More new on our "friends" at the U.N.

U.N. Poster Boy - Dictator Obiang

Well.

Seems like just yesterday I was musing on just how tragic it isn't that we weren't selected to sit at the table with the "good people" at the U.N. Security Counsel.

Today, we learn more about what it takes to be respected by the United Nations.

In 2008, the United Nations scientific and cultural agency, UNESCO, proudly created the "UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in Life Sciences. Deadline: 30 April 2010".  The prize was a $3 million endowment paid for by Equatorial Guinea President Teodor Obiang Nguema.

As set out on UNESCO's website:

The purpose of this Prize is to reward the projects and activities of an individual, individuals, institutions, other entities or non-governmental organizations for scientific research in the life sciences leading to improving the quality of human life.

Well.

Isn't that special? President Nguema wants to "improve the quality of human life".

Problem is, this guy is becoming somewhat typical of the U.N. crowd.

In so far as, according to Amnesty International has reported on his government:

Political opponents of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea face abduction, detention, torture and execution. In August 2010, four men were executed within an hour of being sentenced to death by a military court in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s capital. They had been abducted from Benin where they were living as refugees. In the same trial, two prisoners of conscience (who had earlier been acquitted) were jailed for 20 years.

You don't say?

What else can we learn about the good President Dictator?
Well, as reported by Peter Maas in Slate, asking the rhetorical question, "Who's Africa's Worst Dictator"?:

Mugabe may not be Africa's worst. That prize arguably goes to Teodoro Obiang, the ruler of Equatorial Guinea whose life seems a parody of the dictator genre. Years of violent apprenticeship in a genocidal regime led by a crazy uncle? Check. Power grab in a coup against the murderous uncle? Check. Execution of now-deposed uncle by firing squad? Check. Proclamation of self as "the liberator" of the nation? Check. Govern for decades in a way that prompts human rights groups to accuse your regime of murder, torture, and corruption? Check, check, and check.

Color me not surprised.

The U.N. has evolved from an organization that was, in it's past life, a beacon of hope and peace, to a mouthpiece for the worst of the worlds tin-pot dictators and terrorists.

While it is now bowing to growing world pressure to remove itself from it's association with the dictator, as commented in my earlier blog, the U.N. is no longer a club one yearns to be associated with.

It's becoming a gang of corrupt thugs, and, frankly, Canada is well-off not sitting arm in arm with them.  Frankly, I would be embarrassed if we were "good U.N. citizens" as, obviously, to be a good citizen of the U.N., is to be no good citizen at all.