Six In The Morning

Let The Show Trials Begin After All Who Needs Real Jurisprudence

U.S. Prepares to Lift Ban on Guantánamo Cases
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is preparing to increase the use of military commissions to prosecute Guantánamo detainees, an acknowledgment that the prison in Cuba remains open for business after Congress imposed steep new impediments to closing the facility.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to soon lift an order blocking the initiation of new cases against detainees, which he imposed on the day of President Obama’s inauguration. That would clear the way for tribunal officials, for the first time under the Obama administration, to initiate new charges against detainees.

Despotic Rule Look At What It Gets You
Summit agrees $2bn aid for region as family of Tunisia's former president is arrested
Arab leaders warn of more revolts amid growing anger
Tunisia yesterday began the search for the millions of pounds believed to have been stolen by the country's ousted leader and his family as Arab leaders were warned that dire economic conditions could provoke a Tunisian-style revolt elsewhere in the region.

Switzerland also moved to freeze assets linked to the former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and around 40 others linked to the regime. Mr Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi, who fled the country last Friday after widespread and violent public protests, are alleged to have accumulated a fortune of £2.2bn during his 23-year rule. Their relations are also accused of gaining vast fortunes through illicit means.

China Committed To Abusing Human Rights

China committed to human rights, says Hu
“LOST IN Translation” would have been the best title for the joint press conference by President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, in the East Room of the White House yesterday.

“I didn’t realise there wasn’t simultaneous translation,” Mr Obama said, almost aghast, after the interminable translation of his remarks into Chinese.

Four questions were allowed, two from American journalists, two from Chinese. The process took an excruciating hour and eight minutes and seemed an allegory for the fraught but inescapable relationship between the two countries.

We Really Didn't Mean What We Meant
Victims groups say the letter is a 'smoking gun' that shows the church enforced a worldwide culture of concealing crimes by pedophile priests
Vatican insists 1997 Irish abuse letter has been 'deeply misunderstood'
The Vatican insisted yesterday that a 1997 letter warning Irish bishops against reporting priests suspected of sex abuse to police had been "deeply misunderstood."

The contents of the letter, in which the Vatican's top diplomat in Ireland told bishops that their policy of mandatory reporting such cases to police "gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature", were reported on Tuesday.

What's In A Name? A Revolution

How 5 revolutions got their names
The uprising credited with opening the door to other democratic revolutions in Soviet republics in the 2000s is the Bulldozer Revolution, which overthrew Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 (The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was later renamed Serbia and Montenegro).

The protests were a response to Mr. Milosevic’s political maneuvering to secure another term as president. The opposition parties rallied to run an opposition candidate who could beat Milosevic and declared victory in the election. When the electoral commission said there would need to be a runoff because neither Milosevic nor the opposition won a majority, demands intensified for Milosevic step down. He refused.

Viewing The Revolution
Al Jazeera's rapid-paced, visceral coverage of the Tunisian upheaval has riveted viewers across the Middle East. Many see it as a big voice in a landscape of burgeoning Arab dissent. But governments accuse it of bias.
For the Arab world, the revolution will be televised, on Al Jazeera
Reporting from Cairo — In cafes and living rooms across the Middle East, the whirling montages and breathless journalists of Al Jazeera are defining the narrative of Tunisia's upheaval for millions of Arabs riveted by the toppling of a dictator.

The Qatar-based television network, as it does with the Iraq war and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is airing visceral, round-the-clock coverage in a region of authoritarian states that rarely allow government-controlled media to show scenes of unrest. Al Jazeera is a messenger, pricking the status quo, enraging kings and presidents.