The silence of failure

Friday, March 06, 2009

The silence of failure

Darfur was supposed to be the EU's finest hour – the very reason for the European Rapid Reaction Force, the focus of its humanitarian and peacekeeping ambitions. This was going to be the way "Europe" demonstrated to the likes of the crude Americans how things were to be done.

The EU ambitions degeneratedinto farce, of course – as they always do when the "colleagues" actually have to do something rather than tell others what to do – or criticise them for not doing whatever it is they think should be done.

And the result is this:

Aid officials warn that a humanitarian emergency is in danger of becoming a disaster. The move has put the supply of food to 1.1 million people in doubt, as the UN's World Food Programme scrambles to find lorries to deliver sacks of grain. It had been using four of the expelled charities to get food to people in need. Outside the hospital – run by the International Rescue Committee until it was ordered out – a mother brushed flies from the face of her daughter. "My baby is sick," Fatima Abdulrahmen said. "She has a fever and I brought her here and now I don't know what to do. Who will help me now?"

Wholly predictably, the "colleagues" have failed. And so complete is their failure that no-one is even mentioning the EU – no one even expects it to act. It doles out a little conscience money, with €247 million for "development aid" - a fraction of what it is pouring into Gaza, but as for intervening robustly, with military force, all we get is silence.

There is no longer even a pretence that the EU can resolve the issue. This is the silence of failure.

COMMENT THREAD

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Forecasters caught out …

The Times today notes that a worse-than-predicted shower of snow left motorists stranded in parts of South West England, while heavy frost caused commuter chaos in the South. Thus:

Forecasters admitted being caught unawares after up to 3in (8cm) of snow landed overnight near Okehampton, in Devon, while parts of Somerset and West Dorset also experienced heavy flurries. However, the travel chaos spread beyond the areas affected by snow this morning, with several train services from the south coast to London being suspended, disrupted or cancelled due after heavy frost froze power lines.

And the Met Office forecast for the whole of the year is?

2009 is expected to be one of the top-five warmest years on record, despite continued cooling of huge areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Niña. According to climate scientists at the Met Office and the University of East Anglia the global temperature is forecast to be more than 0.4°C above the long-term average. This would make 2009 warmer than the year just gone and the warmest since 2005.

Considering their recent record, the scientific "consensus" tends towards the view that they couldn't forecast their way out of a paper bag.

COMMENT THREAD

How things change …

28 January 2009, Dr Liam Fox MP (Conservative), Shadow Secretary of State for Defence:

… the Conservative Party has pledged to launch a Strategic Defence Review after returning to government. In addition, we will introduce a US-style system of quadrennial defence reviews and put this requirement into legislation in order to ensure that any future SDR is taken out of the political cycle. This is the only sensible course of action.

7 May 1996, Mr James Arbuthnot (Conservative), Minister of State for Defence:

I have always believed that the Opposition want to carry out a major defence review because they lack the courage to say what they really want to do ...

… and stay the same!