This House Would Force All Governments to Become Totally Transparent

1. Pro's defines "'all governments' as U.N member states and 'force' as to strongly encourage in a peaceful fashion, which could include but is not limited to termination of U.N membership, cancellation of any/all diplomatic agreements and/or the implementation of trade embargoes." Thus the resolution does not apply to terrorist organizations, since they are not member nations. Any state not wishing to comply can withdraw from the U.N. to protect their secrets. 2. The resolution abolishes the right to a fair trial, the right of privacy, the right to protect children from disclosure, the right to protect any intellectual property disputed in court, and the right of independent democratic rule. Pro believes all such rights are trivial, however no democracy will trade civil rights for UN membership. UN membership is not worth much; Switzerland, for example, gets by nicely without UN membership. 3. Nations wishing to conceal military plans may simply withdraw from the UN. Nations like Iran and North Korea would withdraw. 4. Secrets that would lead to loss of human life may be preserved, according to Pro's proposal. To determine which secrets qualify, all secrets must be submitted to the UN to be judged as to whether they qualify or not. In the US, the National Security Agency alone has about 10,000 employees collecting and analyzing intelligence data, the bulk of it related to detecting and tracking down terrorists. All CIA sources, methods, and agent information would have to be disclosed to the UN to determine what qualifies for secrecy. The UN must therefore provide tens of thousands of reviewers. It is not remotely plausible that such a large UN agency, having an international staff, could maintain the secrecy of, say, the identities of covert agents infiltrating terrorist organizations. The US would withdraw from the UN to protect its intelligence. The latter is likely. 5. All designs of weapons systems, including nuclear weapons, as well as encryption codes, launch codes, and security techniques would have to be disclosed to the army of UN bureaucrats to determine what might be kept secret. The US and virtually every other nation would withdraw from the UN rather than comply. If the US did comply, Botswana would get nuclear secrets in return for disclosing nothing of interest. 6. There are no examples of unbiased behavior by UN bureaucracies. Slave traders were put in charge of human rights. Pro's idea of having the Secretary General examine the many millions of documents is preposterous. Tens of thousands of biased and corrupt staff would be involved. Even if Iran were to remain in the UN, the likely outcome is that the UN bureaucracy would chose to reveal that the US must reveal everything, while Iran had nothing important to reveal. 7. UN sanctions are completely ineffective. France and Germany sold a million tons of explosives to Saddam in return for oil, completely ignoring UN sanctions. Nothing of consequence happened to France or Germany. The resolution has no "force" even for those who choose to remain members. 8. Pro claims, "The Western world prides itself on being a shining beacon of openness and democracy, yet how can we ever inspire third world countries to adopt progressive, democratic reforms unless we first practice what we preach?" Pro obviates rights of privacy, fair trials, self-defense, democracy, and self-government. Submitting to authoritarian control by corrupt bureaucrats is a poor example. There is absolutely no history of "openness" of the sort Pro advocates. On the contrary, the history is one of privacy and individual rights. 9. Pro asks how elections can be truly democratic if, medical records, etc., are kept secret. The answer is that there is always a large powerful opposing Party eager to reveal scandals and material that aids them. How do we preserve democracy by surrendering major rights to authoritarian rule?