Editorial du jour:

For all their blinkered insensitivity and gratuitousness, Condoleezza Rice’s recent remarks about the alleged irrelevance of nonalignment do serve a useful purpose. They underline the vast conceptual gulf that separates the world views of the United States and India despite the two countries being “strategic partners.” Secondly, they provide a glimpse of the unrealistic and even dangerous expectations Washington has of New Delhi. According to Dr. Rice, no nalignment has “lost its meaning” now that the world is no longer divided into rival blocs; instead, she posits a new alignment based on the “values of a common humanity” and mutual support for “opportunity and prosperity and justice and dignity and health and education and freedom and democracy.” She might as well have mixed in motherhood and apple pie. Plus Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and extraordinary renditions; agricultural subsidies and unsustainable lifestyles; pre-emptive war, missile defence, and the weaponisation of space, not to speak of ‘tactical’ support for regimes that murder, torture, or imprison opponents and continue to find themselves on the right side of the veil of freedom. Article

From Australia, an interesting (and disturbing) case of a clash of medical ethics and the state security apparatus:

Mamdouh Habib and his psychiatrist are at loggerheads with the Federal Government over an attempt by the Commonwealth to obtain the former Guantanamo Bay detainee’s medical file.

Mr Habib has gone to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal over the refusal by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to return his passport, cancelled in January 2005, three days before his release from the US military prison.

Chris Tennant, professor of psychiatry at Sydney University, was called last week to give evidence about whether Mr Habib had a pre-existing mental disorder before he was tortured in Egypt, where he was held for six months after being captured in Pakistan and before being sent to Cuba. It has previously been disclosed that Mr Habib was receiving treatment for depression before travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001.

Dr Tennant says he examined Mr Habib in February 2005, a few days after his return from Guantanamo Bay, and diagnosed “as florid a case as I’ve seen” of post-traumatic stress disorder.

This assessment confirmed an earlier diagnosis referred to in a medical report issued at Guantanamo Bay on January 17, 2005. It stated that “most of his psychiatric issues included visual hallucinations of his wife and children, recollection of torture he experienced in a foreign country before being taken into custody and major depression”.

Dr Tennant says that reliving the trauma in court would cause Mr Habib extreme anxiety and agitation, and would be exacerbated by his belief that an ASIO agent attending the AAT hearings was also present during his torture in Egypt.

The Commonwealth has denied that any Australian official witnessed Mr Habib’s torture.

After giving evidence to the AAT, Dr Tennant was asked to hand over his file on Mr Habib, but refused to do so on the grounds of doctor-patient confidentiality.

“I said to them look you’ve ambushed me, you’ve brought me in here with my file and now you want to subpoena it, and I’m not prepared to be ambushed,” he told The Australian.

Dr Tennant is now anticipating a subpoena demanding the file from counsel for the commonwealth, Andrew Berger.

He has sought advice from the Medical Defence Union and plans to resist any attempt to force him to provide the file. Article

FYI:

Japan’s defense minister apologized on Sunday for comments about the 1945 US atomic bomb attacks on the country which outraged survivors and drew criticism from the ruling bloc ahead of a key election in late July. Article

It must be stated up front that ye old scribe doesn’t ‘get’ Second Life, but take a gander at the war being waged:

Pig Bombs, Machine Guns and French Racists: Second Life Gets Political