Wednesday, December 8, 2010

This house supports WikiLeaks - closing speeches

Third Proposing Speech
Forcing a state into more transparency is not just a pretext to satisfy journalists hunger for hot topics. The great deal is to force the most powerful nation of the world to acknowledge what is questionable about its numerous military interventions around the globe. That is what Daniel Ellsberg, the first person to ever disclose a large number of classified documents,  intented to do when he leaked more than 7,000 Pentagon files. The objective is to bring to the citizens attention why their country is wrongfully engaged in a war, and is inhumanly conducting it, in order to end it. I think global peace is a strong enough cause to engage in all these troubles and to commit all these acts considered criminal by the international political scene…

Third Opposing Speech
Of course, maybe a site like Wikileaks can set right a few wrongs (like war misdeeds), but at which cost! By revealing American diplomatic cables to the whole world, Wikileaks might have ruined years of peace efforts, especially in the Middle East. Indeed (let’s admit the cables are authentic, for the sake of the argument), it is now known that Iran’s neighbors want the US to attack Iran and that Kuwait asked the US to bomb Afghanistan but told its population that they did the bombing themselves. These revelations will increase tensions in the months to come, for a benefit that is yet to find…

Third Proposing Speech
Dear readers, several things have been said, legitimately or not, in this debate about the reasons one could have to support or discredit Wikileaks. And if there was to be only one of the opposition arguments I would refute, it would be the one made by LG about Wikileaks’ usefulness. Not to mention the fact that this argument is based on one isolated example (the one of Tunisian diplomatic cables), and that the assertions made in it are based on nothing, I would like to explain the true cause Wikileaks may serve. Forcing a state into more transparency is not just a pretext to satisfy journalists hunger for hot topics. The great deal is to force the most powerful nation of the world to acknowledge what is questionable about its numerous military interventions around the globe. That is what Daniel Ellsberg, the first person to ever disclose a large number of classified documents,  intented to do when he leaked more than 7,000 Pentagon files. The objective is to bring to the citizens attention why their country is wrongfully engaged in a war, and is inhumanly conducting it, in order to end it. I think global peace is a strong enough cause to engage in all these troubles and to commit all these acts considered criminal by the international political scene.

We, as the proposing team, have already stated why we think Wikileaks is the victim more than it is the criminal in this case, and also why we should see it as an opportunity to better serve democracy. Yet some clear points have been highlighted concerning Wikileaks reliability, and about the danger it may put some people into (the classified aspect of these information may, in fact, be justified by the will to protect someone’s life, or to avoid endangering military forces on the field.)

Concerning the doubts one may have about the reliability of this data, TC-H has already well explained the method employed by the administrators of the website, and why we think it is clear there is very little risk this info may be made up. But there still seems to be some skeptics, to whom I’d like to point out that if the international reaction is this strong, and if the US government is putting so much effort into stopping the release of these documents, there is no doubt they are compromising, thus authentic.

We still haven’t discussed the violation of privacy these revelations represent, and the danger some say it may put witnesses, soldiers or US Intelligence practices in. The opposing side may have quoted Admiral Mike Mallen, Joint Chief of Staffs at US Department of Defense, who stated that “Wikileaks may already have blood on its hands”, following the release of the Afghan War Logs this summer. Yet, the Associated Press received a letter from the Pentagon reporting no US Intelligence sources or practices were compromised by these leaks. And in terms of blood on the hands, we can point out that a lot of blood has been effectively spilled in these wars, as opposed to this hypothetical blood of which none has been reported. Not to mention the fact that, Wikileaks, as well as the five global newspapers who carried on its data, publicly asked the Pentagon to check the documents they were about to publish, and bring to their attention any risk it may have on someone’s life, so that measures would be taken to avoid any danger.

Even though the opposing side thinks it may be misused, we, as responsible citizens, think Wikileaks can be an incredible tool for democracy and peace throughout the world. It is just a question of trust and courage. We take the risk to be fooled, we take the risk to be accused of supporting a criminal website and we take the risk of asking for more classified data. We trust these people who have demonstrated an enormous deal of courage in order to force several states to more transparency, because it is a duty they have towards their citizens. Bradley Manning is now about to be incarcerated for uploading a video of a US helicopter shooting innocent civilians in Iraq. Julian Assange has been arrested this morning, following the release of an international warrant of arrest by Sweden (for those of you who are not familiar with the true nature of the charges pressed at him, it can fairly be summed up to “unprotected sex”.) People have shown courage and have sacrificed their freedom in order to  serve this cause, and it is now our duty to show them our unconditional support. Vote for us !

by GH

Third Opposing Speech
Our debate is coming to its end. However fierce it might have been, I guess you are now convinced that Wikileaks should not be supported, as it can be a very dangerous tool. In this last speech, I will first come back to the second proposing speech. I will then close our case and sum up the opposition’s brilliant demonstration that Wikileaks should not be supported.

First of all, the proposing team tried to prove us the documents released on Wikileaks are all authentic. This is very doubtful, for many reasons. Indeed, as the proposition said, Wikileaks’ team tries to cross-reference maybe only the most relevant texts. Is this enough for you? You’ll need a much more thorough verification if you want me to believe a document is not fake. Moreover, and I mean no disrespect to the journalistic system, how can 5 newspapers accurately check such a huge amount of documents (more than 250,000)? They might know they’re not allowed to make any mistakes, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen!

But the best is yet to come. For the proposers, “documents published by WikiLeaks are as authentic as any documents published by journalists around the world”. This is exactly my thought: documents published by Wikileaks can be biased, fake or even misinterpreted by the person who submitted them. Do you believe all you read in a newspaper? I don’t. If you want a real view of a situation, the best way of doing it is to find information from different sources (newspapers, Internet, radio…), and compare them, which cannot be done in the case of Wikileaks.

Actually, the problem isn’t even that some documents might not be authentic, the real problem is that there is no 100% accurate way of knowing which of them are and which of them aren’t. 

Finally, proposing speakers tell us genuinely that, thanks to Wikileaks, “useless wars can be avoided”. However great this would have been, I feel sorry to tell you this won’t happen, for Wikileaks might give us hindsight but certainly not the power (nor the legitimacy) to prevent states to go to war.

Of course, maybe a site like Wikileaks can set right a few wrongs (like war misdeeds), but at which cost! By revealing American diplomatic cables to the whole world, Wikileaks might have ruined years of peace efforts, especially in the Middle East. Indeed (let’s admit the cables are authentic, for the sake of the argument), it is now known that Iran’s neighbors want the US to attack Iran and that Kuwait asked the US to bomb Afghanistan but told its population that they did the bombing themselves. These revelations will increase tensions in the months to come, for a benefit that is yet to find.

To conclude this debate, I would like to briefly sum up why we, the opposing side, think Wikileaks should not be supported.

I won’t come back on the authenticity of Wikileaks’ documents, as I think I made my point clear. But there are many more reasons not to support such a website. First, as AS mentioned, the leaker’s safety is quite a problem and cannot be achieved by an organization who leaks information by the thousand. Then comes the question of the interest of Wikileaks’ revelations: reading the cables, one might learn that Sarkozy is “authoritarian” or that Berlusconi is “unpredictable”. This, be it true or false, is political gossip. Maybe that’s the “new media” the proposition referred to: gutter press for the powerful people. More, added to that doubtful interest, let’s not forget how dangerous Wikileaks can be, as it might be (or can be in the future) manipulated by terrorists, anarchists or even governments.

This house doesn’t support Wikileaks, vote for us!

by FL

2 comments:

  1. Erratum : I forgot to quote the source for my rebuttal of the argument about comprising witnesses safety :
    It is the interview of Daniel Ellsberg on Democracy Now ! you can find here :
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1pTl8KdREk for part 1
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJ0AUs09jM for part 2

    GH

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  2. Here is a final video that fosters the proposing speech and gives a new perspective: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html

    Enjoy

    HD

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