Syria news .... October 26 and last few days

Two vids below show two Republicans.  The difference is sharp and telling.  One is a pacifist and the other is a stinking warmonger. Goes to prove that every political party will have their good apples and their rotten ones too. The rotten ones win more elections than the good ones. 

Loveday Morris writing at WashingtonPost:
...While the emergence of al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as a major force in the Syrian civil war has caused deep concern for many rebels, one group’s fighters claim its presence has given them a popularity boost.
Until ISIS asserted its place in the war earlier this year, Jabhat al-Nusra had the reputation of being the most radical wing of the opposition seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It was the first to claim responsibility for car bombings against government targets and was quickly designated a terrorist group by the United States.
But the newcomer, with its high proportion of foreign fighters, has eclipsed Jabhat al-Nusra as it enforces bans on smoking, forces women to wear the veil, carries out public executions and clashes with other rebel groups in an attempt to gain control in opposition areas........

From YahooNews:
Syrian Kurds rout jihadists on Iraq border.  Syrian Kurds drove jihadists from an Iraq border crossing in fierce clashes Saturday, activists said, as the UN-Arab League envoy took his regional peace mission to regime ally Iran.
Fighters from both sides were killed in the border clashes, which came a day after Syria's regime and its opponents traded blame for a car bomb attack on a mosque that left dozens dead.
The Kurds "took control of the Al-Yaarubia border crossing with Iraq at dawn after clashes with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Al-Nusra Front and other rebels," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, citing activists.
The Kurds have been struggling to carve out an autonomous northeastern region similar to one in northern Iraq, further complicating the war pitting Sunni-led rebels against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.....

Oliver Holmes at Reuters:
....An estimated $1.3 million worth of art  from more than 130 artists, mostly from Syria and Lebanon, is being auctioned at below-gallery prices in Beirut to raise money for Syrian refugee children.
"This is first time that you have so many artists from the Middle East mobilize for a cause," said Noura Jumblatt, president of the Lebanese Beiteddine festival and wife of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.
"We had more offers but we had to limit ourselves," she told Reuters in her office, which was filled with thousands of dollars worth of bubble-wrapped art ready for a live auction on November 8th in Beirut.
About half of Syria's two million war refugees are children, according to the United Nations. 



Anne Barnard writing NYTimes:
Some five million Syrians are now refugees in their own country, many living hand-to-mouth in vacant buildings, schools, mosques, parks and the cramped homes of relatives. Others are trapped in neighborhoods isolated by military blockades, beyond the reach of aid groups. Already desperately short of food and medicine as winter closes in, they could begin to succumb in greater numbers to hunger and exposure, aid workers say.
The long civil war has forced two million Syrians outside the country‘s borders, but more than twice that number face mounting privations at home, and the toll keeps rising. The deepening humanitarian crisis threatens to set the country’s development back decades and dwarfs any aid effort that could conceivably be carried out while the conflict continues, aid workers and analysts say.
The cost of replacing damaged homes and infrastructure alone is estimated at more than $30 billion, and the ruin mounts daily. More than half of the country’s hospitals are destroyed or closed, and according to Save the Children a fifth of Syrian families go without food one week a month. Syria’s economy has shrunk by half......

From YahooNews:
The toll from a car bomb explosion at a mosque in Suq Wadi Barada near Damascus Friday soared to at least 40, including seven children, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Syrian government and opposition exchanged blame for the carnage in the town.
Suq Wadi Barada is under rebel control and ringed by troops loyal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
"The toll from a car bomb explosion that detonated after Friday prayers in Suq Wadi Barada has risen to 40, including seven children and a woman," said the Observatory.
"The number of dead is likely to rise because there are dozens of wounded, most of them in critical condition," it added.
State news agency SANA had earlier reported the blast, blaming "terrorists", the term the Assad regime uses for forces fighting to oust it.
The opposition National Coalition meanwhile blamed the Assad regime for the "massacre" caused by what it said were two car bombs placed outside the Osama Bin Zeid mosque in Suq Wadi Barada.
"Bashar al-Assad's gangs detonated two car bombs at midday... that were planted in front of the Osama Bin Zeid mosque in Suq Wadi Barada," the Coalition said in a statement........



Rick Gladstone at NYTimes:
United Nations officials said Friday that they were mobilizing to vaccinate 2.5 million young children in Syria and more than eight million others in the region to combat what they fear could be an explosive outbreak of polio, the incurable viral disease that cripples and kills, which has reappeared in the war-ravaged country for the first time in more than a dozen years.
The officials said that the discovery a few weeks ago of a cluster of paralyzed young children in Deir al-Zour, a heavily contested city in eastern Syria, had prompted their alarm, and that tests conducted by both the government and rebel sides strongly suggested that the children had been afflicted with polio.......

Boutros Hussein and Lee Jay Walker atModern Tokyo Times;
....Terrorists and sectarians aided and assisted by feudal Sunni monarchs in the Gulf have targeted a predominantly Christian and Druze part of Damascus. If this carnage was happening in any other nation then America, France, Turkey and the United Kingdom would be quick to condemn terrorism. However, these nations are siding with Gulf powers despite various Islamist terrorist sectarian groups being intent on crushing all religious minorities and ethnic groups like the Kurds.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are sponsoring militant organizations in many nations but in Syria both nations are providing economic and military assistance to various terrorist and sectarian groups. Sadly, it appears that energy resources and wealth created by this source is blinding nations all over the world because feudal monarchies are out of control. Indeed, in Saudi Arabia all non-Muslim faiths are banned and draconian laws rule the day. However, despite this reality and crushing the Shia in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen; it appears that these monarchies can implement any policies they desire because the international community is looking the other way.........

From Reuters:
...Syrian opposition: won't attend peace talks unless goal is Assad's exit.  Syrian National Coalition President Ahmad Jarba will tell Western and Arab allies on Tuesday that the opposition will not attend proposed peace talks in Geneva unless their goal is President Bashar al-Assad's removal from power.

According to a text of a speech Jarba will make to a Friends of Syria meeting in London, Jarba said the Syrian opposition risks losing credibility if it yields to international pressure to go to Geneva without achieving the uprising's goal of ousting Assad.