Guantanamo Trials: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his friends are on 'trial' in Guantanamo for terrorism.

Being tried by military tribunal.

It is not difficult to find a lawyer or similar person-who-should-know to denounce the trials as mock trials, kangaroo courts or whatever.

The prisoners have been tortured. The evidence is mostly confessional or anecdotal obtained under duress, not acceptable, admissible in a normal court.

It is a mock, it is a sham, it is a disgrace, they are disgusting events, not to be tolerated in an enlightened democracy.

So why are they tolerated?

Because America is NOT an enlightened democracy. The proof of that pudding is in the eating. It is a simple fact. It does NOT behave like an enlightened democracy. The more you investigate this simple fact the more evident it becomes.

And because people have a simple rationale: "These people are terrorists anyway, we know they are guilty, so they don't deserve a fair trial and it wouldn't change anything if they had one."

That rationale is generally 100% convincing. It is an argument stopper. It is in fact the total consideration towards justice that almost any accused person gets in the popular mind.

Or even in the unpopular mind - that is, in the mind of magistrates, judges, policemen, journalists, politicians.

Prejudice rules the day. Prejudice is the norm. Prejudice decides the course of our society, our justice, our direction.

Such prejudice allows such kangaroo courts. Allowing such kangaroo courts and the allied processes - torture, imprisonment with charge, held incommunicado, etc., etc... - totally erode civil rights, civil liberties, everything that a modern democracy supposedly stands for. EVERYTHING.

The nation is destroyed by such things. America is destroyed by this process. It is debased, it is rotted to the core.

America's enemies see this unfairness and hate America and take up Terrorism. America sees the terrorism and increases these hysterical unfair measures. The terrorists see the unfair measures increase and..... so it goes.

All permitted by the mass mind, the mass populace, which considers the situation and pronounces on the basis of prejudice and decides to do nothing.

Little realising or apparently caring that their own lives their own freedoms their own rights their own country has been diminished or destroyed by this.

What's fundamentally wrong? They don't think it can ever happen to them. That's what's wrong. A failure to put yourself in the shoes of another. A total lack of empathy. A failure to understand that you are your brother.

It CAN happen to you. The further this process goes: the abrogation of human rights - the more certain it becomes that it WILL happen to you. The odds get shorter.

The purpose of having fair trials is to protect YOU should you ever be unfairly accused. We give fair trials to people who don't deserve them (as it turns out, as we might think, when we find they're guilty) in order to ensure that YOU will get a fair trial if ever you are accused.

It is a question of what is the procedure. It seems the population at large naively think that fair trial is the norm and will be granted to them should they ever be accused and it is of little importance if unfair trial (and torture etc., etc ) are dealt to a terrorist. Because knowing you are not a terrorist you never expect that treatment to come your way.

But what is happening is that unfair trial (and all the rest) is becoming the norm.

Prejudice is becoming the norm. So that once accused, once arrested you will be considered to be guilty, immediately.

The heartless way we consider the plight of 'terrorists' (in commas because they should be considering innocent until properly proven guilty) in Guantanamo is the heartless way we ourselves will be considered in due course.

How we treat them is how we are asking for ourselves to be treated and we'll probably get our wish.