NYT acts as apologist in theatrical charade for process tainted BICI Report, due from condescending “political rights expert”

“We’re the only game in town,” the professor, M. Cherif Bassiouni, said.

Bahrain Nervously Awaits Revolt Report’s Findings
By ANTHONY SHADID – November 21, 2011 – NYT

There is the beleaguered crown prince of a veteran American ally, and a scheming royal family that believes, with seeming sincerity, that it was almost overthrown. An ensuing crackdown made chauvinism against the majority the effective policy of the state. Inscrutable and aggressive, Iran and Saudi Arabia lurk over a body politic, where the opposition waits, restrained, even as it warns that far worse is yet to come.

Bahrain’s protests in February and March stand as the opening credits to a plot that remains unresolved today, in an oil-rich region that sits at the nexus of American hegemony, regional rivalries and looming instability. In all the revolts that have roiled the Arab world this year, Bahrain’s government managed a tactical, perhaps ephemeral victory through force. But in doing so, it may have destroyed a society that once took pride it its cosmopolitanism. The question not only for Bahrain but for other Arab countries in tumult — like Egypt and Syria — is whether reconciliation can stop an unraveling spreading across the region.

The answer here may be in the hands of an Egyptian-American law professor asked by the king this summer to investigate the protests, crackdown and aftermath, in what the king’s supporters called a bid to heal the country. His task: essentially arbitrate a crisis in which neither side even agrees on what to call the landmark traffic circle where the revolt erupted.

“We’re the only game in town,” the professor, M. Cherif Bassiouni, said.

The commission of jurists and scholars led by Mr. Bassiouni is scheduled to issue its report Wednesday, which has become the defining moment for Bahrain, its Sunni Muslim monarchy and its restive Shiite Muslim majority. Its promise is to chart a way forward for reforms to blunt the fires of revolution that have swept Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Its peril is that it comes too late for Bahrain. Critics, and there are many, already contend it will whitewash the crimes that were committed, a conclusion that will almost certainly condemn the country to more years of unrest and volatility. …more