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Syrian rebels have been ejected from the Baba Amr district of Homs, promising revenge as they retreat. Syrian authorities allow humanitarian aid to those left in need in the city is to be delivered Friday.
Most rebel troops were pushed out of the area by President Assad's forces on Thursday, AP reports. The Baba Amr brigade says it pulled back in order to allow some 4,000 civilian residents who had remained in their homes during the siege to escape to safety, and warned that the government will pay dearly for "targeting the civilian population in Homs."
"We urge the international community and Muslim and Arab states to intervene immediately to prevent a potential massacre in the coming hours against tens of thousands of children, women and elderly people," the Syrian National Council said.
The BBC reports that the rebels' withdrawal may have been made in accordance with some agreement with the government. But online reports on behalf of the Baba Amr brigade say the rebels didn't have enough arms to protect the people in Homs.
Édith Bouvier and William Daniels
Our colleagues Marie Colvin (Sunday Times) and Remi Ochlik (IP3 Press) were killed on Wednesday, 22 February 2012, in the rebel-held area inside Homs.
According to Western news agencies quoting the Free "Syrian" Army, they were victims of the shelling inflicted by the Damascus forces on the area. However, the National Army made use of multiple rocket launchers only for a very brief period to destroy firing positions, and at no time after 13 February. Furthermore, if it were true that the city had been pounded for 21 straight days, as reported by the news agencies, it would long ago have been reduced to a heap of rubble without a living soul.
At least three other journalists still remain in the rebel zone: Edith Bouvier (Le Figaro Magazine), Paul Conroy and William Daniels (Sunday Times), and probably a fourth one of Spanish nationality.
In arming the Wahhabi Legion and feeding it with satellite intelligence, France conducted a secret war against the Syrian army, which caused more than 3,000 deaths among the military, and more than 1,500 among civilians in ten months of fighting.
This information was partially revealed by Thierry Meyssan during an appearance on the top Russian TV channel, on Monday, 13 February 2012, followed by an article published on Tuesday, the 14th, by Komsomolskaya Pravda and finally through a Voltaire Network TV video.
France has sought Russia's assistance to negotiate with Syria the release of its prisoners of war.
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).
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).
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.
© UnknownKoch Industries helped design this facility in Texas to process natural gas fracked from the Eagle Ford formation.
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."
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."
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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.
