'Too close to call': US to enter Election Day with tightly drawn race
Nikki Fuller, 56, flexes her muscles while standing on a truck bed, as supporters of Donald Trump gather ahead of the presidential election in West Palm Beach, Florida, November 4. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare
ByYang Sheng Published: Nov 04, 2024 Global Times
The two candidates of 2024 US presidential election, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump, made their final push on Monday, one day before the Election Day, amid the tightly drawn presidential campaign.
The Associated Press (AP) reported on Monday that Harris was scheduled to spend all of Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. The vice president and Democratic nominee was scheduled to visit working-class areas including Allentown and end with a late-night Philadelphia rally that includes Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.
Harris on Monday discussed her plans to build an "opportunity economy" and outlined specific economic proposals during a pre-taped radio interview with Univision Radio's Spanish-language program, CNN reported.
The Democratic and Republican tickets also have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from donors in these states, and their political parties have spent about $1 billion in advertising.
Trump plans four rallies in three states, beginning in Raleigh, North Carolina and stopping twice in Pennsylvania with events in Reading and Pittsburgh. The Republican nominee and former president ends his campaign the way he ended the first two, with a late Monday night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, AP reported.
A recent New York Times/Siena poll shows that Trump and Harris are effectively tied in Pennsylvania, each receiving 48 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, according to FiveThirtyEight's National Polls tracker, Harris holds a narrow lead of 1 percentage point over Trump. However, this lead is shrinking, indicating that either candidate has a strong chance of winning, Al Jazeera reported.
In the final hours before US Election Day, Kamala Harris appealed to voters upset by the Gaza war, while Donald Trump intensified his violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot, France24 reported.
A CNN analysis said that whichever candidate wins the presidential election, history will be made.
If Trump wins, he will be only the second defeated president to win a nonconsecutive term. He will complete one of the most staggering political comebacks, being convicted of a crime and escaping two attempts on his life this year. If Harris wins, she could shatter the line of nearly 250 years of male commanders in chief and become the first woman president, CNN reported.
About 77 million Americans have already voted early, but Harris and Trump are pushing to turn out many millions more supporters on Tuesday. Either result on Election Day will yield a historic outcome, according to AP.
According to the US News on Thursday, across all seven swing states, the two candidates and their running mates have made visits almost 200 times since President Joe Biden exited the race on July 21. The Democratic and Republican tickets also have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from donors in these states, and their political parties have spent about $1 billion in advertising.
Election day polling times vary from state to state. The first polls close on Election Day at 6pm ET in some counties in Indiana and Kentucky, and the last polls close at 1am ET Wednesday, November 6, in Alaska, CNN reported, adding the result may take a while. In 2020, the process took days as multiple states were decided by incredibly close margins
Too close to call
Fox News reported on Sunday that the final New York Times/Siena College Battleground poll of the 2024 race shows a razor-tight election in the battleground states just days before the election.
"Too close to call," Siena Research declared in a social media post about the poll, according to Fox News.
Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Monday that this year's election is probably the most difficult one scholars have had to predict, and the difficulty is not only about "who will win," but also about "what will happen after the election results have been announced."
As for ripple effects, US media outlets have reported multiple incidents and expressed concerns about election violence. National Guard has been activated to prevent situation similar to the Capitol Hill riot.
In a phone conversation with ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl on Sunday morning, Trump said he has "a substantial lead" and predicted the winner of the election will be known by election night.
As for when he will address the country about the election results, Trump said, "I'll be out there at the right time."
Lü Xiang, an expert on US studies and research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said neither candidate will accept defeat easily, because they have bet too much on this campaign⍐.
அநுரா ஆட்சியில் செல்வினின் பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபைத் தலைவர் பொறுப்பு பறிப்பு!
பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபைத் தலைவராக இரானியேஸ் செல்வின் அவர்களைப் பொறுப்பேற்குமாறு பல சமாசங்களும் தனி நபர்களும் வேண்டிக் கொண்டதற்கு அமைய பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபை தலைவராக இரானியேஸ் செல்வின் 21-10-2024 அன்று பொறுப்பேற்றார்.
கைதடியில் உள்ள பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபை அலுவலகத்தில் இரானியேஸ் செல்வின் தனது கடமைகளை பொறுப்பேற்றார்.
சுற்றாடல், வன ஜீவராஜிகள் பெருந்தோட்ட உட்கட்டுமான அமைச்சர் விஜித கேரத் அவர்களினால் குறித்த நியமனம் வழங்கப்பட்டு அதிகார பூர்வ கடிதம் மூலம் அறிவிக்கப்பட்டதையடுத்து செல்வின் இப்பொறுப்பை ஏற்றுக்கொண்டார்.
இவர் இலங்கை நிர்வாக சேவையில் முதல் தர தகமை பெற்றவர். இதன் நிமித்தம் பல்வேறு பதவிகளை வகித்தவர்.ரணில் மைத்திரி ஆட்சிக்காலத்தில் இச்சபையிலும் பணி ஆற்றியவர். இந் நிலையில் புதிய அரசாங்கத்தினால் பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபை தலைவர் பதவிக்கு நியமிக்கப்பட்டார்.
எனினும் அனுரா ஆட்சி, செல்வின் பொறுப்பேற்று 24 மணி நேரத்தில் அவரது பொறுப்பைப் பறித்து பதவி நீக்கம் செய்துள்ளது.
இது குறித்து திரு.செல்வின் அவர்கள் ஊடறுப்பு நிகழ்ச்சியில் வழங்கிய கருத்துக்களின் சுருக்கத்தை ENB வீடியோவில் காணலாம்.
இதற்கு மத்தியில் செல்வின் நியமனம் தொடர்பாக விசாரணை நடத்துமாறு ரான்ஸ்பரன்சி இன்ரனஸனல் சிறீ லங்கா உடன் விசாரணை நடத்துமாறு அரசாங்கத்தைக் கோரியுள்ளது.
Illustrative: A surfer attends a surfing competition organized to revive local tourism on the island at Arugam Bay in the east of Sri Lanka on September 27, 2020. (Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP)
Monday, 4 November 2024 Daily FT
On 23 October, the United States embassy in Sri Lanka issued a travel advisory warning of a potential attack targeting tourist sites in Arugam Bay, a popular surfing destination in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. The embassies of the United Kingdom and Russia soon followed suit. Given the mysterious circumstances of the 2019 Easter attacks that occurred following a warning by Indian intelligence services, this has understandably stirred much anxiety and speculation among Sri Lankans.
What the recent travel advisories did not mention is the operation of illegal businesses by Israeli tourists in the Arugam Bay area, and the opening of Jewish places of worship in close proximity to local Muslim mosques. To make matters worse, it is reported that many of these tourists are possibly IDF soldiers engaging in the proliferation of Zionist propaganda.
While there is much to be said about these developments, there is also an opportunity here to discuss the more general shortcomings of tourism as an economic sector and Sri Lanka’s toxic dependence on it.
Integrated development
In a 1975 essay on class contradiction in Tanzania, the Guyanese historian and political activist Walter Rodney wrote about how university students in the newly independent United Republic of Tanzania debated the place of tourism in economic development. Rodney summarised the views of the opposing camp thus:
“They were saying that our workers and our peasants are not concerned with those who want to come and watch the lions and gazelle and to watch the Masai and so on, and call themselves tourists: that this will not do anything for the mass of our population. On the contrary it will inhibit a development of serious economic options which could lead to real integrated development.”
Rodney’s use of the words “integrated development” is key. Tourism is at best a stop-gap measure in conditions of serious economic and technical backwardness to raise foreign currency. The barriers to entry in tourism, in terms of skills and technology, are fairly low. While tourism can raise revenue, it historically has been incapable of re-investing resources into more dynamic economic activities.
Like agriculture, tourism is subject to diminishing returns. It is a classic rentier activity dependent on natural endowments like land and its proximity to ‘attractions’. The scope for value-addition in tourism is also fairly low. Tourism lacks the economies of scale, division of labour, and capital deepening that are characteristic of manufacturing and large-scale industry. At best, it may help augment the home market for domestically produced goods. However, this in turn requires activist policies to improve local content.
The lobbies and interest groups surrounding the tourism sector have congealed to such an extent that it seems impossible to have a productive conversation on the place of tourism in a national development strategy. A whole public-private institutional nexus exists to support the tourism sector. Every political party, left or right, must pay heed to the sector.
There is a case to be made that Sri Lanka’s overreliance on tourism diverts productive resources such as land, labour, and even state capacity (if we wish to view it as a precious resource) away from productive economic activities that could have a more long-term impact on developing the country. Revenues from tourism, rather than being invested in new industries, tend to perpetuate a speculative cycle of underdevelopment.
The missed wake-up call
The pandemic should have been a wake-up to Sri Lankan policymakers that non-tradable services such as tourism, are no foundation on which to build a modern economy. It is instructive that the economies of our regional competitors in tourism, such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand, did not collapse the same way Sri Lanka did during the pandemic. This is because they are rising manufacturing powers first and tourist attractions a distant second or third.
One measure of dependence on tourism is the share of international tourism receipts in exports. In 2019, on the eve of the pandemic, tourism receipts accounted for nearly a quarter of Sri Lanka’s exports (24%). By contrast, the figure was 20% for Thailand, 9.3% for Malaysia, and only 4.2% for Vietnam. While the Sri Lankan economy imploded during the pandemic, Vietnam boomed, as its dynamic industrial sector was able to adapt to shifts in global demand for manufactured goods. Vietnam was also agriculturally self-sufficient enough to feed its own population.
Aside from the economic case to be made against tourism as a core component of development strategy, there are also social and cultural arguments that warrant consideration. Is tourism a dignified way to rebuild a country after the ravages of 500 years of colonialism? Should we not have the clear-eyed and sober goal of developing our productive and technological capabilities so that our people can partake in world trade as equals, and not just beggars and debtors?
I am reminded of a quote by the freedom fighter Philip Gunawardena, who said that the need to industrialise was not simply to attain power but to get rid of poverty, improve living standards, “and to give our people, when they are free from the pursuit of inadequate food and shameful housing, the leisure and serenity to enjoy our beautiful country; to develop their culture in their own way.”
Our collective dependence on tourism amounts to a perverse inversion of this dream. Foreigners enjoy our beautiful country, and our culture debases itself in order to entertain them. Yet the majority of our people remain in poverty and in search of food, housing, and, most shamefully, better countries in which to raise their children⍐.
(The writer is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He holds an MSc in Economic Policy from SOAS University of London. He can be reached at shiran.illanperuma@gmail.com.)
For two weeks in late July and early August, said Mohammed Saad, 20, he and two other Palestinian men were forced by an Israeli army unit in Gaza to enter buildings feared to contain explosives and photograph every inch before troops were given the all clear to enter.
By Louisa Loveluck, Hajar Harb and John Hudson November 3, 2024
When the soldiers were done with him, he said, someone shot him in the back.
Saad was among four Palestinian men who spoke on the record to provide vivid accounts of what they described as Israel employing detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza — defined by the Geneva Conventions as using civilians or other detainees to shield military operations from attack — in this case, by forcing them to carry out life-threatening tasks to reduce risk to Israeli soldiers.
Their nearly contemporaneous accounts are detailed, corroborated by other witnesses, and consistent with testimony by an Israeli soldier who fought in Gaza, and with interviews collected by Breaking the Silence, an organization that works with troops who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories. They described a practice in which Palestinians are detained, interrogated and ultimately released, indicating the Israeli army did not believe them to be militants. They described events that took place between January and August.
“This wasn’t something that happened just here and there but rather on a large scale throughout a number of different units, at different times, throughout the war and in different places,” said Joel Carmel, advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects and verifies testimonies from troops who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories.
🌎
Under international law, the use of civilians and other protected people as human shields is a war crime. Israel’s high court has ruled the practice is illegal. On Oct. 16, in response to a New York Times article, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said reports that the Israeli army is using human shields were “incredibly disturbing” and that perpetrators need to be “held accountable,” but did not comment on whether the United States was examining the reports independently. American law requires that the U.S. government suspend military support for Israeli units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.
The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to any of the specific allegations made by the men in this story, but said in a statement that the use of civilians as human shields was prohibited. “The IDF works to address concrete allegations of violations that deviate from the directives and values expected of its soldiers and address them accordingly,” the statement said. The military would not say if any of its forces had been investigated or disciplined for using Palestinians as human shields, or if steps had been taken to eliminate the practice.
Under international law, the use of civilians and other protected people as human shields is a war crime. Israel’s high court has ruled the practice is illegal. On Oct. 16, in response to a New York Times article, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said reports that the Israeli army is using human shields were “incredibly disturbing” and that perpetrators need to be “held accountable,” but did not comment on whether the United States was examining the reports independently. American law requires that the U.S. government suspend military support for Israeli units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.
Washington Post reporters interviewed the four named Palestinians in this story within days or weeks of the events they described. They spoke by phone from Gaza. The Post corroborated elements of Saad’s story through medical records and with a U.S. physician who treated him in Gaza during a follow-up appointment to care for his wounds. Three other Palestinians, who described an incident inside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital complex, spoke to The Post separately and confirmed the presence of one another.The Post was connected with the Israeli soldier through Breaking the Silence, and a reporter interviewed him in person.
Breaking the Silence also provided what it said was visual evidence of the practice. A photograph from northernGaza shared by the group shows soldiers standing next to two prisoners the group says were being used as human shields. The men sit on the ledge of a blown-out window in a shattered building — wrists tied, eyes covered and heads bowed.
A photograph shared by Breaking the Silence shows Israeli soldiers with two Palestinian detainees used as human shields in Gaza. (Courtesy of Breaking the Silence)
‘Our hands were tied and our eyes were covered’
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military operations 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. The Israeli army says more than 350 soldiers have been killed in its war against Hamas, some by booby traps or ambushes laid by militants in urban areas.
The Israeli soldier, who is in his 20s and served in northern Gaza, recalled the moment his commander brought two Palestinians to him, cuffed and blindfolded, to be used as shields. One was a teenager, he said, while the other appeared to be in his 20s. “I asked why we need them,” the soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
He remembers his commander replying that it would be better if the Palestinians were killed by any potential booby traps and that the lives of Israeli soldiers were more important.
For Saad, the ordeal began in June, he said, when he was detained near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, in southern Gaza, where he had been working as a paid guard protecting humanitarian aid from looters. “Without warning, five military jeeps surrounded us,” Saad said. “Our hands were tied and our eyes were covered.”
The soldiers interrogated Saad for several days, he said, before taking him and two other Palestinians to an Israeli army base near an abandoned U.N. warehouse near Rafah, along the Egyptian border. “You are here to perform some tasks for us, ” Saad recalled one of them saying. “You will be in front of us every time we storm a house.”
He said he was given an Israeli military uniform with a camera attached to the helmet. For 14 days, Saad recounted, he was the first one sent into buildings, ordered to film as he went, often with a drone buzzing over his head. The soldiers outside monitored the footage and told him where to go through an earpiece.
“I finished the first mission in about half an hour, and then they asked me to leave,” he said. “I was very afraid because I did not know who was in the house, and I was wearing a military uniform.” If there were militants inside, he thought, “I would surely die.”
He said he was blindfolded and cuffed each morning, then transported to the next location. On the second day, an explosion rocked a building after Saad checked it. The soldiers believed he had misled them on purpose.
“They tied my hands and threw me on the sand,” he said. “They took turns beating me. I still don’t know where the explosion came from.”
Once, Saad said, the captain of the unit showed him a photograph of his destroyed family home in Khan Younis. “If you do not cooperate with us, we will kill all your family members like this,” he recalls the man telling him.
The 15th day was different, he said: He was handed civilian clothes and instructed to start walking. Soon after came the blinding pain in his back.
He remembers waking up in an ambulance, which ferried him across the Israeli border to the Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba. It was the first time he had ever left Gaza. He doesn’t know who shot him, or who decided to save his life.
“An unknown man was received by the IDF from Gaza after a gunshot wound,” read the hospital’s medical report, a copy of which was obtained and reviewed by The Post. The physician detailed “extensive pulmonary contusions” and a fractured rib, among other injuries.
Saad said he was still bleeding two days later when he was returned to Gaza in an ambulance and dropped off at Kerem Shalom.
“They told me not to look back,” he said.
Palestinians sit next to a fire in the rubble of their destroyed home in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. (Haitham Imad/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
International law ‘was not important’
According to accounts provided to Breaking the Silence, Palestinians have been used as human shields throughout the conflict. “The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began,” Carmel said. “The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer.”
The reservist who spoke with The Post said his unit received two Palestinian men during his tour of Gaza. He recalls questioning whether they were militants and being assured by his commander that they were.
One of the detainees, a teenager, spoke little in the 24 hours he spent with the unit, which the soldier believed was because he was in shock. Blindfolds were removed from the men only when they reached the next building the military had designated for clearance.
The soldier’s recollections line up with the accounts of three Palestinian men interviewed by The Post, all of whom independently described being used by the IDF as human shields over a similar period — in their cases, in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s late March raid on al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Omar al-Jadba, a vascular surgeon, said he was detained by soldiers as they entered the hospital, having stayed behind to look after patients who could not easily be moved. The soldiers assigned him a number, and called it out to summon him to the courtyard. There were other detainees there, including Mohamed al-Sharafa, 48, and Mohamed Hassouna, 24, who said they were taken from their homes near the hospital.
Jadba was ordered to call out through a megaphone that the army had set a deadline for militants to leave the area. The men were told what was expected of them: “To remove any obstacles to the troops, such as curtains and doors” inside the hospital, Hassouna said. “They told us that we should photograph every place we entered and that the pictures would reach them immediately via their wireless internet,” he continued.
Detainees who refused were beaten, the three men said. “I was telling them that my hands are precious for my work; I am the only vascular surgeon here,” Jadba said. “My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands.”
The men were terrified that they would be mistaken for soldiers and shot by militants, they said, although they encountered none in the end. When the job was done, they called out through the loudspeaker and waited. Eventually, they said, they were allowed to leave, exhausted but relieved, with their hands in the air.
The reservist said a group of soldiers in his unit questioned the use of human shields. One told a more senior commander, he said, that the practice violated international law.
“He told us that international law is not important and the only thing that simple soldiers need to think about is the ethical code of the IDF,” the soldier said.
In its statement to The Post, the Israeli military said: “The use of civilians as human shields, or coercing them in any other way to participate in military operations, is strictly prohibited by the IDF’s orders. These directives and orders are regularly emphasized and clarified to the forces on the ground. The IDF is fully committed to international law.”
Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department and now a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, described the soldier’s recollection as “pretty damning evidence for prosecution,” saying his account sounded like “prohibited and indeed criminal human shielding.”
When the reservist asked his commander what to do with the Palestinians once the mission was over, he said he was told to release them.
“At this point we understood that if we could release them, then they were not terrorists,” the reservist said. “The officer just lied to us.”
Palestinians said they have also been forced to enter Hamas’s sprawling network of tunnels ahead of Israeli troops, in case they are booby-trapped. Hakim, whom The Post interviewed in January, described being sent underground in the western part of Gaza City with a camera around his waist and a rope that he was told to pull on if he needed to stop.
“Before I went down there, they asked me if I wanted to say goodbye to any family members,” said Hakim, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals. “I didn’t think there was any need if I was going to return safely,” Hakim recalled telling the soldiers, but a man told him, “No, you will only return in pieces,” he said.
At the mouth of the tunnel, Hakim remembered freezing in fear and told the soldiers he couldn’t do it. “One opened fire around my feet, and then pushed me into the hole,” he recounted.
Hakim survived his mission. As the soldiers returned him to their base, inside an abandoned school, he said, he heard them calling a 15-year-old from the detainees gathered there. He was being sent to the tunnels⍐.
Harb reported from London and Hudson from Jerusalem.
srael informed the United Nations on Monday that it has terminated the decades-old agreement legally recognizing the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which provides a humanitarian lifeline for people in the Gaza Strip.
In a letter addressed to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Israel was withdrawing from the 1967 agreement that forms the legal basis for its relations with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), though the impact of the move was not immediately clear.
On Monday, UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said the agency expected to continue its work coordinating the distribution of aid in Gaza and the West Bank at the operational level. Israeli authorities were not communicating directly with UNRWA about terminating the agreement, she said.
The move comes a week after Israel’s Knesset passed two laws that would severely imperil UNRWA’s activities and diplomatic privileges by blocking any activity on Israeli territory and forbidding government authorities from directly communicating with the agency.
Israel has long been critical of UNRWA and accused it of being infiltrated by Hamas, a claim the agency has denied. UNRWA says it distributes food aid to more than a million Palestinians in Gaza who depend on humanitarian aid.
Here are other key developments
Health workers administered second-round polio vaccines to over 35,800 children in northern Gaza on Sunday, UNICEF and COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs, said Monday. Officials hope to vaccinate 90 percent of children in the north this week, UNICEF spokeswoman Rosalia Bollen said.
Israel’s military said its forces conducted a raid in southern Syria “in recent months,” capturing a Syrian man they described as an Iranian operative. The Israel Defense Forces said the man was gathering intelligence on Israeli troops near the border and was taken to Israel for interrogation.
At least 43,374 people have been killed in Gaza during the war and 102,261 injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. At least 2,986 people have been killed and 13,402 injured in Lebanon, the country’s Health Ministry says. Neither agency distinguishes between civilians and combatants.
Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, including more than 300 soldiers. It says 368 soldiers have been killed in its military operation in Gaza⍐.
