h n o l ~ ~ y
in the lowest technolaov part of the world. "It sounds like a great idea," said Peter Frumkin, who teaches philanthropy at Harvard University's Kennedy
School of Government. He said there is a risk, however, that Geekcorps will only be a temporary boost for the local high-technologyindustry. "If it's not married
with any followup, it may be a nice break. But I am not sure where it leads them."
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THE GEEKCORPS IS THE BEST MODEL FOR EXPANDING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY GLOBALLY-PEACE CORPS PROPOSALS ARE MODELED
ON IT

Hawley, 01 (Michael, Technology Review, "A Technology Corps", November, ebsco)

In August of 1961, the first Peace Corps volunteers stepped onto the tarmac in Accra, Ghana. By the end of 1963,7,300 volunteers were working in more than
40 countries; by 1966, the ranks had swelled to more than 15,000 in about 60 countries. And that, alas, was the peak. Under the pall of the war in Vietnam, the
movement shrank. The good news is that President Clinton "expanded" the Peace Corps--lo 10,000. The bad news is that pitifully few Peace Corps workers
have the kind of training that enables them to transfer the best ideas from Western labs into developing countries. Most volunteers have backgrounds in
business, education, health care or ecology. A thin slice of the pie, about four percent, falls into the category of 'other." And in that sliver you find technologists.
It's a hugely disappointing minority. Why SO few COmpUteI' scientists and eflqifleer~join the Peace Corps is unclear. Perhaps it's because
mast technologists are trained in environments that require a lot of infrastructure and support in order to push through to the next discovely. It's hard to break
new technological ground in a subsistence village. Another factor could be that there's a very well oiled path from the university into the high-tech job sector.
Most people who start down that path stay on it. There are, however, rays of hope. One fledcllinq approach that directlv addresses the "four
percent problem" is Geekcoms (www.geekcorps.org). Launched by Ethan Zuckerman, who cofounded the successful Web service company Tripod,
Geekcorps sends SWAT teams of technologists into the field to give the world's poorest people access to the Internet. The
Geekcorps folk work with local communities to build the infrastructure needed to bootstrap local businesses. In an interesting echoof
the Peace Corps, this outft too began in Ghana. In fact, that's where the idea first came to Zuckerman: he went there on a Fulbright scholarship in 1993.
Geekcorus volunteers spend four months on the ground in develo~inanations, workinq to help partner businesses on a technical
-
level. This corps of people and backers is laraelv drawn from the pool of successful U.S. technocrats. one volunteer, fw example, came
from the management and technology consulting firm Accenture, where she became an advocate for more corporate involvement in developing-worldefforts. The firm now has several
initiatives looking at how developing nations can embrace nformation technology to achieve economic growth. Getting a taste of the reality in Ghana, through One of its empioyees,
translated Into boundless energy and fresh leadership lor Accenturwnd thal energy is what keeps these companiesthriving. Often, through these experiences, new opportunities
arise for both volunteers and their partners in developing nations. Armenia Nercessian de Oliveirawas a United Nations onicial for 16 years. Working in hardship countries, she saw
many beautiful local handcrafts and was struck by what happened to them en route to the world market. tn Alrica, she saw handcratted masks being sold for $15; back in the States,
Bloomingdale'swould sell the same mask for $300. Enter Novica United, founded by Nercessan with her daughter and son-in-law. Novica applies an Amazon.like approach to the
marketing and distribution of local handcrafts from around the world. By connecting local offices in dozens of countries to the Internet. Novica has organized a vast online catalogue of
goods created by thousands 01 regional artists. These items can then be sold directly to consumers at far below Bloomingdale'sprices, returninga much greater profit to the allists. For
the recipient, each little gilt, each product Novica ships, is a key that opens a doorway to another parl of the world-a tangible, evocative connection to a living artisan, a person w%ha
name, face and lile story. Novica profits because its networked approach elimnates legions ol middlemen. At the same time, the company is promoting a new kind of sawy eco-
consumerism. This is a "good karma" company par excellence. Novica's business, il it succeeds, could help conserve indigemus crafts and cultures. Like Geekcorps, it is pursuing a
path that heightens public awareness, enriches communities, elevates tastes and deepens sensibilities.As technology evolves, it is imporlant, and I would argue critical, to be able to
hold in one hand an ingenious handmade toy lrom Ghana and in the other some sort of beeping, blinking. battery-powered, computer-infused techno-toy. Ponderingthe difference
between the two will help us come to grips with what sorts of artifacts we want to surround ourselves with and why. In my last column, I argued how vital it is for scientists and
technologists to get into the field and immerse themselves in reality, up to their eyeballs in dinerent ecologies, diflerent cultures, different ways ol thinking and doing. Now more than
ever, the world is our laboratory. We are connected to each other through a fresh matrix of instant communication and easy travel. Burgeoningmasses of people are constantly
transforming the world. Humans have changed the climate, reshapedthe land, harnessed rivers and extinguished species. Science gives us tools to change the world in incredibleways
and at a frightening pace. But it can also help us restore some of what has been lost; it is also our m p a s s for navigating the future. The question is: Who knows how to wield that
compass?The answer cannot come solely from scientists who have lived their lives in a lab. It must come lrom a new generation of technologists who have an active, first-hand sense
of the world: scientists who know what the spirit of sewice means because they have served; engineers who have not just a textbook understandingof a problem, but who have had
liberating experiences in settings that range from inner cities to outer wildernesses; inventors who know not only how to invent things, but how the processes of invention can hdp
nourish a healthy, sustainable community. The idea of dispatching volunteers with technological expertise to different pans of the world is gaining momentum. The MIT Media
Laboratory, in collaboration with Haward University'sCenter for InternationalDevelopment, recently launcheda consortium called "Digital Nations." The wnsortium aims at bringing a
broad set of next.generation technology projects,from e-commerceto health technology, to people In developing regions The U.S.Deparlment of State formed the Global Technalom,
Corps, which enlsts volunteers to share their skills in a number ol areas, such as Web development or information science, with people around the globe. The leaders ol the G8 (major
industrialized countries)formedthe DigitalOpportunity Task Forceto work on bridgingthe digital divide. Venture groups from Softbank to the World Bank are actively spurring new
economic activity in developing regions. This 1s encouraging news, but there's a long way to go. Right now, only seven graduates of MIT and four from Cakech are enrolled in the Peace
Corps. Andthat just won? do.

Public-private partnerships solve the EPC better than they do-it avoids federal bureaucracy
David H. Rothman, author of Networld! and other tech-related books, 1996 ("It's Time to Consider an Electronic Peace Corps!"
http:i/peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages1262913934.html)

Along wlth the EPC proposal, 1'11 offer caveats. First off, the organization ideally will emphasize basics such as health and agriculture and
not wander off into, say, cultural exchanaes. The EPC mustn't be a glorified pen pal service. mSecond, let's not spawn a qiant bureaucracy
overniqht. The aaencv could start as a series of small, closelv monitored pilot proiects. Not all should be "in house." Whv not
have some run by private orqanizations used to operatinq on tiqht budqets? And why not tap the technical expertise of sophisticated
amateur radio operators and computer hackers, many of whom still harborthe old barn-raiser spirit? fflThird, the EPC should build on existina efforts
rather than duplicate them. Perhaps it could help fund experiments such as a low- cost communications satellite proiect started
bv Volunteers in Technical Assistance to improve communications in remote parts of the world without telephone service. Also,
the EPC should work hand in hand with international Qrouus,such as the World Health Orqanization. mFourth, computer and electronic
experts should not run the EPC. Health professionals, agricultural administrators, economic development experts--1hey are the ones who should set the tone.
The techies should serve the "end users," not the other way around.
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I GEEK CORPS 2NC SOLVENCY I


EXPANDING THE GEEK CORPS CAN CLOSE THE DIGITAL DIVIDE AND PROMOTE SUPERIOR INFORMATION SHARING
Krotoski, 05 (Aleks, Technology Review, "Geeks to the Corps", 2/16,
http:l/www.technoloovreview.comlread article.aspx?id=l4202&ch=infotech)

While the Peace Corps builds houses, lays pipes and teaches chemistry, the International Executive Service CorpslGeekcorps
has a more high-tech raison d' etre. Since early 2000, the charitable organization has been sendinq programmers, network
desiqners and technical support to cities in some of the most impoverished nations in the world. Geekcorps was conceived after
Tripod co-founder Ethan Zuckerrnan visited Ghana in 1993. Inspired to narrow the digital divide, Zuckerman set up the initial
program with six volunteers who were sent to Ghanaian city of Accra to develop Web applications and banking software with
local companies. Since then, the orqanization has grown to 1,600 volunteers sttonq, and pulls its members from companies such
as Netscape Communications and the United Kinadom's Department of Trade. Those who make it throuqh the riqorous selection
process then take part in a three-to-four month tour aimed at transferrtna their computinq knowledqe into sustainable systems
that can be used in impoverished regions in eleven countries across the qlobe. Geekcorps volunteers are assigned to a partner
business based upon their experience and the local needs of places where information technology already plays an important
part in the development of the economy. With their technical know-how and specialties, the geeks bring high-tech solutions to the
local business challenges, which included everything from developing e-business infrastructuresto establishing communication
models. "One preconceived notion of which I had to disabuse myself was that the so-called Information Revolution has
completely passed Malians by," explains Mali-based Geek Peter Baldwin. "This is simply not true. IT just looks a little different
here." One major difference for these areas, if the Geek Corps has its way, will be that IT will look much freer with the help of
open source software. The emphasis on libertarian software tools is a recent addition to the IESClGeekcorps armorv. In the past,
and usually at the behest of on-site companies, the army of geeks relied upon proprietary languages and packages like Java and
Photoshop to help set up localized solutions that were quick to implement and easy to use. In the short term and for
organizations which were able to meet the expense, this was an ideal way to connect with the rest of the world. Legally,
however, this was a hot potato. The IESClGeekcorps is supported by private and corporate bodies and government grants, and
--
their use licensed systems which were sometimes hacked -- led to unintentional support for thriving markets in pirated
applications. That meant, for practical purposes, finding Linux-basedsolutions became a necessity for the Geekcorps. "As a U.S.
Government funded program, we cannot condone the theft of intellectual property," says program manager Wayan Vota. "We've
found that open source software has reached a level of maturity where it can offer the functionality that rivals the proprietary
systems. In addition, the total cost of ownership profile is perfect for developing countries". Open software also relieved the
burden that some volunteers faced when they would be implementing solutions from rival companies. The message of
Geekcorps is community solutions, not global competition. That means volunteers who enjoy their tours with the support of home
businesses leave their brand loyalty at the airport. The projects they take on are designed for, created by and maintained by the
locals, which arguably keeps local qualified technicians in work and in their homes. "One of the main reasons that we chose
open source tools is that we wanted the product of our work to be replicable," says Ian Howard, program coordinator for
IESClGeekcorps in Mali. "We are spending a lot of time adapting technologies for Mali, and we want others who don't have the
luxury of US funding to be able to pick the fruits of our labour." Communitv outreach proqrams are essential in the success of
local business applications to the proqram. The resultinq unique diqital solutions are made available to the whole district b\l
trained employees after the Geekcorps leaves. Demand is indeed areat, and the development of sustainable, unlicensed
systems means that lechnoloaicallv-imposedneeds can be met within the self-aenerated constructs of the communitv. The move
to open source projects, though, is still in its infancy. Of the ten countries IESClGeekcorps volunteers are assigned, Mali is the
only one that is "almost completely" open source. Other countries remain reliant upon cross-languageand operating system
fertilisation. However, the current emphasis on open source demonstrates a confidence in the tools and the realisation of the
digital libertarian message. While internationallythe diqital divide threatens to engulf developinq nations, on a local scale
Geekcorps aims to narrow qaus between rich and poor in respect to information, health and education. W e are explicitly
attempting to close knowledae gaps lhrouqh out work," explains Baldwin. "I can't think of anyone who would argue that there is a
downs~deto broader access to information."
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I GEEK CORPS 2NC SOLVENCY I


AND, DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE AFF'S PEACE CORPS SOLVENCY-WHEN THEIR AUTHOR REFERS TO "ELECTRONIC PEACE CORPS", HE ISN'T
TALKING ABOUT THE PEACE CORPS BUT INSTEAD A SEPARATE AGENCY THAT THE AFF DOESN'T ESTABLISH.
David H. Rothman, author of Networld! and other tech-related books, 1998 ("How Chips and Wires Could Help Build National
Pride, Not Just Wealth" http:ilwww.teleread.oralbank.htm) m

Let me return now to the first distinction between the ~resentU.S. Peace Corps and a domestic electronic peace corns for a
developing country. In other words: the fact that a domestic electronic peace corps would be--domestic. No, I don't see such
domestic organizations displacing the U.S. Peace Corps or the Canadian InternationalDevelopment Agency or other agencies
that send volunteers into the field. We need both approaches. I'm delighted to hear of plans to expand the present Peace Corps
by thousands of volunteers. But much has changed since John Kennedy came to the University of Michigan back in 1960 and,
on the steps of the Michigan Union building, dreamed aloud of a Corps-style endeavor. MFor one thing, even more than in the
'60s, developinq countries want to do as much as possible bv themselves. Let me tell you a little story from my recent trip to
Monterrey Tec. Monica E. de Leon--the translator who's now enthusiastic about the idea of a Mexican Peace Corps--almost went
on strike when she read the title of my speech, "How Technology Could Help Chiapas--andMexico City." What; a gringo telling
what Mexicans should do with technology and Chiapas? But then? Oh, yes, so Seiior Rothman's premise was that Mexicans
know what's best for Mexicans! And it was an easy row from there. For she was perceptive and realized that a domestic
electronic peace corps could work closely with Mexico's own Ministry of Education and its universities, much more so than could
an agency North of the border. Last I knew, the existing U.S. Peace Corps was not even active in Mexico, for want of an
invitation. Indeed, at Monterrey Tec, a student or professor asked: "What's a Peace Corps? A body? A corpse?" 0011'1 leave it up
to President Zedillo and others as to whether the U.S. Peace Corps should now be invited in. But sumose Mexico oraanized a
domestic electronic peace corps to raise livinq standards and promote social stability. And what if, as I said, a U.S. Electronic
Peace Corps might work with Mexicans either remotely or in the field? Or for that matter, what if there were a United Nations or
World Bank Electronic Peace Corps? Or better still, what if a number of aroups operated under the electronic peace corps name,
but ultimately were coordinated within Mexico or another developinq country by a domestic agency? U Now, on to the second way
in which a domestic electronic peace corps would differ from the existing U.S. Peace Corps. It could, as I said, be a career-
builder, not just a chance to do qood. This would help answer the objection that the tradition of volunteerism isn't as stronq as in
the States. I'll leave it to others to compare volunteerism in one country with that in another. But it's hardly as if Mexico is now devoid of volunteer efforts.
During my Mexican trip, tor example, Ilearned that hundreds of Monterrey Tec students had volunteeredto work in rural areas during spring break. Perhaps
even more important, the university is consciously trying to build a tradition of volunteerism; an undergraduate can not even graduate from the school without
devoting 240 hours to community sewice of one kind of another. The school believes that community sewice will lead to someone who is better as both a cifuen
and employee. Perhaps not so coincidentally,within the Student Affairs Division, there exists an Office of Community and ProfessionalDevelopment. The two
functions actually go hand in hand. As employers often have discovered, U.S. Peace Corps volunteers ended with new skills in language, in management, in a
number of areas. And volunteers in a Mexican Electronic Peace Corps could gain technical skills and business skills and would qet
mentorina from older volunteers, via phone and computer networks. Acquainted with real-world needs, the members would be
more valuable as corporate employees and as entrepreneurs later On. I'll offer more details on this later. m What about the third way in which a
Mexican Electronic Peace Corps would differ--more use of technology. Chips and wires and satellite links are not the same as volunteers on the scene, but they
can vastly increase the amount of information that is available to local educators, public health officials and others in developing countries. And I'm not just talking
about static databases. With the right equipment and training--and perhaps arrangements for translation--itwould be possible for a local public health official in
the most isolated areas of Mexico to send e-mails directly to the Mexico City. Or perhaps to programs supported by the World Health Organizationor the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Already, a number of the larger medical institutions in Mexico have their own Web pages, and there is even a
Mexican Anesthesiology Network to help spread expertise wrlhin that medical specialty. And a domestic electronic peace Corps model could take
advantage of existino connections, both human and electronic, and develop new ones in ways that a developina country did not
consider intrusive. Mexico perhaps would not want the U.S. to send many volunteers there--and very possibly none, aiven the
fact that the U.S. Peace Corps has not been invited. But it verv well rninht welcome help in developino Spanish-lanquaqe
databases as well as electronic access to U.S. specia ists in important technical areas. And whether rcrno:ely or ~nthe field, Mex co and
other aevelop~ngcountr es m ght take aavantage of the expert se of present or retuned Peace Corps loluntecrs like Patrick and Jacqueline Dulfy-Saenzes,a
couple who s e ~ e in
d ~ruguay.With great satisfaction they tell me how they up hooked up Ufuguayan schools to the Internet, and they would love to be use the
Net to share with rural Mexico their expertise in education and networking.A domestic electronic peace Corps in Mexico would make it much
easier for this to happen without all the costs and international complexities of sendinq the Duffy-Saenzesinto the field. El
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I GEEK CORPS 2NC SOLVENCY I


Geekcorps technology projects helps developing countries grow economically and achieve social stability-Ghana
proves
CNET News.com February 28,2006 ("Geekcorps: A Peace Corps for techies" http:llnews.zdnet.c0m/2100-9595 22-
6043635.html?taa=st.num)

Geekcorps can essentially be thought of as a Peace Corps with a focus on PCs. The omanization recruits technical experts to
conceive ideas for intearatina technolosv into local economies in a self-sustaininqway. Initiatly,the payoff on these projects
comes from the fact that certain tasks--getting information on vaccines and scheduling transportation, for example--are made
easier. But over time, the idea is that technoloqy can better help establish a middle class and, ultimatelv, qreater social stability.
"Someone with an income and a iob is the most dependable person you can find," Vota said. "He is going to be the first to ask for
a level playing field." In Ghana, for instance, Geekcorps volunteers six years ago noted that digital printing had yet to hit the
country, so it brouaht in experts who could hook up PCs and teach locals how to use ~ublishinasoftware. A database for
accessing crop prices and agricultural data across West Africa has also been established. Since then, Ghana has become an
Internet hot spot of sorts for West Africa. Busy Internet in Accra is Africa's larqest Internet cafe and has served as an incubator
for five companies

Geekcorps project ensure sustainability and self-sufficiency of the local peoples


VlArena July 18,2006 ("Geekcorps - empowering people through ICT"
http://www.viaarena.com/defauIt.aspx?PaqelD=5&AlticleID=484&P=4)

The mantra of Geekcorps is sustainability. The idea is for knowledge and skills transfer. What ever projects Geekcorps starls,
when Geekcorps leaves, the project must be self sufficient. Geekcorps miaht h e l to ~ set UD a profitable business, but crucial to
callinq that a success, it must end up being financially sustainable in the lonq term and manaqed and staffed by the local
community. What I learned from talking to Wayan is that the key ingredient in making sure that information and communications
technology (ICT) projects in the developing world work in both the short and long term, is an understandina of the community's
needs, culture and environment.
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AT: ELECTRONIC PEACE CORPS SOLVES THE NEED FOR REGULAR


PEACE CORPS L

An electronic Peace Corps wouldn't be able to address development issues-the actual Peace
Corps is needed.
David H. Rothman, author of Networld! and other tech-related books, 1996 ("It's Time to Consider an
Electronic Peace Corps!" http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/3934html)

Seventh and last, don't expect the EPC to replace the reqular Peace Corps. Ta~pinaout advice on his lor
her] personal computer, a ~ublichealth expert isn't exactlv aoina to be able to give Asian villaaers a step-
by-step demonstration of water purification. For that vou need a Peace Corps volunteer--plain Peace
Corps, not electronic--on the scene. The EPC miqht be a life-saver at times, but never a global panacea.
Rather it should be considered just one of many tools with which imaginative health professionals and
others in international development can chip away at the problems of the The Third World.
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I WORLD CORPS CP SOLVENCY I


World Corps is already spreading technology and internet to developing countries-solves back their aff.
Dwight Wilson, executive director of World Corps, an international non-profit organization based in Seattle, July 19,2001 ("The
World's Poorest Need the lnternet" http://peacecorpsonline.orglmessages/messages/262915230.html)

I do not see eye-to-eyewith Bill Gates about the potentialof the Internet.I l was convinced by an announcement last month about wave heights and weather
conditions in the Bay of Bengal over the scratchy public-address loudspeakersin the Indianfishing village of Veerampatinam. m ~ a sOctober
t at a Seattle
conference, Gates said that to the 1 billion people living on a dollar a day, necessities such as immunizations, primary education and clean water were of higher
priority than gaining access to the Internet.IPart of me agreed. I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in a Honduran village in 1982-83and saw the benefits of
access to health care and education. mBut part of me disagreed. Fortwo days prior to Gates' presentation, speakers from around the world had described
information technology programs benefitingthe poorest of the poor. Last month, I traveled to several villages in lndia to see some of these programs. I have
returned to Seattie convincedthatthe real Internet revolution has only just begun. l]0veerampatiflam is One of eight villaqes taking part
in a project developed by the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation. Each morninq, information on weather and
market prices, iob opportunities and news is downloaded at a central hub office and forwarded via an
lntranet to the eight villages. Weather comes from CNN.com. Informationabout wave heights in the Bay of Bengal comes off the U.S. Navy's web
site. That information tells fishermen where the best catches are and whetherthe sea is too dangerous. mThe lnternet kiosk is located in a building donated by
the community and staffed by volunteers. These volunteers post prices for fish and produce at various local markets. The volunteers also write down the day's
headlines on a blackboardoutsidethe kiosk. UIlVirtuallv all the vilhqers have been im~actedbv the dailv catch off the
Internet. With $120,000 grant funding from the Canadian government soon to run out, the challenge now is to find ways to make the kiosks financially sen-
sustaining. 0[14 second example is in rural Andhra Pradesh, a state governed by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. For the past five years, Naidu has been
touting the benefits of the lnternet for the 75 million residents of his state. mA program called the Chief Minister's Empowerment of Youth provides subsidies and
loans for new businesses launched by young people below the poverty line. Five-memberteams have started taxi services, mechanic shops, small grocery
stores and now lnternet kiosks. mOne CMEY kiosk in Kuppam, a town of 20,000 people, has sustained itself for two years thanks to a steady influx of students,
teachers and businesspeople who send e-mails and check job opportunities. FiReen-minutesegments on the Net mst about 20 cents. The kiosk gets 15-20
customers a day, every day. mYet in Gudipalle, a village 10 kilometers away, the CMEY kiosk is lucky to pull in fourto five farmers a day. The lead owner of the
Gudipaile kiosk is Balakrishna, a 21-year-oldwho is passionate about helpinghis community enter the InternetAge. mBut Balakrishna needs some help. Despite
having taken a onemonth training course, he needed the assistance of my World Corps colleague to set up his own e-mail account on Yahoo. Balakrishna
slowly surfed the keyboard, hunting and pecking out his first e-mail message. And just as he opened up his first incoming e-mail, the power went out. mln rural
areas of India, more populous and prosperous towns such as Kuppam can support one or more kiosks. But what of villages such as Veerampatinam and
r e five maior issues (the five "Cs")
~ u d i ~ a l l e ? m T h e are determininq whether the lnternet will reach India's
villaqes and stay. The three most commonly mentioned 'Cs" are connectivity,cost and content. Innovations like the wireless technology that uses radio
waves, and a Palm Pilot-like device called Simputer are extending reach and reducing the costs of connectivity and hardware. New sites are providing content in
Telugu, the language spoken in Andhra Pradesh, and other regional languages. As for the fourth "C"-- current, inexpensive back-up systems and technologies
such as the battery-powered Simputer, over hope. 001 believe the kev work remains with the fifth "C"-- ca~acitv-buildingor
training. Entrepreneurs such as Balakrishna need comprehensive training and support to translate their
vision into value-added services appropriate to the local community. This is the focus of mv 3-year-old
orqanization, World Corps, which will train vounq professionals from all over the world to establish
sustainable rural businesses in the lnternet and renewable enerav fields, startinq in lndia this fall. OOThese
younq professionals will acquire skills in small-business manaqement, determine what information
community members need and then aet that information to them in a timely, inexpensive wav. OOMedical
information? Villagers can try India's first telemedicine site, set up in Andhra Pradesh. ooLiteracv and
distance learning? Try a new initiative of the Andhra government with Unesco and J.P. Morgan Inc. Caste
certificates and other government forms? Our trainees can guide villagers through Andhra's extensive e-
government site. 000nlv throuqh consistent hiqh-quality services delivered to local communities will new
information technolo~ytools reap dividends for the rural poor. nnDevelopment, like most everything else, is a
relationship business. The final mile is the crucial one, where the idea becomes a reality in the life of.a
fisherman in Veerampatinam or a farmer in Gudipalle. With skilled professionals workina within the
communitv, there is indeed hope for this new technofoqv to chanqe the world. 1
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I INC INDEPENDENT AGENCY NET BENEFITS I


The net benefit is that we solve the case better and avoid the turns. Setting up a new program within the Peace Corps and
expanding its mandate risks destroying the Peace Corps from within, tuming the case:

A. Brand recognition: Creating a separate program complements the Peace Corps goals--combining them will dilute Peace
Corps brand recognition, this destroys solvency

Reiffel, 05 (Lex, Visitina Fellow at the Global Economv and Development Center of the Brookinqs Institution, REACHING OUT:

In the survey of soft instruments undertaken in this study, only a handful of international programs funded by the federal budget appear to offer as much value as
the Peace Corps in t e n s of advancing the security and well-being of.Americans. At the same time, the studv has revealed a remarkable number
arm
-s in the private sector offerinu overseas service opportunities for Americans that may have iust as
beneficial as the Peace Corps, and the studv has found inspiration in the AmeriCorps aparoach to usinq federal budget resources
catalyticallv to sharply boost the quantih-and possiblv quality--of private sector volunteer proqrams. ~ h u thes main policy
recommendationemerging from this study is to establish an ArneriCorps-type program to push the number from Americans performingvolunteer service
overseas from the current level of perhaps 50-60,000 to a level on the order of 300,000 over the next ten years. The maior benefits of doinq so would
be more favorable attitudes amonq foreigners toward the United States and areater understandins amonq Americans of the
pers~ectiveof foreiqners. Both would lend to enhance national security and well-being and cwld make the United States less dependent on hard instruments of poww.
remains a
which tend to have a much higher budget cost. This recommendation is no( intended to diminish the role of the Peace Corps in any way. The Peace C0~tl.S
hiah-value prwram and the basic arquments for establishinq a new overseas service uroaram are all arquments for expandinq
the Peace Corps. Instead, the recommendation is to establish a separate proqram that complements the Peace Corps.
Combinina the two would tend to dilute the irnaact of the Peace Corps or hobble the qrowth of the new proqram.

B. Bureaucratization: Expanding the Peace Corps mandate risks bureaucratizationthat threatens the program

Johnson, 04 (Victor, Associate Executive Director, Public Policy for NAFSA: Association of InternationalEducators, and a former Peace Corps volunteer,
Reader Response to "Reconsidering the Peace Corps", http:Ihww.brook.edulcommlpolicybriefsipbl27-feedback.htm)

Ultimately, however, I'm uncomfortable with the direction in which Mr. Rieffel would take the Peace Corps. It's rare to find such a S U C C ~ S S ~ U ~
government proqram--ashe puts it, "one of the few forms of engagement offered by the U.S. government that is eagerly embraced by developing
countriesM--withsuch stronq bipartisan support. Such success is hard-won--andwhile one would not wantto stand pat, neither should one be too
eager to tty to turn a successful model into something fundamentally different. Arguably-at least, I would argue--the chances of success aren't good enough. I
think one of the problems of Mr. Rieffel's analysis is that it grossly underestimates the Peace Corps' impact abroad. Ils certainly true that the impact is hard to
measure-and even if you could, seeking the measure in aggregate economic terms is the wrong place to look. When I was on the staff, looking to re-open
programs in Central America and the Caribbean that had been closed for decades, I couldn't go anywhere in those countries without ~ n n i n ginto people who
remembered the Peace Corps fondly and wanted it back. That's an impact--anda fundamental one. The facts that we can't measure it (or, at least, we haven't)
and that it doesn't show up in the GNP, doesnt mean it doesn't exist. The Peace Corps has probably had measurable--albeitlargely unmeasured--impacts in
countless communities around the world. One of the Peace Corps' most unrecounized blessinqs is preciselv that its leaislative mandate
has remained fundamentallv unchanqed since its creation 40 years auo. The mandate is clear enough to give the Peace Corps its essential
direction, yet broad enough to enable the Peace Corps to be responsive to changing hosttountry needs. Contrast that with USAID--a quintessentially
failed agency--which uets a new mandate with virluallv everv administration, and seems to have no idea what it's supposed to be
doina anvmore. That's the more typical experience of a aovernment bureaucracy, and it's whv I greet with some skepticism
recurrinq suqqestions that we "update" the Peace Corps' mandate. The existinq mandate, it seems to me, has served the Peace
Corps well, and is not a barrier to most things that the Peace Corps would want to do. The Peace Corps could probablv double its size--if it's
done gradually and thoughtfully, and backed up with a budget--and, in the process, could evolve to respond to the needs of newly-openedcountries and to attract
the necessary volunteers. Some of Mr. Rieffel's suggestions would help it get there. And it could be done within Peace Corps' existing mission.
But I'm leerv of turnina the Peace Colps into a maior bureaucracv, oaeratincl on a much larqer scale, and functioning more like a
placement agency than a volunteer organization. I don't mean this as an exercise in nostalgia.The Peace Corps does--and must--continueto evolve to meet
changing host-country needs and to be responsive to the changing U.S. recruitment pool. The good old Peace Corps of Mr. Rieffel's and my volunteer days,
number one, wasn't so good, and number two, doesnY exlsl anymore--nor should it. And yet, at the most basic level, it does--asan agency which, at its best,
engages in participatory development at the communty level in response to needs articulated by the community itself, through the effective placement of well
trained volunteers. In the course of their work, volunteers produce the positive goal-two effects noted by Mr. Rieffel. Then they return to their communities and to
A
their professions, bringing with them the increased understanding of people in developing countries that is envisioned in goal three. It's a model to be built on.
new prosram with a new mission risks beina a tragic mistake.
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I 1NC INDEPENDENT AGENCY NET BENEFITS I


C. Polliticization: Expanding the Peace Corps mandate politicizes the program by getting Congress involved in determining its
goals

Hill in 02 (Ken, NPCA board chair, Peace Corps Online message board,
htt~://~eacecorpsonline.or~/messa~es/messaqes/2629/6999.html, March 25)

Excessive detail in legislative guidance threatens Peace Corps non-political, independent status and
com~licatesits abilitv to respond to situations as they arise around the world. By agreement between Peace Corps,
the White House and Congress, Peace Corps traditionallv oDerates with relative independence within general
guidance and oversight provided by the Administration and Congress. The "New Mandate" legislation would negate
these important agreements. Peace Corps programming and operating policy should not be legislated nor Peace
Corps appropriations earmarked. Traditional Peace Corps programs place high urioritv on responding to the
requests of Host Countries. This is a basic Peace Corps tenet and a key to much of its success. Peace Corps
programs and the roles and responsibilities of Peace Corns Volunteers should be determined on a country by country
basis in cooperation with Host Country governments. The "New Mandate" proposes that too many of these
decisions be made in Washington which wouId weaken Peace Corps, not improve it.

The perceived politicization of the Peace Corps destroys solvency and puts volunteers at risk

SCHNIEDER - Former director of the Peace Corps - 6-25-2002 (Mark, Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony, Lexis)

That message also underscores the rationale for the independence of the Peace Corps, which I am pleased to see underscored
in bright letters, within the proposed legislation. It is not merelv that the Peace Corps must maintain its own inde~endencein
evew sphere but it must be recognized by the rest of our government and be seen by other aovernments as fully
independent. Every Secretary of State has sent a message to Ambassadors around the world reaffirmingthat, and I quote the
1983 cable under President Reagan, "to be effective (Peace Corps) must remain substantiallv separate from the formal day-to-
day conduct and concerns of foreiqn policy because of its unique people-to-peoplecharacter. As former Secretary of State Rusk
wrote to the chiefs of US, missions: 'To make the Peace Corps an instrument of foreign policy would be to rob it of its
contribution to foreign policy'...." From the start Peace Corps was to be independent. If anvthinq has protected Volunteers across
the qlobe, it has been that separateness. Whatever is done with this legislation, maintaining the Peace Corps independence is
crucial.
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I 1NC SKILLED VOLUNTEERS BAD NET BENEFIT I


TURN-SKILLED VOLUNTEERS KILL THE PEACE CORPS

A. SKILLED PEACECORPS
VOLUNTEERS DISPLACE TRADITIONAL VOLUNTEERS, UNDERMINING THE ORIGINAL MISSION
CQ Researcher, 91 (Peace Corps' Challenges in the 1990s, 1125,
http:/llibrary.cqpress.comlcqresearcher/dument.php?id=cqresrrel991012500)

That image still mirrors reality in most cases. But increasinalv,the Peace Corps is seeking out older volunteers, including
retirees, who possess special skills needed bv host countries. Moreover, some of the assignments today's volunteers receive amount to white-
collar jobs, often performedin a big-city office building. As before, the primary focus of Peace Corps assistance efforts is the Third World, notably sub-Saharan
Africa. But the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe has given the agency an opportunity to establish programs in a region where it was not welcome
before. Peace Corps volunteers already have been sent to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Polaml, and Romania is due to receive a contingent shortly. There is
even speculation about setting up a program in the Soviet Union. These chanqes, while not sweeping at this point, make some lonatime
supporters of the Peace Corps uneasv. They worn, that the emphasis on special skills has lefi fewer openinus for the voung
generalists who have tong constituted the bulk of the volunteer force. The vounaest volunteers may lack advanced urofessional
m, the argument goes, but they often prove more adeut at im~rovisin~ than their elders.

B. THlS KILLS SOFT POWER


Reiffel 2k5 (Lex, Visiting Fellow at the Global Economy and Development Center of the Brookings Institution, REACHING OUT:
AMERICANS SERVING OVERSEAS, 12/27,
htt~://www.brookinqs.edu/viewd~a~ers/20051207rieff el.pdf)

The objectives of the Peace Corps program, carved in stone more than forty years ago, are to provide skilled manpower to less privilegedcountries and to foster
mutual understanding betweenAmericans and the people in these countries. From the beginning, however, the emphasis has been on rnulual understanding.
The stated objective ot the VfP program is less ambiious, to help Americans with professionalexpertise find volunteer service opportunlies overseas.
Promoting mutual understanding is implicit in the program but not a prominent feature. The objectives matter because they affect both the foreign demand for
American volunteers and supply of Americans seeking an opponunity to serve overseas. The critical choice here is between professional
programs in which skill transfer and capacitv building are emphasized, and aeneralist prourams in which mutual understandinq
and social capita! are emphasized. The Bush Admiristration has chosen to focus rhe VfP program on highly-skilled Americans. A ne.& overseas
service program could retain tnis locus bur deeding whch parllcipatlng organizations are recruiting professionalsand which organizationsare recnlting
generalistswould probably end up being rather arbitrary. At least untilsome experience has beengained, a program that works with both professional
volunteers and generalist volunteers is likely to be more broadly supported by American taxpayers. It would also seem strange to model an overseas program
on AmeriCorps, which is distinctly at the generalist end of the spectrum, and then limit it to professional volunteers. A wide-open proaram would also
be more consistent with the immense variation that exists from host countw to host country and even within each countrv.
Without arbitrary limits, a catalytic program may become more oriented toward professionals as the skills base improves in the
host countries. It is also possible that over time, however, the host countries will place qreater value on mutual
understandinq than skills transfer and will adopt a more positive attitude toward aeneralist volunteers from foreian countries.

C. SKILLED VOLUNTEERS HAVE HIGHER ATTRITION RATES; THlS KILLS SOLVENCY


CQ Researcher, 91 (Peace Corps' Challenges in the 1990s, 1/25,
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcherldument.php?id=cqresrre1991012500)

In its Oct. 30 semiannual report to Congress, the Peace Corps Office of Inspector General cited the high cost of attrition.
'Whenever a volunteer wishes to end service for anv reason," the report said, "the aaencv pays all expenses in returninu the
volunteer home to the United States. The costs ao bevond transportation, however, to the costs of recruitins and training
replacement volunteers, and to the other costs associated with the disruption of the volunteer's in-country projects....We believe
that the constant disruption of the continuity of ... the volunteer work force inhibits effective manaaement and programming, and
has become cost-prohibitive,"[l2] Slevin says volunteers who are overaualified for their job assianments are more likelv than
others to drop Out. He adds, however, that '$oing home early is usually due to a combination of factors. In some cases, reality fails to meet expectations. It
could also be loneliness--or illness. In my experience, it takes two or three things to make a person decide to terminate Peace Corps service prematurely."
Peace Corps Chief of Staff Jody Olsen reports that the agency recently began a study aimed at pinpointingthe reasons for early termination and finding more
effective ways of combating the problem. She says the survey is being conducted on a country-by-countrybasis because the mix of contributingfactors may
differ markedly from place to place.ll31
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I BUREAUCRATIZATION EXTENSIONS I
Expanding the peace corps weakens its overall operations because of management problems
Tarnoff, 05 (Curt, Specialist in Foreign Affairs at the Congressional Research Service, "The Peace Corps: Current Issues",
10119, http:llwww.cnie.oralNLEICRSreports105oct/RS21168.pdf)

Program and Management Issues. Members of Congress appear to have been concerned that even an increase in the size of
the Peace Corps more modest than that originally envisioned miaht exacerbate existinq weaknesses or create strains in its
0perati0ns. Both House and Senate legislation in the 108th Congress stressedthe importance to Peace Corps's effectiveness of improved strategic planning
and H.R. 4060, the House bill !hat addressed security issues, called for a report on the extent to which work assignments are well-developed and volunteers are
suitable for them. No matter the outcome of the expansion effort, Congress may continue to pay particular attention to how the agency addresses recruitment,
programming, and supporl of volunteers. The recruitment of volunteers with appropriate skills and willingness to live in unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable
conditions is essential to the overall mission of the Peace Corps. A substantial spike in applicants and those expressing interest in applying since September
11 has made it easier for the Peace Corps to meet its recruitment goals. In FY2004, 148,216 people expressed an interest in the Peace Corps (up from 94,463
in FY2001), 13,249 actually applied (8,897 in FYZOOl), and 3,811 became trainees (3,191 in FY2001). The agency, however, while adept at recruiting
generalists and providing them with sufficient training to carry out useful assignments, has not emphasizedthe provision of highly skilled professionals,such as
doctors, agronomists, or engineers, which, many argue, more accurately reflects the current needs of developing countries. Weighed against this view is the
belief that the Peace Corps is an agency of public diplomacy as much as it is a development organization,and personal interaction,and demonstrationof U.S.
values is as important as providing technical expertise. To accommodate more highly skilled personnel, the Peace Corps might have to change many existing
practices, includingmethods of recruitment,training, programming, and perhaps even terms of service. The Peace Corns has been criticized in the
past for providinq inadequate ~roaramminaand support of volunteers. This view was reflected in a 1990 Government
Accountability Office (GAO) investigation (Peace Corps: Meeting the Challenges of the 1990s, May 1990, NSIAD-90-122). It
noted that some volunteers had little or nothinq to do or had spent six or more months developing their own assiqnments,
without benefit of site visits by Peace Corps staff. The GAO attributed the proqramminq problem to a failure of plannina,
evaluation, and monitorinq svsterns. Since then, the Peace Corps maintains that it has addressed these weaknesses with
systematic approaches to project development, annual project reviews, and increased opportunities for site visits and volunteer
feedback. However, incidents suaqestinq poor proarammina and staff support still occur, although their frequency and depth is
not known, and, one sign of volunteer dissatisfaction-the attrition rate - remains arguably hiah at 30.5% (2002).

OUR ARGUMENT IS EMPIRICALLY TRUE-COMBINING AGENCIES WITH THE PEACE CORPS WRECKS ITS EFFECTIVENESS. THE
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES ARE TOO DIFFERENT TO WORK TOGETHER.
Searles, 02 (P.David, former deputy director of the Peace Corps, 'THE CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE,5/13,
http:1/208.234.30.11Olrnessages/messages/262911007873.htm1?1021326408)

In 1971 the Nixon administration's plan to create a new super aaencv called ACTION to coordinate volunteer activitv throuqhout
the federal government was ~reetedwarmlv, even bv some Peace Coros lovalists. Government-sponsored programs that relied
on volunteers already existed in several departments and agencies. The most prominent of these were the Peace Corps and
Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). These two programs, the first international, the second domestic, would foml the core
of the new agency. They were joined by the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) and the Active Corps of Executives
(ACE), both from the Small Business Administration; and Foster Grandparents and the Retired Senior Volunteer Program
(RSVP), both from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Shriver, having fought so hard for independence ten years
earlier, told a Senate sub-committee, "Not one additional person will volunteer in the future because of government bureaucratic
reorganization. Probably nothing is of less interest to potential volunteers. . . ."His counsel was ignored.. It was to be some
years before the magnitude of the mistake became clear. Experience showed that the benefits of combininq volunteer aqencies
were almost non-existent. The principles on which ACTION was founded -- the elimination of duplication, the efficiencies of
scale, the concentration of resources, the brinqinq together of the generations, the transfer of skills and people -- simply were not
sufficient to overcome the scheme's basic flaw. The missions and or~anizationalcultures of the participatinq aqencies were
fundamentallv different, and the effort to brinq them tosether in one bureaucratic familv was doomed from the start.
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I POLlTlCIZATlON LINKS I
Expanding the mandate of the Peace Corps further politicizes it. This kills the interest other
countries have in it and the ability to recruit volunteers.
Hayes in 02 (Jennifer, Former Peace Corps Volunteer, post on the Peace Corps Online message board for RPCVs,
htt~:II~eacecor~sonline.orulmessaaes/messases/2629/6999.htmI, February 13)

The power of the Peace Corns lies in the credibility of its volunteers as apolitical re~resentativesof peace and
friendship, of sharing and learning. Hibbard and Landrum's new mandate would erode this credibility by further
politicizing its volunteers and putting the organization's strategic direction under the influence of a largely non-
representative interest group. Under their scenario, I fear that support for Peace Corps in foreign countries would
dwindle, as would interest in serving on the part of cluality potential volunteers. The US has plenty of existing
development and foreign policv organizations "to serve the international interests of America" ... the armed forces for
one, which could stand focusing more on strategic relationship-building with foreign countries. Leave Peace Corps
and its volunteers to fill the niche they fill so well-- expanding the threads of friendship and mutual respect at a
grassroots level, across borders but beyond politics.
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I POLlTlClZATlON UNIQUENESS I
The peace corps has successfully resisted politicization
Learned 04 (Mike - Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Malawi. Future of Peace Corps. Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual RPCVs.
February 13 http://www.lqbr~cv.orularticlesi0202 pc future.htm)

Over the years there have been implied and explicit attempts to use the Peace Corps as an arm of American foreiqn policy. In
the early years of the Clinton administration, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky proposed that the Peace Corps lose its
independence as an agency and come under the arm of the State Department. This ~roaosalwas widelv reiected at the time. The
creation of the new organization, USA Freedom, does not suggest the same thing, but then it appears that little has been worked out on how USA Freedomwill
operate. On the surface 1appears that Bridgeland will have responsibilitiessimilar to those of Tom Ridge, the Director of Homeland Security, to oversee and
coordinate. He will report to the president and act as policy director, activity coordinator and catalyst amongst the volunteer agencies. But what sort of budgetary
and policy control will he and USA Freedom have over the volunteer agencies they oversee? What level of agency independence will the Peace Corps retain?
The Peace Corps' stated goals include promoting a better understanding of Americans on people (countries) Sewed, and a better understanding of other people
on the part of Americans. It seems to me that successful volunteers have always walked the fine line between being quiet ambassadors, providers of skills,
students of other cullures and what seems implied in the presidenl's statements and the creation of USA Freedom. In fairness it's too soon to know what this all
means, but I think we need to stay on top of the changes in directionthat will come. Will Peace Corps become a tool to combat this particular crisis, such as
being used to spread American values to the Muslim world? It is of course perceived*American values" that appear to motivate many of those anxious to cause
us harm. Any success in this area wiH require the sensitive distinction between democratic values, individualgrowth and development, and the culture clash of
fast food, cheap t-shirts, raucous music and violent videoentertainment. Peace Corps has survived and flourished over the past 41 Vears and
enjoyed bipartisan support because it has resisted politicization and manipulation.

Peace Corps independence is high


Rieffel2003 (Lex, non resident Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, The Peace Corps in a Turbulent World, October 27,
http:liwww.brookings.edu/viewslpaperslrieffel2OO31O15.pdf)

Bv all accounts, the Peace Corps remains remarkablv independent. While it will not initiate a program in a country over the
objections of the State Department and must suspend a program when the State Department determines that an evacuation is
necessary for reasons of safety and security, the Peace Corps has a oreat deal of autonomv in determininq in partnership with
the qovernment of each host country how manv volunteer positions will be created, which functional areas will be aiven priority,
and what kind of traininu will be provided.

Freedom Corps hasn't hurt Peace Corps independence


Rieffel2003 (Lex, non resident Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, The Peace Corps in a Turbulent World, October 27,
http:/iwww.brookings.eduiviews/papersirieffel20031015.pdf)

Concerns have also been expressed about placing the Peace Corps under the USA Freedom Corps, which was created in 2002
as a single point of entry for Americans interested in volunteering. So far, it does not appear that the USA Freedom C o r ~ shas
had anv imuact on the operations of the Peace Corps. Nevertheless, each time a new volunteer "corps" is created the Peace
Corps brand loses some of its cachet. The Peace Corps does not appear to be at risk of losinq its independence aqain in the
foreseeable future. The issue instead is whether this preoccupation with independence may be getting in the way of making the
Peace Corps more relevant. The Peace Corps' "purity" is easier to preserve in part because of its small size. As long as it
remains a tiny operation in terms of the number of volunteers or its budget, the risks of becoming a political football are
reduced.33
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I POLlTlClZATlON IMPACTS: INDEPENDENCE KEY TO SOLVENCY


Peace corps independence is vital to solvency
I
- Senator - 6-25-2002[Chris, Hearing on the Peace Corps Charter for the 2lst Century Act,
http:l/www.senate.govl-dodd/press/Speeches/107~0210625.htm]

Today our witnesses have been asked to comment on the various provisions in the bill. Before turning to them, let me first take a few minutes to outline some of
the most significant provisions in the legislation. First, our bill Stresses the importance of maintaining the Peace Corps' independence from
any political affiliation, party, government agency, or particular administration. This independence is critical to the continued
success, credibility, and acceotance of the volunteers in the countries in which thev serve. We must viqilantlv preserve this
independence. This is especiallv critical as we are attempt to open new proqrams in challenqinu places. We must make sure that the
Peace Corps' goals of friendship, peace, and grassroots developmentare in no way muddled or compromised by other short-term political objectives.

Independence is vital to Peace Corps trust by developing countries


Rieffel2003 (Lex, non resident Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, The Peace Corps in a Turbulent World, October 27,
http://www.brookings.edu/viewslpaperslrieffe120031015.pdf)

The Peace Corps' independence has become a sacred cow, passionately defended by most returned volunteers and staff
members, but has several dimensions worth exploring. Above all, the imaue beina protected is that of an aaencv that will not be
used to advance the short-term aoals of the State Department or whatever administration is in power. This feature has been
critical to the success of the Peace Corps in aainina the trust and respect of the countries in which it has operated.

Peace Corps independence is vital to its effectiveness and volunteer safety


SCHNIEDER - Former director of the Peace Corps - 6-25-2002 (Mark, Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony, Lexis)

That message also underscores the rationale for the independence of the Peace Corps, which I am pleased to see underscored
in bright letters, within the proposed legislation. It is not merely that the Peace Corps must maintain its own independence in
every sphere but it must be recognized by the rest of our government and be seen bv other qovernments as fully
independent. Every Secretary of State has sent a message to Ambassadors around the world reaffirmingthat, and 1 quote the
1983 cable under President Reagan, "to be effective (Peace Corps) must remain substantiallv separate from the formal dav-to-
dav conduct and concerns of foreiqn policv because of its unique people-to-peoplecharacter. AS former Secretary of State ~ u s wroteto
k
the chiefs of U.S. missions: 'To make the Peace Corps an instrument of foreign policy would be to rob it of its contribubon to foreign policy'..I' From the start
Peace Corps was to be independent. If anvthina has protected Volunteers across the ulobe, it has been that separateness. Whatever is
done with this legislation, maintaining the Peace Corps independence is crucial.

THEPERCEIVED LOSS OF PEACE CORPS INDEPENDENCEDESTROYS SOLVENCY AND OPENS VOLUNTEERS TO ATTACKS
Gearan, 05 (Mark, president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and former Peace Corps director, New York Times, 1014,
lexis)

Per~eptionsmatter. Over five decades, members of Congress and presidents of both parties have recognizedthat for Peace Corps volunteers to succeed,
their actual and perceivedservice must be what it purports to be. Fonner Secretary of State Dean Rusk said it best: "TOmake the Peace Corps an
instt-~mentof foreian ~olicvwould be to rob it of its contributionsto foreign PO~~CV." Indeed, it was President Ronald Reagan who signed into
law a bill 24 years ago that recognized this unique, essential character of the Peace Corps and made it an independent federal agency. The Peace Corps
conducts programs only in places where it is invited. Peace Corps volunteers are neither federal employees nor official representatives of the United States
government. They receive a modest livinq allowance, not a salary, and have na diplomatic privileqes or immunities. Thev live in homes with host-countrvfamilies.
and they are pro&cted, not by seculity forces, but bythe concern of neighbors and colleagues inihe communities in which they live and work. By taw, they are '

required to become proficient in the local language and to conduct themselves in a manner that respects the local culture. Damaqina the trust and
qoodwill that has been established around the world bv adherence to these policies would be devastatina to the Peace Corps, in
some places closinq the door to Peace Corps volunteers and even subiectina them to heiqhtened risk..
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I EXTENSIONS: SKILLED VOLUNTEERS BAD I


THE AFF CAN'T WIN OFFENSE-PEACE CORPS MISMANAGEMENT MEANS IT WILL MISPLACE SKILLED VOLUNTEERS INTO THE WRONG JOBS
Waldorf -Former Peace Corps Volunteer and anthropologist- Winter 2001. (Saral, Public Interest. "My time in the Peace
Corps, Iss. 142; pg. 72, 11 pgs, proquest)

And yet, when the Peace Corps relies on professionals, rather than amateurs, there are seldom anv real iobs for them to do,
since after 40 vears host countries place volunteers in places where thev will do the least harm. This makes for unhappy
professionals, who often leave, reinforcina the Peace Corps's belief that the best volunteers are unskilled ones. This hapvened to
me in Turkmenistan, a country whose Soviet-styled medical system has (if the statistics are to be believed) a high ratio of
professional doctors and nurses to population. When I arrived, the Peace Corps's new urban health-outreach program, which
began in the early 1990s, was alreadv seen bv many in-countw leaders as a failure. And so the Turkmenistan government
recommended that volunteers, usually young and unskilled compared to their urban counterparts, might be more useful at health
centers on the nation's collective farms. The problem with this reassignment became immediately clear to me when no one could
decide during training what to call us. Finally, it was decided that our Turkmen and Russian title should be "Doctor
Propagandist." I hate to think what rupture in American-Turkmenistan relations might still occur if, called out at dawn to reattach a
leg amputated in a tractor accident, a "Doctor Propagandist" declines. No doubt the locals have learned to discriminate
American-stvle "doctors" from medical ones. A colleague who did stay on, a nutritionist, reports she has started an aerobics
class to keep herself busy.

SKILLED VOLUNTEERS HAVE HIGHER AllRITION RATES


CQ Researcher, 91 (Peace Corps' Challenges in the 1990s, 1/25,
.
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcherldocumentphp?id=cqresrrel991012500)

Recruitment is only one of the Peace Corps' recurrent personnel concerns. The aaencv also is constantlv looking for ways to
reduce the hiqh rate of attrition amona volunteers. According to the General Accounting Office, 33 percent of all volunteers fail to
complete their scheduled two vears of service, and 50 percent of older volunteers fail to do so. "Older volunteers often
experience difficulties in traininq, especially with language; reduced abilitv to suffer difficult loaistics; and a areater need for a
correct fit between the assiqnment and the skills of the volunteer:' the agency noted in a May 1990 report. "Our interviews with
numerous volunteers indicate that earlv returns not only hurt the volunteers, who may feel a sense of failure at not being able to
complete their tours, but also the host aovernment, which may have been countina on a volunteer to perform a specific task, and
the Peace Corps, which is seen as unreliable."[ll]

THE PEACE CORPS TREATS PROFESSIONALVOLUNTEERS AS UNSKILLED


Waldorf -Former Peace Corps Volunteer and anthropologist- Winter 2001. (Saral, Public lnferest. "My time in the Peace
Corps, Iss. 142; pg. 72, I 1 pgs, proquest)

In spite of various difficulties at this first post, some general to the workings of any volunteer group, others peculiar to the Peace
Corps, I felt professionallv useful enouqh to applv and be accepted for another two-vear contract, this time as an AIDS worker in
Malawi. This job was extremely demanding and rewarding, but again, the frustrations of work in^ within conflictinq Peace Corps
philosophies made it difficult, sometimes impossible, to be treated as a skilled professional rather than a "volunteer" (i.e.,
m. My final formal experience with the Peace Corps was in Turkmenistan on a Soviet-style collective farm. After some
truly nutty in-country Peace Corps training episodes--one involving a volunteer who taught Reflexology, where we massaged our
fellow volunteers' feet in a combined get-to-knowyou and health session--and the realization that there was no real job to be
done, I resigned. Later, while in Benin, I worked informally in the Cotonou Peace Corps library.
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I EXTENSIONS: SKILLED VOLUNTEERS BAD I


Peace Corps will not assign professionals to appropriate positions-this ensures that they will have little impact and
result in high attrition rates
GAO 1990 ('Peace Corps: Meeting the Challenges of the 1990s" http:llarchive.qao.~ov/t2~batl0/141408.~df)

The Peace Corps does not consistentlv develop adequate assiqnments for volunteers. At the seven Peace Corps posts GAO
visited, manv volunteers were in assiqnments that had no specific tasks, objectives, or responsibilities. In some cases, local
supervisors were unaware that volunteers were cominq and had nothinq prepared for them. Some volunteers spent 6 to 12
months of their 2-year tour developing their own assignments. GAO also found that some volunteers (I) lacked adequate
language skills, (2) did not have local counterparts to carry on activities once they left, (3) were in assiclnments that had little
developmental impact, (4) were in positions that could be filled bv local nationals, or 15) were assistinq wealthy people. These
proarammina difficulties contribute to the relativelv hiah rate of earlv returns. About 33 percent of Peace Corps volunteers leave
before the end of their 2-vear assiqnments. One-half of the older volunteers do not complete their assignments.

Recruiting professionals will distract the Peace Corps from it's cross-cultural rol-ther countries are already
providing skilled volunteers to developing countries
GAO 1990 ('Peace Corps: Meeting the Challenges of the 1990s" http:/larchive.aao.aov/t2obatl0/141408.~df)

We found that other countries' volunteer services are alreadv more development-oriented than the Peace Corps. Virtuallv all of
the nations of Europe, as well as Canada. Japan, and a number of advanced developinq countries, such as Indonesia and
Nigeria, have overseas development services. In addition, the United Nations operates an international volunteer service. These
services tend to be smaller and much more technically oriented than the Peace Corps. They tend to seek trained specialists to fill
soecific needs of developina countries and, thus, are better able to meet the needs of these countries for skiled volunteers. For
instance, the Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers provides technical skills in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, civil
engineeringand architecture, health and welfare, education, and sports. Nevertheless,manv individuals with whom we spoke,
while acknowledoina that the foreian volunteer services reflect the developinq world's need for more hiahlv trained volunteers,
would not hold up these orqanizations as a model for the Peace Corps. The other service organizations tend not to share the
Peace Corps' intercultural goals. While their volunteers may have more specializedtrainina, thev do not have the cross- cultural
responsibilities of Peace Corps volunteers nor do thev qenerallv operate at the qrass roots level as do Peace Corps volunteers,
characteristicsthat contribute to the uniqueness of the Peace Corps.

- And-the aff can't win offense: Volunteers for Prosperity already hires highly skilled volunteers to work around the
world, just outside of the Peace Corps structure
John Bridgeland, Assistant to the President and Director of the USA Freedom Corps May 21,2003
(http:/Ipeacecorpsonline.orq/messaoeslmessaes/2629/2Ol4l0l.html)

Today as part of his USA Freedom Corps, the President will announce -- yes, today as part of his USA Freedom Corps, the
President will announce a new international service initiative called Volunteers For Prosperity to deplov and enlist hiqhlv skilled
professionals like doctors, nurses, computer specialists, enaineers, educators, to be deployed in countries around the world
consistent with his qlobal pros~eritvaqenda. So these volunteers will be matched throuah USA Freedom Corps with
nonqovernmental orqanizations working through the Millennium Challenqe Account, the Emerqencv Plan for AlDS Relief, the
Diqital Freedom Initiative, the Water For the Poor Initiative, the Trade for Africa Development and Enterprise Initiative and the
Middle East Partnership Initiative. There have been 100 --just to put this in context, there have been 183,000 requests for
applications for Americans to join the Peace Corps, and there are only currently 7,000 slots. The President will also restate his
commitment to double the capacity of the Peace Corps from 7,000 to 15,000 volunteers over the next five years. And we remain
on track to do that. But this initiative calls upon hiahlv skilled professionalswho will be deoloved for a more limited period of
- normally weeks or months. And today there are a whole host of orqanizations workinq with USA Freedom Corps and
time,
throuqh the relevant departments and aqencies who are prepared to accept skilled volunteers, for example, to work in hospitals
to help prevent and treat AlDS patients, through City Links partnershipto deploy individuals from city governments to help work
on clean water and sanitation projects. So through each of these initiatives and those that are coming on line, we will have a
massive vobnteer effort that will deploy highly skilled professionals.
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I EXTENSIONS: SKILLED VOLUNTEERS BAD I


The Peace Corps cannot recruit professionals-they do not know how, and recruiter turnover prevents effective
recruitment.
GAO 1990 ('Peace Corps: Meeting the Challenges of the 1990s" http:llarchive.uao.aovlt2pbatl01141408.pdf)

The Peace Corps' recruitina is "qeneralistdriven," and recruitment personnel do not have the resources or opportunities needed
to engage in innovative recruiting to taraet and attract scarce skill recruits. All the recruitment area offices we visited had recently
engaged in more targeted recruiting, but they informed us that they are limited in their efforts because they have insufficient
information on how to recruit scarce skills. Recruitment campaigns have primarily focused on targeting generalists because prior
to fiscal year 1990, the agency required recruiters to pro- duce a certain number of nominees and trainees within a given season.
As a result, the recruiters' incentive was to meet overall goals for trainees rather than engage in ''targeted" recruiting. Recruiters
tvlsicallv visited the same generalist-producinqschools thev visited in the Dast. The recruitment process also faces systemic
problems that detract from recruiters' ability to target scarce skill volunteers. First, the new Management, Planning, and
Budgeting (MPB) process sets scarce skill goals, but information and human and financial resources needed to target scarce
skill recruits are not provided. Second, until recently, the Peace Corps did not offer recruiters incentives or rewards for scarce
skill recruiting. Third, advertisina is not directed toward recruitinq scarce skill volunteers. And finallv, the hiqh turnover rate
amonq recruiters impedes recruitment efforts.

The Peace Corps is ineffective at recruitment-high turnover rates among recruiters prevents productive recruiting.
GAO 1990 ('Peace Corps: Meeting the Challenges of the 1990s" http:llarchive.qao.qovlt2~batl01141408.~df)

Another problem is that the hiqh turnover rate amonq recruiters, averauinq 18 months, limits efforts to attract scarce skill
volunteers. We were told that this high turnover rate occurs for several reasons, but that the pay level and lack of long-term
career potential is the most prevalent. Peace Corps recruitersare hired at Foreign Service pay level seven (currentlv about
$20,400). They work lona hours and, until recently, worked on weekends without compensation. Because of the salarv, many
recruiters told us that thev have no incentive to stav with Peace Corps very lonq. Recruiters overwhelminqlv told us that they
would be more productive and would consider staying with the Peace Corps longer if they saw that recruiters were cliven
opportunities to (1) refine their organizational management, leadership, and administration andlor budget skills and (2) receive
additional recruiter trainina and needed computer training to enable them to use their office's current software and hardware.
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I AT: PERMUTATION-DO BOTH I


--it links to all of our net benefits; the permutation still requires the affirmative to set up new, skilled volunteers within the Peace
Corps, which means it expands the mandate and targets it at those particular skill tasks.

Expanding Peace Corps service beyond its traditional role hurts its brand recognition
Reiffel, 05 (Lex, Visiting Fellow at the Global Economy and Development Center of the Brookings Institution, REACHING OUT:
AMERICANS SERVING OVERSEAS, 12/27,
http:llwww.brookinas,edulviewsl~a~ers/20051207rieffel.pdf)

B. The Brand
The Peace Corps is a stronu brand. Volunteers for Prosperiiy is a weak brand, but it is also a new one that has not had much
time to build recognition, One option for a new overseas senrice propram would be to adopt the Peace Corps brand and attach
it to anv American volunteer who works overseas in a proaram that is partially funded bv the federal aovernment. Resistance to
such a move from the communitv of returned Peace Corps volunteers is likelv to be considerable and it is hard to irnaqine
takinq this step without dilutinq siqnificantly the value of the brand. For example, why make a commitment for two-years of
uninterrupted service when the same status of being a former Peace Corps volunteer can be obtained from a one-month
assignment?
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POLITICS LINKS: EXPANDING THE MANDATE COSTS POLITICAL


CAPITAL
EXPANDING THE PEACE CORPS TO INCLUDE NEW PROGRAMS WlLL BE POLITICALLY CONTROVERSIAL-IT ANGERS THE PEACE CORPS
LOBBY
Reiffel, 05 (Lex, Visiting Fellow at the Global Economy and Development Center of the Brookings Institution, REACHING OUT:
AMERICANS SERVING OVERSEAS, 12/27,
htta:Ilwww,brookinqs.edu/viewslpape1~/20051207rieffel.~df)

The main advantaqe of qivinq a new overseas service aroqram modeled on AmeriCorps to the Peace Corps is that it knows the
territory. With volunteers and field offices in more than 70 countries today, and with experience in another 60 countries over the
past 45 years, the Peace Corps is in a good position to put volunteers into promising job sites and provide the support required
to maximize their impact. The main disadvantaqe is that the Peace Corps is a oem with a powerful constituencv of former
volunteers and staff members and supporters who have repeatedlv fouqht off proposals for siqnificant chanqes. This is not
necessarily a negative in terms of the ultimate objective. There is value in having a blue-ribbon operation like the Peace Corps as a benchmark against which
to measure other programs. A separate program could, indeed, enhance the Peace Corps by boosting the number of Americans attracted by its merits, thereby
allowing it to be mor~selectivein recruiting volunteers. Keeping the Peace Corps separate might alsdboost the demand from host countries-because having a
Peace Corps program would appear less political when there are a substantial number of non-Peace Corps volunteers working in these countries.

THE PLAN ANGERSTHE PEACE CORPS LOBBY WHICH WANTS TO KEEP THE PEACE CORPS INOPENDENT FROM CONGRESSIONAL
INTERFERENCE, THIS EMPIRICALLY WlLL COST POCrrlCAL CAPITAL
Searles, 02 (P. David, former deputy director of the Peace Corps, "THE CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE, 5113,
htlp:1/208.234.30.11 Olmessages/messages/2629/1007873.htm1?1021326408)

With the benefit of hindsiqht, it is clear the creation of ACTION was a disaster because the proponents were wronq on three
counts. First, they had brouqht tooether aroqrams that had little in common despite surface similarities. Second, they had
seriously underestimated the Peace Corps' strono need for indeaendence. Third, they had even more seriouslv underestimated
the Peace Coros' abil ty to orqanize its loyalists into a determined, powerful, and eventuallv effective force for independence. ~ u t ,
slcep~ngdogs do not sleep 'orever. n 1995 Senator M tcn McConicl ol Kefll~cdy,the cha rman of a 6ey Foreign Affairs s,ocomm tree, recorn~~enoed
tiat the
Peace Corps be merged into the State Department. NOsooner had McConnell's plan been made public than the Peace Corps world
reacted with alarm, remembering with dread the consequences of an earlier forced institutional marriage. The six-member
continqent of Peace Corps veterans in the House signed a ioint letter urqinq McConnell to keep the Peace Corps independent.
Senator Christopher Dodd, a former volunteer, Senator Paul Coverdell, a former Peace Corps director under President Bush,
-Senator Arlen S~ector,a former member of the Peace Corps advisory council, led the fiaht in the Senate. In the end
and
McConnell -perhaps also listening to 'pillow-talk' from his wife Elaine Chao, herself a former Peace Corps director - bowed to the pressure, citinq the
"considerable experience and StrOnq views" of his petitioners, and removed the Peace Corps from his proposed reorganization plan.

THE PEACE CORPS LOBBY IS POWERFUL AND HAS SUCCESSFULLY BLOCKED EXPANSION IN THE PAST
Learned, Mike. (Editor of LGB RPCV Newsletler) 2006. "Legislation Removes PC Military Recruiting Link" LGB RPCV
Newsletter, Febrary 2006.http://www.lgbrpcv.orglpdf/02-06.pdf

The National Peace Corps Association and its President, Kevin Quigley, led the wav in lobbvina Conaress to amend this
leqislation to remove Peace Corps service as an alternative to futillinq military service obliqations. Within a nine month period
of intense lobbying and information sharing, NPCA's and its allies' efforts have Daid off. Advocacy and open legislative lobbying
like that practiced the last few months has not been part of NPCA's traditional political behavior. This proiect is an examtie of
how the NPCA and the Peace Corps familv can influence such leqislation in a focused and bioarlisan way. This has been a
major accomplishment.

OTHER CARDS IN THE FILE SUPPORT THIS:


CQ Researcher evidence on the skilled Peace Corps volunteers bad bjock says the Peace Corps lobby fears skilled volunteers
will hurt generalists and they support the generalists
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EXISTING NUMBERS OF THE PEACE CORPS SOLVES


I
DEVELOPMENT

The Peace Corps can address development and promote the US image at it's current levels. The favor of high-level
officials towards the Peace Corps proves it's effectiveness
Mark Schneider, former Director of the Peace Corps MWoodrow Wilson lnternational Center for Scholars June 7,2000
("Globalization, Information Technology, and the Peace Corps in the 21st Century"
http:llpeacecorpsonline.orglmessageslmessages/262914150.html)

Today, nearly forty years later, the Peace Corps has nearly 7,000 volunteers who maintain that same spirit of service and
idealism working in seventy-sevencountries around the world. Peace Corps volunteers are serving as teachers in Africa, Eastern
Europe, Central Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Thev are helpina farmers in Latin America learn about -- and benefit from --
sustainable aaricultural practices. Peace Corps volunteers are working with women to obtain small loans from villaqe banks to
start their own businesses. And thev are helpina local health care workers promote health and nutrition in their communities. MAt
the same time, Peace Corps volunteers are makinu an enormous contribution to how the people of manv developinq nations see
and think about America. I think the former American ambassador to Guinea put it best when he wrote the following cable to the
State Department two years ago. "When I presented my credentials to President Conte," Ambassador Tibor Nagy wrote, "my
prepared remarks included a brief mention of all USG activities in Guinea. In his extemporaneous response, Conte launched into
spirited and effusive praise for Peace Corps volunteers and their work in Guinea." The ambassador said that for many people in
Africa, "Peace Corps volunteers are the real American ambassadors, not whoever runs the embassy in the capital . . . The fact is
that most people on this continent form their opinions about America and Americans from their exposure to volunteers." ml have
had similar experiences. On mv recent trip to West Africa. I was somewhat taken aback bv the frequency with which prime
ministers, cabinet ministers, and even the Vice President of Ghana asked me if I knew a particular volunteer who had taught
them English or math or had lived in their village one or two decades earlier. The success of the Peace Corps in convevina who
we are as a people was expressed in the comments of these leaders and of the local teachers, farmers, and micro-entrepreneurs
m.
PEACECORPS VOLUNTEERS ARE ALREADY EQUIPPED TO SOLVE POVERTY, ENVIRONMENTALISSUES, AND DISEASE.
Mark Schneider, former Director of the Peace Corps IWoodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars June 7, 2000
("Globalization, InformationTechnology, and the Peace Corps in the 21st Century"
http:/lpeacecorpsonline.orglmessageslmessages/2629/4150,html)

As the Peace Corps approaches its fortieth anniversary, our volunteers are finding solutions to contemporary problems that can
accelerate the pace of development, mFor instance, volunteers are serving in the new re~ublicsof the former Soviet Union,
where they are teachina business principles and helpins entrepreneurs and small businesses make the difficult transition from
state-run economies those based on free market principles. And thev are working with local governments, which are so crucial
to the democratic experience. Peace Corps volunteers are working with communities in dozens of countries to protect
biodiversitv at the local level so that future generations can experience sustainable economic growth. In Honduras, they are
helping local governments and communities develop plans and systems to mitigate the tragic effects that natural disasters, such
as Hurricane Milch, have on the country's development. And in Africa, thev are collaboratinq with USAID, international agencies,
grassroots orqanizations, schools, and health groups to help eradicate polio and prevent the spread of HIVIAIDS, which is not
only undermining national development, but is also, in my view, the dominant humanitarian challenge confronting the world
today. RJThese are some of the areas we are targeting today as ways to accelerate development.
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I EXISTING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TRAlNlNG SOLVES I


The Peace Corps is already addressing informatton technology worldwide and recruiting IT experts.
Mark Schneider, former Director of the Peace Corps mWoodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars June 7,2000
("Globalization, lnformation Technology, and the Peace Corps in the 21st Century"
http:llpeacecorpsonline.orglmessageslmessagesl2629l4l50.html)

1.We will build upon Peace Corps' traditional strengths of local community presence, intimate knowledge of local customs and
language, and demonstrated success at grassroots project development and execution. We will enable technology projects that
are financed by other organizations to become accessible to students and businesses that are not in the main square of capital
cities, but beyond the end of the road in distant villages. We also are ~rouosinalo harness IT to hell, resource-poorcommunities
advance their development qoals in education, health, environmental protection, aqriculture production and small business
enterprises, and municipal development. We want volunteers to prepare projects to do just that. m2.To recruit Peace Corps
volunteers with IT skills, a month aQowe created a new cateqow for Information Technoloqy generalists and specialists. It will
give computer whizzes a place to identify their skills for the first time. This also helps our overseas offices more clearly identify
where and how PCVs with these skills can work in the myriad of projects out there, and specifically request them. For instance,
Belize now is requesting thirty IT volunteers to lead their effort to bring computers into every primaty school by 2005. The first ten
volunteers arrived yesterday and twenty more are being recruited. m3.We are undertakina a massive "trainina of trainers"
process for volunteers who are comparative experts in usino information technoloay but not necessarily in teaching others how to
use it. We also want to expand the training programs to insure that volunteers and their counterparts become proficient in
information technology teaching techniques. 004.We want to see communitv computer literacy centers, micro and small business
web Daqe design centers; school-based learning centers expanded by volunteers around the world. We can point to dozens of
innovative uses by volunteers who have done it without support. Now we want to find ways to offer support and believe the
numbers of those projects will be mulliplied ten-fold. Today, f would like to challenge America's information giants to join the
Peace Corps' e-initiative by contributing funds, hardware, sottware, and teaching modules to a Peace Corps e-Partnership Fund.
The Fund will permit us to support hundreds of new volunteer information technology projects developed at the grassroots with
community, NGO, small business, and local government partners. mhirty years ago, my wife and I worked with our neighbors to
build a bridge across a gully so that students could reach school safely. Today, this new Peace Corps e-initiative will enable
volunteers to help build bridges across the digital divide to connect people in the poorest communities to the world of learning
and, hopefully, to more promisingfutures. Oonl that wav, we can make qlobalization "personal" and "local" and beqin to qive those
who traditionallv have been left on the marqins of technolouv a link to the center of the information revolution.
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I AT: INTERNET KEY TO SINGULARITYIARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE I


1, qualifications matter-their impact is from a high school history teacher and isn't different from reading a card about Time
Cube--give it zero credibility, it lacks warrants or any claim of proof connected to it

2. the existence of their asinine intenet evidence empirically disproves that the internet will generate artificial intelligence-any
intelligent being wouldn't have published it or written an advantage based on it

3. no internal link-their evidence isn't specific to the Peace Corps and doesn't provide a threshold for the evolution of global
artificial intelligence. Spreading small-scale telecommunications technology is an infinitessimallysmall component ofthe global
internet. Their highschool history teacher isn't talking about minor expansions of cell phones or giving a village a laptop-he
assumes the e q internet will inevitably evolve

4. Turn: Singularity is worse than extinction.


Venge in 93 (Vernor, Department of Mathematical Sciences at San Diego State University, 'The Coming Technological
Singularity," http:l/www-rohan,sdsu.eduifacultvlvinae/rnisc/sinqulari~.html)

If the Singularity can not be prevented or confined, just how bad could the Post-Human era be? Well ... prettv bad. The ~hvsical
extinction of the human race is one possibifitv. (Or as Eric Drexler put it of nanotechnology: Given all that such technoloqv can
do, perhaps qovernments would sim~lvdecide that thev no lonqer need citizens!). Yet physical extinction rnav not be the scariest
possibilitv. Aqain, analodes: Think of the different ways we relate to animals. Some of the crude physical abuses are
implausible, yet .... In a Post-Human world there would still be plenty of niches where human equivalent automation would be
desirable: embedded systems in autonomous devices, self-aware daemons in the lower functioning of larger sentients. (A
stronqly superhuman intelliqence would likelv be a Societv of Mind 1161 with some very competent components.) Some of these
human equivalents miqht be used for nothinq more than diqital siqnal processinq. They would be more like whales than humans.
Others might be very human-like, yet with a one-sidedness, a -dedication- that would put them in a mental hospital in our era.
Though none of these creatures miqht be flesh-and-blood humans, thev miaht be the closest thinqs in the new enviroment to
what we call human now. (I. J. Good had something to say about this, though at this late date the advice may be moot: Good [12]
proposed a "Meta-GoldenRule", which might be paraphrased as "Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors."
It's a wonderful, paradoxical idea (and most of my friends don't believe it) since the game-theoretic payoff is so hard to articulate.
Yet if we were able to follow it, in some sense that might say something about the plausibility of such kindness in this universe.)
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I AT: INTERNET KEY TO SINGULARITYIARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE I


5. Singularity won't happen-developments in software are incapable of bringing us there.
Webb in 02 (Stephen, professor of physics at Open University in England, If the universe is teeminq with aliens-- where is
evervbodv? )

First, even if high intelligence can exist on a non-biological substrate, the Sinaularitv miqht never happen.172 There are several
-
reasons - economic, political, social whv a Sinqularitv miqht be averted. There are also technoloqical reasons whv the
Sinqularitv miqht not occur. For example, for the attainment of the Singularity, advances in software will be at least as im~ortant
as hardware advances. Without much more sophisticated software than we currentlv oossess, the Sincjularitv will iust not
happen. Now, while it is true that various hardware measures seem to obev Moore's law, Improvements in software are much
less sr>ectacular.(The word processor I use is the latest version of the program. It certainly has more features than the version I
was using ten years ago, but I never use those features. Indeed, the program is probably slightly less useful to me than it was
ten years ago; I persevere with it because everyone else uses it and I need to exchange documents with people. The program I
am using to typeset this book, which is called TpX, is a wonderful piece of software whose creator froze development on the
program several years ago.ln While there is some progress in the worldwide TpX community toward an even better typesetting
program, progress is much slower than would be the case if Moore's law were in operation. Of course, the kind of software
required to create the "intelligence explosion" has nothing to do with word processors or typesetting programs. But the point is
the same: advances in software and in software methodologies come at a much slower rate. We simply may not be smart
enouqh to qenerate the software that will lead to a Sinqularitv.) Perhaps we will see a future in which incrediblv powerful
machines do amazinq thinas - but without self-awareness; surely this is at least as plausible as a future that contains a
Singularity.

6. Singularity leaves the possibility of extinction open--corporate control of technology.


Bell in 02 (James, Author and Writer for Sustain, a national environmental information group, Earth Island Journal, Vol. 17 No. 2,
'Technotopia & the Death of Nature, Clones, Supercomputers, and Robots,"
http://www.earthisland.oraieiiournal/new articles.~fm?articleID=586&iournallD=64)

Joy understands that the greatest dangers we face ultimatelv stem from a world where global corporations dominate
- a future where much of the world has no voice in how the world is run. The 21st century GNR technologies, he
writes, "are being developed almost exclusivelv by corporate entemrises. We are aggressively pursuing the ~romises
of these new technologies within the now-unchallenged system of global ca~italismand its manifold financial
incentives and competitive pressures." Joy believes that the system of global ca~italism,combined with our current
rate of progress, gives the human race a 30 to 50 percent chance of going extinct around the time the Singularity
happens. "Not only are these estimates not encouraging," he adds, "but they do not include the probability of many
horrid outcomes that lie short of extinction." Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen contends that if
chemists earlier in the last century had decided to use bromine instead of chlorine to produce commercial coolants (a
mere quirk of chemistry), the ozone hole over Antarctica would have been far larger, wouId have lasted all year and
would have severely affected life on Earth. "Avoiding that was just luck," stated Crutzen. It is very likely that
scientists and global cornorations will miss key develouments (or, worse, actively avoid discussion of them). A
whole generation of biologists has left the field for the biotech and nanotech labs. As biologist Craig Holdredge,
who has followed biotech since its early beginnings in the 1970s, warns: The science of "biologv is losing its
connection with nature."
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I AT: INTERNET KEY TO SINGULARITYIARTIFlClAL INTELLIGENCE 1


7. SINGULARITY
CAUSES EXTINCTION-ENVIRONMENTAL COLLAPSE

Bell in 02 (James, Author and Writer for Sustain, a national environmental information group, Earth Island Journal, Val. 17 No. 2,
"Technotopia & the Death of Nature, Clones, Supercomputers, and Robots,"
http://www.earthisland.orq/eiiournal/new articles.~frn?articlelD=586&iournallD=64)

Yet there is something missing from this discussion of the technologic singularity. The true cost of technologic
progress and the Sin~ularitvwill mean the unprecedented decline of the planet's inhabitants - an ever-increasing rate
of global extinction. The World Conservation Union (IUCN), the International Botanical Congress and a majority
of the world's biologists believe that a global "mass extinction" already is underway. As a direct result of human
activity (resource extraction, industrial agriculture, the introduction of non-native animals and population growth),
up to one-fifth of all living species - mostlv in the tropics - are expected to disappear within 30 vears. "The speed at
which species are being lost is much faster than any we've seen in the past - including those related to meteor
collisions," University of Tennessee biodiversity expert Daniel Simberloff told the Washington Post. A 1998 Hams
poll of the 5.000 members of the American Institute of Bioloaical Sciences found 70 vercent believed that what has
been termed "The Sixth Extinction" is now underway. A simultaneous Harris poll found that 60 percent of the ~ u b l i c
were totally unaware of the impending biological collapse. At the same time that nature's ancient biological creation
is on the decline, artificial laboratory-created bio-tech life forms - genetically modified tomatoes, genetically
engineered salmon, cloned sheep - are on the rise. Alreadv more than 60 percent of food in US grocerv stores
contain ~eneticallvengineered ingredients - and that percentage is rising. Nature and technology are not iust
evolving: They are competing and combining with one another. Ultimately there could be only one winner.

8. THE INTERNET ISN'T KEY-NANOTECH AND A.I. DEVELOPMENTS ARE THE MOST LIKELY WAY TO SINGULARITY
Bell, 03 (James, writer for Sustain, a national environmental information group, "Technology Runs Amok -ExploringThe
'Singularity, 611, http://www.rense.comlgeneraB9/explor.htrn)

Physicists, mathematicians, and scientists like Vinae and Kurzweil have identified throuqh their research the likely boundaries of
the Sinclularitv and have predicted with confidence various paths leadina up to it over the next couple of decades. These
scientists are currently debating what discovery could set off a chain reaction of Earth-alteringtechnological events. They
suqqesl that advancements in the fields of nanotechnoloav or the discover!! of artificial intelliqence could usher in the Sinuularity.
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Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I XT I: NO QUALIFICATIONS I
SERIOUSLY, THIS CRAP IS SCIENCE FICTION-A QUALIFIED PHYSICIST AND STRATEGIC ANALYST AGREES

MODIS, no date (date is at least 2003, Theodore, physicist, futurist, strategic analyst, and internationalconsultant; also the
founder of Growth Dynamics, an organization specializing in strategic forecasting and management consulting, "The Singulariiy
Myth, httu:llourcvorld.compuserve.romihomeuaqedtmodis/Kurzweil.htm)

Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near dragged me back into a subject that I am familiar with. In fact, ten years ago I
thought I was the first to have discovered it only lo find out later that a whole cult with increasing number of followers was
growing around it. I took my distance from them because at the time they sounded nonscientific. I published on my own adhering
to a strictly scientific approach. But to my surprise the respected BBC television show HORIZON that became interested in
making a program around this subject found even my publications "too speculative". In any case, for the BBC scientists the word
singularity is reserved for mathematical functions and phenomena such as the big bang. Kurzweil's book constitutes a most
exhaustive comuilation of "sinqularitarian" arauments and one of the most serious publications on the subiect. And vet to me it
still sounds nonscientific.Granted, the names of many renowned scientists appear prominently throuahout the book, but they are
generally auoted on some fundamental truth other than the direct endorsement of the so-called sinqularity. For example, Douglas
Hofstadter is quoted to have mused that "it could be simply an accident of fate that our brains are too weak to understand
themselves." No1 exactly what Kurzweil says. Even what seems to give direct support to Kurzweil's thesis, the following quote by
the celebrated informationtheorist John von Neumann "the ever accelerating process of technology.. .gives the appearance of
approaching some essential singularity" is significantly different from saying "the singularity is near". Neumann's comment
strongly hints at an illusion whereas Kurzweil's presents a far-fetched forecast as a fact. What I want to say is that Kurzweil and
the sinclularitarians are indulqincl in some sort of para-science, which differs from real science in matters of methodoloav and
riqor. Thev tend to overlook riuorous scientific practices such as focusina on natural laws, aivina urecise definitions, verifyinq the
data meticulouslv, and estimatinq the uncertainties. Below I list a number of scientific wrongdoings in Kurzeil's book. I try to
rectify some of them in order to properly present my critique of the Singularity concept.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I XT 5: NO SINGULARITY I
Either singularity can't happen or it's inevitable.
Venge in 93 (Vernor, Department of Mathematical Sciences at San Diego State University, "The Coming Technological
Singularity," http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/facultvlvinqeimisdsinuularitv.html)
Well, maybe it won't happen at all: Sometimes& I to imaaine the svmptoms that we should exuect to see if the Sinaularitv is
not to develop. There are the widely respected arguments of Penrose [I91and Searle [22] against the practicality of machine
sapience. In August of 1992, Thinking Machines Corporation held a workshop to investigate the question "How We Will Build a
Machine that Thinksu[27]. As you might guess from the workshop's title, the participants were not especially supportive of the
arguments against machine intelligence. In fact, there was aeneral aareement that minds can exist on nonbiolo~icalsubstrates
and that alqorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds. However, there was much debate about the raw
hardware power that is present in orqanic brains. A minority felt that the largest 1992 computers were within three orders of
magnitude of the power of the human brain. The maioritv of the participants aqreed with Moravec's estimate 1171that we are ten
to fortv vears awav from hardware parity. And yet there was another minority who pointed to [7] [21], and conjectured that the
computational competence of single neurons may be far higher than generally believed. If so, our present computer hardware
miaht be as much as ten orders of magnitude short of the eauipment we carrv around in our heads. If this is true (or for that
matter, if the Penrose or Searle critique is valid), we miqht never see a Sinaularity. Instead, in the early '00s we would find our
hardware performance curves beqinnin~to level off -- this because of our inability to automate the design work needed to
support further hardware improvements. We'd end up with some -very- powerful hardware, but without the ability to push it
further. Commercial diqital siqnal processina miqht be awesome. qivinq an analoq appearance even to diqital operations, but
nothina would ever "wake up" and there would never be the intellectual runaway which is the essence of the Singularity. It would
likely be seen as a golden age ... and it would also be an end of progress. This is very like the future predicted by Gunther Stent.
In fact, on page 137 of 1251, Stent explicitly cites the development of transhuman intelligence as a sufficient condition to break his
projections. But if the technoloaical Sinaularitv can happen, it will. Even if all the sovernments of the world were to understand
the "threat" and be in deadlvfear of it, proqress toward the qoal would continue. In fiction, there have been stories of laws
passed forbidding the construction of "a machine in the likeness of the human mind" [13]. In fact, the com~etitiveadvantaue --
economic, military, even artistic -- of everv advance in automation is so cornpellina that passins laws, or havinq customs, that
forbid such thinqs merelv assures that someone else will qet them first.

THEIR ARGUMENT IS UTOPIAN NONSENSETHAT DOESN'T ACCOUNT FOR EXISTING CRISES


Prieur, 05 (Ran, B.A. in English Lit and Philosophy, "Don't Fear the Singularity", 1213,
http://www.ranprieur.com/essays/singularity.html)

"The Sinqularitv" is the biqqest idea in techno-utopianism. The word is deked from black hole science -- it's the point at the core where matter has
contracted to zero volume and infinite density, beyond the laws of time and space, with gravity so strong that not even tight can escape. They apply the word to
the future to suggest that "progress' will take us to a place we can neither predict, nor understand, nor return from. At least they have their metaphors right that
our recent direction of change is about contraction, not expansion, and leads inescapably to collapse and a new world. Their fatal pride is in thinking they'll like it.
Basically, they think computers are going to keep getting better faster, until they surpass biological life, and we'll be able lo 'upioad" our consciousness into
immortal robots or virtual reality heaven. The engine of this fantasy is the 'acceleration," which supposedly includes and transcends biological evolution, and is
buittinto reality itself, destinedto go forward forever. The weakest part of their mvtholoqv is the part they take for qranted. Civilization can't
be part of evolution, because it's the most anti-evolutionaryevent in the historv of life on Earth, reversinq the normal buildup of
harmonious bio-comdexrlv, killinq species at a faster rate than anv previous mass extinction. Also, it hasn't even been good for humans.
Most "primitive"people enjoy greater health, happiness, political power, and ease of existence than than all but the luckiest civilized people, and even medieval
serfs worked fewer hours than modern people, at a slower pace, and passed less of their money up the hierarchy. Even our medical system, everyone's favorite
-
example of beneficial "progress," has been steadily increasing in cost, while base human health the ability to live and thrive in the absence of a medical system
-- has been steadily declining. Conversely, the strongest part of their mythology is where they focus all their attention, with careful and sophisticatedarguments
that there are no technical limits to miniaturizationor the speed of informat~ontransfer. This a bit like Easier Islanders saying there is no physical limit to how big
they can make their statues -and since the statues keep getting bigger,they must be an extensionof evolution, and will keep getting bigger forever. Meanwhile
the last trees are being cut down... It seems obvious that the acceleration will be cut short bv the crash of industrial civilization, that
wars and plaques and enerav shortaues and breakdowns of central control will make it impossible to maintain the phvsical
infrastructureto keep manufacturinq new qenerations of computers. But some of the accelerationistshave an interesting answer:
that the curve they're describing was not slowed by the fall of Rome or the Black Death, that "innovation" has continued to rise
steadily, that phases of political decentralization are actually good for technology.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I XT: 6-7: EXTINCTION I


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAUSES KILLER ROBOTS-THE IMPACT IS EXTINCTION
Knight, 01 (Will, ZDNet UK, 1/23, htt~:l/news.zdnet.co.uk~hardware!chi~slO,39020354,2083~8,OO.htm)

What was once the realm of science fiction has mutated into serious debate. While the focus is currently on cloning and genetic
engineering, few people have seriouslv considered beinn annihilated by a robot race. That is until an article published in Wired
magazine early last year titled Why the future doesn't need us by cofounder of Sun Microsystems and esteemed technoloaist Bill
Jov introduced a wider audience to the possibilitv that recent technoloqical advances could be a threat to the existence of man.
Joy discussed the potential catastrophes that could result from tinkering with genetics, nanotechnology and artificially-intelligent
machines. Most disturbingly, Jov cites not technophobes or paranoid theorists, but some of the leadifla liqhts of Al research
and academia who have voiced concern that machines miqht confront humans. Steve Grand, artificial intelligence
researcher and author of Creation: Life and how to make it w s it would be impossible for humans to be totallv sure that
autonomous, intelliaent machines would not threaten humans. Perhaps more worryingly, he claims it would be futile to try to build
Asimov's laws into a robot. Artificial intelligence researchers have long since abandoned hope of applying simplistic laws to
protect humans from robots. Grand says that for real intelliqenceto develop, machines must have a deqree of independence and
be able to weigh up contradictionsfor themselves, breaking one rule to preserve another, which would not fit with Asimov's laws. He
believes that conventional evolutionary pressures would determine whether machines become a threat to humans. They will only become dangerous if they are
competing for survival, in terms of resourcesfor example, and can match human's intellectual evolutionary prowess. "Whether they are a threat rests on whether
they are going to be smarter than us," he says. "The way I see it, we're iusl adding a couple more species." In his book The End of the World: The Science and
Ethics of Human Extinction John Leslie, professor of philosophv at Guelph Universitv in Canada, predicts ways in which intelliqent
machines might cause the extinction of mankind. He savs that super-clever machines might arque to themselves that thev are
superior to humans. Thev miqht eventuallv be put in charqe of mananina resources and decide that the most efficient course of
action is for humans to be removed. He also believes it would be possible for machines to override in-built safeguards. "If you
have a very intelligent system it could unprogram itself," he says. "We have to be careful about getting into a situation where they
take over against our will or with our blessing."

THE AFFIRMATIVE MAKES EXTINCTION INEVITABLE


Bell, 03 (James, writer for Sustain, a national environmental information group, 'Technology Runs Amok -Exploring The
'Singularity"',611, http:llwww.rense.comlgeneral69lexplor.htm)

In April 2000, a wrench was thrown into the arrival of the Sinqularitv by an unlikely source: Sun Micro-svsterns chief scientist Bill
&.He is a neo-Ludditewithovt being a Luddite, a technologist warning the world about technology. Joy co-founded Sun Mtrosystems, helped create the Unix
computer operatingsystem, and developed the Java and Jini softwaresystems-systemsthat helped give the Internet "life." In a now-rnfamous cover story in
Wired magazine, "Why the Future Doesn'l Need us," JOYwarned of the danaers posed bv developments in qenetics, nanotechnoloqv, and
robotics. Joy's warning of the impacts of exponential technological progress run amok gave new credence to the coming Singulaii. Unless things change, Joy
predicted, "We could be the last generation of humans.' JOVwarned that "knowledge alone will enable mass destruction" and termed this
phenomenon "knowledge-enabled mass destmction." The twentieth century gave rise to nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies that, while
powerful, require access to vast amounts of raw (and oten rare) materials,technical information, and large-scaleindustries. The twentv-first-century
technoloqies of qenetics, nanotechnoloqv, and robotics (GNR), however, will require neither larqe facilities nor rare raw
materials. The threat posed by GNR technologies becomes further amplified by the fact that some of these new technologies
have been designed to be able to replicate-i.e., thev can build new versions of themselves. Nuclear bombs did not sprout more
bombs, and toxic soills did not QrOW more spills. If the new self-replicatingGNR technologies are released into the environment, they could be nearly
impossible to recall or control. Joy understands that the greatest dangers we face ultimately stem from a world where global corporations dominate-a future
where much of the world has no voice in how the world is run. Twenty-first-centuw GNR technoloqies, he writes, "are beinq developed almost
exclusivelv bv corporate enterprises. We are aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the now-
unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial incentives and competitive pressures." Joy believes that @
svstem of qlobal capitalism, combined with our current rate of progress, gives the human race a 30% to 50% chance of qoinq
extinct around the time the Sinqularity is expected to happen, around 2030. "Not only are these estimates no! encouraging," he adds, "but they
do not include the probabilityof many horrid outcomes that lie short of extinction." It is very likely that scientists and global corporationswill miss key
developments-or, worse, actively avoid discussion of them. A whole generation of biologists has left the field for the biotech and nanotech labs. Biologist Craig
Holdredge, who has followed biotech since its beginnings in the 1970%warns, "Biology is losing its conneclion with nature.'
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I XT 6-7: EXTINCTION I
OPPOSITION TO SINGULARITY IS THE ONLY CHANCE OF AVOIDING EXTINCTION
Bell, 03 (James, wriier for Sustain, a national environmental information group, 'Technology Runs Amok -Exploring The
'Singularity"', 611, http:lhrvww.rense.camigeneral69lexplor.htm)

The rate at which GNR technolwies are beinq adopted by our societv-without resard to long-term safety testina or researchinq
the political, cultural, and economic ramifications-mirrors the development and proliferation of nuclear power and weapons. The
human loss caused by experimentation, production, and development is still being felt from the era of NBC technologies.
The discussion of the environmental impacts of GNR technologies, at least in the United States, has been relegated to the
margins. Voices of concern and opposition have likewise been missina in discussions of the technoloqical Sinqularitv. The true
cost of this technoloqical proqress and any comincr Sinaularitv will mean the unprecedented decline of the planet'sinhabitants at
an ever-increasingrate of qlobal extinction. The World Conservation Union, the InternationalBotanical Congress, and
of the world's bioloqists believe that a olobal mass extinction alreadv is under way. As a direct result of human activity (resource
extraction, industrial agriculture, the introduction of non-native animals, and population growth), up to one-fifth of all living species
are expected to disappear within 30 years. A 1998 Harris Poll of the 5,000 members of the American Institute of Biological
Sciences found that 70% believed that what has been termed "The Sixth Extinction" is now under way. A simultaneous Harris
Poll found that 60% of the public were totally unaware of the impending biological collapse.

Al could not have rules built into them after Singularity.


Venge in 93 (Vernor, Department of Mathematical Sciences at San Diego State University, "The Coming Technological
Singularity," httu:l/www-rohan.sdsu.edu/facultv/vinqe/misclsinqula~tv.html)

Another approach to confinement is to build rules into the mind of the created superhuman entitv (for example,
Asimov's Laws 131). I think that any rules strict enough to be effective would also produce a device whose abilitv
was clearly inferior to the unfettered versions (and so human competition would favor the development of the those
more dangerous models). Still, the Asimov dream is a wonderful one: Imagine a willing slave, who has 1000 times
your capabilities in every way. lmagine a creature who could satisfy your every safe wish (whatever that means) and
still have 99.9% of its time free for other activities. There would be a new universe we never really understood, but
filled with benevolent gods (though one of -my- wishes might be to become one of them).

SINGULARITY WILL BE COOPTED BY THE MILITARY, AND ACCELERATE THE RISK OF EXTINCTION
Prieur, 05 (Ran, B.A. in English Lit and Philosophy, "Don't Fear the Singularity", 1213,
http://www.ranprieur.com/essaysjsingular)

Why is this important to the subject of techno-utopia? Because this is what's going to bring down techno-utopia. The techies are
preparinq defenses aaainst an "irrational' social backlash, without sensina the true danser. That the critique of prosress is valid
has not vet entered into their darkest dreams. The Sinaularitv will fail because its human handlers don't understand what can qo
wrona, because thev don't understand what has qone wrona, because of their human emotional investment in their particular
direction of chanqe. Of course, industrial technoloqv has been very effective for certain thinas: allowinq the Nazis to make an
IBM punchcard database to track citizens and facilitate genocide; burninq Dresden and Naaasaki; qivinq a billion peoole cancer,
a disease that barely existed in prehistory; coverinq the cradle of civilization with deuleted uranium that could make it
uninhabitable by humans forever; enabling a few hundred people to control hundreds of millions. A maior subtext in techno-
transhumanism, seldom mentioned publiclv, is its connection to the military. When nerds think about u~loadlnqthemselves into
machines, about "becomina" a computer that can do a hundred years of thinkina in a month, military people have some ideas for
what they'll be thinkinq about: desianina better weapons, operatinq drone arcraft and battleshipsand satellite communication
networks, beatina the enemy, who will be increasinaly defined as ordinarv people who resist central control.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I XT 6-7: EXTINCTION 1
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCERISKS EXTINCTION
Prieur, 05 (Ran, B.A. in English Lit and Philosophy, "Don't Fear the Singularity", 1213,
1
What if the first bio-nano-superbrain aoes mad? How would anyone know? Wouldn't a mind on a different platform than our own,
with more complexity, seem mad no matter what it did? What if it tried to kill its creators and then itself? What if its first words
were "I hate mvself and I want to die"? If a computer were 100 times more complex than us, by what factor would it be more
emotionally sensitive? More depressed? More confused? More cruel? A brain even half as complex as ours can't simplv be
proqrammed -- it has to be raised, and raised well. How many computer scientists have raised their own kids to be both
emotionally healthy, and to carry on the work of their parents? If they can't do it with a creature almost identical to themselves,
how will they ever do it with a hyper-complex alien intelligence?Again, they're talking chaos while imagining control: we can
model the stock market, calculate the solutions to social problems, know when and where you can fart and make it rain a month
later in Barbados. Sure, maybe, but the thing we make that can do those computations --we have no idea what it's going to do.
To some extent, the techies understand this and even embrace it: they say when the Singularity appears, all bets are off. But at
the same time, they are makina all kinds of assumptions: that the motives, the values, the aesthetics of the new intelliaence will
be remotelv similar to their own: that it will operate by the cultural artifact we call "rational self-interest;" that "proqress"and
"acceleration," as we recoanize them, will continue. Any acceleration continues until whatever's driving ~truns out, or until it
feeds back and changes the cond~tionsthat made it possible. Bacteria in a petrl dish accelerate in numbers until they fill up the
dish and eat all the food. An atom~cbomb chain reaction accelerates until all the fissionable material is either used up or
vaporized in the blast. And information technology will accelerate until... Kurzweil has an answer: When the acceleration ran out
of room in vacuum tubes, it moved to transistors. Then it moved to silicon chips, and next it might move to three dimensional
arrays of carbon nanotubes, and so on.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace Corps/Bectronic Peace Corps neg

I DlSAD OUTWEIGHS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE I


OUR DlSAD OUTWEIGHS THEIR ADVANTAGE-IT WOULD HAPPEN MORE QUICKLY
Knight, 01 (Will, ZDNet UK, 1123, htt~:1lnews.zdnet.co.uWhardware/chi~sl0,39020354~2083908,00.htm)

So what may be the best course of action? Marvin Minskv is an artificial intelliqence pioneer who founded the Al Lab at MIT and
is on the board of advisors at the Foresight Institute, a body created to investigate the dangers of emerging technologies. Minsky
aarees that extinction at the mechanical hands of a robot race may be iust around the corner, but says that developments in the
field of artificial intelligence call for considered debate. He says he is encouraging artificial intelligence experts to participate in
the work of the Institute. "Our possible futures include glorious prospects and dreadful disasters," says Minsky in an email.
"Some of these are imminent, and others, of course, lie much further off.Winskv notes that there are more immediate threats to
think about and combat, such as qlobal warmina, ocean oollution, war and world overpopulation. However, he says, the
possibilities of artificial intelligence should not be completely ignored. "In a nutshell, I argue that humans today do not appear to
be competent to solve many problems that we're starting to face. So, one solution is to make ourselves smarter -- perhaps by
changing into machines. And of course there are dangers in doing this, just as there are in most other fields -- but these must be
weighed against the dangers of not doing anything at all,"

AFF AUTHORS CONCEDE A 30 YEAR IMEFRAME DESPITE THEIR LACK OF QUALIFICATIONS


Venge in 93 (Vemor, Department of MathematicalSciences at San Diego State University, "The Coming Technological
Singularity," htt~:llwww-rohan.sdsu.edulfacultv/vinae/misclsin~ularitv.html)

Within thirty years, we will have the technoloqical means to create superhuman intelliqence. Shortly after, the human era will be
ended.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpsIElectronic Peace Corps neg

ELECTRONIC PEACE CORPS KEY TO SOLVE DISEASE AND


POVERTY

Recent rise in communication makes the Electronic Peace Corps more necessary than ever-key to solve poverty and
environmental issues in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America
David H. Rothman, author of Networld! and other tech-related books, 1996 ("It's Time to Consider an Electronic Peace Corps!"
http:llpeacecorpsonline.orglmessageslmessages/2629/3934.html)

The Internet is but one example. Via BBS networks, for instance, American schoolchildren can learn geography and other
subjects from direct contacts with students and others abroad. And with communications costs lower than in the '80%hiqh-tech is
a perfect medium for cultural exchanqes at a mass level. Electronic libraries, moreover, are no longer quite so novel. In an era of
the Web, Gopher and similar tools, people in developinq countries can track down information on their own without quite so
much help from the States. Most of all, computers are no longer such novelties to the elites of Sri Lanka and other developing
countries. I can't cite a cyber-census of the island; but I'd suspect that the number of microcomputers at universitiesthere is in
the hundreds and perhaps the thousands, a far cry from the Kaypro era. Sri Lanka is but one example of the proliferation of high-
tech. For example, Wired magazine told how, in some circles in China, 286-class computers are enshrined along with the wok
and bicycle in a "pantheon of simple, ubiquitous technology.QAnd vet, if anvthinq, the need is even greater todav for an
Electronic Peace Corps than in the 1980s. Epidemics can spread more raaidlv. And the fates of Americans are more intertwined
than ever with people In the Third Word, some of whom have come to our shores to escape wars and find new opportunities
here. Indeed it has been suggested, quite correctly, that some of the best participants in an EPC might be our recent immigrants
and their children. DoThere are other changes in the idea I'd make today. Just as the existlng Peace Corps is doing already, an
electronic version could help Eastern Europe, not only Asia, Africa and Latin America. William Buckley speculated in 1990: "What
would happen if a half-million Kaypros--1speak of the Volkswagen of personal computers--weregiven away--yes, given away--to
Eastern Europe and to the Soviet Union? The worriers will ask whether we are playing the role of sorcerer's apprentice, giving
away rudimentary instruments that can turn into monsters (with a Kaypro, Stalin might have managed to find and kill even more
people). But no: the universalizationof the resources of the computer can accelerate that which most needs acceleration:
economic relief for 350 million people, Eastern Europeans and Russians, bankrupted bv 70 vears of soc~alism."BAlso, an EPC
could reflect our existinq Peace Corps' interest in the environment--inforestry, for example. Certainly the EPC could plav in
important role in monitorina and copina with pollution and other threats. In this same vein, an Electronic Peace Corps could
promote Th~rdWorld telecommuting. m h e idea, proposed years ago by a Tennessee researcher, makes infinite sense;
telecommuting could reduce smog in the great cities of developing countries, lessen the threat to the ozone layer, and also
encourage greater social stability. The goal wouldn't be to turn every villager into a computer-eraclerk. Rather the EPC could
encouraqe Third World societies to create new opportunities in rural areas to help staunch the flow of ~opulationinto alreadv-
crowded cities. Just a small number of white-collar people in rural reqions could generate service iobs for many others. The EPC
could encourage developing countries to train the children of farmers for jobs they would normally find only in New Delhi, say, or
Mexico City. And it could help city-based companies reach out to this new labor force through rural work centers. Moreover, it
could assist rural people in establishinqtheir own companies to provide some local emplo~mentof the white-collar variety.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace Corps/Electronic Peace Corps neg

ELECTRONIC PEACE CORPS SOLVES DISEASE, ENVIRONMENT,


AGRICULTURE

Creating an Electronic Peace Corps would create communication and cooperation between countries and individuals
on multiple issues, solving major epidemics, agricultural problems, and other global issues.
David H. Rothman, author of Networld! and other tech-related books, 1996 ("It's Time to Consider an Electronic Peace Corps!"
ht$:llpeacecorpsonline.orglmessages/messages/2629/39~. html)

A deadly, unknownd s e v e is killing hundredsol people in a steamy jungle in the year 2000. rmhe illnessbafflesthe local public heelth ohals.They can't determhe whether the disease isspread thmugh f w d
water, sex, insects, orsome other means. Fear ~rows.The sickness might even b m m e another AIDS, a menace not just to Third WorM counlries but ako to developed countries like the United States. ENOW,
An American aqenCy
however, n Me year2000, leadng scientists ohen know of mystery diseases wlthin daysof the first h m l reports. So they enjoy a head stat in fighting this one. mThe reason?
called the Electronic Peace Corps (EPC), mSupervised by a cadre of experienced ~rofessionals.Peace Corps- stvle volunteers
are revolutionizinqThird World communications. Thev use computers, radios, and other electronic means to boost health and
qeneral livinq standards in developinq countries and perha~seven save lives in developed ones. UOSome EPC volunteers work in
the field. Others, however, don't leave their regular jobs in their home towns, Thev share their medical and technical knowledqe
via qlobal ~OmDUternetworks. Whird World officials can dial up computerized lists to select the right EPC volunteers for their needs of the moment. And
time zones dont matter. Computer messages remain in electronic mailboxes thousands of miles away, ready to be picked up at the recipients'leisure. fflA real
EPC does not exist. But it C O U ~ Already
~. the basic plan has won support from such people as Roger Nicholson, former worldwide training director=
Peace Corps; Arthur C. Clarke, father of the communications satellite; and conservative columnist William F. Bucklev Jr., who was keen on the idea as far back
("a
as 1984 concrete proposal available to anyone running for president of b e United States-or for re-electlon"). &he EPC concept is Simple: IIUSe
cellular radio technoloav, computers, and other electronics to speed up the flow of technical and medical informationfrom
country to countw and within countries. The EPC could be part of the existinq Peace Corps or else be an independent agency. Other
nations, moreover, might want to start lheir own. mHere is how the EPC could help fight the hypothetical epidemic and otherwise aid the Third World. mWay No. 1:
Improve Telephone Service DVo, we aren't talking about wiring up every tropical village or placing a Princessphone in every shelter. Nor need we string cables
across every river and mountain range. UlRather, an EPC would aid public health efforts and other development-relatedactivities throuqh
the same cellular radio technoloay that real estate salesmen and doctors employ to stay in touch with their offices from their
BMWs. Faced with a possible epidemic, reqional health workers could consult with the most knowledqeable professionals in their
countries and even abroad. mPublic health would be just one beneficiary of better phone service. Aqricultural oruanizations, for
instance, could more easilv keep track of crop ~rices,and merchants or aovernment officials could better coordinate food
distribution. MWay No. 2: Promote Use of Computerized Databases. Expert Svsterns, and Electronic Spreadsheets OlLearning of the
strange symptoms, doctors in the affected country's capital could consult a computer database--to confirm that the malady was indeed a new one and to
compare il with known illnesses. Computer also could help keep them abreast of new medical trends. A single CD ROM disk, for instance, similar to the kind that
stores music, might offer the equivalent of hundreds of issues of medicaljournals. Imagine the boon to doctors and medical libraries unable to
afford normal subscriptions. CD ROMs would be one way to reduce the expense of internationalcomputer connections when making massive data
searches. mGuided bv CD ROMs and expert svstems--computers that respond to queries and offer advice the way a human expert
might--theThird World doctors could develop some preliminary responses to the epidemic. O ~ A S I . IJnitedSnrcs,mm~urersalsoco~ldst~eanineme
~~
keplng of records w d pertom olllc. kskr rlnglng trcm t l e analyss of labolatcy .~sultslu II$ llonilorlng 21mtic-ts .noer aneslheslao :1e strerrliq~~g
of homtals Inances. If n t h ng eke, ccislder 1% Atncdn
n a t h lhaf aided ewrmicspreameets, got its budget done on Xhedule for h e first lime in years.uway NO. 3: Improve International C~mmunicati~ns--~specia~~ythe computer Kind
m e gadgetly ewiststo 'mail'camputer messages even to Thrd Woald capitak vinh noisy phone lines. !%far back as 1982, Jerome Glenn, a leadng US, pioneer in computer communicationswith pmrer
wuntries. was sendina messages out of HaRi via a suitcase-sized cmDuter terminal. He later institutionalizedwhat he was doina. Thanks to Ihe network he created--calledCARINET-an African Dotter can oet
inlormatiin within a day on how to build electrical insulators.Similarly Jamaican farmers may receive adwe to plant peppers, noi pumpkins, il they want good pnces in the U.S. ~Whaf'smare, since ~lenn'sbianeer
davs, nternationalcomputer communical'~~ns has been arowina steadily chea~er.IFor $1. 1 can send 1,OW-word computer letters to a friend in SoutheastAsia. He oavs more. Just the same. 'E-Mail'costs are
an Electronic Peace Corps could'allow even the most impecunious public health oraan'izations in the Third World to
steidQdecIining,and
comm~nicatewith mai0r Ones in the West. OO~omputers,of course, wouMnY be the only medium. The EPC might also transmt detailed technical informationat times via facsimile. Whars
more, phone conversationson occason might be most efficient and add a personaltouch Even television might be used when appropriate;tor instance, to show surgical procedures. mNo maler what the media, a
W W I ~ help save lives by: MQuicklv arelfinq researchers and decision makers of developinq epidemics, not iust
far-mchingnehv~kof public heath ofciais
of their existence but of important details. AIDS, of course. is the classical example here. Serious research in the U.S. miqht
have started earlier if better qlobal communications had helped Westerners qrasp one of the more important details: that AIDS
could threaten qeneral p~plJlationS,not just 'high-risk' groups such as intravenous drug users and homosexuals. Granted, technology alone isn't the
answer. Com~uternets cannot substitute for improved cooperat;on between coun:ries: all thev can do is make it easier. n m s a s e .
e p m v o q sls sflrw g i n ~ d3: s rlcpJ I tnc CC-!enlor Dts?ase C3r:loI royld IVUIUS
y rack crm m nor awns es ;.rvovmns rets. a l e . VI~C: Ir;) estthey bbc~meAI0S.s zed tireats ~ t s,edpt
t acrossoceans n
mspeedinq Up research,
an era of jet travel. How lmstratingthat epidemiologists,cancer researchersand others are at the mercy of post dlices. Medicaljournals and letters between researchers
may arrlve weeks late or not at all. And telex is often too expensive. With funding from Apple Computer and McOonnell-Douglas Tymnet n m o K Baylor University Medical Center and the Pan American Heanh
The benefits Can be two-w~V.The more countries
Organizatim started a cancer net with rnnnectlons to five Lain countries. U.S. institutionsshouldbe doing more of the same.
and S~ientiStsinvolved, the more likely it is that researchersCan gain fresh insiqhts basedon unusualmses. TMS isn'teven to mentionthe possibiiiiof Ihe
spread of new diseases to the U.S. aSendrngThird Wodd doctors the very latest intormatlonto use on individual patients. Would that the physicians be able to do this routinely. Usually there wont be time or money.
But in special cases, adiagnosis lrom afar might save or prolong life.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I ELECTRONIC PEACE CORPS KEY TO TELECOMMUNICATIONS I


THEDOMESTIC ELECTRONIC PEACECORPSCOULD BE INCORPORATED INTO A NATIONAL POLICY. ITWOULD SOLVE POVERTY BY CREATING
PROSPERITY FROM TELECOM PROJECTS, ALLOWING FARMERS TO COMPETE INTERNATIONALLY, AND IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF LIFE.
David H. Rothman, author of NefWor/d!and other tech-related books as well as a contributor to Scholarly
Publishing: The Electronic Frontier, and the author of Copyright and K-12: Who Pays in the Network Era?,
an online essay published by the U.S. Department of Education. 1998 ("How Chips and Wires Could Help
Build National Pride, Not Just Wealth" http://www. teleread.orq/bank. htm) 1

Now on to an elaboration of the fourth way in which a Mexican Electronic Peace Corps would not be as the
same as the existing U.S. Peace Corps: UoEniovina qreater control of the domestic oraanization, the
Mexican qovernment could make it an integral part of national policy that used better telephone service and
computers as a way to upqrade livinq standards and slow down the disruptive flow of people from rural
areas to Mexico City. The aqencv miqht be either a public-private venture or a division of an aqencv such
as the ministrv of ~ubliceducation; either way, it could be one of the cornerstones of the Mexican
Informatics Development Program. In Telecommunications and Economic Development (a World Bank
Publication from The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), the authors make the case that returns on
investment from telcom proiects supported by the World Bank mav reach as hiah as 40 Dercent in some
cases if you consider not just the revenue from the phone systems but also the benefits to transportation,
tourism, banking and other endeavors. Imagine, then, all the prosperitv that a domestic electronic peace
corps could help Mexico enioy with the Internet technoloqy in the hands of the rural masses as well as the
business community. [[The Mexican Electronic Peace Corps wouldn't blithely parachute telephones,
computers, and modems into little villages or urban barrios; volunteers could patiently show how to use
them to improve lives. Small telcorn companies nurtured by the corps would offer public phones, not just
private ones, as well as low-cost or free Net access via community centers--rural cybercafes with not only
telephones and computers but also food and drink. Call them munytels, my own favorite term, or
community communications centers. Whatever the name, weave them into the lives of the people. Small
farmers in rural reqions, for instance, could use these communitv centers to track commodity prices abroad
and more comfortably switch from qrowina staples to qrowina crops for which there is international
demand. Farmers and others could set micro loans throuqh the munytels--small loans that representatives
of banks could administer more easily from afar because of the efficiencies of computers and networks.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace Corps/Electronic Peace Corps neg

ELECTRONIC PEACE CORPS SOLVES: DEVELOPMENT -

Spreading the lnternet through the Electronic Peace Corps is key to improving education and environmental
stewardship in Third World countries.
Patrick & ~ac~ueline
Duffy-Saenz,former Peace Corps Volunteers a s environmental educators in Uruguay within the Department of Rivera, 2001
("U.S. Peace Corps Veterans Tell Why the Third World Need the Net* httpJ/peacecorpsonline.orglmessageslmessages~62913959,html)

The lntemet should go wherever telephones do. If the phone lines don't reach far enough, then it is time to string up the wires or install cellular gear so that the Net can go there.
have seen the lnternet enrich the lives of children in the Third World, and we believe that the Electronic Peace Corps approach
-

would help spread this blessina and use it well. M s volunteers w~ththe exst~ngu.S. Peace Corps and as envircnmental educators, we lived and worked in
- -=--, wllhln
llrl~ol~av.~ .the
. - Deoartment
. ~ r ~ ~
of. R~vera.We ass~stedNon-GovernmentalOraanlzallons. or NGO's, the local school system, consisting of more than 100 schools, and . . - the
.. .lntendencia
... .. - -.
which in English means "government office." Mostly we worked in NGO development, environmental education, and natural resources brotection. And we quickly missed the wealth of
books and other resources that we had taken for granted in the United States. Having materials shipped to us was not a g w d way to share knowledge with the people of Uruguay, due
to the high costs of sending the packages, which might arrive late or not at ail. Books are heavy. And ten pounds by airmail from Chicago to Uruguay costs roughly US$40 and takes
anywhere from two weeks to three months. So we had to look for a faster, cheaper, and more encompassing solution, and we found it in the Internet. dracking down an Internet
provider in our area, back in those pioneer days, required a p o d two months of pounding the pavement-we searched the phone book and quizzed acquaintances and visited
computer stores, libraries, and local offices. F~nallywe discovered a provider not more than a bock off the heart of the downtown area. Other people were as eager to get online as we
were. It was amazina to watch the lnternet blossom in Uruguay in iust the short time we were there. Alter fiially logging on the ~ e twe , began
searching for materials in Spanish for the local schools, the environmental NGO, PUEDES (Podemos Unirnos en un Desarrollo Sostenible), and the Intendencia.This proved to be
morefmitful than we had ever dared to imagine. NForthe local schools, we worked mainly on curriculum development. Since Uruguay already has one of the more developed
educational systems in Latin America, we didn'l focus quite so much on teaching the schoolchildren directly. Instead we concentrated on helping the teachers receive the most ugto-
The areat maioritv of information we received was throuah the Internet, which let US
date information and relate it tothe lessons lorthe students.
search, read, and print what we believed to be the most helpful. mTo our astonishment, the teacher was the only person with a
textbook in most c ~ ~ s S ~ OSo,Olor~aSg w. d part of the day, the students drew diagrams and maps, and they developed artistic abilit~esbut not full comprehension. All the
books areimported4 book costs over US$100. Compare this to the monthlv salary of an Uruquavan teacher of US$90, and one can
0nlv conclude that somethinq must chanae. The prices of books will not decline in the future unless Uruguay undergoesa revolution in paper-based publishing, a
change that is highly unforeseeable.On the other hand, every school has a couple of computers, and most now have lntemet access. NBut how can teachers use online inlormation in
the best, most appropriateway? The Internel is just a vehicle. and a vehicle is useless il it lacks a direction. And so, after having lived, fought, and searched for the most appropriate
information lor the last two years, we returned from Uruguay with the idea that the world could be a better place if everyone knew how to log on the lnternet and use it in a truly practical
way. The lnternet can do much more than entertain the electronicaltj skilledit can also provide answers fw teachers and children who know how to ask the right questions. UW
the incredible resource of the Internet, we were able to compile an environmental resource libran, available to all the schools and
the public. This library came with lesson plans, activities, and endless meqabvtes of environmental information on such topics as
biodiversity, recyclinq and solid waste manaaement, orqanic qardeninq and horticulture, and endanaered plant and animal
Species, NFor the Intendencia,which was in need of information and ideas for solid waste management,we were able to connect officialswith a substantial list of contacts
throughout the world, many ol whom eagerly sent plans, pamphlets, books, and other assistance. nThe lnternet also led us to a whole network ol contacts and information for
environmental NGO's. PUEDES was the group with whlch we worked most closely, showing how the Net could meet many of its needs. For example, we contacted an organization that
was able to send us hundreds ol packets of a variety 01 seeds including many different types of vegetables, legumes, and even flowers. We worked with the group to teach organic
gardening and nutrition in impoverished neighborhoodson the weekends, and then the people moved up to hands-on experiene+growing their own food. WFor PUEDES, we also
found invaluable information on other Hispanic NGO's and the projects in which they were nvolved, and we located sources ol potential financial aid from organizations that helped
developlocal~~O's.We learned, too, how other Third World countries had coped with such issues as waste manaqement, acid rain,
gold cvanide extraction destruction and contamination, and other threats to health and life. such informationwas not readily available from
Uruguay's Environmental Protection Agency (DNAMA), where we forwarded many of our discoveries. 0

The Electronic Peace Corps will foster cooperation on common problems and promote equality of all peoples.
Patrick & Jacqueline Duffy-Saenz, former Peace Corps Volunteers as environmental educators in Uruguay within the Department of Rivera, 2001
("U.S. Peace Corps Veterans Tell Why h e Third World Need the N e r http:/lpeacecorpsonline.orglmessages/messages/2629/3959.html)

Therein liesome01the reasonsforthis essay. We are now living in the New York area of the United States, but thanks to the Internet, we
could stilt help brinq practical knowledge to countries like Uruquav. In fact, in some wavs, we could be even more effective since
we are closer to maior universitiesand research libraries, lrom which we wuld obtain nondigitlzed information and put the most useful facts on the Net. &
Internet is an intellectual resource with no boundaries, a cumulative worldwide think tank; and alter having the incredble opportunity to live and travel throughout
Latin America, we knowthat the Net is a step forward and up for all. It will not onlv link people and places, but also ideas and solutions to
common problems. mNeedless to say, we were more than thrilled to find David H. Rothman's articles on the Electronic Peace
Corps idea, and we began delving into his research via the Internet. After various e-maildiscussions wilh David, we have concludedthat we are of like minds and ate in search of
acommon goai. We beiieve that a person should have equal access to information and the opportunity to speak out as clearlv from the
middle of the Amazon rain forest as the President of the United States does from the White House. wOf course, the lnternet is
not without problems. We found that limitea access for manv was a arae deterrent. Many groups or pwple C ~ U not I ~affora personal computers ~r
fees charged by local lnlernet Sew ce Provlccrs Alsc-rltncugh rle hel is becorrl?g m2re nu1tllPSl.a and s rlreaay aocquatc for most needs of Spanish-bnguageusers-the
majority of Information online is stili in English. With the help of aovernment and non-qovernmental orqanizations, these unnecessalv barriers
C O U be
~ ~siclnifi~antlvlowered. Ilhhe Net is the world's most encompassing library, even if not everybody has directions on how to get there. We want to be a part ol the
movement to spread knowledge and understandingof the world and each other. C
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpsElectronic Peace Corps neg

I ELECTRONIC PEACE CORPS KEY TO LITERACY I


SPREADING TECHNOLOGY HELPS LITERACY AND EMPOWERS LOCAL GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS
David H. Rothman, author of NetWorld!and other tech-related books, 1998 ("How Chips and Wires Could Help Build National
Pride, Not Just Wealth" http://www.teleread.or~/bank.htm) [10

And the children of illiterate parents could go to the munylels and boot up PCs and type letters for mothers and fathers, just as they are doing in some villages in
Africa today. Use educational video games to help hook the children on computers in the first place. What a combination: technology and education. h l a ~ i n e
the new incentives for leamina how to read--and the new opportunities for vounq literaw instructors in isolated villaqes to
communicate with each other and improve their professional techniaues. Machines by themselves are not enough to triumph
over the circumstances that sends the arnbitjous poor to Mexico City and to the Rio Grande. Nor are people working in isolation.
But to~etherthey just m i ~ hbe
t invincible. This isn't to mention all the other things that could happen--for instance, hel~inatown
halls and qrassroots civic orqanizations qo on the Web in anticipation of the time when many more people would be on line than
is the case now. Alreadv, in Guatemala, efforts are beina made to qet communitv qroups on the Web in a maior wav. A Mexican
Electronic Peace Corps could use similar strategies--andteach Web writing in community communications centers or, to use my term, munytels. If grade
schoolchildren in the U.S. can create their own pages, surely some children and adults in rural Mexico could learn to do the same with proper instruction. And the
more local content was online, the more likely people would be to buy their own computers. Used PCs in the States already are selling for less than $100, and a
group called LlNC is distributing old computersfor free with the proper software for accessing the Web. LlNCT encourages communities to award computersto
people who teaches others how to use the machines. What an excellent way to use an electronic peace corps and rnunytels to spread hardware and knowledge!
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace Corps/Electronic Peace Corps neg

I LIBRARIES KEY TO DEMOCRACY I


LIBRARIES WOULD ENCOURAGE READING AMD SUSTAINED THOUGHT KEY TO DEMOCRACY
David H. Rothman, author of NetWorld!and other tech-related books, 1998 ("How Chips and Wires Could Help Build National
Pride, Not Just Wealth" http://www.teleread.orq/bank.htm) m

Besides the idea of an electronic Deace corns. Mexico and other developinq countries miaht consider another proqram in the
informatics realm, a national diuital library full of books that anv schoolchild could read for free, or at least at much less cost than
if S U C ~a librarv did not exist. Under TeleRead, as I've called it, books would be on the lniernetor available through CD-ROMand sirnilartechnologies. It is urgent lor Mexico and omerrnuntries to
m,
wrestle now with the intellectual property issues, rather than seeing the "pay.per-reafethrn reign unchecked. We cannot get evelythhgonllne tor free. ~ uwth
t especially, we should try
as best we can; for they encouraqe sustained thouuht--a prerequisite for the growth of meaninaful democracv, not to mention the
full develoament of the workforce. mln today's era of paper, a serious shortage of books exists, and not just in Mexico. Palriik and Jacqueline Duffy-
Saenz recall their Peace Corps days in Uruguay, where "a teacher earned about $90 a month, a book cost over $100, and teachers had no idea how to use the
Net other than to send and receive electronic mail." In the United States, books aren't such luxuries, but in one recent year, the Shasta County library system in
the slate of California was spending 25 cents per year per citizen in tax money on books and other intelleclual property. Meanwhile in the wealthy Los Angeles
suburb of Beverly Hills, the library system has spent as much as $34 per citizen, or more than 100 times as much as Shasta did. The answer is not to take away
books from Beverly Hills or the elite sections of Mexico City, but to put them online for all students to share simultaneously--whether their parents drive Mercedes
or donkey calls. The screen technology for electronic books is improving, and new equipment prices are fall~ng;eventually computers will cost no more than
radios. Besides, there are ways around blurry screens if the need for books is great enough. Librarians in rural areas, for example, couldscour a TeleRead
library for books on topics of local interest and print them out (on inexpensivedot-matrixmachines using recyclable ribbons and the least expensive paper) to be
The elite mav care about oackaqing, about leather-bound editions: the masses if need be could
passed around from reader to reader.
do quite well with iust the words, thank you. Child respond best to books on topics about which they most care. The right book
just might make the difference between a reader and nonreader. mYes, TeleRead-stvle national libraries would also benefit
academia. Funding woes have beset university libraries throughout the world. Even in the United States and Canada, some universitiesare cutting back on
the number of subscriptions to scholarly publications because publishers are charging them excessively. Some scholars are publishingdirectly on the Web, of
course. ~ u tas, much as I love the Web, it is not a substitute for a libraw. The riqht informationcan be hard to find, and in most
cases there are not the usual mechanisms for evaluatina the qualitv of the information, NIBeyond that, considerthe benefits that TeleRead-
style libraries could offer to the corporate world. It is no coincidence that some pro-business conservatives like William F. Buckley, Jr., are the among the most
vigorous proponents of TeleRead. Researchers and entrepreneurs, the very ones most likely to pave the way for a new cancer drug or a practical optical
computer, would fare betterwith a wider selection of books and articles. [bust who would choose the books for inclusion in a TeleRead library, though? Many
librarians in many cities, as well as librarians at universitiesand elite research libraries, would designate those eligibie for royalties. And commercial writers and
publishers could gamble money up front to qualify for royalties on books, or to increasethe amount of money that individual tines could earn in the future.
Payment would be by the number of dialups, just as the present system rewards popularity; let us avoid a Soviet-stylecultural bureaucracy. What's more, a
TeleRead-style libraly would not force publishersto participate and they could publish the usual paper books or engage in pay-per-read. In most cases, however,
they eventually would also want to be in the TeleRead collections;that's where the real market would be. TeleRead could even rely on some of the same pay-
per-readtracking mechanisms that publishersare developing for tracking sales of individual titles, except that the a national digital library, not the individual
readers, would pay for the the books. mProperly enlightened, many publishers might actually support such an idea. Despite all the
excitement over online book-sellers like Amazon.com and the recent Eertelsmann deal, books are not farinq well these davs
under the current svstem, even in the United States. The number of hardback adult-level books sold in the U.S. has actuallv
declined, what with all the com~etiionfrom other activities, includinu, ves, the Internet to a small extent. I_his distraction will only
grow in the future.
Michigan 7 week juniors
Medical Peace CorpslElectronic Peace Corps neg

I AT: GEEK CORPS COUNTERPLAN I


Geekcorps can't retain volunteers-high dropout
CNET News.com February 28,2006 ("GeekCorps: A Peace Corps for techies" httu:llnews.zdnet.com12100-9595 22-
6043635.html?taq=st.num)

Recruitina and schedulinq remain among the chief problems. Potential volunteers are often intriqued by the concept, but then
drop out because of iob circumstances or familv issues. Most, though, enjoy the experience, Vota said.

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