Sauce for Uganda...

SBS news made a fine show of confected outrage last night (no transcript, so no link) over the matter of hosting the next CHOGM, due to be held in Uganda, where the leader of the Opposition, Kizza Besigye, has appeared before a military tribunal on charges of terrorism and treason. SBS argues that CHOGM should be using its leverage to pressure Uganda away from politically-motivated trials such as Besigye's. In principle, I can only agree, but I can't help noticing how silent SBS has been over the years in the matter of another trans-national body - the United Nations - not only failing to use its leverage to discipline wayward members, but indeed extending its privileges of office and stewardship to the worst tin-pot thugs and dictators amongst its members.

Heads at SBS must have been spinning, too, over the matter of one of their whipping boys of the recent past - Douglas Wood - coming out as a critic of the death sentence for Nguyen Tuong Van. Wood, of course, was the Australian contractor, sorry, war profiteer, who had not only the temerity to be rescued from Iraqi kidnappers, but the sheer bloody bad manners to call his captors 'arseholes' once he was back in the safety of Crusaderland. Still, the enemy of the enemy of my friend's friend is, er....