WTH, WHO?

Tedros Ghebreyesus is the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), and he fibbed earlier today on Twitter. He said he was "re-thinking" the appointment of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe as a WHO Goodwill Ambassador.

Dr. Ghebreyesus does not seem to understand that thought cannot have been involved in initially selecting Mugabe, therefore the decision to retract the honorary appointment is actually "thinking" instead of "re-thinking.” Mugabe is on record more than once defending the practice of extra-legal arrest and torture. His kleptocracy and corruption have so wrecked the Zimbabwe economy that he schleps his 93-year-old carcass out of the country for medical treatment. He's had journalists who wrote things he didn't like arrested and tortured.

In making the largely ceremonial appointment, WHO said that Mugabe would focus on non-communicable diseases such as heart attacks and strokes. Considering that Mugabe's own organ of that name must indeed be a shriveled and dried out husk, it seems that the WHO statement was designed to induce strokes more than prevent them.