Donald Trump and Peter Thiel. Source: theguardian.com

Murray Horton

Peter Thiel needs no introduction to readers of CovertAction Magazine or to Americans in general. I refer you to Jeremy Kuzmarov’s “Sugar Daddy of Trump’s VP Pick Has Deep Ties to CIA.” I am going to assume all that material as read and deal with another chapter in the Thiel saga that may not be so familiar to Americans (or, indeed, totally unknown).

Jeremy Kuzmarov’s article was prompted by Thiel’s latest move, namely his bankrolling of J.D. Vance, Trump’s pick as his Republican vice-presidential running mate. The clue is the headline of an article about the same subject in The New Zealand Herald, New Zealand’s biggest newspaper—“Kiwi billionaire Peter Thiel’s money links to J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate.”

Secretly Given New Zealand Citizenship

“Kiwi billionaire”? That’s right, Peter Thiel is a New Zealander, although a distinctly lapsed one. He was given New Zealand citizenship, something he kept secret for years until outed by the New Zealand media. And true to form, he is a controversial figure among his “fellow New Zealanders.” It is a fascinating story of power, money and influence.

The story broke in 2017, when New Zealand media questioned why his company’s purchase of an $NZ13.5 million life-style block in Wānaka (in the South Island) did not require any involvement by New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Office (OIO), which is tasked with approving (or, very rarely, declining) applications from foreigners to buy New Zealand rural land. The reason given by the OIO was simple—Thiel is not a foreigner; he is a New Zealand citizen. That was the first anyone had heard of it.

What’s more, he was granted New Zealand citizenship in June 2011, so it had been kept secret for six years. Bill English, the National Party Prime Minister in 2017, said that Thiel had been given citizenship under the heading of “exceptional circumstances” for those who did not meet residency rules (Thiel had been granted residency in 2006).

[…]

Major Media Interest

The New Zealand media started to take a keen interest in Thiel. The Christchurch Press headlined the front page of its January 25, 2017, issue with “Super-rich buying up NZ boltholes,” with a front-page box titled “Trump’s billionaire buddy a Kiwi citizen,” illustrated by a photo of Trump and Thiel together. And The Press filled the first two pages of its January 26, 2017 issue about him. The front-page banner headline read: “Money Talks: NZ Havens For Sale?” (This was from the days when the Press was a broadsheet; now it is a tabloid, except on Saturdays.)

The article itemized Thiel’s New Zealand properties—a house in Auckland (North Island, New Zealand’s biggest city); a property nicknamed “the plasma house,” in Queenstown (South Island), plus the already-mentioned life-style block in Wānaka (also South Island). It was accompanied that same day with an editorial headed “Stop stonewalling on Thiel questions,” the main one being how did he acquire New Zealand citizenship under “exceptional circumstances”? He did not even have to come to New Zealand to pick up his citizenship—it was granted to him at a private ceremony at the New Zealand Consulate in Santa Monica, California.

And the New Zealand media started digging into Thiel’s core business: “New Zealand spy agencies and our elite Special Air Service soldiers have long-standing commercial links with a controversial big-data company founded by surprise Kiwi Peter Thiel, the Herald can reveal. An investigation into Thiel’s links to New Zealand has found his firm Palantir Technologies has counted the New Zealand Defence Force, the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications and Security Bureau as clients with contracts dating back to at least 2012.”

Unique

The surprises kept coming: “The circumstances of Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel’s New Zealand citizenship were so exceptional they have not been repeated, [Department of] Internal Affairs figures show. Thiel was made a Kiwi by then-Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy in June 2011 under a rarely-used ‘exceptional circumstances’ clause of the Citizenship Act, allowing the technology investor and libertarian to sidestep requirements to have lived—and intend to live—in New Zealand.”

[…]

Art Exhibition Devoted to Thiel

The most quirky manifestation of New Zealanders’ sudden interest in “our fellow citizen” and the scandal surrounding how he came to be one was that there was an art exhibition devoted to Thiel in 2017, which went on to tour the country in following years (I saw it at the Christchurch Art Gallery). This was Simon Denny’s “The Founder’s Paradox.” Denny is an interesting and very political artist. He represented New Zealand at the 2015 Venice Biennale with “Secret Power.”

This “simultaneously looked at the graphic design culture of America’s National Security Agency and New Zealand’s place within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance” (Bulletin 194, December 2018, Christchurch Art Gallery, Anthony Byrt). Nicky Hager went to Venice with that exhibition, named after his 1996 book which first exposed the world of the Waihopai spy base, the agency that runs it—the New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau—and the Five Eyes spy alliance, of which Waihopai and the GCSB are integral parts. I refer you to my recent CovertAction Magazine article.

Denny’s exhibition was about Thiel’s decidedly strange world view, which is one typical of extreme libertarian Silicon Valley billionaires. In his case, it also incorporated his obsession with J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books (his spy software is named Palantir after a magical artifact in the books, an upmarket crystal ball). The exhibition was designed as an elaborately detailed game, illustrating the world view of Thiel and his mates.

[..]

“Then there was the strange story of Wharekauhau Lodge. In the mid-1990s, a group of investors—many of them prominent libertarians—participated in a property deal for a large farm station and luxury lodge in the Wairarapa (lower North Island).

Among them were former New Zealand Finance Minister Roger Douglas and the extreme-libertarian authors of one of Thiel’s favorite books, The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State, the American James Dale Davidson, and the late British peer Lord William Rees-Mogg (whose son Jacob is a key player in pro-Brexit British politics).”

The individuals behind Wharekauhau Lodge (Roger Douglas, et al.) were the subjects of CAFCA’s first ever “not of good character” complaint, back in the late 1990s, under the provisions of the Overseas Investment Act, to what was then called the Overseas Investment Commission [OIC, now the Overseas Investment Office (OIO); and it needs to be pointed out that none of those people is still involved with Wharekauhau Lodge]. To cut a long story short, our complaint was not upheld.

The best mainstream New Zealand media article on Thiel’s New Zealand connection (he is the prime example of a “boltholer,” having purchased here what is referred to by the 1% as “billionaire’s apocalypse insurance”) is Matt Nippert’s “Citizen Thiel” in the New Zealand Herald, February 2018.

He Has Ghosted the Country Ever Since

The irony is that, once Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011, he essentially ghosted the country. By the time the story broke in 2017, it was all very much in the slipstream of his private jet. American writer Max Chafkin wrote a fascinating 2021 book entitled The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power. It offers some insights into Thiel and New Zealand.

[…]

Refused Permission to Build Luxury Lodge

But Thiel has not completely severed his ties to New Zealand. He set about spending several years trying to get permission to build a luxury lodge on his Wānaka land. That did not end well for him. He ran into a foe more formidable than he was used to encountering—New Zealand bureaucracy. “American billionaire Peter Thiel appears to have abandoned his plans for a luxury lodge in Wānaka. The lodge, on the shore of Lake Wānaka, was designed by architect Kengo Kuma and Associates, a company known for designing the Tokyo Olympic Stadium. It includes three interconnected lodge buildings, and two standalone buildings with 11 visitor accommodation suites, housing up to 30 guests.”

“But the Otago Daily Times has reported that the Environment Court confirmed Thiel’s company, Second Star Ltd, had not lodged an appeal to the High Court, after an earlier appeal was declined. In June [2024], Stuff reported that Second Star Ltd appealed a Queenstown Lakes District Council independent panel’s decision to decline consent for the visitor accommodation at Damper Bay to the Environment Court. In a decision from May [2024] Judge Prudence Steven and Commissioner Mark Mabin declined the appeal, largely due to the visibility of the proposed lodge on an Outstanding Natural Landscape site.”

[…]

Thiel’s project was thwarted by a combination of the local Queenstown Lakes District Council (it did not comply with their planning rules) and local environmentalists. The latter definitely did not like Thiel or his well-publicized opinions. A spokesman for the Upper Clutha Environmental Society was quoted as saying: “I suggest that the applicant leave his anti-democratic ideas in the United States when he comes to New Zealand” (The Press, May 25, 2022, “Council planner unmoved by benefits of luxury lodge”).

The question must be asked: What was the attraction of New Zealand to Thiel? Well, as already mentioned, he is a Lord of the Rings nerd, to the n^th degree (although I doubt that he sees himself as a hobbit; more of a lord or, preferably, a king). And this is the country that has built a very lucrative niche tourism industry out of the fact that New Zealander Peter Jackson made his blockbuster Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in this country at the turn of the century.

“Billionaire’s Apocalypse Insurance”

That is a real thing—there has been plenty of international and local media coverage about foreign billionaires wanting to hedge their bets with some prime New Zealand real estate. There is plenty of evidence of “boltholers” (Thiel is not alone) but no credible evidence has ever been found of the bunkers that these people are rumored to have had installed on their New Zealand properties. It is an endless source of fascination—during New Zealand’s extremely strict 2020 Covid 19 lockdown, I was interviewed by phone from Denmark on the subject of billionaires, boltholes and bunkers (that remains my only ever appearance in the Danish media—in Danish, too).

Actually the “insurance” turned out not to be worth much when the apocalypse really did come knocking. In 2020 the Jacinda Ardern Labour government declared a state of national emergency, and immediately slammed the border shut indefinitely, locking out virtually everyone from overseas—including New Zealand citizens who were living abroad or out of the country when it happened. No exceptions were made for the likes of Citizen Thiel. It was a very hard job for citizens to get back into the country.

[…]

What of “Kiwi” Thiel Now?

He is still hedging his bets. In 2022 it was reported that he had applied to buy Maltese citizenship—that country sells passports. And he may not be finished with New Zealand. In August 2024 he told U.S. podcaster Joe Rogan that he was thinking of moving to New Zealand, blaming California’s “confiscatory taxation….‘The extreme thing I keep saying is I can’t decide whether to leave the state or the country,’ Thiel said, adding it was ‘tough’ to choose a new home because much of the world was ‘doing so much worse’ than the United States.”

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/10/10/peter-thiel-donald-trumps-favorite-kiwi-billionaire/

The Expose

The world first started to hear about a novel coronavirus in early January 2020, with reports of an alleged new pneumonia-like illness spreading across Wuhan, China. However, the world did not actually know of Covid-19 until February 2020, because it was not until the 11th of that month that the World Health Organisation officially named the novel coronavirus disease Covid-19.

So with this being the official truth, why does United States Government data show that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) awarded a contract on the 12th November 2019 to Labyrinth Global Health INC. for ‘COVID-19 Research’, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?

The shocking findings, however, do not end there. The contract awarded in November 2019 for ‘COVID-19 Research’ was not only instructed to take place in Ukraine, it was in fact part of a much larger contract for a ‘Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’.

Perhaps explaining why Labyrinth Global Health has been collaborating with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, and Ernest Wolfe’s Metabiota since its formation in 2017.

Why did the Department of Defense pay a company that is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”, to help implement a “Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’?

And why did both the DOD and said company then pay Labyrinth Global Health INC to carry out COVID-19 research in Ukraine at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?

Founded in 2017, Labyrinth Global Health is allegedly a “women-owned small business with deep expertise and a proven track record supporting initiatives for scientific and medical advancement.”

They describe themselves as “a multicultural and international organization with offices in four countries and a team of experts with diverse backgrounds and competencies, including microbiology, virology, global health, emerging infectious disease nursing, medical anthropology, field epidemiology, clinical research, and health information systems.”

One of those offices just happens to be located in Kyiv, Ukraine, which the company dubs “a gateway to Eastern Europe”.

The leadership team of Labyrinth Global consists of Karen Saylors, PHD who is the Chief Executive Officer; Mary Guttieri, PHS who is the Chief Science Officer; and Murat Tartan who is the Chief Financial Officer.

Karen Saylors, PhD, who co-founded Labyrinth Global Health, has allegedly worked in the international public health field for over a decade and has spent many years living in Africa establishing global surveillance networks, “working with partners to improve Global Health policy on infectious disease detection, response, and control”.

At Labyrinth, Dr Saylors specialises in studies that aim to understand and mitigate the biological and behavioural risks of disease transmission. Dr Saylors worked with Oxford University Clinical Trials Network in Vietnam on zoonotic disease surveillance research and continues to coordinate with regional partners on emerging outbreaks in animal and human populations.

But who are the partners that Dr Karen Saylors and Labyrinth Global Health choose to work with? They are none other than the ‘Eco-Health Alliance’ and ‘Metabiota’.

Dr Karen Saylors, Eco-Health Alliance and Metabiota worked together on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)* ‘PREDICT’ program from 2009, while Labyrinth Global Health worked alongside EHA and Metabiota on the PREDICT program from 2017.

Launched in 2009 and funded by USAID, PREDICT was an early warning system for new and emerging diseases in 21 countries. It was led by the University of California’s (“UC”) Davis One Health Institute and core partners included EcoHealth Alliance (“EHA”), Metabiota, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Smithsonian Institution, and as we’ve just revealed; Labyrinth Global Health. PREDICT was a forerunner of the more ambitious Global Virome Project.

The USAID describes PREDICT as having made “significant contributions to strengthening global surveillance and laboratory diagnostic capabilities for both known and newly discovered viruses within several important virus groups, such as filoviruses (including ebolaviruses), influenza viruses, paramyxoviruses, and coronaviruses“.

Here’s one of the many studies published by Eco Health Alliance, Metabiota and Labyrinth Global Health proving the connection –

PREDICT partnered with the non-profit Eco Health Alliance (EHA) to carry out its 9-year effort to catalogue hundreds of thousands of biological samples, “including over 10,000 bats.” A PREDICT-funded 2015 study on “diversity of coronavirus in bats” also included Peter Daszak, president of EHA, among its participants.

Eco Health Alliance is listed as a partner of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“WIV”) on archived pages of its website and was mentioned as one of the institute’s “strategic partners” by the WIV’s Deputy Director-General in 2018.

Notably, the relationship between the WIV and the American Biodefense establishment was advanced by EHA policy advisor, David R. Franz, former commander at the US bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick.

WIV’s Dr. Shi Zhengli, a.k.a. “Batwoman,” had also worked with EHA’s Daszak on bat-related studies. As far back as 2005, Daszak and Zhengli were conducting research on SARS-like coronaviruses in bats. Several PREDICT-funded studies on SARS-like coronaviruses and Swine Flu count with both Zhengli’s and Daszak’s contributions. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these is a 2015 PREDICT and NIH-funded study she co-authored entitled: ‘A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence’.

Meanwhile, Nathan Wolfe is the founder of Metabiota and the non-profit Global Viral. He spent over eight years conducting biomedical research in both sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Unsurprisingly, Wolfe is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.  More notably, since 2008 he had been a member of DARPA’s DSRC, Defence Science Research Council, until it was disbanded.

All of these people and organisations have been working for at least the last decade studying coronaviruses and helping to set up Biolabs in Ukraine. All using US Department of Defense funds to do so. You can read much more about this here, here and here.

Putting the Biolabs in Ukraine to one side, for now, let’s return to the subject of Covid-19. If the US Government was funding Covid-19 research before Covid-19 was publicly known to exist then this suggests they either knew Covid-19 existed naturally, or they were involved in constructing this virus in a lab.

But if the contract evidence isn’t enough for you to come to this conclusion (it should be), then perhaps coupling it with evidence that the US National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Moderna had a coronavirus candidate in December 2019 will be.

A confidentiality agreement which can be viewed here, states that providers ‘Moderna’ alongside the ‘National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) agreed to transfer ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates’ developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna to recipients ‘The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’ on the 12th December 2019.

The material transfer agreement was signed the December 12th 2019 by Ralph Baric, PhD, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then signed by Jacqueline Quay, Director of Licensing and Innovation Support at the University of North Carolina on December 16th 2019.

The agreement was also signed by two representatives of the NIAID, one of whom was Amy F. Petrik PhD, a technology transfer specialist who signed the agreement on December 12th 2019 at 8:05 am. The other signatory was Barney Graham MD PhD, an investigator for the NIAID, however, this signature was not dated.

The final signatories on the agreement were Sunny Himansu, Moderna’s Investigator, and Shaun Ryan, Moderna’s Deputy General Councel. Both signautres were made on December 17th 2019.

All of these signatures were made prior to any knowledge of the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus. It wasn’t until December 31st 2019 that the World Health Organisation (WHO) became aware of an alleged cluster of viral pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. But even at this point, they had not determined that an alleged new coronavirus was to blame, instead stating the pneumonia was of “unknown cause”.

All of this requires much further research to fit all of the pieces of the puzzle together, but here’s what we definitely know so far –

• A novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan in December 2019.
• The world did not get to hear about this novel coronavirus until early January 2020.
• The world did not know this novel coronavirus was called Covid-19 until February 2020, when the World Health Organization officially named it so.
• The US Department of Defense awarded a contract for Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services to Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp‘, which is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”.
• That contract involved a Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine.
• As part of this larger contract, another contract was awarded to Labyrinth Global Health for ‘COVID-19 Research’ on 12th November 2019.
• This was awarded at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19.
• Labyrinth Global Health works alongside the ‘Eco Health Alliance’, and ‘Metabiota’, and participated in the USAID PREDICT program. All of these people and organisations have been working for at least the past decade studying coronaviruses and helping to set up Biolabs in Ukraine. All using US Department of Defense funds to do so.
• Information found here points to Eco Health Alliance having a hand in creating the Covid-19 virus.
• Information found here points to Moderna having a hand in creating the Covid-19 virus.
• ‘Moderna’, alongside the ‘National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) agreed to tranfer ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates’ developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna, to recipients ‘The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’ on the 12th December 2019.

*USAID is well-known CIA front operated by US State Department

Via https://expose-news.com/2024/10/10/u-s-d-o-d-issued-contract-for-c-19-research-to-a-company-in-ukraine-3-months-before-c-19-was-known-to-exist/

The many routes of the Camino de Santiago

Episode 16 Medieval Pilgrims and Travelers

The Middle Ages Around the World

Dr Joyce E Salisbury

Film Review

Christian Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage to holy places was extremely popular during the Middle Ages, especially to churches that preserved the remains (bones or items of clothing) of early Christian saints. Thanks to the published chronicles of literate pilgrims, travel itself came to be viewed as a valuable experience.

Pilgrimage to Jerusalem was the most population after the mother of emperor Constantine (306-337) began to identify Christian spaces in a previously pagan Roman city. This unleashed a flood of Egeria, female Spanish pilgrims whose 4th century letters to their families back home describe them retracing steps of important Old and New New Testament figures.

There was heavy traffic in the relics of saints martyred by the Romans, as numerous churches vied for their bones and scraps of clothing to draw pilgrims to their communities.

Pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago (St James) de Compostela in Galicia, Spain was the second most popular Christian pilgrimage. Many Camino pilgrims stopped off to visit the tomb of El Cid (who defended Christian northern Spain from the Muslim armies  – see Medieval Tales of Heroes and Lovers).

Buddhist Pilgrimage

In the 6th century Buddhists went on pilgrimage to Buddha’s place of birth in northern India. Due to the resurgence of Hinduism following the 13th century Muslim occupation, most Buddhist shrines moved further east to China and the Far East.

Kandy Sri Lanka hosts the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, reputed to house one of Buddha’s teeth and the Shedigan Pagoda in Myanmar strands of his hair. In China there are pilgrimages to Longmen grottoes to visit over 100,000 statues and images of Buddha.

Two 13th century Japanese Buddhist nuns, Abutsu and Nijo (who became nuns to escape political turmoil in the imperial court) wrote extensively of their pilgrimages. Abustsu was a poet and lady in waiting unti her husband died and she filed suit contesting his well. Her long lyric poem describes the 14 day pilgrimage for justice she made to the Kamikoto military court. After becoming one of the emperor’s concubines at age 14, Nijo and came into disfavor after she took lovers and bore children by them. Her writings, entitled Confessions of Lady Nijo, describe her 20 year pilgrimage.

Muslim Pilgrims

In Islam the required Hajj (once in a lifetime) is a pillar of the Muslim faith. Ibn Battuta, a 14th century Moroccan cadi (judge) was the most famous Muslim pilgrim. What started out as a Hajj to Mecca turned into a 25 year expedition, which he supported by working as a legal advisor. His recorded observations provide an excellent record of daily medieval life. He married a number of women along the way (under Islam he could only have four at a time, plus concubines) and married four more at the next location.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/13172786/13172821

By Amir Nour

[…]

Israel/Palestine: One State, or Two States?

So, if the two-state solution proposed by the Oslo Accords has failed and seems more remote than ever, if not definitely dead 30 years on, isn’t it about time to consider alternatives to the prevailing untenable status quo, or even worse, to endless war? All the more so since the illusion that the conflict can be ignored or “managed” has been shattered in a resounding manner in October 2023. The current bout of fighting is forcing the U.S., the EU and regional powers to reassess their old approaches and reappraise the wrong and costly assumption that they can safely ignore the conflict.

Nowadays, it appears that the old/new idea of a “one-state” between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River – a democratic state, with full and equal rights for the populations residing in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, as citizens – is the best workable option and, most importantly, the only durable solution to an intractable conflict that has lasted too long and cost too much blood and treasure.

After all, if we properly take stock of past experiences, can’t we justifiably ask what if self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis is not necessarily based on territory but on citizen’s rights?

This idea of a single state is not new. Back in 1930 already, rabbi, scholar and political activist Judah Leon Magnes wrote an essay[11] in which, in contradistinction to the then Zionist leadership, he expressed his strong preference for the establishment of a bi-national, Jewish and Arab state through an agreement with Palestine’s Arab population[12]. And when the Peel Commission made its 1937 recommendations about partition and population transfer for Palestine, Magnes sounded the alarm by saying:

“With the permission of the Arabs we will be able to receive hundreds of thousands of persecuted Jews in Arab lands […] Without the permission of the Arabs even the four hundred thousand [Jews] that now are in Palestine will remain in danger, in spite of the temporary protection of British bayonets. With partition a new Balkan is made”[13].

And in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine in January 1942, he suggested a joint British-American initiative to prevent the division of mandatory Palestine. This move was followed, pursuant to the Biltmore Conference[14], by the foundation – with Henrietta Szold[15] – of a small bi-nationalist party called “Ihud” (Unity).

In 1946, Magnes again opposed the partition plan before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in Jerusalem and submitted 11 objections to partition to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine[16]. Finally, by mid-1948, when the conflict between the Jews and Arabs of Palestine was in full swing, Magnes expressed the hope that if a Jewish state were declared, the United States would impose economic sanctions; and also supported a 1948 U.S. trusteeship proposal, in which the UN would freeze the partition decision and force both sides into a trusteeship with a temporary government ruling Palestine, until conditions suited another arrangement. During the 1948 War, he lobbied for an armistice, and proposed a plan for a federation between Israel and a Palestinian state which he called the “United States of Palestine”, under which the two states would be which he called the “United States of Palestine”, under which the two states would be independent, but operate joint foreign and defense policies, with Jerusalem as the shared capital. Magnes predicted that even if a Jewish state was established and defeated the Arabs, it would experience a never-ending series of wars with the Arabs[17].

The notion of a one state in all of historic Palestine was espoused by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its original charter[18] in 1964, which called for the establishment of a single, democratic, and secular state for Jews, Muslims and Christians. The PLO only abandoned the idea in the context of the diplomatic negotiations within the framework of the Oslo Accords; hence fundamentally swinging its ideological compass and reorienting its political struggle and efforts toward the realization of the two-state path to peace.

With the benefit of hindsight, one can say that the PLO’s historic choice was a huge sacrifice, incommensurate with the petty initial “rewards” of a peace process which eventually led nowhere but to an equally historic, and furthermore tragic, impasse.

As the peace process started to show signs of fraying at the edges in the late 1990s, an increasing number of analysts started to suggest acknowledging a “one-state reality”[19] – an ambiguous reference to the continued entanglement of Israelis and Palestinians on the ground – as the starting point for negotiating a workable solution.

[…]

Making or Breaking Hope for Peace in the City of Peace

It is against this bleak backdrop that, on 1 March 2018, a new initiative based on the old idea emerged when the “One-State Foundation” was launched.[26] The initiative holds:

“first, that the current situation in Palestine and Israel is untenable; second, that the negotiating process that emanated from the Madrid Peace Conference and Oslo Accords on the basis of a two-state solution has reached a dead end as the final status issues degraded to become effectively non-negotiable; third, that this obstructs the realization of the hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples; fourth, that the time has come to rethink the question in its entirety; and, fifth, that any new thinking has to reflect realities on the ground and, above all, the reality that more than fifty years after the Israeli occupation of the whole of Palestine, a form of unity over political, economic, and security matters already exists.”[27]

In recent years, and particularly since the resurgence of the polemical issue of annexation, beginning in the fall of 2019, a substantial debate over the One-State reality has raged between proponents of the two-state “international consensus” and those of the one-state “alternative”, both among and between Palestinians and Israelis, and on the global stage. In the West, the one-state alternative has been boosted over the years by quite knowledgeable academics and militants such as Edward Said, Tony Judt, John Mearsheimer, Ian Lustick, Virginia Tilley, Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, Shlomo Sand, and Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian-American co-founder of Electronic Intifada.

A significant milestone in this regard was registered when four well-known professors published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled “Israel’s One-State Reality.”[28] In this essay, the authors argue that the two-state solution is dead because there is already a one-state reality, no matter what anyone thinks. In other words, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, only one state, namely Israel, controls the entry and exit of people and goods, oversees security, and has the capacity to impose its decisions, laws, and policies on millions of people without their consent. A one-state reality, the academics go on to say, could, in principle, be based on democratic rule and equal citizenship, but such an arrangement is not on offer at the moment.

Forced to choose between Israel’s Jewish identity and liberal democracy, Israel has chosen the former; it has locked in a system of Jewish supremacy, wherein non-Jews are structurally discriminated against or excluded in a tiered scheme: some non-Jews have most of, but not all, the rights that Jews have, while most non-Jews live under severe segregation, separation, and domination. They, therefore, see no real prospect of negotiating a Palestinian state, and are of the opinion that the United States should acknowledge this reality, denounce it, impose sanctions on Israel, while putting an end to its efforts against BDS movement and refraining from leading those aiming at normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

[…]

On the other hand, Israeli opponents, who are more numerous, hold that the Zionist project was and remains the establishment of a state with a Jewish majority – something that could not be sustained given current Palestinian population growth rates, which would reduce Jewish Israelis in the future to a minority status.

As a matter of fact, the feeling that another day of conflict will ultimately bring victory continues to prevail on both sides. Still, the many objections do not diminish the fact that the status quo and ongoing occupation create a volatile situation with all the conditions for uprisings, resistance, and at times full-scale war.

On account of the above, if the two-state alternative to the status quo is unreachable, then the one-state alternative could be laid out with solutions for the different objectors on both sides. This would involve a broad restructuring of the existing political system, whether beginning with the Israeli government’s conferral of citizenship on Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip or beginning with the creation of a new state altogether. Moreover, mechanisms such as subjecting legislation on vital or constitutional issues to a two-thirds majority vote, or to a minority veto, or some combinations thereof, have been floated to prevent a majoritarian state in which the demographic majority, whether Jewish or Arab, would govern unilaterally.

[…]

While confederation reflects the existing realities of a multifaceted interdependence between the two sides, it also resolves the citizenship crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Israelis would always have majority status in their own state and its security, and the Palestinians would have their state with a legitimate place in the Council of Jerusalem, which would be the capital of the confederation. Both the Israeli and Palestinian states would be in a position to interact with their Arab neighbors without animosity for Israel or dependency for the Palestinians. Both would have all symbols of the state from the flag to the seat in the UN, and above all their chosen identities along with the privileges of peace and space throughout historic Palestine.[32]

In the conclusion of her powerfully argued recent book[33], Palestinian-born Academic Ghada Karmi says that the tremendous obstacles facing the “one democratic state solution” may be daunting to some of those who support it in theory, but the fact that something is difficult to realize does not make it any less the right thing to do; nor does the attainment of this solution hinge solely on the wishes of Israel and its supporters.

Other factors, she believes, “though now unforeseen or thought improbable”, could intervene and alter the situation dramatically. If and when they do, such events “will merely dictate the pace and timing of the one democratic state solution. But the concept itself must have been established long before, not as an immediately attainable goal perhaps, but as a vision, an aspiration and a belief in the ultimate humanity of Palestinians and Jews and all who wish them to prosper”.

[…]

All in all, if History is any guide – and it is indeed – we must retain its most overarching principle, which is highlighted in the epigraph: “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.” And if we do remember history – and we must indeed – then the following key considerations should always be duly taken into account in any reflection or negotiation about peace in the Middle East. They all stand in opposition to partition and division of the Holy Land, and point in the direction of the one democratic state from the river to the sea as the only genuinely durable solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/war-gaza-only-durable-solution-one-democratic-state-river-sea/5869536

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (L) met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Tehran, July 19, 2022

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Israel has apparently shelved its planned attack on Iran. A combination of circumstances can be attributed to this retreat, which rubbishes Israel’s own high-pitched rhetoric that it was raring to go.

Despite Israel’s brilliant media management, reports have surfaced  that the Iranian missile attack on October 1 was a spectacular success. It was a display of Iran’s deterrence capability to crush Israel, if need arises. The failure of the US to intercept Iranian hypersonic missiles carried its own message. Iran claims that 90 percent of its missiles penetrated Israel’s air defence system.

Will Schryver, a technical engineer and security commentator, wrote on X: “I don’t understand how anyone who has seen the many video clips of the Iranian missile strikes on Israel cannot recognise and acknowledge that it was a stunning demonstration of Iranian capabilities. Iran’s ballistic missiles smashed through US/Israeli air defences and delivered several large-warhead strikes to Israeli military targets.”

Evidently, in the ensuing panic situation in Israel, as the US president Joe Biden put it, as of October 4, there had been no decision yet on what type of response Israel should mount against Iran. “If I were in their [Israeli] shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields,” Biden said in a rare appearance in the White House briefing room a day after Israeli officials were saying that a “significant retaliation” was imminent.

Biden added that Israelis “have not concluded how they’re — what they’re going to do” in retaliation. Biden also told reporters that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should remember US support for Israel when deciding on next steps. He claimed that he was trying to rally the world to avoid all-out war in West Asia.

In this pantomime, it is safer to believe Biden, as the honest truth is that without US inputs and practical help, and money — and direct intervention — Israel simply lacks the stamina to take on Iran. Israel’s regional dominance narrows down to executing assassination plots and attacking unarmed civilians.

But here too, it is debatable how self-sufficient Israel is vis-a-vis Iran. Reports have appeared that the US’ new technological intel  pinpointed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Nasrallah’s whereabouts, which were passed on to Israel, leading to his assassination.

Interestingly, CIA Director William Burns stepped in to refute the rumours that Iran conducted a nuclear test on Saturday. Speaking at a security conference on Monday, Burns stated that the US has closely monitored Iran’s nuclear activity for any sign of rushing toward a nuclear bomb.

“We don’t see evidence today that such a decision has been made. We watch it very carefully,” he said. Burns gently erased another alibi to attack Iran.

One critical factor that has compelled Israel / US to defer any attack on Iran is the stern warning by Tehran that any attack on its infrastructure by Israel will be met with an even harsher response. “In responding, we neither hesitate nor rush,” to quote Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, who, by the way, made a trip to Lebanon and Syria over the weekend by way of giving Israel a defiant “message” — as he put it — that “Iran has strongly backed the resistance and will always support it.”

Earlier on October 4, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had used a rare public sermon to defend Iran’s missile attack against Israel, saying it was “legitimate and legal” and that “if needed,” Tehran will do it again. Speaking in both Persian and Arabic during Friday Prayers in Tehran, Khamenei said Iran and the Axis of Resistance won’t back down from Israel. Iran will not “procrastinate nor act hastily to carry out its duty” in confronting Israel, Khamenei declared.

However, what deters the Israelis and causes uneasiness in the American mind is something else — Russia’s lengthening shadows on the West Asian tapestry.

American military analysts have disclosed that certain highly advanced Russian weaponry have been transferred to Iran in the recent weeks backed up by the deployment of Russian military personnel to operate these systems, including S-400 missiles. There is speculation that the secretary of Russia’s Security Council (former Defence Minister) Sergei Shoigu paid two secret visits to Iran in the recent period.

Apparently, Moscow also responded to the Iranian request for satellite data on Israeli targets for its missile strike on October 1. Russia also supplied Iran with the long-range electronic warfare system “Murmansk-BN”.

The “Murmansk-BN” system is a powerful EW system, which can jam and intercept enemy radio signals, GPS, communications, satellites, and other electronic systems up to 5,000 kms away and  neutralise “smart” munitions and drone systems — and is capable of disrupting high-frequency satellite communication systems owned by the US and NATO.

To be sure, the Russian involvement in Iran’s standoff with Israel is potentially a game changer. From the US perspective, it raises the worrisome spectre of a direct confrontation with Russia, which it doesn’t want.

It is in this scenario that official Russian news agencies have quoted presidential aide Yury Ushakov on Sunday that Putin plans to meet with his Iranian counterpart, Masud Pezeshkian in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, on October 11.

Ushakov did not elaborate on the meeting. Indeed, this comes as a surprise since the two leaders are scheduled to meet again at the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan that runs on October 22-24.

Of course, Iranians are also playing coy. Both Moscow and Tehran announced that their presidents were visiting Ashgabat on October 11 to attend a ceremony marking the 300th birth anniversary of the Turkmen poet and thinker Magtymguly Pyragy. Smoke and mirrors! (here and here) 

It is entirely conceivable that amidst the cascading regional tensions, Moscow and Tehran may have thought of bringing forward the formal signing of the Russian-Iranian defence pact, which was originally scheduled to take place in Kazan.

If so, the event on Thursday will be reminiscent of the unscheduled visit by the then Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to New Delhi for the signing of the historic Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation Between India and the USSR on 9th August 1971.

Interestingly, Ushakov added that Putin has no plans to meet Netanyahu. Putin is yet to respond to a request by Netanyahu for a phone conversation, made five days ago. A legend that Netanyahu created, typically, in the recent years to impress his domestic audience (and confuse the Arab street) — that he had a special relationship with Putin — is falling apart.

On the other hand, by chalking up an urgent meeting in Ashgabat — in fact, Turkmen president Serdar Berdimuhamedov was in Moscow only on Monday/Tuesday on a working visit — Kremlin is making it clear to Washington and Tel Aviv that Moscow is irrevocably aligned with Tehran and will help the latter no matter what it takes. (See my blog West Asian crisis prompts Biden to break ice with Putin, Indian Punchline, October 5, 2024)

[…]

Via https://www.indianpunchline.com/russia-aligns-with-iran-war-clouds-scatter/

By Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Abubaker Abed

The director of the besieged Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza is refusing Israeli orders to shut the hospital down and evacuate. “As long as there are patients, I won’t leave,” Dr. Hossam Abu Safia told Drop Site News. “I’ve been here since the genocide started, and I am determined to continue helping my people.”

The attack on the hospital comes amid a wider, vicious assault, with Israeli forces issuing new displacement orders for nearly all of northern Gaza on Sunday, where at least 400,000 people remain. Last month, reports emerged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering a plan to lay siege to northern Gaza and ethnically cleanse the entire area of Palestinians. The plan, known as the “General’s Plan,” was launched in an Israeli television campaign in September. Over the past week, Israeli forces have moved into areas of northern Gaza, conducting heavy airstrikes and shelling, and besieging the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Shortly after Drop Site spoke with Abu Safia, there were reports that the hospital received 16 bodies and 17 injured in an Israeli attack on Al-Yaman Al-Saeed Hospital in Jabaliya.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of three hospitals in northern Gaza, including the Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals, to receive evacuation orders on Tuesday by the Israeli military to clear out all their staff and patients within 24 hours, threatening that if they didn’t, they would face “the same fate as al-Shifa hospital, with destruction, killing and arrest,” according to a statement by the ministry of health in Gaza. The statement also said Israeli forces had surrounded the Kamal Adwan hospital and opened fire on its administration office. Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa hospital — Gaza’s largest — for a second time in March, setting buildings alight and destroying much of the complex. Mass graves with hundreds of bodies were found in and around the hospital after Israeli troops withdrew from the area in early April.

Kamal Adwan is the only partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza that specializes in treating babies and providing dialysis. There are some sixty patients remaining in the hospital from newborns to the elderly. “They are mostly war-wounded,” Abu Safia said. “We also handle other types of patients and treat viral diseases, but Israeli forces are encircling the hospital and we lack everything here, we are unable to continue doing our work properly.”

“Patients are still receiving medical care in the hospital. People are forced to walk the streets under the bombs to try and come for treatment,” Abu Safia said. “But we are operating at a very minimum capacity. There is not enough medical equipment and supplies and not enough fuel to run the hospital. This place is just devoid of everything.

On the one-year anniversary of the launch of Israel’s assault, the health ministry issued a series of reports on the attack on the health care system over the past 12 months, including a total of 23 out of 36 hospitals being destroyed or ceasing to function, 130 ambulances destroyed or rendered inoperational, 986 people in the health care sector killed, and more than 300 medical staff imprisoned.

“Israel needs to cease its attacks on medical facilities,” Abu Safia said. “To keep our people safe and enable us to carry on offering healthcare services, it must adhere to the law. It cannot continue to harm us and target hospitals when there are just one or two hospitals treating thousands of patients. Dialysis, pediatric care, and numerous other treatments are offered here. The hospital serves as a major medical hub in this area. We call out the world to stop them.”

Israeli tanks and troops have encircled and invaded the Jabaliya refugee camp, laying siege to the area for days with reports of house demolitions, artillery shelling, and dead bodies in the streets. On Wednesday, the health ministry said 45 people were confirmed killed and 130 wounded over the previous 24 hours across Gaza.

Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif today reported: “Since the beginning of the war, attempts to displace the residents of the north have not stopped, but what is happening today in terms of a stifling siege on Jabaliya camp and a complete disruption of the medical system due to the intensive bombing of homes, hospitals and shelters represents the most dangerous stage.”

Meanwhile, the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA has been forced to shut down lifesaving services in the north with seven schools sheltering displaced people being evacuated. Only 2 out of 8 water wells are now operational in Jabaliya and Israeli troops also shelled the al-Shulufa bakery, in al-Fallujah, setting it alight and destroying the only bakery in northern Gaza.

“These forced mass evacuations of homes and bombing of neighborhoods by the Israeli forces are turning the north of Gaza into an unlivable wasteland, effectively emptying out the whole north of the Strip of Palestinian life. To make matters worse, no humanitarian supplies have been allowed to enter the area since 1 October,” Sarah Vuylsteke, Médecins Sans Frontières project coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement.

[…]

Via https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/northern-gaza-kamal-adwan-hospital-director-defies-israeli-order

Alejandro Mayorkas Secretary of Homeland Security

Dave Hodges

MUST LISTEN 

Kamala Harris Admin ARRESTED a man for bringing helicopter full of supplies to Hurricane Helene victims.

“There was a man that took off yesterday in his helicopter to go up in the mountains to drop off food. He landed and got arrested and said he was interfering with a government operation, but there’s no operations going on. I’m currently in Asheville, North Carolina with my company doing disaster security for a dialysis company, and we’re also doing search and rescue for patients to bring them to dialysis so they don’t die. This place is a war zone people and the military is not here. And the reason I’m pissed because I was part of the operation during hurricane Katrina. I was stationed in San Diego and within 96 hours we were in Louisiana. And these bastards are not sending the military here.

There’s so much destruction. There’s no news crews here. That’s why you’re not seeing it. The American people should be angry at what our government is doing to this town. There are people hurting here.

There are so many people dying. I drove past young kids about 5 to 7 years old. They were brother and sister, and they were looking for their parents. We got them to a church. These young kids don’t know where their mom and dad are.

And the military is being f*cking hamstrained by these goddamn DOD f*cking executives. If you’re not angry, you should be. Because this is what our government thinks about us. They’re not here to help us. We have to take care of ourselves.

There’s towns here that are self policing. We drove into towns where the the town folk came up to us and said, what are you doing here? So we’re looking for patients. We’re trying to get them help, and they welcome us with open arms.

This is bad, people. You’re not here. It is very bad. We need water. We need food. We need clothes. I’m in a budget motel, and I’m very grateful, and I feel somewhat guilty that I have a roof over my head and a shower. And it’s right across from the airport. There was a man that took off yesterday in his helicopter to go up in the mountains to drop off food. He landed and got arrested and said he was interfering with the government, a government operation, but there’s no operations going on. I’m sick to my stomach that our government treats our American people this way. And then when they get slapped in the face, oh, here’s $750. After we sent over $200,000,000,000 overseas. Alejandro Mayorkas, you’re a traitor to your country.

[…]

Via https://thecommonsenseshow.com/agenda-21-conspiracy-economics/kamala-harris-admin-arrested-man-bringing-helicopter-full-supplies-hurricane-helene-victims