Week in Review Part III: Foreign Affairs

Iran: This was an historic week on the U.S.-Israel front.

President Barack Obama…to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, March 4.

“Let’s begin with a basic truth that you all understand. No Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe Israel off the map, and sponsors terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction. And so I understand the profound historical obligation that weighs on the shoulders of Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, and all of Israel’s leaders.

“A nuclear-armed Iran is completely counter to Israel’s security interests. But it is also counter to the national security interests of the United States….

“And that is why, four years ago, I made a commitment to the American people, and said that we would use all elements of American power to pressure Iran and prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapons. And that is what we have done….

“Iran is isolated, its leadership divided and under pressure. And by the way, the Arab Spring has only increased these trends, as the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime is exposed, and its ally – the Assad regime – is crumbling….

“The United States and Israel both assess that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon, and we are exceedingly vigilant in monitoring their program….

“(Given) their history, there are, of course, no guarantees that the Iranian regime will make the right choice. But both Israel and the United States have an interest in seeing the challenges resolved diplomatically….

‘Moreover, as President and Commander-in-Chief, I have a deeply held preference for peace over war…

“We all prefer to resolve this issue diplomatically. Having said that, Iran’s leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States – just as they should not doubt Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.

“I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say….

“Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…to AIPAC, March 5.

“President Obama has reiterated…all options are on the table, and that American policy is not containment.

“Well, Israel has exactly the same policy – We are determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons; we leave all options on the table; and containment is definitely not an option.

“The Jewish state will not allow those who seek our destruction to possess the means to achieve that goal.  A nuclear armed Iran must be stopped….

“Fortunately, President Obama and most world leaders understand that the claim that Iran’s goal is not to develop nuclear weapons is simply ridiculous.

“Yet incredibly, some are prepared to accept an idea only slightly less preposterous; that we should accept a world in which the Ayatollahs have atomic bombs.

“Sure, they say, Iran is cruel, but it’s not crazy. It’s detestable but it’s deterrable.
“My friends, responsible leaders should not bet the security of their countries on the belief that the world’s most dangerous regimes won’t use the world’s most dangerous weapons.

“And I promise you that as Prime Minister, I will never gamble with the security of the State of Israel….

“For the last decade, the international community has tried diplomacy. It hasn’t worked.

“For six years, the international community has applied sanctions. That hasn’t worked either.

“I appreciate President Obama’s recent efforts to impose even tougher sanctions against Iran. These sanctions are hurting Iran’s economy, but unfortunately, Iran’s nuclear program continues to march forward.

“Israel has waited patiently for the international community to resolve this issue. We’ve waited for diplomacy to work. We’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer.

“As Prime Minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation….

“We deeply appreciate the great alliance between our two countries. But when it comes to Israel’s survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate.”

[Note: I have more extensive excerpts of both speeches on my “Hot Spots” link.]

And so the two leaders met at the White House on Monday; Obama having spoken to AIPAC the night before, Netanyahu addressing the key lobby group hours later.

I have long said in this space that Benjamin Netanyahu is the smartest man on the planet…and it’s not even close. [He’s also a corrupt sonuvagun.]

President Obama, on the other hand, thinks he is the smartest man on the planet. And so you have this dynamic between the two. It’s largely why they don’t get along.

Well it would behoove the Free World that the two cooperate now, but here’s the bottom line.

Israel’s “red line” is when it can no longer take out Iran’s capacity to build a nuclear weapon; with Israel also not wanting Iran to pass into a “zone of immunity” in which key facilities may be invulnerable to attack. In both instances, Israel could build a case that given its Air Force’s existing capabilities, Iran has basically already reached the zone.

For the United States, the red line is when the U.S. is convinced Iran is about to ‘break out’ and go for the bomb, acknowledging Iran could already have the capacity to build one, with the U.S. having far greater military capabilities for inflicting the kind of devastating damage necessary to disrupt Iran’s increasingly underground program at that point.

So, goes Israeli thinking, if Netanyahu doesn’t act, will Obama before it’s too late?

Obama is relying on the intelligence community to be able to tell him when Iran is within a year of having a bomb. But Iran can have a bomb within months of breaking out, meaning the enrichment of uranium from harmless 20% to bomb-grade 90%. Today, the West doesn’t have the inspectors on the ground to know when this is occurring. We just have some cameras at places like Natanz, while you saw how Iran prevented the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency from checking out the military site at Parchin, which the IAEA now says Iran is attempting to clean up after possible tests of a nuclear-weapon trigger.

On Tuesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Iran is seeking to build “some sort of intercontinental missile capability,” adding in a speech to British lawmakers, he does not “believe that an Iranian nuclear weapon is just a threat to Israel.”

But now the United States and the other members of the Group of Six (China, France, Germany, Russia and Britain) will commence a new round of talks with Iran. The timing is to be determined, even as the sands of the hourglass are running out.

Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post

“It’s Lucy and the football, Iran-style. After ostensibly tough talk about preventing Iran from going nuclear, the Obama administration acquiesced this week to yet another round of talks with the mullahs.

“This, 14 months after the last group-of-six negotiations collapsed in Istanbul because of blatant Iranian stalling and unseriousness. Nonetheless, the new negotiations will be both without precondition and preceded by yet more talks to decide such trivialities as venue.

“These negotiations don’t just gain time for a nuclear program about whose military intent the International Atomic Energy Agency is issuing alarming warnings. They make it extremely difficult for Israel to do anything about it (while it still can), lest Israel be universally condemned for having aborted a diplomatic solution.

“If the administration were serious about achievement rather than appearance, it would have warned that this was the last chance for Iran to come clean and would have demanded a shorter timeline. After all, President Obama insisted on deadlines for the Iraq withdrawal, the Afghan surge and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Why leave these crucial talks open-ended when the nuclear clock is ticking?....

“So what is Obama’s real objective? ‘We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel,’ an administration official told The Post in the most revealing White House admission since ‘leading from behind.’

“Revealing and shocking. The world’s greatest exporter of terror (according to the State Department), the systematic killer of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, the self-declared enemy that invented ‘Death to America Day’ is approaching nuclear capability – and the focus of U.S. policy is to prevent a democratic ally threatened with annihilation from preempting the threat?....

“A fair-minded observer might judge that Israel’s desire to not go gently into the darkness carries higher moral urgency than the political future of one man, even if he is president of the United States.”

Bret Stephens / Wall Street Journal

“Should Israelis and pro-Israel Americans take President Obama at his word when he says – as he did at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee… ‘I have Israel’s back’?

“No.

“Here is a president who fought tooth-and-nail against the very sanctions on Iran for which he now seeks to reap political credit. He inherited from the Bush administration the security assistance to Israel he now advertises as proof of his ‘unprecedented’ commitment to the Jewish state. His defense secretary has repeatedly cast doubt on the efficacy of a U.S. military option against Iran even as the president insists it remains ‘on the table.’ His top national security advisers keep warning Israel not to attack Iran even as he claims not to ‘presume to tell [Israeli leaders] what is best for them.’

“Oh, and his secretary of state answers a question from a Tunisian student about U.S. politicians courting the ‘Zionist lobbies’ by saying that ‘a lot of things are said in political campaigns that should not bear a lot of attention.’ It seems it didn’t occur to her to challenge the premise of the question.”
On Thursday, Netanyahu gave an interview to Israel’s three television networks.

“I don’t have a stop watch in hand. This is not a matter of days or weeks. It is also not a matter of years. The result has to be that the threat of a nuclear weapon in Iran’s hands is removed.”

Netanyahu made clear that Israel and the U.S. had different time references.

“The U.S. is big and distant, Israel is smaller and closer to Iran, and – of course – we have different capabilities. So the American clock regarding preventing nuclearization of Iran is not the Israeli one. The Israeli clock works, obviously, according to a different schedule.”

[One note on Israel and the Palestinian situation, which is getting buried in all the Iran talk. An Israeli airstrike took out a top Hamas military commander, while action is heating up in Gaza with heavy exchanges of rocket fire between Palestinians and Israelis.]

Syria: I first brought up the issue of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons stockpiles a few weeks ago and Friday’s Wall Street Journal has a story that American and Jordanian militaries are jointly developing plans to secure it. For this story to be presented the way it has been, you know it is of utmost concern and no doubt in my mind that Assad will use them on his own people (U.S. officials say there is no sign of this…but frankly my track record is better than theirs), let alone the danger the WMD fall into the hands of terrorists.

“Significant quantities…are believed to have been weaponized by the Syrian government in artillery shells, bombs and possibly Scud and SS-21 missiles.

“Russia, North Korea, Egypt and Iran are among the countries that have assisted Damascus in developing these weapons, according to current and former U.S. officials.”

The main concern, as expressed by Adm. William McRaven, head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, is the weapons falling into the hands of Hizbullah in particular.

Any joint U.S.-Jordanian effort, however, can’t occur until Assad falls, but were a headline to flash that he has been assassinated or flown out of the country, you can just imagine the incredible amount of immediate activity that will take place in Syria, including tribal bloodletting.

The other news of the week from here was the same. Dreadful, including talk of a fresh massacre in Homs, where 44 members of several families were reportedly executed the day after the UN’s humanitarian chief visited the place.

Syria’s deputy oil minister defected, condemning his family to death, by his own admission as he left them behind, the bastard. At least four generals also reportedly defected, but it’s too easy to then reach the conclusion that Assad’s fall is imminent. You can only pray this is so. Just remember, if and when he does go, it’s chaos and there is no united opposition…it’s worse than Libya.

And you also have Syria’s ability to light the entire region on fire. Just last Sunday, 2,000 Syrian refugees fled into Lebanon, according to the UN. A Lebanese security source told the Daily Star that the Lebanese Army arrested 30 armed Syrian rebels trying to sneak into the country as well. How many have already done so? Remember, I first went to Beirut in 2005 in the weeks after the Syrian Army was forced to exit following the assassination of Rafik Hariri. They had been there a long time. Assad could easily attempt to create a diversion in Lebanon today. Otherwise, Assad is trying to pound and cleanse one town, one city after another. As my friend Michael Young of the Daily Star adds:

“How the Syrian president intends to govern his sullen citizens after that is an open question. But if the principal American motive is a responsibility to protect citizens, then issuing statements of condemnation and piling up sanctions are unlikely to change Assad’s behavior, and a new Security Council resolution will either be vetoed by Russia or so watered down as to be irrelevant.”

Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. John McCain said there was a “clear strategic interest in forcing the regime” from Damascus, seeing as the Assad government serves as the “main forward operating base” for Iran in the Middle East. McCain is calling for air strikes. President Obama said “Ultimately this dictator will fall” but that U.S. military action would be a big mistake.

For its part, fresh off his election victory, returning President Vladimir Putin said don’t expect any change in Russia’s policy.

Editorial / Washington Post

“Testimony by senior U.S. officials to Congress this week about Syria has made one thing clear: The Obama administration has yet to face up to its own assessment of what is happening in that strategic Arab country.

“For months President Obama has been declaring that the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad is ‘inevitable’ or ‘a question of when,’ as he put it Tuesday. But Marine Gen.

James Mattis, the head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee the same day that Mr. Assad is ‘gaining physical momentum’ in his assault on his rebellious population. ‘He’s going to be there for some time because I think he will continue to employ heavier and heavier weapons. It will get worse before it gets better.’

“Mr. Obama also derided suggestions that the United States should intervene militarily. Among other things, he said ‘we’ve got to think through…what’s critical for U.S. security interests.’ But Gen. Mattis said that if the Assad regime were to collapse, ‘it’ll be the biggest strategic setback for Iran in 20 years.’…

“As for building an international coalition for more forceful action, that historically has been the responsibility of the United States and its president. If Mr.

Obama does not lead on Syria, there will be no international consensus – and an outcome that meets U.S. interests will be anything but inevitable.”

Russia: Vladimir Putin is officially back, having captured 64% of the vote in Russia’s presidential election on Sunday. Vlad, knowing his days are now numbered, shed a few tears as he accepted the cheers of his supporters outside the Kremlin Sunday evening. Err, rather, it was the cold wind that caused his eyes to water, he later said.

Western observers said the vote was deeply flawed as Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov took second with 18%, while billionaire New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov came in third with 8%. The vote was a joke as you had situations like in Chechnya where, according to the Moscow Times, one precinct reported 99.7% for Putin with a turnout of 99.6%. Another precinct in Chechnya, as reported by the New York Times, saw Putin capture 1,482 votes, though only 1,389 were registered to cast ballots; a neat trick if you can pull it off…and they did.

The independent watchdog, Golos, said Putin got at least 50.7%, so he would have avoided a run-off anyway, and it’s a fact the opposition slate of candidates was pathetic.

But the world knows the vote was still far from clean; this after the disastrous Dec. 4 Duma election that spawned the mass protests leading up to the presidential ballot.

The discontent that spells Putin’s eventual demise (I’m on record as saying it’s this year) goes back to last September when Putin and soon-to-be former President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to swap positions. It was said to be a tense meeting, with Medvedev reluctantly agreeing to the move. He had wanted to run again and instead Putin subjected him to this humiliation; confirmation that Medvedev was nothing more than Putin’s puppet The thing is, the job swap, when announced at the United Russia party congress on Sept. 24, could not have gone worse as Putin blurted out, “We agreed to this years ago.”

Mark Franchetti writes of this period in the Sunday Times of London, “(Putin) had overreached himself. If Russians thought they were the victims of a hatchet job, here was its architect rubbing their noses in it.”

And so the rumblings started, with the growing middle class having had enough; it being as much about Putin himself as the stupendous level of corruption that dominates all facets of life.

I’ve long said Putin will be done in by a shadowy third force, and of course it will be in essence an old-style KGB coup. I said way back it would be Igor Sechin and his people who take control. Regardless, Vlad is gone because he is no longer an asset.

The only thing that could potentially save Putin is a massive reform effort, including the release of one-time Yukos oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but this is not in the cards, especially the former. Just more stagecraft, designed to make the people believe Putin is reforming when he isn’t; only this time the people won’t allow the charade to continue.

The post-election protests fizzled out last week, but they’ll return (they might be today), and if Vlad tries to repress them it won’t work. [The Great Repression will come with the next guy.]

Meanwhile, one question for President Barack Obama. “How’s that reset workin’ out for ya?”

Afghanistan: “The tide has turned. (The insurgency in southwestern Afghanistan) is no longer able to intimidate the local nationals to the point where they’re fearful of siding with the government of Afghanistan,” Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan told USA TODAY in a phone interview.

Two things. Afghans hate the U.S., and the Taliban is of course just biding its time, knowing 10,000 troops are leaving the region by October. Sorry to be such a cynic, but I’ve been following this theater too closely not to feel otherwise. I do not doubt the surge in Helmand and Kandahar has had its successes, it’s just not going to stick once we’re gone.

All you have to do is look at the deepening suspicion between Afghan security forces and NATO, especially after the recent incidents in which six Americans were killed in three separate attacks by their Afghan counterparts. Afghan soldiers and police, or Taliban dressed in Afghan uniforms, have now killed 75 U.S. and other coalition forces since 2007.

Maj. Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, tried to put it into context in testimony before Congress this week.

“Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare…No force is perfect.”

Mattis said that recruitment and training of Afghan security forces is progressing and that the goal of 352,000 will “be reached in 60 days,” ahead of schedule.

Separately, the Brits lost six soldiers in the worst single attack on their troops of the war, bringing the British death toll to 404 since 2001. The attack was blamed on the Taliban. General David Richards, Chief of Defence Staff, said “truly impressive” progress has been made in Afghanistan, adding: “We will hold our nerve. I know I speak for every man and woman in uniform when I say that we understand the importance of the mission with which we are charged.”

Wendy Rayner, the wife of a soldier killed in Helmand province in 2010, said that the lives of British and other NATO troops had been thrown away. “My husband and our friends who died, and everybody else’s throughout the whole of England and other countries, died for nothing,” she said. Rayner added:

“It makes me very angry…they have gone into this country to try to make peace and yet they will pull out of there and the poor people who are left will go back to the same crappy lifestyle that they had before our lot went in.” [The Times of London]

The UK still has 9,500 troops in Afghanistan. Prime Minister David Cameron is to address the mission in a meeting with President Obama in Washington next week.

Lastly, an estimated 200+ were killed when their village was buried in an avalanche near the border with Pakistan.

Pakistan: Al-Qaeda confirmed one of its top commanders, Badr Mansoor, was killed in an American drone attack last month. Mansoor, whose picture many of you would recognize, was said to be behind some of the worst attacks on Pakistani civilians in recent years. Al-Qaeda accused the Pakistani government of collaborating on the drone strikes, which is a nice change in sentiment when looking at it from the Washington-Islamabad standpoint.

Meanwhile, Pakistan charged Osama bin Laden’s three widows with illegally entering the country. The two Saudis and a Yemeni were taken into custody last May in the bin Laden raid. Why the Pakistanis would make this announcement this week is probably just to send a message that the government is not as protective of the bin Laden family as some believe. The 10 children are free to leave the country.

“Run along now. Make sure you find an official cab or you could get gouged.”

Iraq: Way back, former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said al-Qaeda had been reduced to a few “dead-enders.” Those dead-enders killed at least 27 Iraqi police in the western part of the country the other day, disguising themselves as police with false warrants.

Yemen: Speaking of, ahem, dead-enders, al-Qaeda ambushed a Yemeni military post in the southern part of the country, killing at least 90, while 30 or so militants are said to have died in the operation. Al-Qaeda made off with the heavy weaponry, it was reported, in an attack clearly meant to send a signal to new president, Abed Hadi, who has proclaimed he would go after the terrorists. The United States helped install Hadi so I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised to learn of an American airstrike or two on al-Qaeda bases in the not too distant future.

Egypt: Many in the new parliament are seething over the release of pro-democracy American activists before they could stand trial on charges they received illegal funds. The speaker of the lower house said those involved in the decision to lift the travel ban on 43 non-governmental organization workers, including the 16 Americans, would be held accountable.

China: The government announced it was raising the defense budget to $100 billion this year, an increase of 11.2%. Spending rose 12.7% the previous year. Li Zhaoxing, a spokesman for the national parliament, said the amount was aimed at “safeguarding sovereignty, national security and territorial integrity.” Needless to say, many in the region find this a bit disconcerting.

At the National People’s Congress, Premier Wen Jaibao said government seizures of land must stop.

“Farmers’ rights to the land they contract to work on, to the land on which their houses sit, and to proceeds from collective undertakings, are property rights conferred by law, and these rights must not be violated by anyone.” [South China Morning Post]

Such land grabs have been a big cause of mass protests.

On the issue of the size of China’s economy, economist Robert Samuelson wrote the following in the Washington Post.

“Let’s look at the numbers. In 2010, according to the World Bank figures, China’s economy was about 70% the size of America’s. Its GDP totaled $10.2 trillion, compared with U.S. GDP of $14.6 trillion. The trouble, contends (Arvind) Subramanian (of the Peterson Institute for International Economies), is that the United States’ lead is a statistical illusion and that China’s GDP is about 47% larger than the official estimates. This would bring the 2010 figure to $15 trillion, slightly ahead of the U.S. GDP. Indeed, says Subramanian, a new study suggests the underestimate could be more than 70%. This implies China’s 2010 GDP exceeded $17 trillion.”
Kind of funny, considering all the talk on China is usually about their numbers being a total illusion, far less than reported.

As Samuelson points out, China’s production and income is spread over 1.34 billion while U.S. GDP is divided among 309 million; so using the World Bank figures, “U.S.

per capita income totaled $47,153 in 2010, compared with China’s $7,599. Assuming a Chinese GDP of $17 trillion raises per capita income to about $12,700.”

Whether or not you believe China is bigger today, the point at which it passes the U.S. based on today’s widely accepted data is far sooner than once believed.

North Korea: The United States is seeking the return of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, soon, before granting any food assistance under the recent agreement that calls for the North to freeze long-range missile and nuclear tests and cease enriching uranium and other “nuclear activities” at the Yongbyon atomic complex. Assuming the monitors are granted full access, instead of the limited access they had at Yongbyon before they were evicted in 2009, then the first 20,000 tons of Drakes Cakes can be delivered. Personally, if I were a North Korean, I’d go with the Funny Bones because peanut butter travels better.

John Bolton / Wall Street Journal

“(IAEA) inspectors will be limited to the Yongbyon facility, which is like looking at North Korea through a straw – and at the wrong place no less. The overwhelming mass of the North’s important nuclear-weapons activities have long been deeply buried in hidden locations, unknown even to U.S. intelligence, let alone IAEA inspectors….

“Most objectionable morally, despite U.S. denials of a quid pro quo: We are providing 240,000 tons of food aid that will almost certainly be diverted to the DPRK military and other favored recipients. It is a strict canon of U.S. humanitarian assistance that such aid be closely monitored, but there is no reason to believe that monitoring will be any more effective than in the past. Make no mistake, we are simply feeding young Kim’s dictatorship.

“This agreement is a sham, pure and simple – which the North’s separate communiqué highlights. Pyongyang emphasizes that the deal with Washington is a prelude to resuming the six-party talks (including South Korea, China, Russia and Japan), which will focus on ‘the lifting of sanctions on the DPRK and provision of light water reactors.’

“Those are hallmarks of the failed 1994 Agreed Framework that the North never honored….

“Undoubtedly, a campaigning President Obama, fearing that his much-touted foreign policy succ

esses are less than meet the eye, is looking for quick diplomatic triumphs. He certainly does not want inconvenient crises in Iran and North Korea erupting simultaneously later this year.

“But whatever the electoral impact of the North Korea deal may be, its national-security consequences are all too painful. Let’s hope a new president can reverse them.”

Japan: The first anniversary of the tsunami / Fukushima disaster is Sunday. According to a survey of those most impacted, 72% said they could see little or no progress in reconstruction efforts.

Turkey: An official of the government said Turkey was prepared to annex northern Cyprus if talks on reunification of the island between Greek and Turkish Cypriots did not reach a conclusion. Many Turkish Cypriots oppose the idea of annexation. Cyprus is governed by a Greek Cypriot administration and is part of the European Union.

 Turkey has stationed troops in the north since invading in 1974. Northern Cyprus is only recognized by Turkey and its only air link is to there.

France: The race for president is heating up. This week President Nicolas Sarkozy said there were too many foreigners in France and the system for integrating them is “working more and more badly,” a shameless ploy aimed at picking off Marine Le Pen’s National Front supporters.

As for Le Pen, as of March 1, she only had 452 of 500 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot and needs to get the remainder by March 16. These are signatures of elected officials: mayors, deputies, regional councilors and such. We’ll see if my spoiler is just jerking everyone around and playing for PR, miraculously coming up with the rest just in time.

Meanwhile, the frontrunner, Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande, has proposed a 75% income tax rate on France’s super wealthy, to be applied on income over 1 million euros ($1.32 million). Which means that this could spell the death of French football! The reason? The stars are among the few in the country making that kind of money and of course they’ll opt to play elsewhere.

Hollande himself is miffed because Europe’s leaders won’t meet with him. Angela Merkel, Mario Monti and Spain’s Mariano Rajoy have agreed not to see Hollande because of his demand that the recently signed fiscal compact be renegotiated upon his election. The Germans in particular worry that any changes a President Hollande may demand would open a Pandora’s Box of demands from other states and delay the ratification process. Recall, 12 Euro nations still must have their parliaments approve the compact and Ireland is having a referendum.

Britain: Aside from losing six soldiers in a single attack in Afghanistan, it was a bad week for Britain on another front as British Special Forces failed to rescue two taken hostage in Nigeria last May (one Brit, one Italian) and the hostages were then murdered by their captors before the Special Boat Service and elite Nigerian forces were able to seize them.

What makes this worse is that Italian authorities were not informed of the operation until it was underway and the Italians are pissed, rightfully so. We aren’t talking not informing Pakistan before taking out bin Laden, after all. You’re talking about an ally on a hostage mission.

The captors, at least two of whom were also killed, were affiliated with the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. The victims worked for an Italian construction firm.

Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez said a tumor removed from his pelvic region was malignant, indicating the cancer had returned. Chavez told his people his prognosis was good and that he looked to return from Cuba in a month or so to resume campaigning for re-election in October.

Congo: Unreal…three days after a fire inside an arms depot set off a series of massive explosions, at least 250 were dead in Brazzaville, yet there was no relief effort, as reported by the AP, nor was the Red Cross let in because of the risk of more unexploded shells going off.

Uganda: Finally, just a note on the video sweeping the world, “Kony 2012,” about the leader of Africa’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. Back on 10/15/11 in this space, I wrote “Kill Kony!” after learning President Obama sent 100 troops to the Central African Republic to help forces there track him down.

But now this video has been produced, it’s had well over 60 million hits as of Friday evening, and the producer did the documentary as a way of raising awareness of the horrors inflicted by the LRA, with Kony being accused of using thousands of child soldiers in his reign of terror.

The thing is, the video is apparently, to some experts in the region, loose with the facts and hardly helpful in existing efforts to bring Kony to justice, including the Obama administration effort, which I applauded last fall.

I mean who is this latest social activist hero, filmmaker Jason Russell? More importantly, there are serious questions about his fundraising. The accounting for his San Diego organization, “Invisible Children,” is murky at best.

But you have celebrities ranging from Justin Bieber to Oprah to J.K. Rowling offering their support. What the heck do they know about the topic?

If you aren’t concerned about this display of mass manipulation, then you should be. To me, it’s a Sign of the Apocalypse.