TBR News July 6, 2020
The Voice of the White House
Comments: “Here is a nasty, racist bit of old propganda that someone found in the files and Xerox copies of which are now all over the White House:
Nigger Doodle Dandy:The New National Anthem
Yankee Doodle is no more,
Sunk his name and station;
Nigger Doodle takes his place,
And favors amalgamation.
CHORUS:
Nigger Doodle’s all the go,
Ebony shins and bandy
“Loyal” people all must bow
To Nigger Doodle dandy.
The white breed is under par
It takes the rich a-ramy,
Give us something black as tar,
Give us “Old Dahomey.”
CHORUS: Nigger Doodle’s all the go,
Ebony shins and bandy
“Loyal” people all must bow
To Nigger Doodle dandy.
Blubber lips are killing sweet,
And kinky heads are splendid;
And oh, it makes such bully feet
To have the heels extended.
CHORUS: Nigger Doodle’s all the go,
Ebony shins and bandy
“Loyal” people all must bow
To Nigger Doodle dandy
Trump does not like black people (after all, his father was a member of the KKK) and I am told he was “delighted” with the Xerox when he saw a copy.
The Table of Contents
- Donald Trump rushed to reopen America – now Covid is closing in on him
- Encyclopedia of American Loons
- Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder
- Psychiatrists meet at Yale, claim President Trump is mentally ill
- The Coming and Going of an Ice Age
- The Coming of a New Ice Age
- Coronavirus pandemic may not have started in China, experts say
- NYPD’S Culture of impunity sees an officer repetedly accused of physical and sexul abuse and rising through the ranks.
Donald Trump rushed to reopen America – now Covid is closing in on him
The president trumpets jobs figures built on thin ice but does nothing to protect those about to lose their health and homes
January 5, 2020
by Robert Reich
The Guardian
Donald Trump said Thursday’s jobs report, which showed an uptick in June, proves the US economy is “roaring back”.
Rubbish. The labor department gathered the data during the week of 12 June, when America was reporting 25,000 new cases of Covid-19 a day. By the time the report was issued, that figure was 55,000.
The US economy isn’t roaring back. Just over half of Americans have jobs now, the lowest figure in more than 70 years. What’s roaring back is Covid-19. Until it’s tamed, the American economy doesn’t stand a chance.
The surge in cases isn’t because America is doing more tests for the virus, as Trump contends. Cases are rising even where testing is declining. In Wisconsin, cases soared 28% over the past two weeks, as the number of tests decreased by 14%. Hospitals in Texas, Florida and Arizona are filling up with Covid-19 patients. Deaths are expected to resume their gruesome ascent.
The surge is occurring because America reopened before Covid-19 was contained.
Trump was so intent on having a good economy by election day that he resisted doing what was necessary to contain the virus. He left everything to governors and local officials, then warned that the “cure” of closing the economy was “worse than the disease”. Trump even called on citizens to “liberate” their states from public health restrictions.
Yet he still has no national plan for testing, contact tracing and isolating people with infections. Trump won’t even ask Americans to wear masks. Last week, Democrats accused him of sitting on nearly $14bn in funds for testing and contact tracing that Congress appropriated in April.
It would be one thing if every other rich nation in the world botched it as badly as has America. But even Italy – not always known for the effectiveness of its leaders or the pliability of its citizens – has contained the virus and is reopening without a resurgence.
There was never a conflict between containing Covid-19 and getting the US economy back on track. The first was always a prerequisite to the second. By doing nothing to contain the virus, Trump has not only caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths but put the US economy into a stall.
The uptick in jobs in June was due almost entirely to the hasty reopening, which is now being reversed.
Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, initially refused to order masks and even barred local officials from doing so. This week he closed all gyms, bars and movie theaters in the state. The governors of Florida, Texas and California have also reimposed restrictions. Officials in Florida’s Miami-Dade county recently approved the reopening of movie theaters, arcades, casinos, concert halls, bowling halls and adult entertainment venues. They have now re-closed them.
And so on across America. A vast re-closing is under way, as haphazard as was the reopening. In the biggest public health emergency in US history, in which nearly 130,000 have already lost their lives, still no one is in charge.
Brace yourself. Not only will the virus take many more lives in the months ahead, but millions of Americans are in danger of becoming destitute. Extra unemployment benefits enacted by Congress in March are set to end on 31 July. About one in five people in renter households are at risk of eviction by 30 September. Delinquency rates on mortgages have more than doubled since March.
An estimated 25 million Americans have lost or will lose employer-provided health insurance. America’s fragile childcare system is in danger of collapse, with the result that hundreds of thousands of working parents will not be able to return to work even if jobs are available.
What is Trump and the GOP’s response to this looming catastrophe? Nothing. Senate Republicans are trying to ram through a $740bn defense bill while ignoring legislation to provide housing and food relief.
They are refusing to extend extra unemployment benefits beyond July, saying the benefits are keeping Americans from returning to work. In reality, it’s the lack of jobs.
Trump has done one thing. He’s asked the supreme court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. If the court agrees, it will end health insurance for 23 million more Americans and give the richest 0.1% a tax cut of about $198,000 a year.
This is sheer lunacy. The priority must be to get control over this pandemic and help Americans survive it, physically and financially. Anything less is morally indefensible.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US
Encyclopedia of American Loons
Donald Trump
“I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.”
– Actual quote from a July 2018 unofficial campaign rally in Montana at which Donald Trump described things, as usual according to many fans, “as they are”.
Donald Trump is a conspiracy theorist, rich buffoon (inherited wealth), almost remarkably unsuccessful businessman whose main business strategy has been pushing for bankruptcies (“I do play with the bankruptcy laws – they are very good for me”), reality TV celebrity and 45th president of the US, since a large number of people apparently thought that would be a good idea. According to some, including himself, he is also “the chosen one” and the “King of Israel”, something that – apparently this needs to be pointed out – does not make electing him a better idea. Now, we are not going to try to provide anything resembling a comprehensive portrait of Donald Trump here. In particular, we will not cover his incompetence and ignorance (which he is proud of, remember); his moral corruptness; his feeble, rambling, vindictive incoherence; lack of integrity; infantile delusions; strategically problematic (idiotic) political decisions and visions (for an old one, here is his 2015 explanation for how he would fight IS, which reminds one of this); his total disconnection from reality; hypocrisy; striking character flaws (even those that have led to actual deaths) or his pandering to worrisome sentiments in the electorate. Heck, we won’t even comment (much) on his systematic (or, rather, mostly completely random) lying – a quick, outdated tally here – and well-established complete disregard for the truth, his fabrications (anyone still remember his claims about people in New Jersey cheering 9/11 and subsequent claim that a media conspiracy is suppressing footage and citing Infowars as supporting source?), complete lack of a bullshit detector and inability to distinguish reliable sources from InfoWars or random, genuine nazis on Twitter. Donald Trump is, in short, incompetent as a president, as well as generally incompetent as a human being (this description is pretty apt). What we will do instead, though, is to give a few, briefly described examples of Trump’s actual promotion of pseudoscience and (some of many) conspiracy theories. Even these will be kept at a superficial level, however: others write about these issues more comprehensively and eloquently than we do.
“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
– Donald Trump making a surprising discovery in 2017.
That said, it should be emphasized that Trump encapsulates, perhaps better than any other politician, the characteristics of a post-truth political rhetoric – the appeal to narratives, emotions and personality, and utter disregard for details, analysis, evidence or accuracy, as well as a tendency to treat facts, evidence and science as inherently political and dismissing those who disagree with him as having ulterior and nefarious motives. His tendency to label facts he doesn’t like “fake news” is an obvious case in point (an early, pre-presidential meltdown example is here), a strategy that not only reflects an attempt to discredit those whose claims he doesn’t like without having to engage with the content of what they say, but also serves to sow confusion about what fake news, and the threats posed by fake news, really are – thereby further enabling propaganda and casual rejection of inconvenient facts as political attacks to be dismissed among his followers. The rage he expressed when he was fact-checked on Twitter is also illustrative in this respect; Donald Trump has his own facts, and if reality doesn’t agree, then favoring reality is a form of bias – Twitter is “silencing” him, he reported (on Twitter).
Nor can we avoid mentioning Donald Trump’s completely uncritical reliance for information on sycophants who tell him exactly what he wants to hear – often by repeating claims Trump himself has made up a bit before. This is, needless to say, not a quality most sane people would be looking for in a president. Trump’s supporters, however, tend to accept any conspiracy theory, no matter how incoherent and wild-eyed, Trump pushes, giving the whole dynamics a cult-like tinge. (Such as when right-wing pastor Curt Landry told his viewers that they should listen to Trump and not medical experts on the COVID-19 outbreak, or Kenneth Copeland telling his fans that the Holy Spirit is guiding “king” (!) Trump through the coronavirus crisis.)
“All I know is what’s on the Internet”
– Donald Trump offering a fitting campaign slogan after being confronted with the fact that his claim that a demonstrator who attempted to storm the stage at a rally in Dayton, Ohio “has ties to ISIS” was based on a fake video.
The Deep State Conspiracy
Trump is setting out to dismantle every single aspect of the government that isn’t solely dependent on the President’s word, which is perhaps not, in itself, lunacy (just scary). His followers tend to cheer him on, because they tend to confuse division of powers and checks on power with deep state conspiracies. That, of course, puts the lunacy on them rather than on Trump. But Trump also seems to share those lunatic conspiracy theories, and that clearly qualifies him for the “deranged conspiracy kook” title.
Among the worst techniques the deep state employs, according to Trump, is the electoral college, which is used by the establishment to steal the election from the people. In 2012 he even called for “revolution in this country” (while under the misapprehension that Romney won the popular vote). Of course, Trump actually believes that he won the popular vote in 2016, too: “[i]n addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”. Trump’s own incoherent claims, attempted policy decisions and ideas about voter fraud, are a topic we need to set aside here, however.
Not all the deep state conspiracies are particularly deep, though. For instance, as Trump sees it, Obama’s deliberate efforts to import drug lords to the US to help the Democratic party, or his efforts to relocate Syrian refugees to Republican states were rather blatant, if not particularly non-ridiculous – though you should probably keep in mind the quality of the minds to which this sort of nonsense is addressed. (Mostly the same audience who’d put faith in his commitment to fight the War on Christmas – the standard for manufactroversies against which all other manufactroversies must be judged – against, apparently, himself.)
Back in the days, Trump was a major promoter of birtherism, relying for instance on an unnamed “extremely credible source” and the ramblings of criminal Joe Arpaio, whom Trump as a president later pardoned, falsely claiming for instance that president Obama spent millions of dollars “to keep this quiet” and that Obama’s grandmother confessed to witnessing his birth in Kenya. Accordingly, Trump declared himself a “proud” birther, noting that he (Trump) “went to a great college, the best” and “was a very good student” and “a very smart guy.” Trump has even claimed that Obama himself “said he was born in Kenya” and promised to write a “very successful book” laying out his birther theory. In 2012 Trump promised to give $5 million to a charitable cause in exchange for documents that would prove that Obama was not born abroad. He did not follow up on this promise either.
Other birther talking points made by Donald Trump include claiming:
– That a Hawaii official was murdered in a birth certificate cover-up
– That Bill Ayers was the real author of Dreams from my father.
– That Obama’s birth name was Barry Soetoro (a common birther idea, which is so stupid that it beggars belief, even when the contrast class is other conspiracy theorists)
– That Obama never attended Columbia.
– That Obama was a “terrible student” when he attended Columbia
– That Obama is secretly a Muslim or sympathetic to radical Islam, and that his administration is secretly running guns through Bengazi to ISIS – Obama is, in short, not only a Muslim but an ISIS sympathizer. Not that many of his fans would ever think that there was a difference.
In fairness, Trump also pushed birther conspiracy theories about Marco Rubio.
Otherwise, Trump’s disregard for the Constitution probably needs a brief mention. According to his son Eric Trump, conservatives can trust Donald Trump to protect constitutional principles, but insofar as he cited his father’s engagement with the imaginary War on Christmas as his sole piece of evidence, few minimally reasonable people would be much swayed (“This is a guy who jumps up and down every time somebody says, ‘holiday tree.’ No, it’s not a holiday tree guys, it’s a Christmas tree,” said Eric Trump, who seems to have as little conception of what the Consitution actually is as his father.) Donald Trump has otherwise vowed to change libel laws to sue journalists who write “horrible” articles about him, urged the Federal Communications Commission to fine a media commentator who criticized him and urged Bill Gates to begin “closing that Internet up in some way” (no, you wouldn’t suspect him of knowing how the Internet works, would you?), while dismissing concerns about free speech rights: “Somebody will say, ‘oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.” In line with a typical fundie wingnut understanding of religious freedom, Trump has also called for a ban on Muslims from entering the country (not only immigration) and government surveillance of mosques, even suggesting that the government should begin tracking all Muslims in databases.
Denialism and general view of science
“Look, having nuclear – my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, okay, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart – you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world – it’s true! – but when you’re a conservative Republican they try – oh, do they do a number – that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune – you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged – but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me – it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right – who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners – now it used to be three, now it’s four – but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years – but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
– Donald Trump apparently establishing his scientific credentials while talking about the Iran nuclear deal (note that the whole thing is a single sentence. Immanuel Kant used long sentences, too.)
Donald Trump vacillates between claiming to know science better than the scientists and rejecting science and dismissing scientists as airheads who promote fake news (which seems to have become the regular conservative platform). He is, however, always ready to take them on (some examples here). So for instance, when he claimed some golf course he owns was also the site of a historic Civil War battle, and real historians told him this was not the case, Trump was ready to dismiss their objections in a manner that … some of us have become rather familiar with: “How would they know that? Were they there?”
“I know much about climate change. I’d be – received environmental awards.”
– Donald Trump on his climate science credentials.
Trump is, predictably, a global warming denialist, and so much so that he at one point even cut a “life-saving” program that helps children specifically because said program mentioned climate change, a term he has banned from being used in his administration. More importantly, his administration has made great efforts to eliminate environmental protections and prevent government-funded agencies from doing any scientific research on climate-related issues and limiting the extent to which government and governmental agencies can rely on, or even refer to, science in their decision making (we’ve already covered Scott Pruitt, and it was Trump who appointed him, together with industry lobbyists like Robert Phalen, who complained that the the air is “too clean” in America, after he fired all the scientists from the EPA).
As for his own views, Trump says of global warming that “a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it” because if you repeat it three times it becomes true.
Apparently, the idea of global warming is merely the result of scientists “having a lot of fun.” On other occasions, the whole “concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”. After all, conspiracy theorists are not deterred by contradictions. What matters is that his opponents worry about global warming, and his opponents include both scientists and the Chinese, in addition to the Democrats. Trump was naturally critical of Obama’s talk about climate change: “he’s talking about climate change. I call it weather. I call it weather. You know, the weather changes [no, of course he doesn’t get the difference – what did you really expect?].” He did admit that “[m]aybe there’s a little bit of change, I don’t happen to believe it’s manmade.” (One might wonder what he thought there might be a little bit of change to insofar as he rejects the distinction between climate and weather, but we are very sure there would be no point in asking.) Then he repeated the oft-repeated utter falsehood that scientists in the 1970s said that the earth was cooling.
He is apparently also an ozone depletion denialist. “If I take hair spray, and if I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer? I say, no way, folks. No way, OK? No way,” said Trump, apparently unaware that gases sprayed inside will eventually get outside or in general how doors and windows work (unless he was planning on storing said hair spray in his lungs).
Trump is, moreover, an asbestos denialist. In his book The Art of the Comeback (which he is, in fairness, unlikely ever to have read), he denied any association between asbestos exposure and cancer, stating instead that the asbestos scare was a conspiracy by politicians afraid of the asbestos-pushing mob. It is notable that Trump was still pushing asbestos denialism in 2018 via his EPA director Scott Pruitt, who announced that the EPA would cease evaluating asbestos hazards in the environment. Meanwhile, Trump does believe, falsely, that wind turbines cause cancer. (Later rants about wind turbines, including wind turbine “fumes”, have been even less coherent).
Trump’s education policies would be worth a separate chapter, starting with him tapping Jerry Falwell jr. for his education panel and appointing anti-public education activist Betsy DeVos as secretary of education.
Antivaxx sympathies
Trump has, on several occasions, expressed sympathies with the antivaccine movement and promoted antivaccine conspiracy theories. His long antivaccine history (up until 2015) is recounted here. Trump has, after casually asserting that “I’ve gotten to be pretty familiar with the subject” (false), claimed that vaccinations lead to autism and, in particular, that autism comes from a “monster shot” – “have you ever seen the size of these inoculations? You can’t pump that much fluid into a little baby’s body,” said Trump, who has evidently never seen the size of the inoculations. He has elsewhere pushed the “too many, too soon” myth, which tends to be the favored gambit among antivaxx activists at present (some of Trump’s defenders seem to have missed that dogwhistle). As he put it in 2007: “When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor. And now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic [it isn’t]. Everybody has their theory. My theory, and I study it [he doesn’t] because I have young children, my theory is the shots. We’ve giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.” And no: he doesn’t seem to have changed his mind on the issue – indeed, his 2014 update was that his theory was “being proven right about massive vaccinations – the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.” He wasn’t, but then again no one has ever really suspected Trump of really having any clear idea about what’s going on, have they? Meanwhile, Trump campaign spokesperson Elizabeth Emken, a former Executive Director of Autism Speaks, decided to brazenly lie about what Trump was saying to try to make it as palatable as possible both to antivaxxers and to those who rightfully view antivaxxers as dangerous conspiracy theorists.
Like most antivaxxers, Trump doesn’t like being called “anti-vaccine”; according to Trump “I’m all for vaccinations, but I think that when you add all of these vaccinations together and then two months later the baby is so different … I’ve known cases,” which reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how evidence works even if his observational claims were true, which we suspect they aren’t. When Fox host Gretchen Carlson intervened as a voice of reason (!) and informed him to say that most physicians disagree with this position, Trump dismissed the idea in an all too familiar fashion: “Yeah, I know they do. … I couldn’t care less”.
Trump’s foundation, which tends to be stingy with donations, did give $10,000 to Jenny McCarthy’s “charity” Generation Rescue. In 2014, Trump asserted that “If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take – AUTISM.” Of course, he hasn’t quite acted on that promise (and probably doesn’t remember giving it), but in 2017 leading antivaccine conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy jr. claimed that Trump had asked him to head a “commission on vaccine safety” (a Trump spokesperson confirmed the meeting – Trump has also met Andrew Wakefield – but denied that anything had been decided with regard to the commission).
Trump’s ebola virus reactions in 2015 did not exactly suggest a mind that understands what goes on around him either. His various hunch-based responses to and (often dangerous) takes on Covid-19 are a chapter in itself that we will have to set aside here. (His son Donald jr.’s take on the pandemic is, if possible, even more deranged).
Trump University and the Trump Network
Trump University was a diploma mill at which students could supposedly earn real degrees (on the topic of real estate) from random people Trump himself had never met in exchange for an exorbitant “tuition”. (The institution was basically run independently of him, though he received a cut for allowing them to use his name). The “institution’s” claim to offer degrees was in violation of New York law, and in 2014, the New York Supreme Court held that Trump was personally liable for running an unlicensed school and making false promises through his “university”. In 2016, Judge Curiel ruled that Trump must face a civil trial for fraud and racketeering under RICO. This is the case in which Trump attacked a “Mexican” judge’s ancestry (the judge is from Indiana) because he didn’t like the ruling.
In 2009, Trump “partnered” with the founders of Ideal Health International, a multilevel marketing business, rebranding their pyramid scheme as The Trump Network. Of course, “partnering” really means allowing them to use his name for a steep fee (and appearing in their promotional materials claiming “that was certain to lift thousands of people into prosperity”). The “business” consisted of selling a urine test device with customized vitamins, which is of course pure quackery, properly described as a “naturopathic weight-loss pyramid scheme”). Yes, they do have a quackwatch entry.
A selection of other conspiracy theories promoted by Trump
In 2015 Trump claimed that Muslims in California knew about the San Bernardino shooters and their plans but did nothing to stop them or turn them in, as part of a general campaign against Muslims in America (“they hate us so much,” says Trump, but apparently we still have to figure out why).
In 2016 he at least expressed some sympathy with conspiracy theories over Justice Scalia’s death, and the same year he also promised to reveal the truth about 9/11 if elected president. He has previously promoted Vince Foster murder conspiracies. Now, it’s not that he necessarily places any credence in this kind of nonsense, but his willingness to pander to the ridiculousness of his fans (like Michael Savage) excellently illustrates his penchant for post-truth techniques and rhetoric. He did seem more committed to his claim that Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, was linked with the CIA and with JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald based on an old photograph that some conspiracy theorists think looks like Rafael. After all, Ted Cruz was at that point a competitor, and the more of a threat you seem to be, the more willing people like Trump will be to believe the most unhinged and unfounded bullshit about you. (After Cruz had dropped out, Trump said he never actually believed the Oswald connection, which may or may not be true but in any case wouldn’t make the accusation any more reasonable.)
On multiple occasions, Trump has entertained audiences with a chain-email-like tale of an American general in the Philippines who supposedly solved the country’s “tremendous” terrorism problem by massacring a large group of Muslims with bullets washed in pigs’ blood. Apparently the story brings forth memories of a time when American leaders were “tough” and not politically correct or concerned with rules against committing war crimes – rules Trump has declared that he wants to change. Of course, to many people the major worry with Trump’s claims might not be the fact that the story isn’t true, but it certainly isn’t. When the story was called into question, Trump urged his supporters to trust his historical expertise, falsely claiming that “the press was saying it was a rumor; it’s not a rumor, it’s a true story.”
He also said that the IRS was auditing him because he is a “strong Christian”. We seriously doubt that Trump believes that he is a strong Christian, but given Trump’s general mindset it is hard to know. (He has at least admitted that his relationship with the evangelical right is based on a deal: he grants them power, and they refrain from criticizing him.)
In 2014 Trump claimed that Net Neutrality was a conspiracy by Obama to attack conservative media. Given our assessment of the extent to which Trump understands net neutrality, we don’t really doubt that he believes this. As a president, one of the first things he did was to ensure that net neutrality was gutted, to the detriment of us all.
There is a 2016 list of (58) conspiracy theories until then pushed by Donald Trump here, though keep in mind that there have been plenty new ones since then. There is an instructive commentary on how Trump’s political persona is founded on conspiracy theories here.
Counterpoints to our assessment
“I’m, like, a smart person”
– Donald Trump explaining why he doesn’t need the daily intelligence briefings his predecessors have received.
On the other hand, Donald Trump has on several occasions assured the world that he is “a very stable genius”. To prove his point, he has repeatedly challenged people to compare IQ tests. So there is that.
Remember also that he is very humble; indeed, he is “much more humble than you would understand.”
Diagnosis: You probably don’t need us for this part.
Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder
Grandiose sense of self-importance
Grandiosity is the defining characteristic of narcissism. More than just arrogance or vanity, grandiosity is an unrealistic sense of superiority. Narcissists believe they are unique or “special” and can only be understood by other special people. What’s more, they are too good for anything average or ordinary. They only want to associate and be associated with other high-status people, places, and things.
Narcissists also believe that they’re better than everyone else and expect recognition as such—even when they’ve done nothing to earn it. They will often exaggerate or outright lie about their achievements and talents. And when they talk about work or relationships, all you’ll hear is how much they contribute, how great they are, and how lucky the people in their lives are to have them. They are the undisputed star and everyone else is at best a bit player.
Lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur
Since reality doesn’t support their grandiose view of themselves, narcissists live in a fantasy world propped up by distortion, self-deception, and magical thinking. They spin self-glorifying fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, attractiveness, and ideal love that make them feel special and in control. These fantasies protect them from feelings of inner emptiness and shame, so facts and opinions that contradict them are ignored or rationalized away. Anything that threatens to burst the fantasy bubble is met with extreme defensiveness and even rage, so those around the narcissist learn to tread carefully around their denial of reality.
Needs constant praise and admiration
A narcissist’s sense of superiority is like a balloon that gradually loses air without a steady stream of applause and recognition to keep it inflated. The occasional compliment is not enough. Narcissists need constant food for their ego, so they surround themselves with people who are willing to cater to their obsessive craving for affirmation. These relationships are very one-sided. It’s all about what the admirer can do for the narcissist, never the other way around. And if there is ever an interruption or diminishment in the admirer’s attention and praise, the narcissist treats it as a betrayal.
Sense of entitlement
Because they consider themselves special, narcissists expect favorable treatment as their due. They truly believe that whatever they want, they should get. They also expect the people around them to automatically comply with their every wish and whim. That is their only value. If you don’t anticipate and meet their every need, then you’re useless. And if you have the nerve to defy their will or “selfishly” ask for something in return, prepare yourself for aggression, outrage, or the cold shoulder.
Exploits others without guilt or shame
Narcissists never develop the ability to identify with the feelings of others—to put themselves in other people’s shoes. In other words, they lack empathy. In many ways, they view the people in their lives as objects—there to serve their needs. As a consequence, they don’t think twice about taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends. Sometimes this interpersonal exploitation is malicious, but often it is simply oblivious. Narcissists simply don’t think about how their behavior affects others. And if you point it out, they still won’t truly get it. The only thing they understand is their own needs.
Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others
Narcissists feel threatened whenever they encounter someone who appears to have something they lack—especially those who are confident and popular. They’re also threatened by people who don’t kowtow to them or who challenge them in any way. Their defense mechanism is contempt. The only way to neutralize the threat and prop up their own sagging ego is to put those people down. They may do it in a patronizing or dismissive way as if to demonstrate how little the other person means to them. Or they may go on the attack with insults, name-calling, bullying, and threats to force the other person back into line.
Psychiatrists meet at Yale, claim President Trump is mentally ill
connecticut.news
NEW HAVEN –
A group of psychiatrists meeting at Yale Thursday says President Donald Trump is so mentally unstable that he’s unfit for office.
The bold, controversial claim is based on the group’s belief that Trump has more than one mental disorder — including antisocial personality disorder and extreme narcissism.
The doctors are not all from Yale. They came from around the country.
“We have an ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump’s dangerous mental illness,” said Dr. John Gartner.
The group has already collected 41,000 signatures calling for President Trump’s removal.
They face some criticism from other experts who say it is dangerous to diagnose someone without meeting or treating them in person.
The psychiatrists at the meeting disagree. They argue that Trump has made so many public statements, gone on so many Twitter rants and voiced so many conspiracy theories that the diagnosis is obvious.
The Coming and Going of an Ice Age
American Museum of Natural History
Certain landscapes in Canada, the northern U.S., and northern Europe are bona fide strange: Lone boulders squat on grassy, gentle hills. Rocks are raked with deep scratches. Rectilinear piles of gravel are aligned almost too perfectly in a single direction. Swiss geologist Louis Agassiz was among the first to realize that ancient, monstrous sheets of ice spanning entire continents produced these odd geological leftovers. In 1837, such an idea was highly controversial.
However, 150 years of follow-up research is finding that Earth’s climate has actually undergone many such glaciations in the last 2.5 billion years. In the past two million years alone, Earth has experienced around 20 ice ages–cycles of advance and retreat of large continental ice sheets. Currently, Earth is between glaciations. If nature has its druthers, we’re probably not due for the next big chill for tens of thousands of years. How exactly our anthropogenically influenced global warming is forcing large-scale natural cycles, however, remains to be seen.
Plotting the Pleistocene
The glaciation that scientists in the 1800s noticed was our most recent one. At the maximum extent of its ice sheets 21,000 years ago, Earth’s air temperature was, on average, about 4 degrees C cooler than today. Around 30 percent of the land surface was covered with ice up to 3 km thick. The sheets carved the basins of the Great Lakes and bulldozed the gravelly ridge we now call Long Island.
The event took place in the Pleistocene Epoch, which began about two million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago. For roughly the first half of it, every 40,000 years or so contained a single cycle of prolonged, extensive glaciation, then a shorter warm period. For roughly the last half, each cycle took 100,000 years.
This timing became clear only in the early 1970s. That’s when researchers working in the Indian Ocean drilled the first cores of deep-sea sediment deposited throughout the entire Pleistocene up until current times. By measuring oxygen-isotope ratios in the carbonate “rich shells of tiny marine organisms buried in the strata of these cores, scientists estimated the temperature of the ocean’s surface when these organisms lived. Using computer models, scientists were able to infer average global temperatures during the entire Pleistocene from this data.
Milankovitch Cycles
The effort to explain how glaciers retreat and advance began decades before scientists studied these cores, however. The Indian Ocean work simply confirmed long-debated speculation that astronomical cycles may have timed the Pleistocene’s glaciation.
Cyclical changes in the way Earth orbits the Sun and spins in space were worked out by Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch in the early 20th century, based on calculations made by two earlier scientists. Three changes were scrutinized:
Orbit: Earth orbits the Sun in a slightly elliptical path. Sometimes, the orbit is more elliptical than at other times. The shape of the orbit changes the maximum distance of Earth from the Sun, and with it the amount of solar radiation Earth receives. The transition from “most circular” to “most elliptical” and back again takes about 96,000 years.
Tilt: The tilt of Earth’s axis of rotation also varies. It shifts between 21.5 and 24.5 degrees in a cycle of 41,000 years. The tilt affects where the globe is receiving the most solar radiation. During times of more tilt, higher latitudes receive more sunlight.
Precession: Earth doesn’t rotate perfectly around its axis. Instead, it wobbles like a top, a motion called precession. Precession influences the amount of solar radiation striking a given location for a given season. This causes the difference of temperature between seasons to be either large or small. For example, sometimes winters will be extra frigid and summers extra warm (large difference). Other times, mild winters are followed by cool summers (small difference). Precession operates on a 21,000-year cycle.
Milankovitch reasoned that these cycles could work together to vary the amount of sunlight a given place on Earth receives by 20 percent, especially at high latitudes. That could nudge the advance of the polar ice caps: Less radiation at the poles would mean more snow would survive until the next season. Snow would therefore increasingly accumulate into glacier ice.
Milankovitch cycles explain much about how and when climate changes have occurred in the last 2.5 billion years. But they’re not the whole story. The magnitude of large-scale climate change is influenced by many Earth-bound factors. Among them are changes in topography and plate motions, the hydrosphere, the biosphere, and the atmosphere. The concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases is important: The higher the concentration, the more these gases trap escaping radiation close to Earth’s surface. Ice-core analysis indicates that levels of greenhouse gases were lower during glacial periods than interglacials.
Welcome to the Holocene
After continental glaciation reached its largest extent 21,000 years ago, the Pleistocene began to warm. Prodded by Milankovitch cycles, the ice sheets shrank. After about 11,000 years ago, humans began to cultivate food, domesticate animals, and build cities in the continuously stable climate. Enter a new interglacial period, and with it, a new epoch: The Holocene. This, as they say, is our time.
“There’s no danger of an ice age popping in now,” says Penn State glaciologist Richard Alley. “I believe that most people studying this field think that, without any human intervention,…a new ice age should arrive 20,000 years into the future.” Likewise, it’s generally accepted that our civilization’s increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases could make it tougher for that ice age to get going. However, William Ruddiman, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, is one scientist that suggests that the transition to the next glaciation should have already begun. Ruddiman’s research says that early, pre-industrial societies generated enough greenhouse gases to actually stop a current-day ice age from happening altogether. But whether nature or humans avoided an ice age recently, we still have 20,000 years or more to wait before the next one.
“It’s a fascinating idea,” says Alley, “but it doesn’t mean anything for the future. If you’re concerned about staving off a new ice age, the wise thing would be to save your fossil fuels for 20,000 years from now and burn them then. But nobody has 20,000-year planning in their blood
The Coming of a New Ice Age
Climate Change
by Gerald E. Marsh
Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the day, the real danger facing humanity is not global warming, but more likely the coming of a new Ice Age.
What we live in now is known as an interglacial, a relatively brief period between long ice ages. Unfortunately for us, most interglacial periods last only about ten thousand years, and that is how long it has been since the last Ice Age ended.
How much longer do we have before the ice begins to spread across the Earth’s surface? Less than a hundred years or several hundred? We simply don’t know.
Even if all the temperature increase over the last century is attributable to human activities, the rise has been relatively modest one of a little over one degree Fahrenheit — an increase well within natural variations over the last few thousand years.
While an enduring temperature rise of the same size over the next century would cause humanity to make some changes, it would undoubtedly be within our ability to adapt.
Entering a new ice age, however, would be catastrophic for the continuation of modern civilization.
One has only to look at maps showing the extent of the great ice sheets during the last Ice Age to understand what a return to ice age conditions would mean. Much of Europe and North-America were covered by thick ice, thousands of feet thick in many areas and the world as a whole was much colder.
The last “little” Ice Age started as early as the 14th century when the Baltic Sea froze over followed by unseasonable cold, storms, and a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea. That was followed by the extinction of the Norse settlements in Greenland and the loss of grain cultivation in Iceland. Harvests were even severely reduced in Scandinavia And this was a mere foreshadowing of the miseries to come.
By the mid-17th century, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, wiping out farms and entire villages. In England, the River Thames froze during the winter, and in 1780, New York Harbor froze. Had this continued, history would have been very different. Luckily, the decrease in solar activity that caused the Little Ice Age ended and the result was the continued flowering of modern civilization.
There were very few Ice Ages until about 2.75 million years ago when Earth’s climate entered an unusual period of instability. Starting about a million years ago cycles of ice ages lasting about 100,000 years, separated by relatively short interglacial perioods, like the one we are now living in became the rule. Before the onset of the Ice Ages, and for most of the Earth’s history, it was far warmer than it is today.
Indeed, the Sun has been getting brighter over the whole history of the Earth and large land plants have flourished. Both of these had the effect of dropping carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to the lowest level in Earth’s long history.
Five hundred million years ago, carbon dioxide concentrations were over 13 times current levels; and not until about 20 million years ago did carbon dioxide levels drop to a little less than twice what they are today.
It is possible that moderately increased carbon dioxide concentrations could extend the current interglacial period. But we have not reached the level required yet, nor do we know the optimum level to reach.
So, rather than call for arbitrary limits on carbon dioxide emissions, perhaps the best thing the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the climatology community in general could do is spend their efforts on determining the optimal range of carbon dioxide needed to extend the current interglacial period indefinitely.
NASA has predicted that the solar cycle peaking in 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries and should cause a very significant cooling of Earth’s climate. Will this be the trigger that initiates a new Ice Age?
We ought to carefully consider this possibility before we wipe out our current prosperity by spending trillions of dollars to combat a perceived global warming threat that may well prove to be only a will-o-the-wisp.
Coronavirus pandemic may not have started in China, experts say
July 6, 2020
by Sarah Knapton
Sydney Morning Hearald smh.com
London: Coronavirus may have lain dormant across the world and emerged when environmental conditions were right for it to thrive – rather than starting in China, an Oxford University expert believes.
Dr Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, and visiting professor at Britain’s Newcastle University, says there is growing evidence the virus was elsewhere before it emerged in Asia.
Last week, Spanish virologists announced they had found traces of COVID-19 in samples of waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the disease was seen in China. Italian scientists have also found evidence of the virus in sewage samples in Milan and Turin, from mid-December, many weeks before the first case was detected, while experts have found traces in Brazil from November
Dr Jefferson believes that many viruses lie dormant throughout the globe and emerge when conditions are favourable. It also means they can vanish as quickly as they arrive.
“Where did SARS-1 go? It’s just disappeared,” he said. “So we have to think about these things. We need to start researching the ecology of the virus, understanding how it originates and mutates. We may be seeing a dormant virus that has been activated by environmental conditions. There was a case in the Falkland Islands in early February. Now, where did that come from?
“There was a cruise ship that went from South Georgia to Buenos Aires and the passengers were screened and then on day eight… they got the first case. Was it in prepared food that was defrosted and activated?
Exploring why so many outbreaks happen at food factories and meat-packing plants could uncover major new transmission routes.
“Strange things like this happened with Spanish Flu. In 1918, around 30 per cent of the population of Western Samoa died of Spanish Flu and they hadn’t had any communication with the outside world.
“The explanation could only be that these agents don’t come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should look for.”
Dr Jefferson believes that the virus may be transmitted through the sewerage system or shared toilets, not just through droplets expelled by talking, coughing and sneezing.
Jefferson and Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, have called for an in-depth investigation similar to that carried out by John Snow in 1854, which showed cholera was spreading in London from an infected well in Soho.
The Tonnies slaughterhouse in Germany was the centre of a major outbreak last month, and in May, Melbourne’s Cedar Meats also recorded a cluster of cases.
“We’re doing a living review, extracting environmental conditions, the ecology of these viruses which has been grossly understudied,” said Dr Jefferson.
“There is quite a lot of evidence of huge amounts of the virus in sewage all over the place, and an increasing amount of evidence there is faecal transmission. There is a high concentration where sewage is four degrees, which is the ideal temperature for it to be stabled and presumably activated. And meat-packing plants are often at four degrees.
Exploring why so many outbreaks happen at food factories and meat-packing plants could uncover major new transmission routes, they believe. It may be shared toilets coupled with cool conditions that allow the virus to thrive.
“These meat-packing clusters and isolated outbreaks don’t fit with respiratory theory, they fit with people who haven’t washed their hands properly
“These outbreaks need to be investigated properly. You question people, and you construct hypotheses that fit the facts, not the other way around.”
NYPD’S Culture of impunity sees an officer repeatedly accused of physical and sexual abuse and rising through the ranks.
July 6, 2020
by Tana Ganeva
The Intercept
On a late January morning in 2015, Carletto Allen was sitting in a car parked in front of his house in the Bronx, when two men ran up to the car, guns drawn.
Allen thought he was being robbed, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit he filed in 2016. He tried to lock the door,a but one of the men burst in and grabbed him, threw him on the ground, and jumped on top of him. A second man told Allen that they’d been looking for him, punched him in the face, and also jumped on his back. “I don’t have any money, don’t shoot,” Allen recalled saying, right before a car with police sirens pulled up. One of the men on top of him yelled, “He’s resisting!” and three more officers jumped on top of him. He went home that night with a broken hand.
“I felt someone punching me in my upper torso and face,” Allen claimed in the lawsuit. He added that he tried to yell for help but was rapidly losing consciousness. “I felt a blow to the back of my head and went out.”
The plainclothes officers who Allen said jumped him — police officer Jozsef A. Tass and Jeremiah Williams, a special detective with the 47th Precinct in the Bronx — did not identify themselves as belonging to the New York Police Department, according to his lawsuit, which was dismissed last year after a jury found that Allen, who did not have legal representation, could not prove the officers’ use of excessive force. According to reporting by The Appeal, Williams testified that he pursued Allen because he saw him smoking a “marijuana cigarette,” and that he found a gun on Allen, a claim Allen pleaded guilty to in state court and later disputed in federal court. Allen was later caught up in a hugely controversial mass sweep, and Williams testified against him at trial.
In the wake of sustained protests against police brutality in recent weeks, the NYPD announced that the particularly violent plainclothes unit has been disbanded. It was one of a series of reforms promised by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who have also floated ideas such as changing police priorities, reallocating funding, and speeding up disciplinary procedures in cases in which officers cause “substantial injury to a civilian.”
“You don’t need to protest, you won,” Cuomo told Black Lives Matter protesters on June 14. “You accomplished your goal. Society says you’re right, the police need systemic reform.”
Activists are wary that the promised reforms will do anything to address the NYPD’s culture of impunity. The officers from the plainclothes unit, for example, were merely reshuffled into other jobs, a move one activist recently described to The Intercept as a “shell game.” On Tuesday, New York’s City Council passed a budget that includes shifting $1 billion away from the NYPD, a move protesters and progressive lawmakers say is a cosmetic change that will do little to change the nature of policing.
“The reforms cooked up by the mayor and governor aren’t going to fix this,” said Alex S. Vitale, a professor of sociology and the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. “Both Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo, in particular, have cozied up to police and correctional unions across the state. Meanwhile, de Blasio is deferential towards them. … He could order the commissioner to clean house. To fire certain officers. He just doesn’t do it
The NYPD’s Risk Management Bureau, which is supposed to identify problem officers, ends up protecting bad cops, said Vitale, who is the author of “The End of Policing.” “It’s damage control. And there are well-documented cases of officers who are seriously out of control. Firing those officers is consistent with the defund movement. That’s not saying we need no officers; that’s saying, fewer officers and let’s start with the worst ones.”
Based on a history of official complaints and lawsuits naming him, Williams may be a prime example of where to start. Over the course of Williams’s 18-year career with the NYPD, 60 complaints, involving 21 separate incidents, were lodged against him with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency that investigates NYPD misconduct complaints, according to records obtained via a public records request following the recent repeal of 50-a, a controversial law that shielded officers’ misconduct records from public view. For comparison, 41 percent of current NYPD service members have never had a complaint lodged against them, according to the CCRB’s 2018 annual report. Twenty-one percent have had only one complaint, 3 percent have had five, while 9 percent have more than six.
Between 2008 and 2018, there were 11 lawsuits that named Williams (usually including other officers) alleging police misconduct like excessive force and wrongful arrest, according to CAPstat, a project that tracks NYPD misconduct claims. Williams has been accused four times of anally penetrating a suspect, according to CCRB complaints reviewed by The Intercept, as well as a federal lawsuit reported on by The Appeal. In a 2017 trial, Allen’s attorneys asked Williams if that conduct had earned him the nickname of “assman” in the neighborhood. Williams admitted that people call him “assman,” but disputed the moniker’s origins, The Appeal reported, citing court records. As recently as last year, he was accused in a CCRB complaint of using a chokehold during an arrest; that practice has been under intense scrutiny in New York since the 2014 killing of Eric Garner, yet it was not until last month that Cuomo signed a bill banning it.
The chokehold complaint, like 31 of the 60 allegations against Williams, were found by the CCRB to be “unsubstantiated,” which means that the board did not have enough evidence to reach a definitive conclusion, either way, according to the CCRB website. Only two allegations, stemming from the same complaint, meanwhile, were found to be “unfounded,” meaning the CCRB had enough evidence to say they were baseless. Williams was exonerated of three complaints, while five were found to be substantiated, including one related to a strip search. In 18 of the complaints, the complainant or the victim are listed as being “uncooperative,” which means that, after filing an initial complaint, the CCRB lost contact with the complainant or the complainant did not want to provide a signed statement.
For almost 20 years, Williams and other officers of the 47th Precinct have been accused of inflicting abuses on people in the Bronx, according to the records reviewed by The Intercept. But even the egregious actions Williams has been accused of may not fall under the vague “serious bodily injury” standard that de Blasio has identified as a target to crack down against.
But even if — a big if — de Blasio and Cuomo’s reforms get the most abusive officers fired, it’s not clear how they’d change the larger culture that enabled the abuses in the first place. In the complaints against him, it appears that Williams never acted alone, as other officers are also named. His partners and other officers on the scene have been accused of engaging in abuses like restricting a suspect’s breathing, as laid out in a 2019 CCRB complaint that was never resolved because the complainant did not cooperate. When Allen’s hand was broken during his 2015 arrest, he showed an officer at the precinct his protruding bone, according to his lawsuit; yet, rather than discipline Williams for the unruly arrest, the department awarded Williams an $11,000 raise soon after. Of the 11 lawsuits against Williams, the two that have been publicly settled cost the city $95,000; the remaining nine are either still pending or have an “unknown” outcome, according to CAPstat. Despite having so many civilian complaints lodged against him, Williams has been rewarded within the NYPD: Between 2008 and 2018, he got 13 raises, and was promoted from police officer to detective, joining the plainclothes unit.
Asked about Williams’s record, the NYPD referenced New York’s recent appeal 50-a. “The Department is committed to transparency and long advocated for reforms to 50-a. Since the law was repealed just last week, the Department has received a significant number of requests for disciplinary records that it had been prohibited from disclosing,” the NYPD said in a statement. The department declined to make Williams available for comment, and De Blasio’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The complaints and lawsuits against Williams allege that he put his hands inside people’s anuses four times. This behavior, ostensibly used to search for contraband, is explicitly prohibited by the NYPD, whose patrol guide section on strip searches prohibits body cavity searches in an all-caps note, unless the officer sees a foreign object and obtains a search warrant.
In one 2007 complaint to the CCRB, which the board could not reach a conclusion on, a complainant described the incident by saying he felt “raped.” Indeed, the FBI defines rape as “the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
The most recent of these complaints occurred just last September, when a Bronx man was approached by officers because they thought he had a bag of drugs, according to a complaint filed with the CCRB. According to Williams, who filed a report about the arrest with internal affairs, there was a brief struggle, during which an officer was pushed back and the man was arrested. The complainant claimed that Williams probed his anus during that arrest. The CCRB complaint mentions that the complainant’s sister went to the station house to complain about Williams, who she said held her brother on the ground by the throat, while another officer pressed his weight against his back. She said a “fat white cop” touched her breast and then she was arrested for “inciting a riot.” The CCRB did not reach a conclusion on the complaint, due to a lack of cooperation.
Diane Goldstein, a retired sergeant with close to 22 years with the Redondo Beach Police Department in southern California and member of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, said that cavity searches are “never” appropriate in the field. “You would never be allowed to conduct a body cavity search for drugs out in the field,” Goldstein said. “No gray area.”
The complaint stemmed from the 2015 arrest of Cameron Hanson, who was arrested along with his girlfriend after a fight. Hanson said in a lawsuit that when he was booked into jail, he was searched, and no drugs or weapons were found on him. Later, according to the complaint, a white detective came into his cell and said, “Whoever has it, give it up.” The detective tugged on the waistband of Hanson’s sweatpants, peering inside his pants. Shocked by the detective’s behavior, Hanson leaned away. The officer slammed him face down on the floor and ripped off his pants, underwear, and shirt, leaving him fully naked, while kicking and punching him, according to the lawsuit. Close to 10 officers joined in, and Williams and five others are named in the complaint.
Hanson was shackled. The officers claimed to have found marijuana on him, and he was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana, harassment, and attempted assault. All the charges were eventually dismissed. Hanson’s lawsuit against the city was dismissed in December 2018 after the parties reached an out-of-court settlement.
Other complaints about Williams accuse him of framing a civilian and using excessive force.
For example, Shawn Wint sued Williams and Sgt. Eric Florio for civil rights violations, alleging they stopped and searched Wint and found no drugs or weapons, so they cast around and found a cigarette butt on the ground. They claimed that it was weed and that it belonged to Wint, using it as a pretext to arrest him, Wint claimed in a lawsuit. They had mistaken him for a neighborhood man nicknamed “Sho,” who they thought had information about crime in the area. Once Wint was fingerprinted a second time, the officers realized he wasn’t “Sho” and told him so, according to the lawsuit. To paper over their error, they charged Wint with unlawful possession of marijuana. He had to appear in court eight times before the charges were dropped. Wint’s civil rights lawsuit is pending, with the defendants denying the substantive charges.
In a complaint stemming from a May 2019 incident, a man claimed that, after walking away from Williams and his partner, Williams said, “Why is that guy always walking away from us. The next time I catch him I’m going to slam him on the ground and plant everything I find on him.” The CCRB ruled this complaint “unsubstantiated” due to not having enough evidence.
Williams and other officers were accused of physical abuse against teenagers in a May 2007 complaint, also found to be “unsubstantiated.” The teens alleged that as they tried to call passersby for help during their arrest, an officer slammed one of their heads into the police car window so hard it shattered the glass, leaving a gash on his face.
Even with de Blasio and Cuomo’s promised reforms, Vitale is not optimistic the NYPD’s abuses will be curbed.
“Throughout their tenures both de Blasio and Cuomo have shielded police from accountability,” Vitale said. “While their recent support for repealing 50-A are laudable, the reforms they are currently proposing are unlikely to make a major dent in the culture of impunity at the NYPD.”