16 June 2010

I don't think that they like him

A nice denunciation from the UK Guardian -
The UN's scientific and cultural organisation, Unesco, has put on hold the award of a prize for "improving the quality of human life" paid for and named after one of Africa's most authoritarian, brutal and corrupt rulers.

The prize, aimed at scientists, is funded with a $3m (£2m) donation by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea who is regarded as having made a major contribution to human misery as well as curtailing more than a few lives. It was to have been awarded later this month but has been suspended following an international outcry.

Obiang, 68, is known not only for having his predecessor executed and the arbitrary arrest and torture of political opponents but for plundering his country's oil wealth while many of its people live in poverty.
A Grauniad criticism of some of the Middle Eastern monsters would now be in order.