Wham Silver Da
Wham Silver Da
WHAM! Silver DA
Silver DA Index
Silver DA Index.............................................................................................................................................................1
1NC Shell.......................................................................................................................................................................2
Links- General...............................................................................................................................................................3
Link- Solar (1/2)............................................................................................................................................................4
Link- Solar (2/2)............................................................................................................................................................5
Ext. Silver in Short Supply...........................................................................................................................................6
AT: Silver Surplus Now................................................................................................................................................7
Ext. Econ Internal Link................................................................................................................................................8
AT: Econ Low Now.......................................................................................................................................................9
Econ ! T/ Solar Affs.....................................................................................................................................................10
Genocide ! Module......................................................................................................................................................11
Ext. Genocide Internal Link......................................................................................................................................12
Iran Impact Module (1/2)...........................................................................................................................................13
Iran Impact Module (2/2)...........................................................................................................................................14
Heg ! Module...............................................................................................................................................................15
Ext. Heg Internal Link (1/2).......................................................................................................................................16
Ext. Heg Internal Link (2/2).......................................................................................................................................17
Readiness Key to Heg.................................................................................................................................................18
Disease ! Module.........................................................................................................................................................19
Ext. Disease Internal Link..........................................................................................................................................20
Aff - Demand Inevitable.............................................................................................................................................21
Aff- Non Unique..........................................................................................................................................................22
Aff- Non Unique..........................................................................................................................................................23
Aff- No Link- Solar Energy........................................................................................................................................24
Aff- ! Empirically Denied...........................................................................................................................................25
Aff AT: Econ !- Turn...................................................................................................................................................26
Aff AT: Econ !- Uniqueness........................................................................................................................................27
SDI 2008 2
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1NC Shell
A. Silver supply is too stretched to meet any new demands.
Jason Hommel, Silver Stock Reporter, 3/21/08. Silver Seek. “Silver Shortage gets Worse, Price Drops
Again!”, http://news.silverseek.com/GoldIsMoney/1206119500.php
Three more major silver dealers are reported to be out of silver today: The U.S. Mint, Kitco, and
Monex. This, on top of the major dealers yesterday, Amark, Perth Mint, CNI Numismatics, and
APMEX, all reported sold out. Further, nearly all of Canada is reported to be out of silver, from Vancouver
to Toronto. This is unprecedented, and is a perfect case of market manipulation in the paper market at
COMEX and other futures exchanges to see silver prices continue to drop down to below $17/oz. today.
Paper promises can be created endlessly, but real silver cannot. This is NOT a case of the dealers getting
spooked, and selling out to the refiners just in time, at peak prices. This is a case of the public buying
up the stock at coin shops across the world ever since gold hit $1000/oz.. That event finally sparked a
little of the public's buying of silver and gold. Thus, the typical coin shop flow of silver to the refiners just
stopped in the last few weeks, and especially the last two days. This is NOT a case of the public creating a
top with 'everyone' in silver, because nobody's in silver yet. In 2006, only $1 billion was spent on investment
silver, which is 0.007% of the $13.5 trillion of money in the banks. As I have long reported, the silver
market is so small, there is no room for new investor demand, not even 0.1% of money could be spent
on silver, because that would be $13 billion, which would push silver prices to $200/oz., and we are
seeing only the tiniest beginnings of that.
C. Impact
1. Silver supplies are key to the world economy.
Jason Hommel, Silver Stock Reporter, 2008. The Silver Stock Report. “Here’s why silver investment is better
than gold,” http://silverstockreport.com/ MH
Each silver contract at the NYMEX is a promise. There are too many contracts, too many promises to
deliver silver that may not exist. Each contract is for 5000 ounces. There are often over 200,000 contracts
for 5000 ounces, that's a total of 1000 million ounces of silver promised to be delivered. With recent market
trends of defaults and bankruptcies, these contracts are at risk of default. Yet the exchange has only
about a third of that in real silver. How can they promise to deliver more silver than exists? If they fail to
deliver silver, then confidence in the world's entire financial system may collapse. Industrial
users of silver may have to shut down their factories. To prevent this, users will bid silver prices much higher.
2. Nuclear war.
Walter Russel Mead, fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, 1992 New perspectives quarterly, summer pp. 28
But what if it can't? What if the global economy stagnates - or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a
new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China, India -
these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger
to world order than Germany and Japan did in the '30s.
SDI 2008 3
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Links- General
Silver is key to building alternative energy sources because of unique characteristics.
COEUR d’ Alene Mines Corporation 2008 , Silver: The Metal for Modern Applications, “The Value of
Silver,” http://www.coeur.com/silver.html’
Silver is unique among metals. It is a precious metal and a store of value for investors around the world. Yet
over half the silver demanded by consumers each year is used in industrial or technological products. This
is because silver’s unique characteristics as a metal are essential to the development and growth of
modern and growing economies everywhere. Its uniqueness includes its strength, malleability and
ductility, its electrical and thermal conductivity, its ability to reflect light and endure extreme
temperatures. This has made possible plasma television sets, solar panels, electrical connectors and
semiconductors, alternative energy sources, and thousands of other devices we take for granted in our
modern world, all of which are dependent on silver.
Silver needed for alternative energy (fuel cells, solar, windmills, nuclear)
Matt Savinar, Political Science from the University of California at Davis, J.D. from the University of California
at Hastings College of the Law, "The Peak Oil and Die-Off," 2004, ACC. 6/7/2008,
http://www.unicamp.br/fea/ortega/eco/traducao-DieOff.pdf, p. 58
The same holds true for almost every resource and material known to humanity, including resources and
materials such as platinum, silver, and uranium, which are necessary to up-scale alternative forms of
energy such as hydrogen fuel cells, solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants. We won’t even be
able to recycle the leftovers of industrial civilization without cheap energy, as recycling things like SUVs,
computers, asphalt, etc., is extremely energy-intensive. Most recycling centers (particularly large, industrial
ones) get their energy from – you guessed it – fossil fuels! Unless you’re super-rich, it’s back to the caves.
SDI 2008 4
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The economy is only hanging on because silver is stable and can stop the credit crisis. If
silver collapses so will the economy.
James R. Cook, President of Investment Rarities Incorporated 12-26-2001, “Weekly Commentary”
http://doomgloom.com/12-26-01.html
Gold and silver play identical roles when conventional investments go sour. They act as a storehouse of
value. Whenever currencies fail and economies contract, people turn to gold and silver. Whenever
bankruptcies and defaults sweep through a nation or a credit collapse shakes the financial foundations,
people rush into precious metals. Gold and silver protect against loose money and credit. Silver acted as
a perfect hedge against the inflation of the 1970s. Silver promises to act as a bulwark against inflation,
a falling dollar and depression. That’s a primary reason to buy silver. It’s one of the best means of
preserving capital. Any pending price rise because of short supply and industrial demand is a bonus. Silver
will let you keep what you have in the face of today’s unfolding economic problems. Ten to twenty percent of
your net worth in silver will keep you hedged, keep the rest of your wealth insured and keep you partially
outside the paper and credit woes of a highly leveraged financial system.
SDI 2008 10
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Genocide ! Module
A. The U.S. will resort to genocide to control access to key minerals in the Third World
Matt Savinar, Political Science from the University of California at Davis, J.D. from the University of California
at Hastings College of the Law, “The Peak Oil and Die-Off,” 2004, ACC. 6/7/2008,
http://www.unicamp.br/fea/ortega/eco/traducao-DieOff.pdf, p. 58
Our government’s other solution to the coming oil shortages is forced depopulation (genocide) of oil-rich
areas. This policy is nothing new and not unique to any one political persuasion. In 1968, environmentalist
Dr. Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which sold about 20 million copies and exerted a huge
influence upon policy makers. According to Ehrlich: Our position requires that we take immediate action at
home and promote effective action worldwide. We must have population control at home, hopefully through
a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail. We can no longer afford
merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out. Dr.
Ehrlich goes on to say that compulsory birth control could be imposed by governments via the addition of
“temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food.” A few years later, the brutal methods advocated by
Ehrlich were officially discussed in the highest levels of our government. In December 1974, the US National
Security Council completed a classified 200-page study, “National Security Study Memorandum 200:
Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM).” The study
explained that the US needed to control populations in third world countries in order to maintain access
to certain resources: The location of known reserves of higher-grade ores of most minerals favors
increasing dependence of all industrialized regions on imports from less-developed countries. The US
economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less-
developed countries. That fact gives the US enhanced interest in the political, economic, and social
stability of the supplying countries. Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced
birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource
supplies and to the economic interests of the United States.
Heg ! Module
A. Silver shortages hurt military readiness and hegemony.
Charles Savoie, Master of Fine Arts degree from Illinois State University, 10-8-2004, silver4India, NM,
http://www.silver4india.com/silver4india/modules/news/article.php?storyid=63
Let's take a look at the need for silver as a vital resource material necessary to warfare. We won't be
able to examine any detailed weapons breakdown of specific items by exact silver content from one defense
contractor to another on a current basis, because that information isn't readily available. I can tell you that as
of January 2, 1980---nearly a quarter century past---some 84,000 military parts (aircraft, submarines, etc.)
contained precious metal, mostly silver (Wall Street Journal, January 2, 1980, page 10). American
Superconductor and Intermagnetics General won't openly discuss how much silver they will need for
superconducting cables. That's probably an understanding with the COMEX shorts---anything to suppress
projected silver demand statistics! As you probably know, America has been without a silver stockpile for
strategic defense applications for several years. We aren't swimming in silver as we were going into World
War II. One of the implications could be a limitation on our ability to wage war overseas; and also spell
inadequacy as to our ability to defend our shores. Silver is the most versatile metal there is, and a
strategic shortage will hurt us more so than shortages of other strategic metals such as tantalum,
platinum, chromium, vanadium and cobalt. America cannot produce enough silver to meet our internal
needs, that hasn't happened in most of a century; therefore, silver imports are vital. Over 153 years ago,
Merchants Magazine & Commercial Review (March 1851), page 280 spoke of--- "…the numerous uses to
which we apply silver, beyond the uses to which we apply gold."
B. Nuclear war
Zalmay Khalilzad, Senior Analyst at RAND, 1995 Washington Quarterly, Spring, Lexis
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a
global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding
principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the
United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would
be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second,
such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as
nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S.
leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and
the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global
nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar
or a multipolar balance of power system.
SDI 2008 16
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"Representative White Warns that Any Move to Cut Off Silver Market Would Cripple Defense Industries.
Representative Compton R. White of Idaho, a member of the House Committee on Coinage, Weights and
Measures, in a statement issued in New York on July 14, warned that any move to cut off the national
market for silver at this time would force many copper, zinc and lead mines in this country to close and
further cripple our defense industries. Mr. White declared the controlling factors in our national defense
program were the cost of production in mining strategic war metals and the Government's profit in the silver
purchase program. He said there were virtually no exclusive producing silver mines, and that in this
country or anywhere else silver was a by-product of copper, zinc and lead mines and the profit received
for the by-product went a long way in meeting the cost of production of strategic metals, copper, lead
and zinc. He said that at a time when the Government was arbitrarily holding the price of the strategic metals
down and combing the Western Hemisphere for lead and zinc, to cut off the silver market now would surely
cripple defense." Summary---no silver, no defense industries. Of course the silver situation was radically
different in 1941. The battle over retaining silver as a monetary base was raging in the midst of
wartime debates over silver needs in manufacturing. Today we have no silver monetary base---and no
silver for industrial use---not in the Treasury Department, nor in any government stockpile. The C &
FC, July 19, 1941, page 330 said--- "The American Silver Producers Research Project, sponsored by several
of the leading silver producing companies in the United States, has completed a year of activity at the
Bridgeport (Conn.) plant of Handy & Harman. The project, formerly located at the National Bureau of
Standards, Washington D.C., was reorganized June 1, 1940, and the research program and activities were
transferred to the laboratories of Handy & Harman. The report, issued July 11, follows in part--- "The field
of electroplated coatings continues to show promise as an outlet for silver and the project's pilot plating plant
has been kept busy recently plating drums, pails and cans. At the present time one of the large can
manufacturers is cooperating with the project and a chemical supply house in the development of a silver
lined can for packaging chemicals. Containers with a silver plated coating also have been packed with
different commodities and some experimental units have been put into service. In some instances silver lined
containers are being seriously considered and tested for packaging corrosive materials because the corrosion
resistance of other metals and lacquers is not adequate."
Notice that in a wartime period, silver use increases dramatically. In the nearly 63 years since that review
was issued, no substitute has been found in nature for silver and its fantastic characteristics. Many
revolutionary uses for silver were discovered as a consequence of war industry research, and what was true in
1942 is truer still today. A modern war machine MUST have silver to function at peak efficiency.
Aerospace and jet aircraft technology could not exist without silver, nor could missiles and satellites.
Countries which don't have adequate silver supplies are at serious strategic disadvantage in wartime,
most likely to the point of being on the losing side. Commercial & Financial Chronicle, February 5, 1942,
page 570, made reference to the same report and said--- "The substitution of silver for other metals has
occurred both in industry and the arts, the purpose being to conserve scarce war materials such as copper,
nickel, aluminum and tin. War requirements are also demanding millions of ounces of silver. This metal is
playing an important part in the construction of ships, airplanes, tanks, trucks, guns, shells, bombs, torpedoes
and a wide variety of miscellaneous equipment."
SDI 2008 17
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Disease ! Module
A. Silver is needed to prevent widespread disease
Steve Arizona, writer for American Free Press, 5-6-2008, Daily Paul, <http://www.dailypaul.com/node/48236>
Preventing hospital infections -- from such stubborn bugs as Staphylococcus aureus -- could get a little
easier with a new non-toxic, silver-based material. Used in coating, it helps keep hospital air ducts
bacterium- and fungus-free. The material is also used in a number of products including athletic footwear,
door hardware, pens and business supplies. DUARTE, Calif.--For more than 6,000 years, humans have
used silver to fight germs, also known as microbes. Now, some hospitals are using a silver compound to
reduce hospital infections. You can't see them, but millions of microorganisms are living quietly
among us, in places where we least expect them.
B. Extinction
John Steinbruner, Director of the Center for International and Security Studies @ Maryland, 1998 Winter
Foreign Policy)
It is a considerable comfort and undoubtedly a key to our survival that, so far, the main lines of defense
against this threat have not depended on explicit policies or organized efforts. In the long course of evolution,
the human body has developed physical barriers and a biochemical immune system whose sophistication and
effectiveness exceed anything we could design or as yet even fully understand. But evolution is a sword that
cuts both ways: New diseases emerge, while old diseases mutate and adapt. Throughout history, there
have been epidemics during which human immunity has broken down on an epic scale. An infectious agent
believed to have been the plague bacterium killed an estimated 20 million people over a four-year period in
the fourteenth century, including nearly one-quarter of Western Europe's population at the time. Since its
recognized appearance in 1981, some 20 variations of the HIV virus have infected an estimated 29.4 million
worldwide, with 1.5 million people currently dying of AIDS each year. Malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera-
once thought to be under control--are now making a comeback. As we enter the twenty-first century,
changing conditions have enhanced the potential for widespread contagion. The rapid growth rate of the
total world population, the unprecedented freedom of movement across international borders, and
scientific advances that expand the capability for the deliberate manipulation of pathogens are all
cause for worry that the problem might be greater in the future than it has ever been in the past. The
threat of infectious pathogens is not just an issue of public health, but a fundamental security problem
for the species as a whole.
SDI 2008 20
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It's potent enough to kill germs, but is safe to use on virtually any surface. Trogolo says, "It's less toxic
than table salt and less irritating than talcum powder. Ultimately we hope this will result in less
infections and actually better outcomes for the patients." The silver compound can also kill germs in
your kitchen, on shopping cart handles, even in your sneakers. It's already used in a number of
products including athletic footwear, door hardware, pens and business supplies.
SDI 2008 21
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