Let's do a thought experiment. Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang some bananas by a string from the ceiling and place a ladder underneath it. Before long, one of the monkeys will go to the ladder and try to climb towards the bananas. As soon as…
President Bush recently expressed doubt that he will be viewing Al Gore's documentary on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." In the course of this same interview (reported by the Associated Press), Mr. Bush also made two extraordinary statements: 1) "New technologies will change how we live and how we drive…
I previously posted the results of my personal investigation into the fake medical clinics that call themselves "Pregnancy Resource Centers." My earlier investigation revealed that Pregnancy Resource Centers are unwilling to plainly admit their real agenda: to keep people ignorant about birth control, to deny women access to effective birth…
CNN reported last week that the US military has been ignoring its own rules concerning the deployment of soldiers known to be mentally ill. Last year alone, the practice contributed to the suicide deaths of 22 US soldiers, which was a stunning 20% of all non-combat fatalities. I wish someone would explain…
The popular view here in the UK on Guantanamo Bay (GB) is that it is illegal and morally abhorrent that suspects of terrorism should be detained in awful conditions without either a formal charge or fair trial, for an indeterminate period of time. This is the view spread by the mass media and the view unquestioningly accepted by the masses.
Yesterday night, while discussing my full reasons for disagreeing with the above popular view, I was told that “international law just does not work that way”. Therefore, until I have the chance to read up on the legality of issues arising from GB, I will reserve my judgment. Thus, I will only deal below with the moral issues that arise from GB, and explain why they could be (but not necessarily are) morally defensible.
The right to a fair trial (and I think the obligation to charge a suspect can be subsumed underneath this) is the principle argument against GB that is circulating in almost all social circles in the UK, so it is this argument that I must primarily address.
The right to fair trial is not an absolute right that people should always be entitled to in every conceivable scenario, because every right (with the arguable exception of the right not to be tortured), needs to be balanced against other competing human rights of other individuals, and, perhaps, the interests of larger social entities (like the survival of a culture or a nation or religion).
If there is …
