NGOs Apologize For Insulting Saudi Arabia At Climate Conference - WWF Staffer Fired

[hatrack]

BONN, Germany, July 28, 2010 (ENS) - The global environment organization WWF today apologized "unreservedly" for the actions of an employee who took offensive photographs of the official nameplate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and distributed them at an international climate change meeting. WWF has fired the man, who admitted sole responsibility for the incident.

The episode took place over the night of June 9-10, near the end of a two-week meeting of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, in Bonn. The employee of WWF-UK took the black and white nameplate of Saudi Arabia from a conference table, broke it, and photographed it in a toilet bowl. That photo was a feature of leaflets distributed around the conference.

The incident occurred after Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, blocked a request by small island states for further studies into the effects of climate change, such as sea level rise.

The leaflets were gravely offensive to the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which called for an investigation, and to the meeting as a whole.

EDIT

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2010/2010-07-28-02.html

[BrklynLiberal]

1. The truth hurts....even when it is photographic truth.

Wonder if the small islands that are being sunken due to sea level rise took offense at the attitude of Saudi Arabia blocking further studies into the effects of climate change?

Any investigation into THAT???

[Nihil]

2. "gravely offensive"?

Putting a broken "Saudi Arabia" nameplate in a toilet bowl and photographing
it there is "gravely offensive"?

Fuck that.

Now *this* IS gravely offensive:
> Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, blocked a request by
> small island states for further studies into the effects of climate change,
> such as sea level rise.

:grr: