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| August | 12 |
| 2006 |
Is there are a more preposterous UN figure than Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs? (Probably - Mark Malloch Brown might well edge him.)
Here's his latest 'humanitarian' comment - a moral warping which, if one was not used to the UN's mirror-image world, would take the breath away:
People were enraged collectively in Lebanon, everybody against the Israeli indiscriminate onslaught.
I would love to be charitable and assume he doesn't understand English, but that isn't the case. So the only conclusion one can draw is that he has a warped moral compass.
Here's what 'Indiscriminate' means:
Having no particular pattern, purpose, organization, or structure: chance, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, random, spot, unplanned.
So to whom do you think that applies?
One might think to a terrorist group which targets civilians and fires rockets...what word comes next?...indiscriminately?
No. In Mr Egeland's mind it applies to an arny which takes great pains - at severe cost to its own chances of success - to notify everyone in an area it is about to attack, and to direct its strikes only at areas from which terrorists operate, even if civilians are, unfortunately and inevitably (given Hezbollah using them as human shields), caught up in the attack.
Such is the moral universe of the UN.
UPDATE: A commenter quite rightly takes me to task for referring to a thesaurus' entry, rather than a dictionary, and then goes on to list various dictionary definitions of 'indiscriminate'. He cites a variety of dictionaries' entries, such as Chambers:
Indiscriminate adj 1 making no distinctions; not making or showing careful choice and discrimination; chosen at random. 2 confused; not differentiated.
So yes, I should have used the dictionary definition - if for no other reason than it makes my point even more strongly.
MessageSpace
On BBC bias - I am curious to know if Professor G. Philo has indeed yet produced as you put it "a single example I have cited being made up, or in any material way inaccurate. (By material I simply mean that there may be the odd definite article or 'um' left out.)". Doubtless you'll let us know in the fullness of time.
Why do you report only one side of what Mr Egeland said?
The definition in the Chambers dictionary is rather different:
"Indiscriminate adj 1 making no distinctions; not making or showing careful choice and discrimination; chosen at random. 2 confused; not differentiated."
The American Heritage dictionary includes, among others, the meanings "Not making or based on careful distinctions; unselective" and "Unrestrained or wanton; profligate".
The Collins dictionary gives:
"1. lacking discrimination or careful choice; random or promiscuous. 2. jumbled; confused"
A particular sense has been selected in order to suggest that Hezbollah alone is guilty of "indiscriminate" attacks. Whatever one's view of Israeli attacks, Egeland's statement can only be properly assessed with the full definition of the word to hand.
The posting doesn't supply this because Pollard has, in spite of his Oxford education, eccentrically chosen to quote a thesaurus instead of a dictionary. See http://www.bartleby.com/62/96/I0809600.html. He does not reveal what "indiscriminate" means. Instead he supplies a collection of words that would also have popped up if he'd typed in "chance" or "haphazard".
Stuarta, you are surely not inferring that Mr Pollard's thinking could be characterised by definition 2. of the Collins dictionary for the word "indiscriminate"? This is an outrage, I come here looking for understatement and all I find are rants! I want my money back!!!
Surely Oxford is the final arbiter, Stuart?