Monday, October 21, 2024
Pennsylvania governor says law enforcement should investigate Elon Musk’s $1m voter ploy | US elections 2024 | The Guardian
Pennsylvania governor says law enforcement should investigate Elon Musk’s $1m voter ploy
"Josh Shapiro says Musk’s plan, announced Saturday, to give money to registered voters in key swing states is ‘deeply concerning’
Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, said law enforcement should look into Elon Musk’s new ploy to give $1m to a registered voter who signs a petition supporting free speech in key swing states each day until the US presidential election.
Legal experts have said it appears to violate laws that prohibit giving incentives to people to register to vote. On Sunday, Shapiro expressed similar concerns. Monday is Pennsylvania’s deadline to register to vote.
“I think there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race, how the dark money is flowing, not just into Pennsylvania, but apparently now into the pockets of Pennsylvanians,” Shapiro told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “That is deeply concerning.”
Later in the interview Shapiro added: “I think it’s something that law enforcement should take a look at. I’m not the attorney general any more of Pennsylvania, I’m the governor, but it does raise serious questions.”
Since Musk announced the plan on Saturday, he has given the prize to two registered voters in Pennsylvania. Signing the petition is also now a prerequisite to attend Musk’s town hall events.
Last week, it was reported that so far, Musk has given roughly $75m over the last three months to his political action committee, America Pac, which is supporting Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and through which he is organizing the giveaway.
With just 14 days remaining until the presidential election, Musk’s petition and giveaway seem primarily aimed at encouraging Trump voters to register to vote, concerning election experts.
Several legal experts have said that Musk appeared to be violating federal election laws that prohibit paying or offering to pay for someone to register to vote or vote.
Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor, called it “illegal vote buying”, saying that the America Pac $1m prize draw seems to be an illegal scheme as it offered the payments to registered voters.
“Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal,” Hasen said.
“Who can sign the petitions? Only registered voters in swing states, which is what makes it illegal.”
David Becker, a former justice department official and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, told CNN that because the prize is only available to registered voters “in one of seven swing states that could affect the outcome of the presidential election”, it’s evidence of Musk’s intent to sway the race, which could raise legal issues."
Donald Trump keeps calling Kamala Harris stupid - The Washington Post
Trump keeps calling Harris ‘stupid,’ offending many voters
"Speaking to a crowd in Erie, Pa., on the last Saturday in September, former president Donald Trump lambasted his Democratic opponent.
“Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired — sad — but Lyin’ Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way,” he said, mispronouncing the Democratic presidential nominee’s name as the crowd chuckled. “There’s something wrong with Kamala and I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing.”
Ten minutes later, he offered an even blunter assessment, warning that the nation’s immigration system was being mismanaged by “stupid people like Kamala.”
“She’s a stupid person,” he said, before adding again, as if for emphasis: “Stupid person.”
Since Harris emerged on the top of the Democratic ticket in July, Trump has repeatedly attacked her intelligence — deriding her as a “dumb,” “mentally unfit,” “slow,” “stupid” and an “extremely low IQ person,” among other similar pejoratives.
To some of the former president’s fiercest supporters, he is simply articulating aloud their view of her. But for many voters, as well as experts, Trump’s sneering dismissiveness of Harris’s intellect reeks of racism and sexism.
If elected, Harris — who is Black and Indian American — would make history as the first female president, as well as the first female president of color, and Trump’s repeated jabs at her intelligence go beyond mere insults.
The attacks are particularly striking given Harris’s deeply accomplished résumé: former San Francisco district attorney, former California attorney general, former U.S. senator and now vice president. She has a bachelor’s degree from Howard University and a law degree from the University of California, and she was widely seen through polling and focus groups to have soundly bested him at their Sept. 10 debate.
“This lands differently when you do this to women of color, because you’re saying, ‘How dare you get out of the box I put you in,’” said A’shanti Gholar, president of Emerge, an organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.
“There is a history in the United States about the perception of Black people, about the perception of Black women, that we’re not smart enough, that we’re not good enough, that you only get to where you are because of affirmative action,” she said. “So when you attack people of color, when you attack the vice president, you’re really showing that you have these biases.”
The Trump campaign rejected the notion that Trump’s questioning of Harris’s intelligence is in any way racist or sexist.
“Only dumb and low IQ individuals would be offended by that, expressing faux outrage because they need every excuse to explain away their insecure, miserable, and pathetic existence,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “Being unintelligent has nothing to do with race or gender. It has everything to do with Kamala Harris being wholly unqualified to be President because of all the hurt and misery she has brought to America.”
Harris has raised her own questions about Trump’s acuity and fitness for the job, though with less stark language and name-calling. In an interview with journalist Roland Martin last Monday, Harris accused Trump’s staff of deliberately keeping him from the public, noting he had recently pulled out of a CBS “60 Minutes” interview, has refused a second debate with her and won’t release his medical records.
“Why is his staff doing that?” she asked. “And it may be because they think he’s just not ready. And unfit and unstable.”
Trump’s digs at Harris’s intelligence began to intensify almost as soon as President Joe Biden bowed out of his reelection bid on July 21 and endorsed her. The very next day, Trump described Harris as “Dumb as a Rock” in a social media post.
He has since continued to press the theme. Appearing on “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning, Trump described her as “a low IQ person” who is “not smart.” The night before, at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in Manhattan, Trump’s comedy roast included a gibe at Harris’s intellect.
“We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child,” Trump told the white-tie crowd. “This is a person that has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.”
During an interview Tuesday at the Chicago Economic Club, Trump said Harris “is not as smart as Biden, if you can believe it.” And last Monday, he took to social media to call on her to “pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility” and dismissed her recent appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” as “slow and lethargic.”
Trump’s attacks on her intelligence happen on an almost daily basis — and sometimes more than once a day. Trump described her as “dumber than hell” at the Detroit Economic Club on Oct. 10, and in Reading, Pa., on Oct. 9 warned, “People are realizing she’s a dumb person, and we can’t have another dumb president.”
He continued: “Somebody said to me — one of my people, a nice person, a staff person — said, ‘Sir, please don’t call her dumb. The women won’t like it.’”
Trump has struggled with both Black and female voters. An NBC News poll conducted earlier this month found women supported Harris by a 14-point margin, with 55 percent preferring her and 41 percent preferring Trump. The same poll found that Harris also overwhelmingly leads Trump among Black voters, with 84 percent preferring her to the 11 percent who prefer Trump — although Trump has improved his margins slightly among Black women, to the consternation of the Harris campaign and Democrats.
Trump has so far refused to heed advice to avoid bad-mouthing Harris’s intelligence — in part because, as one confidant put it, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share a candid insight, “he doesn’t respect her as a worthy opponent.”
The Harris campaign declined to respond to questions about Trump questioning her intelligence. Her team has largely followed the vice president’s posture: not leaning into the history-making nature of her bid as potentially the first woman of color to be president, while dismissing Trump’s broadsides as “the same old tired playbook” that has left Americans exhausted and ready for change.
Last week, Harris accused Trump’s staff of hiding him away, rhetorically asking a large crowd in Greenville, N.C.: “Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America?”
Trump has long viewed himself as a counterpuncher — forcefully attacking anyone who goes after him, including his White male opponents. Trump, 78, repeatedly went after Biden, 81, over his alleged cognitive abilities, arguing that the president was not physically or mentally capable of serving a second term.
But Trump also has a rich history of sexist attacks, and he has reserved some of his most vituperative abuse for women of color. In 2018, Trump demeaned three Black female reporters in as many days, describing one as a “loser” and sneering at another, “You ask lots of stupid questions.” In 2019, amid a fight with House Democrats, Trump took to social media to encourage “The Squad” — a group of congresswomen of color — to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came.”
He has also attacked Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who is Black, as “low IQ Maxine Waters” and as “an extraordinarily low IQ person.”
For supporters of Harris, 60, the insults are deeply offensive and, they say, geared toward firing up Trump’s base.
“There’s an air of misogyny about it. There’s an air of racism about it,” said Kim Barbaro, 49, a Democrat from Ottsville, Pa., in rural Bucks County. “There’s a lot of dog whistles going on when he speaks, so I’m hoping we’ve reached the tipping point with it, because it’s gotten so intense.”
“We need to return back to decency. He’s an unkind human, and I’m not here for it,” she added.
Alexandra Moncure — a 35-year-old former Republican turned independent after the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — took full-time leave from her marketing job in Manhattan to volunteer at one of Harris’s Pennsylvania campaign offices and said she believes Trump’s attacks on the vice president’s intelligence come “from a place of insecurity.”
“I think it’s one of his approaches in terms of how he activates his base to attack people — on gender, on race, on anything that he views as something that could detract from her,” Moncure said.
Marjorie Margolies — a former Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication — arrived in Congress during the first “Year of the Woman” in 1992, when four women won election to the Senate. She said she is astonished that a presidential candidate deliberately treats his female opponent this way.
“It boggles my mind that this is acceptable behavior,” she said. “I’m stunned, I’m appalled, and mostly I’m surprised that there are that many people out there who think that this is acceptable behavior. And I’m oh so sad.”
But, she added, she thinks Harris’s handling of this particular brand of insult has been masterful.
“She doesn’t want to give it too much air,” Margolies said. “She doesn’t want to give it a place to resonate. I think that is smart.”
Trump’s supporters, meanwhile, remain largely undaunted by this line of attack, with many agreeing with and encouraging it. Julie Apfelbaum, a Republican who attended Trump’s recent Coachella rally in Harris’s home state of California, said Trump’s criticisms of Harris are totally justified.
“She’s stupid,” said Apfelbaum, an insurance broker from the Thousand Oaks, Calif., area, before offering a mocking rendition of Harris speaking. “She gets done talking, and it’s like, ‘What did she say?’ She said a bunch of nothing. She does a word salad, like they say.”
Later in the Coachella rally, the audience punctuated Trump’s speech with shouted insults at Harris. One man stood up from his seat to yell that Harris was dumber than a rock. Someone responded that they shouldn’t insult rocks.
Hannah Knowles in Coachella, Calif.; Maeve Reston in Washington Crossing, Pa.; Marianne LeVine in Oaks, Pa.; and Jeremy Merrill and Clara Ence Morse in Washington contributed to this report."
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Most Ashkenazi Jews are genetically Europeans, surprising study finds
Most Ashkenazi Jews are genetically Europeans, surprising study finds
(They are not different than the Apartheid era South Africans. Anyone who has formally studied history would not be surprised by this study)
The origin of the Ashkenazi Jews, who come most recently from Europe, has largely been shrouded in mystery. But a new study suggests that at least their maternal lineage may derive largely from Europe.
Though the finding may seem intuitive, it contradicts the notion that European Jews mostly descend from people who left Israel and the Middle East around 2,000 years ago. Instead, a substantial proportion of the population originates from local Europeans who converted to Judaism, said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England.
Tangled legacy
Little is known about the history of Ashkenazi Jews before they were expelled from the Mediterranean and settled in what is now Poland around the 12th century. On average, all Ashkenazi Jews are genetically as closely related to each other as fourth or fifth cousins, said Dr. Harry Ostrer, a pathology, pediatrics and genetics professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and the author of "Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People" (Oxford University Press, 2012).
But depending on whether the lineage gets traced through maternal or paternal DNA or through the rest of the genome, researchers got very different answers for whether Ashkenazi originally came from Europe or the Near East.
Past research found that 50 percent to 80 percent of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East, Richards said. That supported a story wherein Jews came from Israel and largely eschewed intermarriage when they settled in Europe. [The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds]
But historical documents tell a slightly different tale. Based on accounts such as those of Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70, as many as 6 million Jews were living in the Roman Empire, but outside Israel, mainly in Italy and Southern Europe. In contrast, only about 500,000 lived in Judea, said Ostrer, who was not involved in the new study.
"The major Jewish communities were outside Judea," Ostrer told LiveScience.
Maternal DNA
Richards and his colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA, which is contained in the cytoplasm of the egg and passed down only from the mother, from more than 3,500 people throughout the Near East, the Caucusus and Europe, including Ashkenazi Jews.
The team found that four founders were responsible for 40 percent of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA, and that all of these founders originated in Europe. The majority of the remaining people could be traced to other European lineages.
All told, more than 80 percent of the maternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews could be traced to Europe, with only a few lineages originating in the Near East.
Virtually none came from the North Caucasus, located along the border between Europe and Asia between the Black and Caspian seas.
The finding should thoroughly debunk one of the most questionable, but still tenacious, hypotheses: that most Ashkenazi Jews can trace their roots to the mysterious Khazar Kingdom that flourished during the ninth century in the region between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, Richards and Ostrer said.
The genetics suggest many of the founding Ashkenazi women were actually converts from local European populations.
"The simplest explanation was that it was mainly women who converted and they married with men who'd come from the Near East," Richards told LiveScience.
Another possibility is that Jews actively converted both men and women among local populations at this time, although researchers would need more detailed study of paternal lineages to test that hypothesis, Richards said.
US investigates leaked documents alleging Israel plans to attack Iran | US military | The Guardian
US investigates leaked documents alleging Israel plans to attack Iran
"US officials say documents appear to be legitimate and House speaker says ‘leak is very concerning’
The US government is investigating an unauthorized release of classified documents that assess Israel’s plans to attack Iran.
The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, confirmed the investigation in remarks to CNN’s State of the Union program on Sunday, saying “the leak is very concerning”.
“There’s some serious allegations being made there,” the Republican from Louisiana said. “The investigation’s underway, and I’ll get a briefing on that in a couple of hours.”
Three US officials had earlier told the Associated Press about the investigation into the leak. A fourth US official said the documents in question appear to be legitimate.
The documents are attributed to the US Geospatial Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and they note that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on 1 October. They were sharable within the “Five Eyes”, which are the US, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
The documents, which are marked top secret, were posted to the Telegram messaging app and first reported by CNN and Axios. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The investigation is also examining how the documents were obtained – including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the US intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack – and whether any other intelligence information was compromised, one of the officials said. As part of that investigation, officials are working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, the official said.
The US has urged Israel to take advantage of its elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and press for a cease-fire in Gaza, and has likewise urgently cautioned Israel not to further expand military operations in the north in Lebanon and risk a wider regional war. However, Israel’s leadership has repeatedly stressed it will not let Iran’s missile attack go unanswered.
In a statement, the Pentagon said it was aware of the reports of the documents but did not have further comment.
Johnson on Sunday said he spoke with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – referring to him as “my friend” – and explained how he had made it a point “to encourage him”. He also said there would be “a classified level briefing, and then others, but we’re following it closely”.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the leak of the two documents.
The documents first appeared online Friday via a channel on Telegram, claiming they had been leaked by someone in the US intelligence community, then later the US Defense Department. The information appeared entirely gathered through the use of satellite image analysis.
One of the two documents resembled the style of other material from the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency leaked by Jack Teixeira, an air national guardsman who pleaded guilty in March to leaking highly classified military documents about Russia’s war on Ukraine and other national security secrets.
The Telegram channel involved in the leak identifies itself as being based in Tehran, Iran’s capital. It previously published memes featuring Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and material in support of Tehran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Middle East militant groups armed by the Islamic Republic.
The Associated Press contributed reporting"
Israeli strike in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia kills at least 73 people - The Washington Post
Israeli strike kills at least 73 people in northern Gaza, medics say
(America must stop supporting this murderous, apartheid, settler colony with our tax dollars)
"Israel’s military intensified operations there just days after Biden suggested the death of Hamas’s leader could usher in an end to the ruinous war.
BEIRUT — At least 73 people were killed when an Israeli airstrike slammed into a group of homes in the northern Gaza Strip, the civil defense force said Saturday, as Israel’s military intensified operations there just days after President Joe Biden suggested that the death of Hamas’s leader could usher in an end to the ruinous war.
The bombing targeted the town of Beit Lahia, less than two miles from the border with Israel, late on Saturday. The entire block was “leveled to the ground,” said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense, adding that there were a large number of people still under the rubble.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the strike was against “a Hamas terror target.”
“We emphasize that the area in question is an active war zone,” the military said.
People searched for survivors in the rubble of Asmaa School in northern Gaza's Shati camp on Oct. 19, after an Israeli airstrike killed dozens in Beit Lahia. (Video: Reuters)
Israeli forces launched a new operation in northern Gaza two weeks ago, ramping up strikes and shelling, ordering swaths of the region to evacuate, and laying siege to the Jabalya refugee camp, still home to about 40,000 people, according to United Nations estimates. Nearly 500 Palestinians have been killed in the two-week operation, Bassal said by phone.
Israeli officials say troops are battling to stop Hamas from regrouping in northern Gaza, and that the strategy there could be mimicked in other parts of the territory. At its most extreme, the battle plan, backed by key members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, envisions systematically emptying areas of civilians and starving out — or shooting down — anyone who stays.
Earlier Saturday, Israeli forces surrounded and fired on two hospitals in northern Gaza, according to local health authorities. They fired artillery shells at the upper floors of the Indonesian Hospital, the facility’s director, Marwan Sultan, said in a phone interview. The hospital lost power and two patients in the intensive care unit died, he said.
“No one is allowed to enter or exit the hospital,” he added. “Soldiers are almost at the hospital gates.”
In a statement, the Israeli military said troops were “operating against terrorists” in the area of the hospital. “There was no intentional fire directed at it,” the military said.
The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Muhannad Hadi, said Saturday that the Indonesian Hospital “is no longer operational.”
“We have repeatedly warned that the tightening siege on Jabalya and northern Gaza is life-threatening,” Hadi said in a statement. The United Nations made an “urgent request” to Israeli forces on Friday to access northern Gaza to “assist in rescuing dozens of injured people trapped in rubble,” he said, adding that as of Saturday, the request “remains unfulfilled.”
Last week, citing U.S. and international law, senior Biden administration officials gave Israel one month to reverse course on sealing off the north, or risk losing American military assistance. The World Food Program said on Oct. 12 that no food had entered northern Gaza since the beginning of the month, and on Saturday, aid officials said they have seen no indications Israel is seeking to significantly increase aid to the area.
Israel says the operation has killed militants, uncovered weapons stores and dismantled “terrorist infrastructure” in the north. Videos from Jabalya have also shown dead children lying in the streets and on hospital floors.
Among the dead was 31-year-old Mahasen Khateeb, an illustrator, whose work celebrated Palestinian culture. “I don’t want to be just another number on the news ticker,” she said in a post to her social media feed this summer. “I am a story.” A relative said she was killed after an Israeli airstrike hit her neighbor’s house.
After more than a year of war, at least 42,519 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the local health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Health experts say the death toll is probably several magnitudes higher, since the reporting system in several areas has broken down, and thousands remain missing under the rubble.
In statements describing the battles in Jabalya on Saturday, the Israeli army said that two soldiers had been killed in the fighting, and that its 162nd Division had “eliminated” dozens of people, and made arrests, but that hundreds of civilians had also been permitted to leave the area.
In their letter to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken had urged Israel not to force the evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza — but outlined no clear penalties for if it did.
Photographs and drone footage published by the army and a local journalist on Saturday, showed dozens of men and boys near the Indonesian hospital, divided into groups, in a stretch of land so decimated that tarmac roads had been replaced by ground dirt. They held their hands in the air and stood in line. It was unclear whether they were being detained or forcibly evacuated.
On Oct. 19, IDF released footage that shows people lined up outside a school near the Indonesian Hospital in the Jabalia area. (Video: Israel Defense Forces via Storyful)
In southern Gaza, Israeli planes dropped leaflets Saturday showing a picture of Hamas’s slain leader Yahya Sinwar. “Hamas will no longer rule Gaza,” it said. “Whoever drops his weapon and bring hostages back to us we will let him out and live peacefully.”
In the aftermath of Sinwar’s killing Thursday, Biden — a leading international champion of Israel’s war — said there was “now the opportunity for a ‘day after.’” But by Friday, his pronouncements to reporters were more muted. “There’s a possibility of working to a cease-fire in Lebanon,” where Israel has launched a ground invasion to dislodge Hezbollah, while “it’s going to be harder in Gaza.”
Netanyahu’s office said Saturday that a drone had reached his residence in Israel’s coastal Caesarea area. It did not hit his home and neither Netanyahu nor his wife were present at the time, with no casualties reported, his spokesman Omer Dostri added. The Israeli army said that it was one of about 180 projectiles fired from Lebanon toward northern Israel, leading to at least one death and several injuries.
A 50-year-old man died after shrapnel struck his car in the northern Ein Hamifratz area, Israeli paramedics and Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s emergency services, said. Next to the 50-year-old driver was another passenger, who said that the driver wasn’t able to duck when an explosion hit following sirens, MDA senior EMT Alex Mutzkin said in a statement.
Hours later, Israeli warplanes bombed several locations in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, where the Israeli army says it is targeting Hezbollah personnel and infrastructure. The air campaign and ground invasion has displaced around a quarter of Lebanon’s population, according to the United Nations. Lebanon’s health ministry said Saturday that 2,448 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of the war, with 11,471 others wounded — most from the past month alone.
In a statement, the Israeli army’s Arabic language spokesman said that the airstrikes in Beirut targeted “several weapons depots and the headquarters of Hezbollah’s intelligence branch.” It was not possible to independently verify that claim. The blasts sent dust and debris swirling over an anxious city, after three days of relative calm here, even as airstrikes pound swaths of southern Lebanon, and its rolling Bekaa Valley.
The health ministry said that 36 people had been killed and 204 wounded nationwide in the space of 48 hours.
Mahfouz reported from Cairo and Balousha from Hamilton, Ontario. Suzan Haidamous in Beirut, Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, and Meg Kelly and Sammy Westfall in Washington contributed to this report."