Yesterday was the centenary of the outbreak of WWI, accompanied by many moving ceremonies, not least the ‘Hour of Darkness’, when lamps were switched off across the country, to commemorate the words of the then Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, that ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime’.
Dignitaries, not least PM Cameron, vowed that we shall never forget the sacrifices of that war.
However …
It didn’t make headlines, it didn’t appear on the front pages of our MSM that the EU is facilitating another dark hour, into which we can slip just like the sleepwalkers in the eponymous book by Christopher Clark on the history of how we came to that terrible war.
It was reported that the EU, without much fanfare, revoked the agreement on supplying the Ukraine with arms which was agreed on in February this year, so as not to supply the then Ukrainian PM, Mr. Yanukovich, which weapons he could use against his citizens.
Since July this year, EU countries can again supply such weapons. It is apparently irrelevant now that they are used against citizens of the Ukraine by the current PM, Mr. Petroshenko. Reuters reported that EU officials were not available for comment.
At the same time, more sanctions for Russia were agreed because of the tragic downing of the Malaysian flight MH17 – because ‘everybody’ knew that the Russian or their ‘puppets’ did it.
The EU could not wait for the results of the investigation – and even now, nearly three weeks later, the results of the investigation of the black boxes haven’t been made public. Instead, the EU keeps demanding that Russia intervene, while at the same time, the EU and their leaders are not doing anything to rein in their client, the Kiev regime.
It is difficult not to see parallels to 1914, where attempts at calming down the situation after the Sarajevo assassination failed again and again because the future warring parties, each and every one, were intransigent.
The EU was created, amongst other purposes, to prevent such a situation where nations sleepwalked into war.
Now it looks as if the EU has abandoned using her powers but has become itself like one of the intransigents of 100 years ago.
This time, there is no national Parliament, nor even a Sir Edward Grey, who might try and put a stop to this, having learned the lesson of 100 years ago, which only yesterday the politicians of the warring nations proclaimed they will heed.
What irony there is in commemorating the lamps going out over Europe while, thanks to the EU, unelected bureaucrats are working towards another such hour of darkness.
Photo by formatted_dad 
The attitude of the UK Government (and the EU) to events in Ukraine is to complain about a foreign power assisting people in Ukraine to fight against their own government. So the UK Government (and the EU) are dead against any foreign power giving assistance to insurgents who are fighting against their
own government. Well, actually, no they are not. They are totally in favour of themselves giving assistance to rebels in Syria who are fighting against their own government. For some reason, a foreign power assisting insurgents is OK if the foreign power is the UK. And what about Kosovo? Was that not a case of assisting insurgents who were fighting against their own Government and wanting their bit of the country to break away from the rest? Again, it’s OK if you are the UK Government. It only seems to be wrong if you are Russia.
As for downing the Malaysian aeroplane, nobody knows for sure yet who did it but I think that we can be sure that it was a mistake whoever did it. I can’t imagine either side deliberately downing a passenger plane. But who else has shot down a passenger plane by mistake? Many people might not remember (or even know about) it but in 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian
passenger plane, killing 290 people, including 60 children. A terrible mistake,
of course, but perhaps the USA should be a bit more careful in its comments in
view of its own history.