联合国多维综合稳定特派团

Security Council voting to approve a 12,600-strong UN peacekeeping operation to take over from the African-led mission in Mali on 1 July 2013. UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

OK, that's the "United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission" in "simplified Chinese," as determined by Google Translate.  If you translate that back into English, it is exactly the same as the starting English gibberish, which makes me wonder about Google Translate.  How can you translate English bureauspeak into Mandarin and get exactly the same translation back?  Has Google Translate insinuated itself into the United Nations, American machine translation not mediated by a human translator sensitive to the subtleties of two languages?  Is it also vulnerable to manipulation by American national security state, uh, "agencies"?  Am I paranoid?

It's no better in French: "la Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation au Mali (MINUSMA)" - the same bureaucratic mind is at work.

It's hard to say about the Chinese.  The closest I could come in the official UN translation is:

联合国多层面综合稳定团

And Google translates that as:

"Multidimensional United Nations Stabilization Mission in"

I used a different online translation as:

"UN multi-level synthesis stable group" which isn't bad as a rough translation of the original.

It's terrible in all three languages.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

George Orwell
Politics and the English Language 

U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali

You can't make this shit up.

Nobody would believe it. It sounds like the "disposition matrix".   Orwell was so on to these guys:

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write -- feels, presumably, that he has something new to say -- and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

[Emphasis added.]

George Orwell
Politics and The English Language

"How many SWAT teams does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

The Ethics of the Pressure Cooker
by Pierre Lemieux

And - it can't be repeated often enough - here is Germaine Tillion's view on the response to violence:


"We see the United States as deeply worried about terrorism. But effectively fighting against terrorism does not mean increasing the number of military operations; it means fighting against what causes terrorism. If you introduce kindness and gentleness at the place where terrorism begins, you will eradicate terrorism without pain. It is necessary to examine the most sensitive areas of the earth. You can do nothing to stop the seventeen-year-old kid who has decided to place a bomb somewhere. You can do strictly nothing, and any effort against him will just fly back in your face. Countering violence with violence is the most ineffective response imaginable. Instead, we should target the pain, with the goal to alleviate it. I firmly desire a worldwide dialogue, and I would like to see the United States discharged from the monologue. The period of great wars is over. Science has put in the hands of children extraordinary means of death. The greatest error the United States is currently making is to think that international military operations can stop a seventeen-year-old child from acting. The focus should be placed instead on alleviating the pain in the most sensitive regions of the world, beginning with Jerusalem."

Excerpt from “Déchiffrer le silence”:
A Conversation with Germaine Tillion
by Alison Rice
Research in African Literatures 2004 35(1):162-179

Canada apologizes for inconvenience

Sam Benfield Steele
Royal Canadian Mounted Police

The nation of Canada is temporarily unavailable. Please do not adjust your foreign policy. We hope to restore common sense and decency very shortly.

Marine Corps General tells it like it is in 1935

War is a Racket

Major General Smedley Butler

Spike Milligan and The Lord's Prayer

Prescription for "terrorism" from a Ravensbruck survivor

Ravensbruck

The person who got terrorism right is Germaine Tillion.

"We see the United States as deeply worried about terrorism. But effectively fighting against terrorism does not mean increasing the number of military operations; it means fighting against what causes terrorism. If you introduce kindness and gentleness at the place where terrorism begins, you will eradicate terrorism without pain. It is necessary to examine the most sensitive areas of the earth. You can do nothing to stop the seventeen-year-old kid who has decided to place a bomb somewhere. You can do strictly nothing, and any effort against him will just fly back in your face. Countering violence with violence is the most ineffective response imaginable. Instead, we should target the pain, with the goal to alleviate it. I firmly desire a worldwide dialogue, and I would like to see the United States discharged from the monologue. The period of great wars is over. Science has put in the hands of children extraordinary means of death. The greatest error the United States is currently making is to think that international military operations can stop a seventeen-year-old child from acting. The focus should be placed instead on alleviating the pain in the most sensitive regions of the world, beginning with Jerusalem."

Excerpt from “Déchiffrer le silence”:
A Conversation with Germaine Tillion
by Alison Rice
Research in African Literatures 2004 35(1):162-179