The European Commission president said that due to the position he occupies he has to maintain “dialogue with many people. Even those, whose company I don’t appreciate much.”

As for relations with Erdogan, he said he holds meetings with the Turkish leader on a regular basis.

“I have known him for the last 17-18 years. I know him but also he knows me,” Juncker said.

According to the top EU official, Europe is in no position to lecture Ankara on the refugee and migrant crisis.

"Turkey is an important partner not only for the migration crisis. This aspect is obvious. But because it houses on its territory over three million migrants and refugees which Europe for its part doesn't do," he said.

"So I would like Europe to refrain from giving lessons to Turkey on that matter. Turkey does much more than Europe as do Jordan and Lebanon. So we need to be humble when we speak on these issues,"Juncker added.

However, he stressed that Turkey must pay close attention to the demands coming from Brussels if it wants to become part of the European Union.

read more;

https://www.rt.com/news/368310-eu-juncker-odious-regimes/

The French call for an emergency UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Aleppo is an attempt to distract attention from humanitarian issues of the Western-backed operation in the Iraqi city of Mosul, said Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s envoy to the UN. 

Paris is pushing for the meeting in order to “distract attention from what is going on in Mosul where the situation – in many respects, including humanitarian – is much is more dramatic than in eastern Aleppo,” Churkin told reporters.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/368643-churkin-russia-un-mosul-aleppo/

 

Meanwhile:

This week has brought a breakthrough for the Russian-backed Syrian operation to retake eastern Aleppo, allowing humanitarian relief to be brought to tens of thousands of civilians living in the captured districts, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

“Over the past few days, well-planned and careful action by the Syrian troops resulted in a radical breakthrough. Half of the territory previously held by the militants in eastern Aleppo has been de facto liberated,” Gen. Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the defense ministry, said.

“The most important thing is that over 80,000 Syrians, including tens of thousands of children, have been freed. Many of them at long last were able to get water, food, medical assistance at humanitarian centers deployed by Russia. Those Syrians served as human shields in Aleppo for terrorists of all flavors,” the general stressed.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/368541-aleppo-breakthrough-humanitarian-relief/

President Obama has issued a memo waiving restrictions on the provision of military equipment to rebel groups in Syria. Speaking to Radio Sputnik, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity director Daniel McAdams slammed Obama for trying to reignite the war, just as things are starting to look up for the establishment of a lasting peace.

Obama's memo, issued Thursday to the Departments of State and Defense, waived earlier legal restrictions on the provision of military aid to the rebels, and instructed officials to seek Congressional approval to proceed with providing official US support to Syria-based militants, ostensibly for the purpose of 'facilitating US anti-terrorist operations' in the country.

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201612101048406117-us-weapons-waiver-daniel-mcadams-commentary/

A rapidly-increasing civilian death toll resulting from Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen has prompted the White House to halt the sale of weapons to Riyadh. Washington announced that instead it will shift focus to improving target practice in the kingdom and training the Saudi Air Force.

In the 20 months since the Saudis, at the behest of Yemen’s exiled president, became involved in the country’s civil war, President Barack Obama’s administration has been vexed by some 10,000 casualties and massive food shortages that have created a humanitarian crisis amid already scarce resources. 

In late October, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Stephen O’Brien addressed a statement to Obama on conditions in Yemen, writing, "This humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen is a man-made disaster, where conflict has exacerbated and exponentially increased the suffering of the 50 percent of the Yemeni population who already were in dire and extreme poverty."

"Repeatedly over the past 19 months," O’Brien wrote, "the people of Yemen have been robbed of their lives, their hope and their right to live in dignity. Thousands have been killed, tens of thousands have been injured, more than three million have been forced to leave their homes, and seven million suffer the daily anxiety of not knowing where their next meal might come from." 

An unnamed White House official said that "systemic, endemic" civilian killings by the kingdom compelled the Obama administration to cease the sale of weapons to Riyadh, including precision-guided ordnance. 

The official said the decision is "obviously a direct reflection of the concerns that we have about Saudi strikes that have resulted in civilian casualties." 

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201612131048519501-us-stops-saudi-weapons-sale/

In the days of hysteria immediately following the Boston bombing, an unlikely media darling emerged. Ruslan Tsarni, the alleged bombers’ uncle, known to the press as “Uncle Ruslan,” gained notoriety for the ferocity with which he denounced his own nephews and their alleged Islamic radicalism.

It isn’t hard to see why the press focused so closely on “Uncle Ruslan.” He said precisely what the so-called “authorities” wanted to hear about the suspects in precisely the way they wanted to hear it. Compare this to the coverage of the boys’ mother in the mainstream media. After revealing the FBI’s connection to the Tsarnaev brothers—causing the Bureau to reluctantly confirm that they had investigated Tamerlan in the past—she has been alternatively smeared and dismissed by those same media outlets which have refused to delve into the FBI connection.

But even more interesting than the sudden popularity of “Uncle Ruslan” is his background and ties to other organizations.

In an official SEC filing from 2005 it was revealed that Ruslan Tsarni had worked as a consultant for USAID, ostensibly an independent federal agency which is little more than an adjunct of the US State Department and is a known front for deep cover CIA agents in various geostrategic corners of the globe. At the same time in the mid-1990s, Tsarni incorporated a company called the “Congress of Chechen International Organizations” which recently unearthed documentsshow was providing material support to Chechen terrorists, including Sheikh Fathi, who, according to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, was a “military commander in the violent jihadist movement in Chechnya” and a “preacher of violent jihad.”

As investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker has demonstrated, the address for the Congress of Chechen International Organizations just happened to be the home address of Graham E. Fuller, formerly Vice Chairman of the Reagan-era CIA’s National Intelligence Council. The relationship between Ruslan and this former top CIA official was not a loose one. Tsarni married Fuller’s daughter in the mid-1990s and lived in Fuller’s home for some time, basing his terror-supporting operation under Fuller’s own roof.

Fuller himself has an interesting background that includes his two decade stint with the Central Intelligence Agency. During that time he served as National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia. One of his most notorious acts during that time was penning a memo that, according to the New York Times, later became the basis for the Iran-Contra scandal.

In addition, Fuller has long made the argument that Islam is a potentially useful geopolitical tool for the United States to manipulate for their own ends. He has been quoted as saying, “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against [the Russians]. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”

Fuller’s ties also extend to the network of Imam Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher who was run out of Turkey for allegations of conspiracy to overthrow the secular government, Gulen ended up in Pennsylvania where he now oversees a vast organization known as the Gulen Movement which has over $20 billion at its disposal for setting up Islamic schools in over 100 countries.

read more: 

https://www.corbettreport.com/who-is-graham-fuller/

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