This House Would Force All Governments to Become Totally Transparent

I would also like to point out to all you Americanos that 'this house' is merely a way of introducing a resolution, similar to 'be it resolved. ' I would define 'this house' as the United Nations, '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. I would loosely define 'totally transparent' as the sustaining of a system where the average citizen has full and immediate access to ALL government documents, transactions, history, legislation, etc. The only information that shall not be made available to the public should be documents that, if exposed to general circulation, could be adequately proven to cause direct physical harm to citizens of any given nation, which will be determined by an impartial U. N council. I would also add the qualifications; -Countries will be given sufficient time to make the transition to transparency based on their level of democracy and internal stability. -The Western countries (North America, Europe) must establish full transparency within a decade so as to set a precedent for the rest of the world. -The IMF and WTO shall encourage investors to help establish the infrastructure for the release of the information; be it by internet or otherwise. ------- Today we live in a world where access to information is essentially unfettered in the Western world. We sift through terabytes of information a year, some of it important and relevant and some if it is not. We are beginning to think that we know all and that the world is at our finger tips, but exactly how in-the-know are we? Today I'm arguing that we must be allowed to find out. It must be acknowledged that democratic governments mus work for us, the people, therefore we have a right to know what our employees are doing. Are they stealing from their tills? Are they working to their full potential? Today I intend to prove that fully transparent governments are absolutely vital in today's society and I will use examples of situations where transparency has benefited society and a lack thereof has hurt it. My first argument is that of true democracy. 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? Too much is classified and locked away. This sort of secrecy makes it impossible to conduct an accurate, informed election and thereby undermines the constitutions of most countries. Since the available information will always be skewed towards the ruling party, how can any election be declared truely democratic? The second is that of accountability. It is fine to say that elections are a way of getting rid of the bad and bringing in the good, but how true is that really? For every scandal that has plagued the developed world in past 50 years, how are we to know that there have not been two more hiding in the darkness? One would assume the situation would be worse in the developing world where corruption runs amok. How are we to know that Watergate was not the worst of Nixon's crimes? How many more Elliot Morleys are there in hiding? While I understand that the police often do tremendous jobs of exposing these scandals, but they cannot possibly catch every single one. My third and final point is that of world security. If all, or most, of the UN nations were to adopt full transparency, there would be two major geopolitical ramifications; countries would no longer need to play the spying game and countries would think twice about engaging in overt or subversive conflicts. I look forward to my opponent's response.