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Scientists Propose Biodiversity Lab To Redeem Guantanamo Prison Camp
HughPickens.com writes: The American presence at the Guantanamo Prison Camp has been deeply contentious since even before terrorism suspects began to be housed there beginning in 2002. Now as President Obama prepares to make the first presidential visit to Cuba in almost 90 years, ecologists Joe Roman and James Kraska have published their case in the influential journal Science for creating a Guantanamo-based research center to study biodiversity in the Caribbean. The primary benefit of a Guantanamo Bay research station is symbolic. "The main goal is trying to take Guantanamo and make it an inspiring place, and redeem it," says Roman. But the case for Guantanamo Bay as a science lab goes beyond political optics. According to Roman and Kraska the land and the sea offer an ecosystem uniquely worthy of study. The research hub of Roman's dreams would be a state-of-the art facility to help understand how biodiversity loss can be prevented across the Caribbean. "A parcel of the land, perhaps on the developed southeastern side of the base, could become a 'Woods Hole of the Caribbean,' housing research and educational facilities dedicated to addressing climate change, ocean conservation, and biodiversity loss. With genetics laboratories, geographic information systems laboratories, videoconference rooms — even art, music, and design studios — scientists, scholars, and artists from Cuba, the United States, and around the world could gather and study. The new facilities could strive to be carbon neutral, with four 80-meter wind turbines having been installed on the base in 2005, and designed to minimize ecological damage to the surrounding marine and terrestrial ecosystems"
Hugh Pickens continues: According to Roman, the main idea is that science can be healing: a way to bring diverse nations together, a way to rectify a complicated history, and a way to help better the lives of all people through research. The biggest roadblock won't be the Obama administration but Congress. Republican lawmakers have derided Obama's preliminary framework for closing the prison, so for the foreseeable future, the status quo will remain. But Roman can still dream. "At a certain point, I don't know when, that base is going to close. It's going to return to Cuba at some point. This is a great use of that property. You don't have many places in the world like that."
How about just giving it back to Cuba?
It's as anachronistic and wounding to national pride as it would be for Americans having to tolerate a foreign military base on Manhattan island.
The Brits gave Hong Kong island back to China for a good reason. Shit like this belongs in the 19th century, not the 21st.
to Redeem Guantanamo Prison Camp...
there is no redemption in a torture camp. Auschwitz and Dachau didnt find salvation in an agricultural or a climate research institute. Instead they perist in silence, discipline, and remorse as a sterling reminder of some of the most profound human genocide mankind has ever committed. Many israeli jews, including new IDF troops, make a pilgrimage to these sites yearly to remember.
Prisoners at Guantanamo have been beaten, waterboarded, subjected to forced intubation and rectal feeding, extreme temperatures, and have experienced some of the most brutal and least reported abuse under the US governments authority that any human has seen in the 21st century outside of Darfur. Some prisoners have been kidnapped from their home countries under extraordinary rendition, and others simply scooped up during the occupation campaign in Iraq. Once theyre free, many are in limbo as their home countries no longer want them and no foreign nation will consider them for immigrant status.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The US military isn't giving that real estate up period. Obama said he would close it and failed to do so. The next president will do the same. Where do you think the extremists will go for their rightfully deserved enhanced information gathering sessions?
[...] things that would not be normally allowed under US Law.
I think the symbolic point is to stop doing that.
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Guantanamo Bay is primarily a U.S. Navy Base. It is only secondarily, if that, a prison camp for those who made war against the U.S. outside of the boundaries of the Geneva Convention (this may not be true of all of those imprisoned there, but that is the justification for the prison camp aspect).
Guantanamo Bay is the best harbor in the Caribbean for Naval operations and the U.S. has retained control over it for that reason.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Since "Guantanamo" also has obtained a somewhat unpleasant ring to it (why? no idea!), let's just give it a new name, too. Perhaps something fitting based on classic literature, like "Island of Dr. Moreau".
They have far less to apologize for than those who supported Fulgencio Batista.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body