On 13 February 2012, Thierry Meyssan revealed on the first Russian television channel that Syria had captured a dozen French soldiers. Voltaire Network is now in a position to confirm that as of 26 February the number of French prisoners is 18 (eighteen).

If Paris admits that they were on a mission, they will be entitled to prisoner-of-war status and protected by the relative Geneva Convention; but if Paris denies having sent them, they will be considered as foreign civilians and judged in Syria for their crimes, which are punishable by the death penalty.

France has opened three negotiation channels via the Russian Federation, the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman.

The ambassador of France, Eric Chevallier, returned urgently to Damascus on 23 February.

Kofi Annan has been appointed as the joint United Nations-Arab League envoy on the Syrian crisis.

Aware of the potential use it can make of the captives in the midst of the French electoral campaign, Damascus called on Syrian state media not to raise the matter at this time. It thus reserves the possibility of dealing with it under the radar if this option proves to be more advantageous.

While acknowledging the uniqueness of this situation, the Syrian journalists, who were quick to adapt to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the new media law, growled that limits are again being imposed for reasons of national security.

"I am optimistic that in 18 months, yes, we will be autonomous in our decisions. But right now I have to assume... that we are not." With these words, Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive watched a swath of his government's decision-making power shift into foreign hands in early 2010.

It's one thing to privatize government services. Since the earthquake, U.S. firms have actually been involved in privatizing governance - in fact, the governance of another country. Corporations with little to no knowledge of Haiti were brought in as volunteers to plan, kick off, and even staff the team with the single greatest operational influence over shaping the reconstruction model for the year after the quake, the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC).

"The crisis is at its end" is no longer a relieving statement made by some political analysts, as the crisis is really close to its end. Baba Amro is now under the control of the Syrian army... and so are the armed groups of which a big number escaped to the Lebanese borders dubbing their retreat "tactical".

Around 700 Arab and Western gunmen surrendered in Baba Amro, well-informed sources told Al-Manar website, adding that "huge and critical surprises will be uncovered in the coming few days... such as the kinds of arms seized, as well as the military tactics the armed groups followed, and the sides that supervised the operations."

The sources further assured the news website that the security operation in Homs will be over in a maximum of five to eight days.

At the Republic Report, Lee Fang details how the Koch Industries petrochemical empire is involved in the boom in natural gas hydrofracturing.

The right-wing Koch brothers have developed a vertical empire designed to extract wealth from every point in the hydrocarbon lifecycle. A small fraction of their profits is funneled into corrupting our political system, in order to prevent government from protecting society against the costs of the waste products.

The EU has recognized the Syrian National Council, one of the main opposition groups, as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people. The decision came as the EU ministers met in Brussels to slap Syria with its toughest set of sanctions yet.

­Although the EU ministers recognized the SNC as the "official opposition", French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told journalists that there are other groups opposed to Assad's regime which should be urged to unite and become more organized.

The EU continues to execute its strategy of putting political and economic pressure on the Syrian regime to force President Bashar al-Assad out of power. Verbally, the West maintains its support of the opposition, at the same time reiterating that a Libya-style scenario will not be repeated in Syria.

Some of the Arab countries, however, advocate a direct military intervention in the country to stop "the bloodshed against the civilians."

Israel, what was that about MAPS?

For years, the paranoid Israelis have been screaming bloody murder that the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said that "Israel should be wiped from the map." Of course, the man said no such thing, it was a deliberate mis-translation meant to serve their purposes: to demonize Ahmadinejad and Iran and to justify an unprovoked attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in Farsi:

"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

The full quote translated directly to English:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."

Word by word translation:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

So that should settle the disinformation campaign being waged in order to set the stage for an aggressive attack against Iran and their paranoid delusions that Iran is building a nuclear weapon in order to "wipe them off the map."

Animal welfare groups reacted with outrage Wednesday after the Iowa Legislature made the state the first to approve a bill making it a crime to surreptitiously get into a farming operation to record video of animal abuse.

The groups have urged Gov. Terry Branstad to veto the measure that was overwhelmingly approved Tuesday by the Iowa House and Senate, arguing that the measure would prevent people from publicizing animal abuse.

"The intent behind the legislation is to put a chilling effect on whistleblowers on factory farms," said Matthew Dominguez, a spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States. "It begs the question of, what exactly does animal agriculture have to hide?"

Legislatures in seven states - Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York and Utah - have considered laws that would enhance penalties against those who secretly record video of livestock, though the efforts have stalled in some states.

The Iowa measure would establish a new penalty for lying on a job application to get access to a farm facility, making it a serious misdemeanor. A second conviction would be an aggravated misdemeanor.

When I was 11 or 12, I was stopped by one of the neighborhood kids as I walked home one day. Gary was in my grade; even at that age, I knew he was remarkably stupid. He was also much stronger than I was. Gary was very athletic; I was not. He had a sizable group of friends; I did not. I was overweight, and I knew -- everyone knew -- that I was "different" from most other kids in at least several ways. Gary and I had never had much to do with each other; that day, for some reason, he decided that he had some business to conduct with me.

"Where have you been?," he asked, in a manner suggesting I'd answer if I knew what was good for me. I told him I'd been at my piano lesson. He looked at me with a puzzled expression and thought about it for a moment or two. "I don't want you going to piano lessons any more." Gary said it as a simple declaration of fact: this is what he wanted, and it would happen. I looked puzzled in my turn; I wondered what on earth he meant. Gary noted my expression, and he took a step closer to me, his face tightening with distaste and disapproval. "You aren't going to any more piano lessons. If I catch you going to one, I'm going to beat the crap out of you."

Because the Department of Homeland Security has asked parts of the public to report suspicious activity through the "Communities Against Terrorism" program , if you visit an airport, stay in a hotel, drink coffee at an Internet café, or in some other way interact with one of the Halloween G-men in the American public, a full-fledged FBI investigation is only one phone call away, says LaTi.

Contrasting with all those fake bloggers and Pentagon twitter activists, here is a real Syrian explaining how it really is in her country.

What Syria Should Do