Joseph Kony's rebel dress sense, Tuareg wars in Mali, Don Cheadle makes some noise for Amnesty...

Uganda on my mind - more precisely, cult-like rebel movement high fashion on my mind. A piece from the Daily Monitor in Uganda describes a video of southern Sudan's vice president giving the head of the Lords Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, at least $20,000 "to help you buy food not arms not ammunition". You would be forgiven for reacting with scepticism to this request, given that Kony and his conies have shown a complete disregard for human life during their 20-year rebellion. The LRA has used bases in southern Sudan to raid northern Uganda.

What caught my eye, though, was the attention paid to the dress sense of Vice President Riek Machar, Kony's commander and Kony himself. Kony, enigmatic child-kidnapper extraordinaire, sported a "green military uniform with red pips". He also looked healthy, apparently. Machar was dressed in a white Kaunda suit, an outfit with a short-sleaves and a four-pocketed jacket popularised by founding Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. Vincent Otti, one of Kony's commanders, clearly didn't put enough thought into his look because he was dressed virtually identically to Kony and wore old-fashioned spectacles.

If and when this DVD surfaces I'd be interested to see if fashion from this devastated part of the world bleeds onto the catwalk, taking Milan, Paris and New York by storm. I have a couple more lingering questions -- what exactly are red pips, and will Otti be allowed to use some of that $20,000 to update his eyewear?

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I'm in love with Don Cheadle. Why Don Cheadle and emphatically not Bono? I don't have an answer to that except to say that the human heart works in mysterious ways. The star of Hotel Rwanda and Crash, among many others, has been working with Amnesty International's Make Some Noise initiative to highlight injustice around the world. The organisation's aim is to galvanise a new generation to stand up for human rights in places like Southern Sudan and support campaigns against torture. The hook is music, personalities and videos. A wide array of musicians, such as Mexico's Jaguares, The Cure and John Lennon, are featured.

By the way, the organisation struck gold when John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono granted it the recording rights to "Imagine" and his entire solo songbook. And in one video Cheadle asks us to "imagine ... a world where human rights are respected and protected for all people. It is a safer, more peaceful world."

Amnesty's aim is to attract one million new supporters around the world. Here's hoping the new generation is listening.

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Cambridge University and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) are collaborating to come up with a new HIV test that would be especially effective in detecting the condition in young children in developing countries. Unlike currently available ones, the so-called SAMBA test would not need to be refrigerated and the technology would allow for test results to be delivered while the patients wait. This all is incredibly important given that 95 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are in low- and middle-income countries. More than 25 million are in sub-Saharan Africa.

MSF is also demanding an overhaul in the way medical research and development is financed and prioritised. Its own analysis shows that only about 1 percent of the drugs reaching the market between 1974 and 2004 addressed neglected diseases like tuberculosis and sleeping sickness.

MSF says it is a "call to governments to provide significant and sustained support to bring essential new diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines to people suffering and dying from neglected diseases". The actual resolution, tabled at the World Health Assembly meeting this week and proposed by Kenya and endorsed by Brazil, would a) set up a working group of countries to look at ways of encouraging research and development, and, b) the group would then give feedback at a World Health Assembly in 2008.

Maybe it's just because I'm wallowing in a post-lunch haze, but doesn't this sounds a bit, well, blah? Is this just the circuitous way that all international agreements of this sort are discussed and hammered out? Whatever, it is hard to deny that something ought to be done about the diseases rampaging through many poor countries, conditions that the rich world often seems unable or unwilling to address.

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What's going on in Mali, huh? Suspected Tuareg rebels have occupied a town in the north of the country.

The Tuaregs are an interesting bunch. The traditionally nomadic communities live in Mali, Libya, Niger, Algeria and Burkina Faso. Mali, a former French colony, has had a fractious relationship with the Tuaregs, who have demanded greater autonomy since independence in 1960. Things got really bad in the last few decades and many were forced into refugee camps throughout the Sahara. This fed resentment with youths leaving to get military training in Libya, with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi seeing them as foot soldiers in a revolutionary army that could build a Socialist Sahara. Another interesting factoid - Libya recently set up a consulate in Kidal, which was a staging ground for a rebellion in the 1990s and the object of today's attack. This piece on openDemocracy is interesting...

Climate change is another issue plaguing Mali and other countries in the Sahel - the huge region bordering the Sahara. The Sahara is growing, wreaking havoc on the lives of traditional people like the Tuaregs, and making it impossible for many to fend for themselves.

Let's throw the fear of militant Islam into the mix. The Sahel is "the new front in the war against terrorism" according to the United States. Think tank International Crisis Group disputes this, and says the United States risks pushing local populations toward extremism.

"There are enough indications, from a security perspective, to justify caution and greater Western involvement. However, the Sahel is not a hotbed of terrorist activity. A misconceived and heavy-handed approach could tip the scale the wrong way ... " it says in a 2005 report. In fact, real engagement with the country and the region would do a lot more good than a hardline crackdown, Crisis Group says.

Hmmm, sounds like one to watch...

F. Brinley Bruton
AlertNet journalist