Apalling. Bush, that is. He choose this week to come out in support of--fulfilling a campaign promise made back in 'o4--an amendment to the Constitution banning same sex marriage. The timing could not be crueler. Twenty-five years ago this week AIDS began to appear in this country. The religious right…
Once in a while I get tired of the environmental/ecological harangue. People should do such-and-such; people should not do so-n-so; we need to etc etc etc. The question that needs to be addressed--and the one which, consciously or not, drives the resistence of this or any other administration's apparent lack…
We define terror narrowly, and one of the components seems to be that it is aimed at A People, rather than individuals. Given the overwhelming cost of dealing with it, perhaps such definitional parameters are necessary. Certain things ought to be "merely" police problems, while "terrorism" is a larger, necessarily…
Does one need faith to believe in God? Or God in order to have faith? Are the two necessarily tied together, inextricably? Faith is a process. (What I refer to here is not the kind of FAITH that has a set of requirements in order to claim, visa vis the…
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 …
