Series boss Jed Mercurio has shared some new snaps from set.

This competition is now closed

Jed Mercurio has regularly been teasing fans with new behind-the-scenes images during the ongoing shoot for Line of Duty series six, and now the series creator has taken to Twitter to share some more snaps.

Mercurio has posted two images of Steve Arnott (Martin Compston), Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure), and Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) before and after interrogating a bent copper.

The first image shows the trio alert and ready to deliver a good grilling, while in the second they are slumped over a desk, clearly exhausted by their efforts. (Given how long some of those interrogation scenes run, who can blame them?)

In a second set of images, Arnott and Fleming are seen to be having some fun behind their bosss back, with Mercurio writing, Poor Gaffer he gets no respect around here!.

Fans of the popular police drama are waiting patiently for the next batch of episodes, with production having been postponed by the coronavirus pandemic back in March meaning the originally planned 2020 release date could not be kept.

Production resumed in September and the BBCs official position is that season six is now due to air on BBC One next year although an exact date has not been provided at this stage.

The sixth series will once again see AC-12 dealing with corrupt police officers, with guest star Kelly McDonald playing this seasons chief suspect DCI Joanne Davidson, who has been described as the most enigmatic adversary AC-12 have ever faced.

The cast will also include Shalom Brune-Franklin (Our Girl), Andi Osho (Kiri), Prasanna Puwanarajah (Doctor Foster) and Perry Fitzpatrick (This is England).

More here:
Line of Duty's Arnott, Fleming and Hastings unite to tackle bent coppers in behind-the-scenes pic - RadioTimes

God is erotically charged and the world is achingly amorous, hence they caress each other in mutual attraction and filiation.

Jewish philosopher Martin Buber made that assertion, and while it seems to perfectly echo the opening line of St. Augustines autobiography (You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.)it hints at something more. St. Augustine was talking about an insatiable ache inside the human heart which keeps us restless and forever aware that everything we experience is not enough because the finite unceasingly aches for the infinite, and the infinite unceasingly lures the finite. But St. Augustine was speaking of the human heart, about the restlessness and pull towards God thats felt there.

Martin Buber is talking about that too, but hes also talking about a restlessness, an incurable pull towards God, thats inside all of nature, inside the universe itself. It isnt just people who are achingly amorous, its the whole world, all of nature, the universe itself.

Whats being said here? In essence, Buber is saying that whats felt inside the human heart is also present inside every element within nature itself, in atoms, molecules, stones, plants, insects, and animals. Theres the same ache for God inside everything that exists, from a dead planet, to a black hole, to a redwood tree, to our pet dogs and cats, to the heart of a saint. And in that theres no distinction between the spiritual and the physical. The one God who made both is drawing them both in the same way.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was both a scientist and a mystic, believed this interplay between the energy flowing from an erotically charged God and that flowing back from an amorous world, is the energy that undergirds the very structure of the universe, physical and spiritual. For Teilhard, the law of gravity, atomic activity, photosynthesis, ecosystems, electromagnetic fields, animal instinct, sexuality, human friendship, creativity, and altruism, all draw on and manifest one and the same energy, an energy that is forever drawing all things towards each other. If that is true, and it is, then ultimately the law of gravity and the Holy Spirit are part of one and the same energy, one and the same law, one and the same interplay of eros and response.

At first glance it may seem rather unorthodox theologically to put people and physical nature on the same plane. Perhaps too, it some might find it offensive to speak of God as erotically charged. So let me address those concerns.

In terms of God relating to physical nature, orthodox Christian theology and our scriptures affirm that Gods coming to us in Christ in the incarnation is an event not just for people, but also for physical creation itself. When Jesus says he has come to save the world he is, in fact, talking about the world and not just the people in the world. Physical creation, no less than humanity, is Gods child and God intends to redeem all of his children. Christian theology has never taught that the world will be destroyed at the end of time, but rather (as St. Paul says) physical creation will be transformed and enter into the glorious liberty of the children of God. How will the physical world go to heaven? We dont know; though we cant conceptualize how we will go there either. But we know this: the Christ who took on flesh in the incarnation is also the Cosmic Christ, that is, the Christ through whom all things were made and who binds all creation together. Hence theologians speak of deep incarnation, namely, of the Christ-event as going deeper than simply saving human beings, as saving physical creation itself.

I can appreciate too that there will be some dis-ease in my speaking of God as erotic, given that today we generally identify that word with sex. But thats not the meaning of the word. For the Greek philosophers, from whom we took this word,eroswas identified with love, and with love in all its aspects. Eros did mean sexual attraction and emotional obsession, but it also meant friendship, playfulness, creativity, common sense, and altruism. Eros, properly understood, includes all of those elements, so even if we identify eros with sexuality, there still should be no discomfort in applying this to God. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and thus our sexuality reflects something inside the nature of God. A God who is generative enough to create billions of galaxies and is continually creating billions of people, clearly is sexual and fertile in ways beyond our conception. Moreover, the relentless ache inside of every element and person in the universe for unity with something beyond itself has one and the same thing in mind, consummation in love with God who is Love.

So, in reality, the law of gravity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit have one and the same aim.

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Link:
Rolheiser: The law of gravity and the Holy Spirit Grandin Media - Grandin Media

Louis Ren Beres, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Purdue, analyses America's future after the 2020 Presidential Elections...

The mass-man has no attention to spare for reasoning; he learns only in his own flesh. Jose Ortega yGasset, The Revolt of the Masses (1930)

In the United States, prima facie, presidential elections represent a core fixture of democracy. Nonetheless, though necessary and never more so than in the just-completed defeat of Donald J. Trump they are sorely insufficient in dealing with this countrys most deeply underlying problems. To deal satisfactorily with the coronavirus pandemic (our current worldwide plague) and with a more-or-less corresponding global chaos, America will first have to fix the microcosm. More precisely, we must diminish the always-corrosive influence of mass-man.

This obligation, in turn, will require various tangible reforms. The goal must be a citizenry that can finally take learning, science and law with evident seriousness. To effectively meet this goal, Americans must first work diligently at taking themselves more seriously. No long-term survival goals can be met by an electorate that nods predictably and approvingly to nonsensical howls of presidential gibberish and presidential execration.

Let us be candid. American democracy is now largely an oxymoron. Its not just the steep wealth disparities between individuals and groups inequalities steadily enlarged during the dissembling Trump-Era. It is also the de jure validation of an institutionalized plutocracy. Oddly enough, counted among the most numerous and strenuous supporters of Trump-generated inequalities were millions of newly-deprived and badly-treated American workers.

Credo quia absurdum, said the ancient philosophers with considerable prescience. I believe because it is absurd.

But now its all about our national future after the election. Now, more than ever, we must look forward. And we must look systematically.

Basic questions arise. What are the most significant post-election threats facing the United States? To answer properly, these substantial perils will need to be approached holistically, in their entirety; that is, conceptually, analytically and cumulatively.

Quo vadis? Above all else, this means, inter alia, a society rising high above the previously-deflecting politics of individual personality and strident partisanship; and a polity paying a sincere heed to the immutable primacy of intellect or mind.

For too long, incontestably, this unhappy country has mired itself in the sordid and superficial orientations of personal animosity, demeaning clich and callous indifference to law. This last dereliction refers to both US domestic law and to international law. These mainstay normative systems are always closely bound up with each other. To suggest otherwise is to accept a flagrantly false dichotomy.

To accept such falsehood is tantamount to sacrilizing a heavy ignorance.

Truth is exculpatory, especially in matters of law. One basic truth goes like this: The United States now stands at a once inconceivable level of national impotence and legal invidium. On Americas international legal wrongdoings, we have been witness to a President who routinely follows the authoritarian lead of Russias Vladimir Putin and other retrograde world leaders. On our more conspicuous domestic derelictions, We the people have had to endure, again and again, a President who acts as if peremptory legal norms were non-existent, and who led chanting rallies as if he had been taught by Third Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

None of this is an exaggeration or hyperbole; rather, the anti-law similarities are overwhelming, deeply consequential and foreboding. In one repeatedly grotesque Trump refrain, Lock him up (earlier, for Hillary Clinton, Lock her up), the explicit call was for casually shelving the proper Constitutional protections of due process of law. When, most recently, the object of Trumps orchestrated rancor became the female governor of Michigan and this immediately after Gretchen Whitmer had become the intended target of a Trump-backing US terrorist group it once again became Lock her up.

Either way, the crude chants were a shameless rejection of Constitutional government and long-codified legal protections.

There is more. This ritualized obeisance to lawlessness was not confined simply to adrenalized and incoherent chants. Just days before his second presidential debate with Democrat candidate Joe Biden, Donald Trumps sought to convince his Attorney General to launch a full investigation of his opponent. This time, however, William Barr, ordinarily a dutiful sycophant to the end, stopped short of cowardly capitulation.

There is still more to understand. If the nations leaders and citizens could finally bring themselves to soar above this bitter amalgam of societal atrophy and mass wrongdoing a measurably low point in both legal and socio-political terms it will quickly become apparent that a single archetype of contemporary American life should become our present-day focal point of remediation. This ubiquitous object is the philosophers mass man, a one person distillation (male or female) of all that is most unworthy and law-violating in American life.

Clarifications are in order. To explain, this philosophers mass man is the herd person who all-too-often prefers anti-reason to reason and intimations of conspiracy to any tangible science. During the closing days of the recent presidential campaign, President Donald Trump several-times ridiculed Joe Biden because he would base his pandemic decisions on the scientists. Here, hewing to scientists rather than propagandists was described as a pejorative.

Credo quia absurdum, said the ancient philosophers.

There is more. At this still-unraveling time of plague and impending chaos, more precise and respectable normative standards will be necessary for guidance. Ongoing and prospective perils are generally intersecting; also, such intersections could often be synergistic. Accordingly, the whole corpus of relevant harms could on occasion be even greater than the sum of all relevant parts.

In these matters of leadership, it is time for celebrations of intellect or mind. In principle, at least, following a US leadership era that had proudly and loudly loathed science and learning, Americans should look back at authentic political and legal thought. We ought to be learning from Plato, Cicero and Blackstone, not from Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh.

In his seventeenth century work of classical philosophy, Thomas Hobbes a little-read but still-foundational author of the eighteenth century American Republic explored deductively the natural condition of mankind. Published just a few years after the Peace of Westphalia, the 1648 treaty that ended the Thirty Years War and ushered in the state system. Hobbes Leviathan placed its primary emphasis on what we would call today geo-strategic context.

There is more. Hobbes analytic focus was directed toward understanding the always-crucial connections between individual or personal weaknesses and world system anarchy or chaos. The thinker concluded that in the Westphalian system of international law, a condition of permanent war must obtain, not just during episodes of actual fighting, but whenever these exists a known disposition thereto. At that particular point in history, however, the philosopher was not taking into account the rare but catastrophic factor of worldwide disease pandemic.

One neednt be an historian or legal scholar to understand that such a relentlessly insidious disposition to conflict remains current for America, in 2020. Indeed, at the present historical moment especially in consideration of verifiable evidence for ongoing nuclear proliferation we are devolving still further from traditional anarchy toward a far more stubbornly remorseless and indecipherable chaos. It follows, for scholars and relevant policy makers, that to better understand Americas changing risk profile, more attention must now be oriented to central matters of intellect and thought.

Now that the presidential election is behind us, what does all this really signify? In the United States, as a direct consequence of Donald Trumps disjointed pandemic policies, tens of millions of Americans have been pushed ruthlessly into poverty. Lest anyone mistakenly feel that such an American poverty is relatively benign or gentle, the numbers make clear something far different. This poverty includes several distinctly palpable forms of hunger. Considered against the backdrop of the rest of the so-called developed world, Americans in general are now anything but enviable. We surely did not become great again.

In critical matters of foreign affairs and international law, the United States displays assorted and comparably distressing failures. Now faced with significantly strengthened adversaries in Russia and China, and with a greatly weakened set of once-viable alliances, even the most plausible strategic outlooks include a steady expansion of war and terrorism. Such an expectation has very deep roots in President Donald J. Trumps manifold disregard for Americas obligations under international law obligations ipso facto a part of US law.

Even before the creation of the modern state system in 1648 indeed, from time immemorial world politics have been rooted in some more-or-less bitter species of Realpolitik or power politics. Although such traditionally rancorous patterns of thinking are normally accepted as realistic, they have actually proven to be starkly shortsighted and insufferably transient. It follows, among several other things, that Americas president would be well-advised to finally acknowledge the inherent limitations of a persistently fragile global threat system, and begin to identify more promising and substantially more law-supporting patterns of international interaction.

There is a bigger picture. The United States, in the fashion of every other state, is plainly part of a much larger world system. But this more comprehensive system has steadily diminishing chances for achieving any sustainable success within a transient pattern of endlessly competitive sovereignties. What then, one must promptly inquire, is the point of continuing to maintain a qualitative military edge? After all, we coexist in a system that is resolutely destined to fail.

What is the good of passing from one untenable position to another, asks Samuel Beckett philosophically in Endgame, of seeking justification always on the same plane?

Realpolitik or balance of power world politics, has never succeeded for longer than brief and dreadfully uncertain intervals. From time to time, in the future, this unsteady foundation could be further exacerbated by multiple systemic failures, sometimes mutually reinforcing or synergistic, sometimes perhaps involving weapons of mass destruction. Most portentous, in this regard, would be nuclear weapons.

By definition, a failure of nuclear Realpolitik could be not only catastrophic, but sui generis. This truth obtains if the failure is judged in the full or cumulative scope of its resultant declensions.

Remedial steps need to be taken. Immediately, all states that depend upon some form or other of nuclear deterrence must prepare to think more self-consciously and imaginatively about alternative systems of world politics; that is, about creating viable configurations that are more reliably war-averse and cooperation-centered. While any hint of interest in complex patterns of expanding global integration, or what Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin calls planetization, will sound fanciful to realists, the opposite is vastly more plausible.

Now, it is more pragmatic to acknowledge that our every man for himself ethos in world politics is both degrading and incapable of conferring any credible survival reassurances.

Now it is plain that absolutely nothing could be less realistic for governments than to remain on the present collision course.

There is more. To grasp rapidly disappearing opportunities for long-term survival, Americas president must seize upon the penetrating insight of thinker Lewis Mumford: Civilization is the never ending process of creating one world and one humanity. Whenever we speak of civilization, we must also speak prominently of law. Jurisprudentially, of course, no particular national leadership has any special or primary obligations in this regard, nor could one reasonably afford to build its own security policies upon vaguely distant hopes.

Even after the corrupting and attenuating Trump presidency, the United States remains a key part of the world legal community, and its president must now do whatever he can to detach an already weakened America from the time-dishonored state of nature. Any such willful detachment should be expressed as part of a still-wider vision for a more durable and justice-centered global politics. Over the longer term, Washington will have to do its part to best preserve the world system as a whole.

America Together, not America First, must now become the preferred and expressed national mantra.

However impractical this may first sound, nothing could possibly be more fanciful than continuing indefinitely on a repeatedly discredited policy course.

Everything changes. In particular, the geo-strategic world within which we must all necessarily endure is endlessly in flux. Apropos of this transience, the specific kinds of anarchy or chaos facing the United States and all other states in the years ahead will be very different from what had earlier emerged in the seventeenth century.

What then? Though hardly compensatory in any meaningful human sense, there would nonetheless be present an optimal occasion for seeking greater precision in all pertinent analyses. American strategic thinkers should already understand that refractory threats that still lie ahead ominously may originate less with formidable enemy armies than with multiple forms of decisional miscalculation or inadvertence. These threats, furthermore, are now magnified or force-multiplied by an inherently many-sided pandemic.

Examples abound. One current example could center on any still-planned US deployment of intermediate range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region, a provocative step that would especially worry China (a state sorely needed by the United States to assist with still-accelerating nuclear developments in North Korea, and with a host of other more fundamental economic survival matters).

Already, for its part, at least on one key level, China indicates it has no intention of joining any nuclear weapons reduction talks with the US, pointing (understandably) to the huge gap in size between Chinas nuclear arsenal and Americas. At the same time, it would be a grievous error in American strategic thinking to conclude that the more destructive US nuclear arsenal will necessarily bestow any corresponding increase in overall American global power or influence. For too many years, even long before the grievously misdirected Trump presidency, the United States had consistently confused power of destruction with more general species of influence.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, China has an estimated 290 nuclear warheads currently deployed, compared to 1,750 for the US.

Another problematic area of possibly expanding chaos and corollary nuclear confrontation might be Kashmir. Here, America could quickly or suddenly find itself caught between variously unpredictable India-Pakistan escalations. Of course, even if the US were not directly involved in any such unprecedented levels of warfare, any nuclear war in southwest Asia would inevitably prove generally injurious (an evident understatement) for the planet as a whole.

An even more primary axis of conflict in world politics will require closer conceptual attention by American strategic thinkers and planners. Recalling Thomas Hobbes definition of war as not merely actual fighting, but also as a known disposition thereto, the US president should take far more explicit note that we are already in the thickening midst of Cold War II. This steadily expanding adversarial posture between Russia and the United States is both similar and dissimilar to the original Cold War. In any event, it defines the most plausibly basic context within which US nuclear strategy must from now on be fashioned and/or refined.

Even this most basic context will be impacted by expanding hazards of worldwide disease epidemic, primarily by their largely unpredictable effect upon national decision makers and by their similarly unknowable effects upon relevant decisional synergies.

These issues are not susceptible to solution by applying the dreadful clichs or empty witticisms of the previous US administration. Instead, they will require some serious engagement by a small number of genuinely gifted thinkers and planners, individuals who have been the beneficiaries of a comprehensive and challenging formal education. This is not the time for core policy judgments by mass man. Though Donald Trump claimed to love the poorly educated, these are not the people who can best guide Americas imperiled ship of state through uncharted waters.

There is more. In a world increasingly prone to periodic and potentially primal conflict, the role of nuclear weapons will need to be more closely and specifically considered. This overriding obligation pertains not only to the nuclear capacities and intentions of the United States and its most obvious foes, but also to their several and most probable intersections with various other countries.

Because such plausible intersections could sometimes become synergistic, American strategists will need to best ensure that (1) there will occur no further spread of nuclear weapons among recognizable state or sub-state enemies, and (2) attempting to counter any one designable enemy would not wittingly or unwittingly assist another. Even more potentially bewildering in these pandemic-focused times, these strategists would need to take meticulously proper account of expanding disease impact upon both enemy decision-makers and on our own.

Among other things, this will not be a task for thinly-educated, narrowly political or commerce-oriented public personalities.

Soon, too, American decision-makers will need to more fully acknowledge that geo-strategic context can be broadly intellectual rather than just narrowly geopolitical or geographic. Expressed in terms of Thomas Hobbes aptly fearful argument about the state of nature, America must do whatever it can to avoid any dreadful equality from emerging in enemy nuclear capacity. Here, still more precisely, Washington could learn purposefully from Leviathan, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.

By definition, the capacities of law to aid human survival and human betterment would be diminished by any such equality.

No matter how powerful this country may first appear vis--vis its relevant adversaries, even a seemingly less-powerful North Korea could bring nuclear harms to the United States or its allies. We ought not to presume, therefore, any clear existential benefit to national nuclear superiority. In the more formal parlance of original Cold War nuclear theory, absolutely any nuclear harms would be unacceptable.

Another specific threat must be factored in or considered. Looking even further ahead, assorted terror groups could gain incremental access to usable forms of profoundly dangerous weapons, including biological materials or crude nuclear ordnance. As a result, any still latent or residual civilizational capacity to deal with global chaos would immediately obligate the US to enter the fray with appropriate forms of remediation. To meet this demanding obligation in extremis atomicum, the American president should have firmly in hand, in advance, a suitably coherent playbook, one that takes into account (both legal and strategic) the discoverable capacities of patron states and their plausible intersections with pandemic-impacted sub-state actors.

Once again, this will not be a task for the intellectually faint-hearted. It is not a task for the philosophers mass man.

Strategy is a game that an American president must always be prepared to play with very conspicuous skill and without suffering any significant losses or declensions. Behind the manifold complexities of such an expanding chaotic context is the derivative obligation to see things through the eyes of each applicable adversary. Fundamentally, this must quickly become a psychological or psychiatric obligation, one not in any way specific to orthodox military calculations. It has been succinctly summarized by existentialist thinker Rollo May in The Discovery of Being (1983): The problem is how we are to understand the other persons world.

Now, of necessity, to make matters more of an analytic problem, we must add: during a time of pandemic.

Sooner or later, a visibly stark juxtaposition of pre-modern ideologies with nuclear weapon systems could present a unique challenge to the United States for dealing with chaos. This complex and pandemic-affected challenge could be exacerbated by (a) persistently opaque considerations of enemy rationality; and (b) steadily expanding uncertainties of decisional miscalculation and/or escalation. These overlapping factors could become still more daunting whenever the dynamic relationships between them becomes determinably synergistic, especially at a time of expanding biological adversity.

There is more. Struggling amid chaos, it should realistically be expected that we could fail to discover any reassuring succor in international law. This regrettable expectation is reinforced not only by President Donald Trumps unilateral US withdrawal from the JCPOA 2015 Vienna Pact regarding Iran, but also by US withdrawal from the INF Treaty with Russia. Today, one might also add Donald Trumps gratuitous and generally injurious attacks on the World Health Organization in Geneva, or his continuing attempt to deflect blame for pandemic harms upon Beijing. For Trump, the coronavirus has always been the China Virus.

To be sure, thinking people all over the world are still shaking their heads in disbelief about these wholly destructive and irrational US deflections.

One consequence of such shortsighted behaviors is that the United States will have to deal with multiple effects of a nuclear Iran in a shorter period of time, and to face simultaneously an expanding nuclear arms race with the Russian superpower. It should be unsurprising, therefore, when the already palpable global slide toward chaos eventually becomes unstoppable.

What then?

For the US, the expected perils of any emerging primal chaos must be particular and unique. Conceivably, the calculable probability of world system chaos could be enlarged by certain unforeseen instances of enemy irrationality. If, for example, America should have to face a Jihadist adversary that would value certain presumed religious expectations more highly than its own physical survival (e.g., Islamic expectations of a Shahid or martyr), this countrys applicable deterrent could be correspondingly diminished or immobilized.

Presumptively foreseeable worst case scenarios would involve an irrational nuclear North Korea or Pakistan; that is, in essence, a nuclear suicide-bomber in macrocosm. Here, once it had been convincingly determined in Washington that enemy leaders were meaningfully susceptible to certain non-rational judgments vis--vis the United States, this countrys rational incentive to strike first defensively could become overwhelming or even irresistible. Naturally, however, there could then be no reasonable or reciprocal assurances that actively yielding to such an incentive would be in the overall security interests of the United States.

None at all.

There is more. America could discard the preemption option one that would likely be described in more expressly legal terms as anticipatory self defense but it would then still need to identify other usable and multi-vector strategies of secure deterrence. Any such identification could then further require diminished ambiguity about selected elements of this countrys nuclear forces; an enhanced and at least partial disclosure of certain strategic targeting options; more substantial and simultaneously less ambiguous ballistic missile defense postures; and/or increasingly recognizable steps to ensure the perceived survivability of Americas nuclear retaliatory forces.

Going forward, America will need serious preparation, not just attitude. These alternative American strategies should be carefully worked out in advance of any specific crisis. In all such calculations, chaos itself would need to be included as a potentially salient explanatory factor or independent variable. In short, pandemic-rein forced chaos would maintain its analytic pride of place, however distasteful to Americas currently operating strategists and policy-makers.

At that disintegrative point, there might remain no reasonable expectations of safety in arms, of rescues from higher political authority or of any comforting reassurances from science. As with any true forms of chaos, new wars could rage until every flower of culture were trampled and until many things human had been flattened in a vast and barbarous cauldron of biological disorder. In such dire circumstances, even the best-laid plans for collective defense or alliance guarantees could quickly become little more than iconic cultural artifacts of a world order that had once been merely anarchic.

At that singularly portentous point, Carl von Clausewitzs idea of friction (that is, the effects of reality on ideas and intentions in war) would trump all earlier hopes for both predictability and conflict resolution.

At that fearful point, the only fully predictable insight would be that nothing was any longer predictable.

Some further clarifications are still in order. Since the seventeenth century, our anarchic world can best be described as a system. What happens in any one part of this world necessarily affects what would happen in some or potentially all of the other parts. When a particular deterioration is marked, and begins to spread from one nation to another, the disintegrative effects would quickly undermine regional and/or international stability.

We are still living in a planetary system. But now, there are significant points of difference from classic Westphalian dynamics. Now, when deterioration is rapid and catastrophic, as it would be following the start of any unconventional war and/or act of unconventional terrorism, the corollary effects would be immediate and overwhelming. These critical effects would be chaotic.

Soon, aware that even an incremental collapse of remaining world authority structures would impact its friends as well as its enemies, leaders of the United States, in order to chart more patently durable paths to survival, will need to openly advance certain credible premonitions of global collapse. Such considerations will be uniformly distasteful, of course, and are most likely not yet underway. Still, even without charting any compellingly precise Spenglerian theory of decline, American strategists ought not to seek to avoid this primary obligation.

In the final analysis, the only way for the American president to deliver us from the intersecting ills of pandemic and chaos will be by freeing us from the law-debasing tyrannies of mass man. As a practical matter, this will be a multi-faceted struggle against political falsehood, and a many-sided reaffirmation of fundamental international law. For this coming presidential administration, a corollary presumption must be that American interests and world system interests are intimately intertwined, and that extracting the United States from Realpolitik and America First will be required. Though any such extraction will at first appear impractical or naive, there can be no other way.

If United States presidential elections are to continue as a critically viable expression of American democracy, this expressly primary shift to a more cooperative world order has now become indispensable.

Jose Ortega yGassets mass man is the authentic root of our governance problem. To better ensure a safe and decent future for the United States going forward that is, in this critical post-election period Americans will need to heed another worthy philosophers quintessential counsel. It is Friedrich Nietzsches call for self overcoming, for finally understanding that a society (the macrocosm) can never be any better than its individual human components (the microcosm).

There is more. The corresponding will to power has nothing to do with the subordination or exploitation of others, with making a big noise in the world, or with the wretched ide fixe of obtaining progress though politics and marketplace. Rather, it represents the imperative of each singular person to wittingly defy mass and resist or overcome the valueless temptations of the herd.

In the final analysis, the only way this too-long-deceived nation can make proper use of Americas legal traditions and norms is to set itself on a determined path of science, intellect and overcoming. As always, elections will have their proper place, but they ought help to liberate us from the endless lies of mass and herd, not to imprison us further.

Too often ignored in the past, this sage counsel might not be enough to protect us from some future Trump-style era of derelictions and deprivations. In assessing future elections, history should be granted appropriate pride of place. Before America can avert yet another onslaught of egregious presidential wrongdoing, one that could sometime become an irrecoverable national catastrophe, this country must first plan to fix the microcosm. Until we wittingly reject herd and mass in every segment of presidential selection, all other efforts at electoral remediation will remain beside the point.

Louis Ren Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Law at Purdue. He is the author of twelve major books and several hundred journal articles in the field. Professor Beres writings appear in many leading newspapers and magazines, including The Atlantic, The Hill, U.S. News & World Report, The National Interest, The Jerusalem Post, The New York Times and Oxford University Press. In Israel, where his latest writings were published by the BESA Center for Strategic Studies, the Institute for Policy and Strategy and the Institute for National Security Studies, he was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon, 2003). Dr. Beres strategy-centered publications have been published in such places as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; JURIST; Special Warfare (Pentagon); Infinity Journal (Israel); The Strategy Bridge; The War Room (USA War College); Modern War Institute (West Point); The Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Modern Diplomacy; Yale Global Online; The International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War College, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); World Politics (Princeton); International Security (Harvard) and the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. Professor Louis Ren Beres was born in Zrich, Switzerland, at the end of World War II.

Suggested citation: Louis Ren Beres, After the American Election: Overcoming Plague, Chaos and Mass, JURIST Academic Commentary, November 9, 2020, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/11/louis-rene-beres-after-the-american-elections/.

This article was prepared for publication by Akshita Tiwary, JURISTs Staff Editor. Please direct any questions or comments to her at commentary@jurist.org

Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.

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After the American Election: Overcoming Plague, Chaos and Mass - JURIST

An OU student group is holding a Thursday evening protest against a Turning Point USA event hosting best-selling author and conservative media pundit Ann Coulter.

The protest Stand Up Against Bigots like Ann Coulter will take place at 6:30 p.m. on the east side of the Oklahoma Memorial Union, according to a graphic.

Susie Kerr, a microbiology senior, said in a message this is an informal gathering organized by Student Advocates Against Governmental Injustice.

We want to use our voice to stand in solidarity and let marginalized groups or persons in the OU community know that there are people here who support them and do not condone hate, Kerr said. Ann Coulter has a history for misogynistic, racist, xenophobic and ableist rhetoric that may make some members of our community feel unsafe or unwanted, so while she is here, we would like to counter that dialogue.

The graphic contains no other information other than the time, place, and reason, which is to protest the guest speaker presenting on campus. Coulter, who has been criticized in the past for anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric after the Sept. 11 attacks, will be speaking in the union at 7 p.m. hosted by the OU chapter of Turning Point USA.

The TPUSA event will adhere to the universitys social distancing and masking guidelines, according to the event registration page,and Coulter will be discussing the outcome of the election and college politics as they relate to our community, according to a TPUSA press release. The release acknowledged a statement from OU College Democrats calling for the event to be canceled, stating the event would not be canceled or postponed.

The release also acknowledged Coulters past remarks.

We encourage the community to remember that a college campus is a place where students are meant to encounter a spectrum of ideas, and engage in open, rational debate, the release read. We must value ideological diversity, because if we are thinking the same, then we are not thinking at all.

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OU Student Advocates Against Governmental Injustice to hold informal protest at Ann Coulter speaking event - The Oklahoma Daily

Voters faced a fresh barrage of misinformation Tuesday, the latest development in a voting period that has been marred by misleading narratives across social media.

Twitter removed a post, shared from a screenshot on Instagram, in which a person falsely claiming to be a poll worker in Erie, Pa., said he had thrown out hundreds of Trump ballots. A far-right influencer falsely claimed on Twitter said that the National Guard had been deployed to Philadelphia and other cities to prevent unrest in the case of a Trump victory.

#Stopthesteal, a hashtag associated with alleged voter fraud and a Democratic theft of the election, was used more than 50,000 times, driven largely by right-leaning influencers including Donald Trump Jr. and Ann Coulter amplifying isolated incidents, according to researchers. One video, in which a pro-Trump poll watcher was mistakenly prevented from entering a Philadelphia polling location, racked up more than 287 million likes, retweets and views across Twitter by the afternoon as evidence of efforts to steal the election, according to researchers.

Late Monday, in a tweet Twitter restricted with a label, President Trump said the Supremes Courts recent decision about Pennsylvania mail-in ballots will induce violence in the streets. He added, Something must be done!

Many of the attempts appeared specifically targeted at voters in swing states, particularly in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Some, like the presidents, intimated that violence could take place. His statements echoed concerns by elected officials and businesses, which boarded up storefronts before Election Day.

My biggest fear is the potential for physical violence that we didnt have in 2016, said Alex Stamos, head of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former Facebook chief security officer, said on a media call Tuesday morning from the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of misinformation researchers that examined the #Stopthesteal hashtag.

The lead up to the 2020 election has been uniquely influenced by social media, particularly because in-person campaigning has been more limited by the global pandemic. Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Bidens campaigns have spent millions of dollars on social media and other targeted advertising in recent weeks.

But researchers have cautioned that domestic disinformation has also taken on an increased power this election, as groups attempt to spread lies online and even the president uses his Twitter account to share misinformation to his more than 87 million followers.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Google-owned YouTube, collectively have held more than 100 scenario-planning exercises, launched a spate of new policies including prohibitions on premature declarations of victory and calls to violence, and taken unprecedented enforcement actions, according to the companies.

They have come up with detailed plans on how they will flag whether the election is decided or not, partnering with media outlets to attempt to slow the spread of misinformation. Facebook and Google have banned political and social ads with the close of polls Tuesday, while Twitter has banned them entirely.

They are trying to prevent a repeat of 2016, when in the weeks after the election they discovered that their platforms were abused by Russian operatives who successfully showed disinformation to American voters.

The final day of voting culminates a period in which disinformation has been spread beyond just social media, including in text messages, email and old-fashioned mail.

Across the U.S. voters received an estimated 10 million robocalls in recent days encouraging them to stay safe and stay home, according to researchers.

Throughout Election Day, Twitter labeled some posts as disputed and potentially misleading about an election or other civic process, including several #StopTheSteal posts that suggested fraud was rampant. But many of them remained on the site, unflagged, including a tweet by Trump campaign official Mike Roman that said Democrats were keeping TRUMP WATCHERS OUT to steal the race. The post had gained more than 11,000 retweets by early afternoon.

On Tuesday, officials in Erie County, Pa., disputed the claims in the viral post regarding Trump ballots being tossed. The person making the statements does not work in any way with Erie County, the county said on its Twitter account.

The dissemination of misleading narratives was highly centralized, and, in places, took on the characteristics of a game. A post on 8kun, the anonymous image board at the center of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, advised the use of particular hashtags, from #Watchyourballot to #VoteInPerson to #Trump2020Landslide. The message illustrated the behind-the-scenes coordination that goes into creating the appearance of an online groundswell.

The presidents tweet about violence in Pennsylvania was labeled by Twitter with a notice that voting by mail and voting in person have a long history of trustworthiness, and that voter fraud is extremely rare. It also took actions to restrict the spread of the tweet. But the tweet had already been retweeted more than 55,000 times before the social media company throttled it, according to the Election Integrity Partnership.

Facebook appended a label to the same post on its site about the security of mail balloting. Still, it received internal pushback from Facebooks own employees saying they should do more, according to internal communications viewed by The Washington Post.

The light touch from the worlds largest social network alarmed David Brody, counsel and senior fellow for privacy and technology at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Its really important for the platforms to raise up the authoritative sources and algorithmically downlink conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated rumors, said Brody, warning about the possibility that the presidents words could lead to real-world violence.

The #stopthesteal hashtag gained momentum Tuesday as users and right-leaning influencers spread the banned poll watcher video and other isolated incidents of improper practices or glitches at polling locations, according to First Draft News, a nonprofit that focuses on tackling misinformation. Pro-Trump users had previously popularized the #stopthesteal hashtag during the 2018 midterm election, as part of similarly baseless allegations of wide-scale voter fraud. There were also some signs the hashtag had been promoted by bots.

Zignal Labs, a media intelligence firm, said the hashtag went from just a few dozen mentions at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning to more than 2,000 every 15 minutes by 8:15.

The video of a Trump poll worker wrongfully being denied entry to a polling place in Philadelphia went viral on Twitter with that hashtag and commentary around efforts to steal the election. A local polling judge incorrectly told him that his certificate only worked at one location in the city, when in fact it worked at any.

Kevin Feeley, a spokesman for the Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley, said the locations judge of election made an honest mistake in preventing the watcher from entering the location, and the commissioners office acted quickly in informing him of the correct rules.

The poll watcher did not re-enter that particular location, but Feeley said he did gain admittance to another polling location in Philadelphia.

Narratives pushing unproven allegations of widespread voter fraud have been circulating on social media for months, including from Trump, his adult sons, and affiliated outlets and supporters. Stories have been taken out of context, such as a claim that ballots which were found in a ditch in Wisconsin were put there on purpose to hurt Trump.

A video clip of Biden that was deceptively edited to make it appear as if he was admitting to voter fraud racked up more than 17 million views over the past week, according to the left-leaning human rights group Avaaz.

That has led to additional concerns about potential manipulated videos surfacing Tuesday and in the aftermath of voting, in attempts to cast doubt on results.

The Washington Posts Drew Harwell, Cat Zakrzewski and Tony Romm contributed to this report.

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Online lies and misinformation surge on Election Day - Anchorage Daily News

On the lawn of Jeff Whritenours house in Kinnelon, New Jersey, a sign reads, Presidents are temporary, the Grateful Dead is forever. A few feet away, a flag bearing the iconography of the Grateful Dead flies above a Trump 2020 banner. Passersby often pause for a double-take, no doubt questioning what many would perceive as conflicting messages. After all, the Dead were liberal, pot-smoking hippies of the San Francisco counterculture; musicians inspired by the LSD experience of the 1960s and the Beat Generation. These attributes arent what naturally comes to mind when thinking of Donald Trumps supporters but Whritenour doesnt see it that way.

Im not a big fan of the president, but at the end of the day, Trump is about individual freedom and so was the Dead, says the insurance claims consultant. His take, along with that of an unknown number of Trump-supporting Deadheads, is that the Grateful Deads philosophy was about individual liberties and not telling people what to do.

I aint buyin it, declares Dennis McNally, the Grateful Deads longtime publicist and author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead. McNally worked for the band from 1984 to 2004 and feels that the essence of the Grateful Deads music and its core members Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann is to be compassionate and tolerant. The capacity for people to compartmentalize their lives is infinite, and anyone who is serious about being a Deadhead and then supports Trump is more or less consciously overlooking the values that he espouses which are bigotry and cruelty.

The Deads lyrics are not a polemic, there is a lot of room for interpretation and disparate perceptions. Further, its difficult to identify a singular theme or collective Grateful Dead political philosophy. Most of their lyrics were written by Robert Hunter, a poet inspired by folk music whose words elicited no mundane meanings but rather formed an authentic journey into an old, ideal, adventurous storybook America. The Dead saw themselves as meta-political, playing concerts at anti-war protests but never supporting any political candidates. In fact, its rare that an original song by the Dead even reference a news event of its time. The Dead have no Ohio in their repertoire.

Courtesy of Jeff Whritenour

That political agnosticism may in fact be what draws Republicans and libertarians to the band. Deroy Murdock, a political commentator and Fox News contributor, saw the Dead over 70 times and uses the song Liberty specifically Hunters lyric to find my own way home as evidence that the Deads values are inherently conservative. Murdock attended Dead shows in the 80s and 90s with other rightist commentators like Ann Coulter and Marc Caputo. The emphasis of individuality, self-expression, and patriotism is appealing to Trump supporters, says Murdock, who prefers to focus on the presidents policy record rather than his public demeanor. Yet, after over four years of nonstop coverage, late-night tweet storms, and questionable leadership, its hard not to focus on Trumps character. Murdock thinks that Garcia, the Deads somewhat reluctant leader, and Hunter would have found Trump amusing. They would have laughed at his antics.

Actually, Hunter is spinning in his grave, says McNally, who worked closely with the late lyricist and Garcia. Steve Silberman, a New York Times best-selling author who co-produced So Many Roads, a boxset of Grateful Dead music, says of Garcia: Could you imagine Jerry supporting a government kidnapping 500 children and losing their parents? I cant.

This isnt to say the band never took a political stance. In the summer of 1989, members of the Dead testified before Congress to raise awareness of deforestation in Malaysia. Garcia lit a cigarette in the non-smoking chamber before Representative Claudine Schneider, a Republican from Rhode Island, stated that her guess would be 90% of Deadheads did not vote. Garcia himself rarely voted, except as Silberman recounts, for Lyndon B. Johnson over Barry Goldwater in 1964. A few years later in 1993, Garcia stood in the oval office wearing sweatpants and sneakers as Vice President Al Gore explained the origins of the Resolute Desk, wearing a three-piece suit. We would have never gone to the White House if a Republican was in office, says McNally.

Garcias small acts of rebellion were indicative of a Grateful Dead philosophy that put great stock in freedom, autonomy, independence and not preaching to the population. Still his reasoning for being invested in the rainforest issue was: I am an earthling on this planet, pointing toward a spirit of caring that is at the core of the Deads philosophy.

Conservative Deadheads have gotten much more stupid and much more programmed, says Silberman, who fears civil war may be imminent with potential polling place violence on election day and Trumps continued spread of Covid-19-related misinformation. He, like countless others quarantined in their homes for months, has found himself returning to the comfort music of his youth, turning to the Deads melodies and sense of community for something more meaningful, as a place to be reborn at every show.

But Silberman also recalls shows in the 70s and 80s where he felt afraid to hold his boyfriends hand in public, worried about being gay-bashed by those in attendance. Homophobia and sexism ran in the Grateful Dead family, he says.

Murdock, who is a Black gay man, insists that the scene was inclusive. He also feels strongly that Trump is not a racist. If he were racist, he would not have ended mass incarceration, states Murdock, falsely, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The issue at the heart of conservative Deadheads point of view is the desire for little to no government interference in their private lives. Offers Whritenour: We shouldnt focus on Trump the man, but instead the right to do what I want with my time, money, and life.

North Carolina newspaper editor Brian Clary, who attended Dead shows in the 80s and 90s, counters that the peace and love vibe does not square with Trump at all. If anything, he believes Trump-supporting Deadheads are misinterpreting the songs and the culture. The I got mine, you got yours philosophy that [Trumps] supporters are all about is the antithesis of the Grateful Dead.

Among the Deads guiding mantras is Garcias oft-sung line, Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world. And while Deadheads may not collectively agree on the greatest Dark Star jam or who was the bands best keyboardist, never mind politics, fans from all walks of life would endorse the fact that American has the right and duty to make their own decision on election day.

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Wave That Flag: Meet the Deadheads Who Stump for Trump - Variety

Americans are counting down the hours to vote in an embittered election race, pitting incumbent Republican Donald Trump against his Democrat challenger Joe Biden.

Tonight, we should start to get some idea of whether President Trump will keep his place in the White House, orif Mr Biden will deny him a second term.

Many news channels will be providing live election coverage tonight heres how you can stream the event online.

The US election takes place on 3 November 2020.

With the time difference, however, the majority of election shows in the UK will start late tonight, and mainly air in the early hours of 4 November.

The BBCs US Election 2020 programme, can be watched online from BBC iPlayer, either through theBBC One live streamorthe BBC News Channel live stream.

You will also be able to watch a live stream on the BBC News website on theUS Election Live Page, where you will find text updates, key tweets and an interactive map with results and polling data too.

The live programme will be fronted by Katty Kay from Washington and Andrew Neil from London, starting at 11.30pm (GMT) on Tuesday 3 November and will also be shown live on TV on BBC One and the BBC News Channel.

Christian Fraser will show every result from a special screen, while Jon Sopel and Clive Myrie will be with the Trump and Biden campaigns with further reporters including Emily Maitlis in key states.

Tina Daheley will present bulletins throughout the night and experts will be on hand to offer analysis.

The coverage will continue into the next morning, with other presenters taking over in the early hours.

To watch a selection of additional programmes, short videos and documentaries about the US election from the BBC, such as What Does The Election Cost? as well as all the debates, you can head to BBC iPlayer.

You can watch ITVs election night special called Trump Vs. Biden: The Results, live through ITV Hub, here.

The ITVs live coverage, which you can also watch on its TV channel, runs from 11pm (GMT) to 6am and will be led by Tom Bradby, who will be presenting the show from Washington.

He will be supported from the studio by Washington correspondent, Robert Moore and US political analyst Dr. Keneshia Grant.

Additionally, Julie Etchingham will report live from the swing state of Florida, while a cast of politicians, campaigners and voters from across the US political spectrum will also offer insight and analysis.

Those set to make an appearance include Anthony Scaramucci, Ann Coulter and Martin Luther King III.

Sky News can be streamed live online, here and through its YouTube channel here.

Skys election show, calledAmerica Decides, will begin at 10pm (GMT) tonight and will also be available to watch on the Sky News TV channel.

The show will be anchored byDermot Murnaghan, and accompanied by US Correspondent Cordelia Lynch, former aide to Donald Trump, Omarosa Manigault Newman and the former British Ambassador to the US, Sir Kim Darr

Broadcasting from a studio overlooking the White House, the show will present live results, expert analysis, special guests and a bespoke augmented reality studio allowing viewers to visualise the Race to the White House.

There will also be other channels providing live election coverage that can streamed online.

These include CNN which can be watched live, for free, from the UK via its website here. The channel is streaming 24/7 but the official election show kicks off at 9pm GMT (4pm ET).

Most US news channels will be showing election coverage tonight, some of which can be streamed live through YouTube.

These include ABC News which can be watched here, from midnight tonight (GMT).

Others providing coverage that can be streamed on YouTube include CBS News, which starts at 10pm (GMT) and NBC News, which will start early and provide coverage all day today, from 11am (GMT).

While we will know results from many states in the early hours of 4 November, it may be a while longer until we know the who will be the next US President.

Due to thecomplexity of voting during the coronavirus pandemic, states have taken different approaches to processing and counting votes, with some taking longer than others.

There are three basic ways to vote in the US: in person on election day, in person and early, and via a mail-in ballot all of which will be counted separately and on different timescales.

For more information on why it may take longer than usual to find out the results of the vote,see our article here.

The i on TV newsletter is a daily email full of suggestions of what to watch as well as the latest TV news, opinions and interviews. Sign up here to stay up to date with the best new TV.

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US election 2020 live stream: how to watch results online from UK tonight, and what time it starts - iNews

ANew Yorkercartoon shows Donald Trump in an orange jumpsuit. Until last night, his enemies could enjoyably salivate over that prospect. Today, it might look to them as though President Trump is not going to jail, after all. We cannot say yet whether thats because he has won outright, or because he has lost so narrowly he can dispute the result and dictate the terms of his exit. Either way, the Joe Biden blow-out that most of the polls predicted and his supporters nervously expected has not materialized. This is, as a New York Timesheadline said, a nail-biter. It is not yet a repeat of 2016; Biden could well win, but the opinion polls, which set the tone of much of the reporting of this race, and which made much of the political weather, were once again dramatically, embarrassingly wrong.

As I write, Biden has a slight lead in the Electoral College. It looks as if he will win Arizona, which was Trumps in 2016. Immigration seems to have turned the state from red to blue. The next results to watch are those from Georgia and North Carolina if Trump wins both, the race will then be decided by the three Rust Belt states he flipped in 2016: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. If Biden wins Georgia and North Carolina, he would probably need only one of those three states.

At the moment, Trump is ahead in Georgia, but only slightly. One Democratic party operative told me that African American votes from Fulton County outside Atlanta were still being counted and would give the state to Biden. Elsewhere, he said, Bidens vast advantage in mail in ballots would carry the remaining states. Bidens got this. Its true that mail-in ballots favor Biden by a huge margin. Thats part of the reason why Nate Silver a pollster whos been less wrong than others in the past says the final result could be Biden 280, Trump 258.

Or it could be Trump. Almost alone among polling organizations, the Democracy Institute said that Trump would beat Biden.Some early results have matched their predictions. They thought Trump would take Florida with a four-point lead; in the end it was 3.4 percent. Florida could be a special case. President Trump did unexpectedly (and ironically) well among Hispanics there. That was largely because Cuban-American men of a certain age and outlook seem to approve of Trumps macho, unapologetic swagger. We are still waiting to see if all of the Democracy Institutes other state-by-state predictions are borne out and Donald Trump is triumphant.

To understand how we got here, watch or watch again Andrew Neils Spectator TV interview with the director of the Democracy Institute, Patrick Basham.

They discussed the shy Trump voter, people too embarrassed to say publicly that they would cast their ballot for Trump. The percentage of these voters may be only in the low single digits, but that could be more than enough to make the difference in a tight race. The Democracy Institute also took its projections only from people identifying as likely voters instead of from those simply registered to vote the mistake that Basham says other polling organizations made. This is a crucial difference given the devotion of many Trump supporters. Large and enthusiastic crowds came to see Trump in the last days of the campaign. Bidens events could have been held in a campervan, as the conservative commentator Ann Coulter said. If Trump has won, he earned his victory by fighting to the very last rally.

Of course, the votes are still being counted. And in many of the remaining states, the two candidates are separated by a gap of a few tens of thousands of votes, just tenths of a percentage point. There could be a recount in more than one state and then, as widely expected, challenges from both sides in the courts. President Trump has long been telegraphing that this will be his strategy as so often with Trump, he says exactly what he is thinking and we should take him at his word.In the early hours of this morning, he declared that he was ready to go the Supreme Court to right the wrong of what he has repeatedly called (without evidence) a rigged election. Avery sad group of people was trying to disenfranchise millions of Americans. This is fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly we did win this election.

Donald Trump must fear losing the protection of the Oval Office. He was Individual 1, identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful prosecution of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Cohen was convicted of paying $130,000 in hush money to the porn actress Stormy Daniels six days before the 2016 election an illegal campaign contribution. Cohen told me recently that this was done at the direction of Trump and hes prepared to give evidence against him. Cohen and many others speculate that Trump will try to pardon himself, or resign the presidency and get Mike Pence to pardon him.

*** Get a digital subscription toThe Spectator. Try a month free, then just $3.99 a month ***

This might not help Trump. A pardon would apply only to federal crimes. Making an illegal campaign contribution is a federal crime but in this case, if Cohen is telling the truth, it may have involved other, state crimes. The payment was allegedly buried in the Trump Organizations accounts as legal expenses and false accounting is a state crime in New York. More than that, Cohen told me he believed that Trump would almost certainly face state charges of tax evasion and of bank fraud. The Trump Organization is being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, who has already convened a Grand Jury. Cohen had spoken several times to state prosecutors about Trumps business practices. He told me: His dangers are vast and significant.

Cohen wouldnt say me exactly what evidence he has given to Vance but there are some clues in his book,Disloyal. Trump is accused of keeping two sets of books one for the banks, another for the IRS. Cohen writes that Trump would order him and other executives to inflate the value of buildings and golf courses for the banks to get bigger loans. For instance, Seven Springs mansion in Westchester cost $7 million but was supposedly given a value of $291 million for Deutsche Bank. For the IRS on the other hand the same properties would be deemed essentially worthless, or better yet the subject of giant capital losseshe could then deduct. Trump reportedly took a $21 million tax deduction on Seven Springs. In one scene from Disloyal,Trump gets a tax refund check for $10 million and holding it up, delighted, says: Can you believe how fucking stupid the IRS is?

The President, like any other American, is innocent until proven guilty. He says that Cohen is a proven liar. But what if Trump believes that the office of the presidency is the only thing keeping him out of jail? He would cling to the gold lame drapes in the Oval Office with his last ounce of strength. And there is always a deal to be done. According to Trump, the art of the deal is to behave so unreasonably at the start of a negotiation that an opponent is desperate for an agreement on almost any terms. If Trump makes enough trouble now in the courts or on the streets could he extract a promise that he will remain a free man after he leaves the presidency? That would be Trumps greatest deal ever.

This article was originally published on The Spectators UK website.

Link:

Donald Trump is preparing to strike his greatest deal yet - The Spectator US

Its almost time for the US to decide who will be in charge of the country for the next four years.

The results announcement of the US presidential election is set to be one of the biggest TV events of the year, with current Republican Donald Trump facing off against Democrat Joe Biden.

Heres how to watch the US election results in the UK and what to expect on the night.

The US election takes place on 3 November 2020.

With the time difference, however, the majority of election shows will air in the early hours of 4 November.

While we will know results from many states on the night, it may be a while longer until we know the full set of results.

Due to the complexity of voting during the coronavirus pandemic, states have taken different approaches to processing and counting votes, with some taking longer than others.

There are three basic ways to vote in the US: in person on election day, in person and early, and via a mail-in ballot all of which will be counted differently, and on different timescales.

For more information on why it may take longer than usual to find out the results of the vote, see our article here.

Here are some of the main election programmes offering overnight coverage:

BBC One and the BBC News Channel will be showing a live US Election 2020 programme, fronted by Katty Kay and Andrew Neil from 11.30pm on Tuesday 3 November.

The coverage, which is split into four parts, will continue through the night and into the next morning, with other presenters taking over for part four, starting at 9am on Wednesday 4 November.

Christian Fraser will show every result from a special screen, Jon Sopel and Clive Myrie will be with the Trump and Biden campaigns with further reporters in key states, and Tina Daheley will present bulletins throughout the night.

A panel of expert political strategists will assess how the night was won, how the campaign was lost and the impact the decision will have on the years ahead, according to the BBCs programme description.

ITV will also broadcast a live election programme, called Trump Vs. Biden: The Results on from 11am to 6am.

Tom Bradby, who will be presenting the show from Washington, said: If we have learned one thing with these overnight programmes in recent years, it is to expect the unexpected and this night might very well be the most interesting of all.

He will be supported from the studio by Washington correspondent, Robert Moore and US political analyst Dr. Keneshia Grant.

Additionally, Julie Etchingham will report live from the swing state of Florida, while a cast of politicians, campaigners and voters from across the US political spectrum will also offer insight and analysis. Those set to make an appearance incude Anthony Scaramucci, Ann Coulter and Martin Luther King III.

Presenter Moore said: Over the years, I have seen many presidential battles in my role as Washington correspondent. But this is a unique moment in so many ways: an election amid a pandemic; extraordinary early voting figures; and the spectre that President Trump may not accept the outcome. This will be a thrilling political night a true test of Americas democratic resilience.

Several other news channels will be showing election coverage on the night, including Sky News.

Skys show, called America Decides, will begin at 10pm on 3 November.

Broadcasting from a studio overlooking The White House, the show will present live results, expert analysis, special guests and a bespoke augmented reality studio allowing viewers to visualise the Race to the White House.

The show will be anchored byDermot Murnaghan, and accompanied by US Correspondent Cordelia Lynch, former aide to Donald Trump, Omarosa Manigault Newman and the former British Ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch, among others. Ed Conway will add to the coverage from the London studio.

On the evening of the US presidentialelection on 3 November, polls will close at different times across the United States, usually on the hour.

As soon as this happens, a state can be called by the US news networks for either Mr Trump or Mr Biden.

Here is a guide to how USelectionnight might play out, based on the latest available information for when polls are due to close.

All times are GMT.

11pm 3 November: Polls close in two Republican strongholds Kentucky and Indiana.

12am 4 November: Virginia, Vermont, South Carolina could provide results. Polls also close in two of the swing states Florida and Georgia. While neither will be called straight away, Florida should count its votes quickly and as such will give an early idea of how both the candidates are doing.

12.30am: West Virginia could be called, while North Carolina and Ohio will close their polls but probably wont call results straightaway

1am: More than a dozen states are set to close their polls including Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington DC, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee anf Texas.

Swing states Michigan and Pennsylvania will also close their polls.

1.30am: Polls close in Arkansas.

2am: Polls close in Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, New York. Three swing states of Arizona, Minnesota and Wisconsin will close their votes.

3am: Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah will close their polls, as will the last of the swing states Iowa.

4am: California, Oregon and Washington will close.

5am: Polls close in Hawaii.

6am: Alaska is the last state to conclude voting.

Additional reporting by PA.

The i on TV newsletter is a daily email full of suggestions of what to watch as well as the latest TV news, opinions and interviews. Sign up here to stay up to date with the best new TV.

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How to watch US election 2020 in the UK: What time results start tonight, and full TV schedule - iNews

Four years ago, then-candidate Donald Trump forged an unlikely alliance with the Hindu American community. In an Edison banquet hall where posters of Trump showed him superimposed upon lotuses and Bollywood dancers wielded lightsabers for an interpretive dance condemning terrorism, Trump made his now-famous decree:

We love Hindus, Trump said. And if elected, you would have a true friend in the White House.

Trump lights a diya lamp at an RHC rally on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2016, at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, in Edison.

For a group typically snubbed by Republicans, Trumps proclamation reverberated.

That was the biggest gift candidate Trump could give to us, to the Hindu community, Shalabh Kumar, founder of the Republican Hindu Coalition which hosted the rally, told NJ Advance Media.

The same month, an ad showing Trump speaking Hindi, parroting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis re-election slogan and featuring clips from the rally went viral across Indian American media, with a multi-million-dollar fundraising push from the RHC.

You know how some kind of a moment happens and everyones enthusiastic, even though you might not be Republican, but just because the wave of your community joining something Thats how everybody was at that time, Dhiren Parikh, a 2016 Trump voter from Old Bridge, told NJ Advance Media.

He added: This year we dont see any movement.

Hindu-Americans who supported Trump in 2016 reported a reversal in attitude from the Trump campaign, contrary to its surprisingly active push four years prior. Though its no secret Hindu Americans en masse will go for the Biden-Harris ticket in New Jersey and nationwide, an ardent subsection of Hindus that showed up for Trump in 2016 might wane come election day, representing the campaigns failure to capitalize on would-be supporters.

Though polling data cant paint an exact picture of Trumps support among Hindus, which make up about half of all Indian Americans, 72 percent of registered Indian American voters plan to cast their ballots for Biden and 22 percent for Trump, according to the Indian American Attitudes Survey which surveyed nearly 1,000 Indian Americans. In 2016, 32 percent of Indian Americans held a favorable view of Trump in the Post-Election National Asian American Survey which polled more than 4,000 Asian Americans.

Attendees show their support for Trump at an RHC rally on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2016, at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, in Edison.

The campaign side this time around in 2020 has gone back to the traditional Republican outreach towards the Indian or Hindu-American community, which was simply a checkbox approach, Kumar said. You talk to a few Indians, you talk to a few Hindus, and check the box, youve done the minority outreach. There really has not been any serious outreach this time around.

The RHC has not held any major events this election cycle and Kumar, a Trump megadonor and one of the Hindu communitys most powerful political power brokers, has taken a back seat in 2020.

Others expressed the same frustration, complaining that the Trump team has made no efforts to reach out this time around, issued no statements, forged no community bonds and has just generally been absent.

President Trump has not made any formal statement or his campaign team about the Indian Americans are they thankful for [Indian Americans'] presence in this country or not?... South Brunswick resident Jyotsna Sharma told NJ Advance Media. "So why do they want to discard this community altogether?

Indian Americans show their support for Trump at an RHC rally on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2016, at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, in Edison.

Of course, not everybody agrees. A.D. Amar, president of the Indian-Americans for Trump 2016 PAC and Seton Hall University Professor, feels the Trump campaigns footprint has been felt by Indian Americans and sees the group serving as a decisive bloc in swing states. Still, Amar worries that Kamala Harris, of Indian and Hindu heritage, will invigorate Hindu Americans to vote Democrat.

Democrats typically enjoy the support of Hindus and Indians along with their multicultural coalition of Jews, Muslims, African Americans, Latinx Americans and immigrants.

If you are a Hindu-American, Indian-American, you naturally move towards Democrats because Democrats are considered to be a party of minorities they welcome minorities a lot more than Republicans do, Kumar said. Thats a very natural tilt toward the Democrat party. Thats the connection of the heart, connection of feelings. Not economic policies.

But, analogous to Jewish voters, a reliably blue bloc with a fervent swath of Trump supporters, there are a significant number of Hindus who admire Trump for his friendship with Indias strongman leader Modi, just as Republican Jews like Trumps relationship with Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Coupled with Trumps aggressive posture against Pakistan, his action against terrorism and his business-first economic policies, theres much Hindu Americans, the religious group with the highest socioeconomic levels in the U.S., found attractive in Trumps first term.

Part of the disenchantment, however, this election cycle is Trumps inaction on immigration reform.

Kumar has asked the Trump administration to clear the green card backlog, where more than a million immigrants have gotten petitions approved from employers but are stuck in a backlog, waiting for legal permanent residence. Additionally, hes lobbied for so-called DALCA kids or Deferred Action for Legal Childhood Arrival to enjoy the same legal protections as DACA kids.

RHC seeks a more definitive commitment from the Trump administration towards that, Kumar said. Even though we know President Trump is all for it, but the Trump administration needs to commit to it.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appears with Republican Hindu Coalition Founder Shalabh Kumar at an RHC rally on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2016, at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, in Edison.

Some Hindu Americans are also turned off by Trumps racial rhetoric.

This country is a land of immigrants and this kind of discord doesnt land anywhere. We look for more peace and prosperity and more respect for each otherHe should have set better examples when it comes to white supremacy, Sharma said, who cannot actually vote as she is still waiting for a green card.

For Parikh, the change in campaign strategy and Trumps tone on immigration were enough to swing his vote to Biden.

What we thought at the time candidate Trump can do for America, for me personally, didnt turn out that way, Parikh said.

Regardless, Hindu Americans are not a monolith, and trends in voting are just that: trends. There still exists a significant portion of Hindu voters whose adoration for the president is undiminished, who dont care about identity-based campaigning.

Why does he need to reach out to specifically South Asians, or African Americans or Hispanics? South Brunswick resident Jinesh Patel asked NJ Advance Media. It doesnt make sense, just for an election gimmick. I think he has done a lot in the last four years for South Asians, and African Americans, and Hispanics and America as a whole.

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Josh Axelrod may be reached at JAxelrod@njadvancemedia.com.

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Hindus in N.J. who voted for Trump in 2016 say their support is waning - nj.com