I'm not aiming at "USA bad, EU good" - I'm aiming at "Gitmo bad, please fix NOW". Whatever was in earlier years, now there doesn't seem to be any justification whatsoever in keeping it.

Whilst internment was a pretty nasty thing, I don't think that what went on in British prisons is comparable to what goes on in Guatanamo Bay.

The point was that whilst nowhere is perfectly just and or free, there is the perception that the USA promotes itself as being so.

Not sure you are right there, speaking as a Brit. Torture was used on internees, as detailed in the book Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain. I believe that torture also took place in Guantanamo, but I don't know whether it was worse. (Black prisons in other places like Baghram are another matter.)

In any case, in Guantanamo, the detention without trial is almost worse and more disgraceful than the torture. How can the democracies hold our heads up if this is how we behave?

The British didn't do forced feeding, but I'd hardly say it was great. As well as hunger strikes the prisoners also protested wearing prison uniforms. So the staff didn't empty their toilets. The prisoners smeared their feces on the walls. I'd recommend the film Hunger, it's a bit raw.

Well, the Brits did actually do force feeding:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Price

Though there are/were certain conditions on when it could be ordered such as when the inmate has an eating disorder or becomes mentally incapacitated:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/493713.stm

I believe that the inhumane treatment that went on in UK/NI was not systemic but a result of individuals acting of their own accord. Guantanamo Bay was chosen to locate the camp in order to allow these kinds of things to go on because American law does not apply there.

I was talking about that particular hunger strike in the 80s. Many died who didn't get force fed. That's not to say they never did it, nor will ever again, I was merely comparing that hunger strike to the one in the article.

I do think a lot of the Northern Ireland stuff was institutional. Gerry-mandering of election results, police oppression, etc.

Why da faq are you arguing on this nitty gritty of UK? US cannot justify gitmo just on the basis of something that UK did sometime back. You cant change what UK did, let it be. Every country has its heritage, both contributions and black spots.

But, you know, on the upside, they were all convicted terrorists.

If they want to smear shit up the walls because they don't get Casual Friday then let them.

Your parallel is off. Ireland itself was the "war" zone, which would be analogous to the US black sites in Afghanistan. You don't want the comparison.

And civil liberties in the mainland were nowhere near as bad as this stupid war on terror.

The UK had internment without trial in the 1970s. The hunger strike episode was in the 1980s, and was started by people who had been tried and convicted. Not people being "rendered" illegally from other countries and certainly not random people handed in for bounty who never received trial.

Finally, the internment episode, which shows the UK in the worst light, is documented in this link in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius

The timeline is from 1971-1977. "Gitmo" has been going for twice that long already.