Michelle Alexander wrote a scathing article in The Nation entitled “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.”

The author of The New Jim Crow writes Bill Clinton’s crime bill and welfare reform, which Hillary Clinton enthusiastically supported, “decimated black America.”

Bill Clinton took Reagan’s war on crime and drugs and “escalated it beyond what many conservatives had imagined possible,” bringing the American incarceration rate to the highest in the world.

“He supported the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine,” which willfully targeted black drug users, as well as other policies that contributed to the massively disproportionate imprisonment of blacks:

Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the level in 1983.      

Alexander argues that in her support for the 1994 crime bill, Hillary Clinton

…used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. “They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” she said. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”

She also writes Hillary Clinton “ardently supported then and characterized as a success as recently as 2008” Bill Clinton’s welfare “reform,” which eliminated the federal safety net, placed strict limitations on state welfare programs, and slashed billions from public welfare spending. This increased American poverty, doubling extreme poverty.

In addition, financial aid to college students with drug convictions, and to inmates working on a degree in prison, ended. The Clinton administration enacted “a lifetime ban on welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense.”

Perhaps most alarming, [Bill] Clinton also made it easier for public-housing agencies to deny shelter to anyone with any sort of criminal history (even an arrest without conviction) and championed the “one strike and you’re out” initiative, which meant that families could be evicted from public housing because one member (or a guest) had committed even a minor offense. People released from prison with no money, no job, and nowhere to go could no longer return home to their loved ones living in federally assisted housing without placing the entire family at risk of eviction.

This is why Hillary Clinton not only does not deserve the black vote, she does not deserve the vote of any person helping decide the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party.

Saying “this was Bill Clinton’s doing, not Hillary’s” is thoughtless, a standard never applied to others: do you not condemn a Republican who supports discriminatory legislation even if he or she was not the one to propose, write, vote on, or sign it?

Adding to Alexander’s condemnation is far from difficult. In terms of race, during the 2008 campaign against Barack Obama, Clinton attempted to lock in the white vote by portraying Obama as un-American and flirting with racial stereotypes, as James Rucker documents. She also currently accepts money from private prison lobbyists, which profit off mass incarceration, while promising to end mass incarceration.

Regarding gay rights issues, a liberal should denounce Clinton’s support for anti-gay rights legislation such as the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the 1990s, and her opposition to gay marriage until 2013.

Then there’s her ties to Wall Street and corporate power. She spent 6 years on the Walmart board of directors, where she went along with union busting to protect the corporation. Jacobin Magazine writes that

as Clinton left her secretary post in January 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek commented that “Clinton turned the State Department into a machine for promoting U.S. business.” She sought “to install herself as the government’s highest-ranking business lobbyist,” directly negotiating lucrative overseas contracts for US corporations like Boeing, Lockheed, and General Electric. Not surprisingly, “Clinton’s corporate cheerleading has won praise from business groups.”

Indeed, “her State Department collaborated with subcontractors for Hanes, Levi’s, and Fruit of the Loom to oppose a minimum-wage increase for Haitian workers.”

Clinton is mainly funded today by Wall Street banks and corporations:

Clinton’s top 10 cumulative donors between between 1999 and 2016 were, in descending order, Citigroup ($782,327), Goldman Sachs ($711,490), DLA Piper ($628,030), JPMorgan Chase ($620,919), EMILY’s List ($605,174) Morgan Stanley ($543,065), Time Warner ($411,296), Skadden Arps ($406,640), Lehman Brothers ($362,853) and Cablevision Systems ($336,288).

In a recent debate, Clinton promised to take on this entities, and challenged anyone to “name one” time Wall Street and corporations influenced her political positions. Yet this is something U.S. senators talked about openly while Clinton was a senator.

Elizabeth Warren said in a 2004 interview that Clinton, as first lady, helped her defeat a bill that would tighten bankruptcy laws that would “disproportionately hurt single mothers.” But after receiving money from interest groups that supported similar legislation, Clinton, as a senator, also supported it.

Greenpeace, criticizing the millions the fossil fuel industry poured into Super PACs backing Clinton, lists examples of Clinton’s cozy relationship with corporate America, such as:

3 Enbridge lobbyists contributed to HRC’s campaign. While she was Secretary of State, Clinton signed off on the Enbridge pipeline.

Hess lobbyists from Forbes-Tate (Daniel Tate, Jeffrey Forbes, George Cooper and Rachel Miller) all gave maximum allowable contributions to HRC’s campaign. The firm lobbied on behalf of the Hess Corporation, on crude by rail and crude exports. Hess owns rail cars that came off the tracks and caught fire after a BNSF train derailed in North Dakota in early May, 2015. Hess is the third largest oil producer in North Dakota. Lynn Helms, a former Hess executive served as ND’s top oil and gas regulator at the Department of Mineral Resources between 2005 and 2013. When Clinton came out in opposition to KXL she started talking about how fixing train tracks would create jobs.

Fracking company and gas industry trade association lobbyists have also contributed to Clinton’s campaign, including Former Rep. Martin Frost (D-TX), who lobbied for the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, and Martin Durbin of the American Natural Gas Association (now merged and part of the American Petroleum Institute – API), the nephew of Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL).  Another donor is Elizabeth Gore, a lobbyist for WPX energy (fracking).  A lobbyist for FTI Consulting, creator of an industry front group called Energy In Depth, also contributed to Clinton;s campaign. Although Clinton has said she would require FERC to consider climate change before granting any new gas pipeline permits, she recently told activists she would not ban fracking as president, and has a pro-fracking track record which has been well-documented by numerous groups, including pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record.

Greenpeace also wondered if Clinton could fully support an investigation into Exxon while taking money from their lobbyists:

Although Clinton has said she supports an investigation into Exxon’s early concealment of what it knew about the risks of climate change and subsequent financing of climate denier front groups, her campaign has taken contributions from at least 7 lobbyists working for Exxon, including one in-house lobbyist – Theresa Fariello – who has bundled and additional $21,200 for the campaign.

The Huffington Post in July 2015 ran a piece entitled, “Hillary Clinton’s Biggest Campaign Contributors Are Fossil Fuel Lobbyists.”

Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Exxon lobbied the State Department and donated millions to the Clinton Foundation in the year before a decision was made on the Alberta Clipper pipeline. The State Department, to no one’s surprise, approved a permit for it. Clinton supported fracking around the globe.

As Secretary of State, Clinton also supported government policies that benefited pharmaceutical, energy, and telecommunication companies, who later contributed huge sums to the Clinton Foundation. See for example “Hillary Clinton Acted on Concerns of Bill Clinton’s Foundation Donors.”

After Secretary Clinton helped sign over 20% of uranium production capacity in the U.S. to Russia by approving the Russian takeover of the company Uranium One, the company donated millions to the Clinton Foundation, as reported by The New York Times. The Foundation did not disclose these donations–like many others. But as the Huffington Post reports, “According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of public and foundation disclosures, at least sixty companies that lobbied the State Department during Hillary Clinton’s tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation.”

An International Business Times investigation found that:

Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation…nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration.

After her efforts at health care reform were defeated in the 1990s, Clinton sunk deep into the pockets of the health insurance giants, including those she previously stood against. In the 2005-2006 election cycle, Clinton received over $854,000 from the healthcare industry, more than any other political candidate save one. Much of the money came from the same firms that once battled her. See The New York Times’ “Once an Enemy, Health Industry Warms to Clinton.”

In the first 3 months of 2007, she earned nearly $849,000 from the healthcare industry, more than any other candidate. For backing off health care reform, Clinton was rewarded, and praised by her former corporate enemies as “extremely knowledgeable” and a “leader” on the health care issue.

In 2015, Clinton took a stand for insurance companies when she condemned single-payer health care, a system in which taxes cover citizen medical costs, cutting out the need for insurance giants.

Then there’s Clinton’s disastrous foreign policy positions.

She strongly supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, led the charge for military intervention in Libya, pledged to expand the U.S. military presence surrounding Iran, supported increased American involvement in Afghanistan and Syria, called for more arms to Israel, supported Obama’s brutal drone warfare in the Middle East and Africa that kills far more innocent people than terror suspects, vowed to expand the war against ISIS, and refused to pressure the Honduran military to restore the country’s democratically-elected president to power after a coup (which led to domestic terrorism, widespread poverty, drug trafficking, and a right-wing dictatorship, which she later supported).

Again, she apologized for mistakes like Iraq. Yet how many people have to die before a person who supported deadly policies is disqualified from the White House? Clinton wishes to continue the endless war that has killed over a million people since 2001 and only worked to breed new terror groups and hugely increase terror attacks worldwide. Ralph Nader rightly called Clinton “a corporatist and a militarist.”

Finally, Clinton’s scandals speak of either her utter incompetence or a startling willingness to lie.

Leave aside controversies such as the young woman in 2008 who claimed Clinton’s campaign forced her into offering a planted question at an event, or the Whitewater Scandal of old (Clinton and her husband were part owners of a sketchy real estate development firm that saw its other owners, including a couple judges and a governor, jailed for fraud and taking bribes; accusations of the same against the Clintons went nowhere).

Focus on what we know of Clinton, and don’t reject these concerns because Republicans and conservatives also raise them. Do you believe there’s never been a corrupt Democratic politician? You haven’t read enough American history.  

It is known that the State Department edited CIA reports by deleting mentions of warnings of terrorist threats to Benghazi. Clinton, the head of the State Department, denied knowledge of the warnings.

Clinton also denied knowing of the State Department order for U.S. diplomats to spy on U.N. officials in 2010.

Clinton claimed there was “no classified material” on her private email server, a claim almost surely a lie. She claims top secret information was only labeled as such after she handled it; the FBI is investigating. Clinton also destroyed tens of thousands of “personal” emails before they could be brought to light through investigations, while at the same time saying she was trying to be as “transparent” as possible.   

When Clinton was senator of New York, according to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, two veterans were “subjected to illegal drug experimentation by employees of the Stratton Veterans Affairs Center in Albany” and Clinton’s “personal knowledge did not translate into action…she did nothing about the systematic abuse and murder of veterans…” This was Clinton’s “pattern of studious avoidance of principled action in the face of serious government misconduct.”

These things indicate either Clinton cannot effectively oversee the governmental bodies she is supposed to, or isn’t afraid to deceive the citizenry. Scott Pelley of CBS asked Clinton, “Have you always told the truth?” She replied, “I’ve always tried to. Always.”

Clinton frequently changes her position on important issues like immigration, gay marriage, NAFTA, the TPP, mass incarceration, gun control, oil drilling, and so on, allegedly based on new information. Yet, as a Politico correspondent wondered, “What was the new information?” He rightly mocks the notion these issues were turned on their heads by “shocking new findings,” noting opponents of Clinton’s (conservative-leaning) stances had the information available to them, so why wouldn’t someone with “some of the best researchers at her disposal—a private staff, a campaign staff, the wizards at the State Department staff, a senatorial staff, the busy beavers from the Congressional Research Service and the White House staff.” In literally the same breath Clinton speaks of absorbing new knowledge and changing her view accordingly, she insists she has “been very consistent” and “held to the same values and principles” her “entire life,” a blatant contradiction.

Clinton even called herself a “moderate and center” politician, both before and after calling herself a “progressive.”  

A liberal–or even a moderate–has little business voting for a candidate such as this.

[Update, 11/2/2017: According to Donna Brazile, Democratic National Committee chair, Clinton loaned a broke DNC millions in exchange for “control” over it almost a year before her nomination (the DNC is supposed to be neutral until after the nomination). According to Brazile, Clinton had control over DNC strategy, money, staff, communications, mailing, and so forth. This would have allowed Clinton to avoid donation limits to campaigns (instead fundraising through the party and then laundering it to her campaign, just as the Sanders campaign said) and influence the DNC’s work in each state in a way that favored her and hurt Sanders. This would explain DNC efforts to elevate Clinton over her rival. Brazile is actually the one who leaked debate questions to Clinton during the campaign. 

The next day, NBC News published the agreement Brazile referred to, supporting her claim while adding some clarifications. “The arrangement pertained to only the general election, not the primary season, and it left open the possibility that it would sign similar agreements with other candidates. Still, it clearly allowed the Clinton campaign to influence DNC decisions made during an active primary, even if intended for preparations later [for the general election].” During the primary season, the Clinton campaign appeared to have “oversight over how its money was spent” (“joint authority,” to quote the agreement), and the DNC agreed to find a communications director “acceptable to HFA [Hillary For America]” by September 2015, long before Clinton was nominated.]

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The Flat Earth Society declares, “Throughout the years it has become a duty of each Flat Earth Society member to meet the common Round Earther in the open, avowed, and unyielding rebellion; to declare that his reign of error and confusion is over; and that henceforth, like a falling dynasty, he must shrink and disappear, leaving the throne and the kingdom of science and philosophy to those awakening intellects whose numbers are constantly increasing, and whose march is rapid and irresistible.” Can their claim, that the world is flat, possibly stand up to critical thinking?   

* * *

Sources used in this discussion include the Plane Truth, Atlantean Conspiracy, and Flat Earth Society websites.

Flat Earthers believe that land and water rest on a circular disc surrounded by a 150-200 foot wall of ice, therefore no ships fall off the edge (this is Antarctica, no longer a solid mass on the pole of a sphere, but rather a ring around a 2-D plane).

Abandoning the idea of a heliocentric solar system, the sun and moon are said to orbit above the disc.

According to the Flat Earth Society, the distance across, or diameter, of the flat earth is 25,000 miles (at least, that is the “known world,” the “area of land which the light of the sun affects,” but the earth is “physically much larger”).

One will note 25,000 miles also happens to be the circumference of the globe, according to scientists. The Flat Earth Society believes that individuals credited with measuring the circumference of the earth in the past, like the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes, were actually measuring the diameter.

(The globe is about 7,900 miles in diameter, from surface to center to surface on the opposite side.)

Necessarily, Flat Earthers believe those who advocated (and advocate) a spherical earth either erred or were part of a conspiracy to keep the truth of a flat earth hidden. Evidence that the world is round is either wrong or fake.

Antarctica: The Inconvenience of Math and Sailors

Let us first consider the ice wall surrounding the disc. The Flat Earth Society says of the wall:

How far the ice extends; how it terminates; and what exists beyond it, are questions to which no present human experience can reply.

Assuming that the world is flat and such an ice wall exists, the size of such a ring can be easily determined, using the diameter Flat Earthers trust. If 25,000 miles is the distance across the flat earth, the ring must be about 78,540 miles long (C=Dπ).

Were a Flat Earther to venture outward (on the disc) and encounter Antarctica/the ice wall, he or she could travel along the coast and traverse, if flat earth theory is correct, 78,540 miles before reaching the starting point again.

If only there were individuals from multiple nations, some independent of governments, who over centuries had circumnavigated Antarctica to reveal its true dimensions!

Individuals like James Cook of England (1772-1775), Thaddeus Bellingshausen of Russia (1819-1821), John Biscoe of England (1830-1833), Hjalmar Rilser-Larsen and Nils Larsen of Norway (1930-1931), David John and William Carey of England (1931-1933), Lars Christensen and Klarius Mikkelsen of Norway (1933-1934), Leonard Hill of England (1937-1939), Nikolay Elin and Roman Panchenko of Russia (1982-1983), Joseph Smith of the United States (1982-1983), Peter Golikov of Russia (1996-1997). The latter was a tourist ship, a cruise.

One could also study people like Jon Sanders of Australia (1982) or Fedor Konyukhov of Russia (2008), men who circumnavigated the south pole alone, nonstop and unassisted.

Or perhaps a Flat Earth theorist could investigate (and join in) the Antarctica Cup, a yacht race around Antarctica. People who circumnavigate the continent are alive and available to interview.

Each circumnavigation revealed the same thing: Antarctica is roughly 11,160 miles in circumference (with sea ice extending out several thousand miles more). Not 78,540. If it was an ice wall around the disc, the diameter of the world would have to be not 25,000 miles, but rather 3,550.

That’s about the distance from New York to France.

Also, though Ernest Shackleton’s famous 1915 attempt to cross the continent on foot failed, explorers succeeded after him. Britain’s Vivian Fuchs and New Zealand’s Edmund Hillary succeeded (1957-1958), as did Boerge Ousland of Norway (1997), Cecilie Skog and Ryan Waters of Norway (2010), and Felicity Aston of Britain (2012).

Conspiracy theorists could cross it themselves, if they so decided (they commonly say it’s too heavily guarded by government militaries, an exaggeration that also assumes governments are devoting the massive resources to and effectively protecting a 78,540 mile strip).

But one might suppose they would insist “crossing” the continent would in reality be a manipulation, nothing more than traversing a rounded protrusion in the ice wall. Perhaps a yacht would be a better idea.

via National Geographic

Flat Earthers could of course say all the voyages of the past two centuries were a grand hoax, akin to the alleged moon landing hoax of 1969, but there is of course no evidence for this.

Each person involved would have had to either be silenced with perfect efficiency (upon discovering the world is flat and enclosed in an ice wall) or an agent intimately involved in a multinational conspiracy to hide the truth from all.

Seeing is Believing

Much of the flat earth debate has to do with perception. Eric Dubay’s “200 Proofs Earth is Not a Spinning Ball,” popular among Flat Earthers, begins there:

The horizon always appears perfectly flat 360 degrees around the observer regardless of altitude. All amateur balloon, rocket, plane and drone footage show a completely flat horizon over 20+ miles high. Only NASA and other government “space agencies” show curvature in their fake CGI photos/videos.

As all governments, for some wildly strange reason, want to keep the earth’s flatness a secret, any nation (and now private companies like Space X) that journeys into space creates forgeries to fool the masses.

So here the scientific explanation has already been discarded: when you’re at low altitude and have a limited field of vision of the massive curved object on which you stand, the horizon shows not a hint of curvature, yet when you reach high altitude and have a broader field of vision, being able to see more of said object, the curvature becomes visible.

Not difficult to understand, yet understandably not quite good enough for a conspiracy theorist.

So consider that a ship coming over the horizon doesn’t change much in perceived size from the moment you see the top of the sail to the moment you can see the full bow. That phenomenon would not be possible if the world were flat. It is because the ship is traveling on a curved surface that the size remains relatively the same from appearance to full view (as it is approaching, it does grow a bit larger).

Were the world flat, the ship would become visible on the horizon immediately: there would be no emerging from below the horizon. It would be a pinprick in size, and would continue to rest on the horizon as it approached, growing in size. Further, the height of the point on which you stood would not matter (on a globe, if you stand at a higher point, you can see the ship sooner than someone below).

via Popular Science

These truths can be tested small-scale, or observed in real world scenarios, without much difficulty by any conspiracy theorist.

Likewise, an experiment with shadows is available for all to try. Remember Eratosthenes?

He realized that rays of sunlight are hitting Earth at the same degree, but because Earth has a curvature, the length of shadows at different locations across Earth aren’t the same.

By calculating this shadow length change between two cities – Alexandria and Syene – he gave an estimate for the circumference of the Earth…

Consider a curved object and its light source. Placing identical markers on different spots on the curved object (the side illuminated by light) will yield shadows of different lengths. Were the sun orbiting above the surface of a disc, shadows would be the same length. This phenomenon is easily replicated at home, using markers on both a flat surface and round surface and shining a single light source on each.

via Rochester Institute of Technology

Further, consider that if the sun and moon were circling above a flat earth, there would be no such thing as a lunar eclipse (when the earth comes between the sun and the moon) nor a solar eclipse (when the moon comes between the sun and the earth).

Dubay writes, however, that “lunar eclipses have happened and continue to happen regularly when both the Sun and Moon are still visible together above the horizon,” so the whole explanation for the eclipse must be fraudulent. He decides against mentioning that phenomenon as it is understood through scientific study (atmospheric refraction creating a selenelion; our atmosphere functions like a lens that can make astronomical objects appear higher in the sky than they actually are, which is why what Dubay describes only occurs just before sunset or just after sunrise).

Finally, consider the sun. Looking at the flat earth model above, one might wonder why the sun is too weak to light the entire disc at all times. Conspiracy theorists explain that the sun is much smaller than it is claimed (Dubay mocks the idea that the “Sun is actually 400 times larger than the Moon and 400 times farther away! You can clearly see they are the same size”).

Pretending for a moment that the earth is small enough to only light a portion of the flat world at a time, one might wonder why the sun seems to rise and set without changing size. Perhaps if the sun orbited not above but around the disc (from lighting heads on a quarter to tails and then back to heads), the sun would disappear over the horizon of a flat earth with no change in perceived dimension.

But in the model above, at what location can you stand where the sun will appear to plunge into the surface of the earth without shrinking? Flat Earthers explain sunrise and sunset by saying the sun is simply moving farther away from your location and thus disappears at the vanishing point on the horizon, conveniently forgetting that objects diminish in size as they move away from you, eventually becoming infinitely small as they touch the horizon.

The sun appears the same size to us on a round earth high in the sky as it does on the horizon, unsurprising as we are the same distance from the sun at both noon and sunset.

Popular Science offers other issues to be considered.

NASA’s stupidity

A pattern begins to emerge with conspiracy theories.

Many conspiracy theories, it seems, rely on the assumption of remarkable incompetence on the part of the powers attempting to hide the truth or perpetuate fraud. So NASA was somehow stupid enough to not include stars on their movie set of the 1969 moon landing. The U.S. government was dumb enough to demolish Building 7 in the evening of 9/11, when it had already demolished the World Trade Center in the morning, a pointless and risky redundancy!

Flat Earthers believe that the inconsistency of earth’s appearance in photos released by NASA show NASA is making effective use of Photoshop. So NASA is stupid enough to drastically change the shape of continents and the color of the water and land, all while trying to deceive billions of people!

Alas that the perpetrators of conspiracy are both the most clever and most incompetent of all humanity.

Perhaps there are more reasonable explanations. Perhaps the camera technology on satellites and rockets has changed over the years, or perhaps hue and saturation can be changed on their cameras just like ours, modifying the colors of earth in NASA photos. Perhaps the location of the camera and distance from earth changes perspective in a shot a bit:

Perhaps NASA openly admits when an image is a composite, or “synthesized view” of the earth taken pixel by pixel on multiple orbits around the globe, resulting in a strange, distorted view like this:

via NASA

Motive and Conclusion

This is a truly interesting conspiracy theory because little explanation for motive is offered. According to theorists, the truths about JFK, the moon landing, and 9/11 are hidden because someone wants to hide their crime, and the truth about aliens is hidden to prevent mass panic. But why would governments around the world collaborate to convince the masses the world is round, not flat? What’s motive? What crime is being covered up? Who profits from keeping reality hidden? How is their power increased?

No sensible explanation is offered.

When debunking the moon landing conspiracy theory, Donald Sinclair wrote, “The size of a conspiracy is inversely proportional to the odds of it remaining a secret.” In other words, the more people involved in a conspiracy, the less likely it will succeed.

The flat earth conspiracy would necessarily have to involve more conspirators than any theory we have examined thus far. It would have to span centuries, including generation after generation of hoax makers…it would involve governments across the globe…any person who has ever recorded images of or traveled into space or a certain altitude in the atmosphere…anyone who has circumnavigated Antarctica…an army of scientists.

Reign of error and confusion indeed.

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The footage of Neil Armstrong stepping off the Eagle of Apollo 11 and onto the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969 shook the people of Earth to the core. Today, conspiracy theorists believe the United States faked the event, filming it in a Hollywood studio, because the government was so worried the Soviet Union would beat them to the moon. They further believe one famous director was brave enough to tell the truth through symbolism in an iconic horror film. Of the conspiracy theories examined thus far, this is unquestionably the weakest.    

* * *

What evidence exists that the Moon landing was faked? That depends on your definition of evidence.

If you’re looking for what one might call “positive evidence” (testimony from Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, or other NASA personnel; testimony from a film director, gaffer, grip, or editor; an old script; a photograph of the movie set; internal government documents discussing such a hoax; etc.) you will be disappointed, for there is none.

If you’re looking for what one might call “negative evidence” (arguments that attempt to discredit the footage of the landing), that is not hard to find on the Internet, but may be hard to take seriously with even a half-hearted effort at critical thinking or willingness to learn scientific principles.

Questioning the Moon Footage and Photos

There are several details in the pictures and film taken during the moon landing that have bothered conspiracy theorists since the mid-1970s.

For instance, the American flag planted by the astronauts looks like it’s fluttering in the wind, when there is of course no atmosphere nor wind on the moon. So this must be an “obvious stuff up” unnoticed by the director, cast, crew, and government officials producing the farce.

However, scientists and science enthusiasts explain while there is no atmosphere or wind, there is also no friction, and thus the flag would continue to move for a significant spell after being planted on the lunar surface, due to inertia. This phenomenon is actually not difficult to replicate; any conspiracy theorist could conduct such an experiment.

Another criticism: “[I]n all of the photos taken during moon landing, you cannot see a single star. Not one.” This is would be another sign of unimaginable incompetence on the part of the filmmakers.

Rather than forgetfulness, anti-conspiracy types point out the lack of stars was due to the fact that astronaut cameras would need to increase exposure to capture a quality photo of the stars. But as the moon surface was reflecting sunlight (the spacesuits were designed to as well), increasing exposure would have washed out everything else in the photos or film. Capturing the stars would require pointing a camera in space (making stars the dominant light source in the frame) and taking long-exposure images.

(Speaking of cameras, some say photos of one astronaut showing the reflection of another must indicate this was all a hoax, since only two astronauts of the three walked on the surface of the moon at a time and the reflection doesn’t show an astronaut holding up a camera [see above]. In reality, the cameras were situated on the astronauts’ chests, which happens to be exactly where the reflected person has his hands. And might that shadow be that of the subject?)   

Finally, conspiracy theorists question why photos and film show object shadows that are not parallel to each other, assuming the sun would be the only source of light on the moon. Multiple sources of light must suggest lights on a movie set.

This is another idea that can be easily tested by any conspiracy theorist. First, the terrain a shadow falls on changes its angle. Cast a single light source on objects on various terrain and you can see this. Second, there are in reality multiple sources of light on the moon. The sun’s light was reflected off the lunar surface (off ground and rocks of varying heights), off the earth, off the lunar module, off the spacesuits, etc. Thirdly, even if shadow lines are parallel, perspective can make them appear nonparallel.

There are more questions, easily explained. The astronauts would supposedly have been exposed to lethal radiation and never would have made it home alive…the same “fake” rocks used by those stupid filmmakers in multiple shots…no crater made by the lunar module…rocks with letters on them…no flames from the lunar module during takeoff back into space. All these have reasonable explanations when one asks scientists, even those independent of NASA and the U.S. government.

And, naturally, believing in the vast majority of them requires the belief that whomever was charged with creating the fake videos and photos (and whomever approved them for public release) was an imbecile.

This is quite incredible, considering who many think actually directed the Hollywood moon landing. (Or perhaps he screwed up on purpose, to let the truth be known?)

Stanley Kubrick and The Shining

In 2015, conspiracy theorists lit up the Internet upon the release of an alleged interview with famous director Stanley Kubrick (supposedly filmed before his death in 1999), who confessed to filming the fake moon landing.

Now this video turned out to be a hoax. “Stanley Kubrick” is played by an actor the filmmaker calls “Tom” and coaches between takes.

The idea that Kubrick, who directed 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, directed the moon landing existed before this. Some conspiracy theorists even believe Kubrick was so burdened by this lie he helped create that he left clues in his 1980 horror film The Shining that reveal the truth.

Kubrick, theorists say, would have been the right man for the job after 2001, and they believe a lighting technique he used in that film (“front projection”) was also used on the fake moon footage.

In The Shining, Kubrick allegedly left these clues, among others:

1. The boy, Danny, wears an Apollo 11 sweater
2. Room 237 could represent the 237,000 miles from Earth to moon
3. In the line “All work and no play makes jack a dull boy” the “All” looks like “A11” because it was created on an old typewriter
4. Hexagonal patterns on carpets in the film look like launching pads
5. 6 crates of 7-Up are in the film; Apollo had 7 missions but only 6 landed on the moon
6. The character Dick comes from Florida, from which Apollo 11 took off
7. The hotel owner has an eagle on his windshield

Obviously, this sort of analysis is not “evidence.” It is speculation, absurdity that is not hard to replicate. How difficult is it to do this with other films? Consider that in Rocky IV (1985):

1. Fighters, Americans and a Russian, battle for supremacy
2. Rocky’s best friend is named Apollo
3. Apollo and the Russian box at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas; that’s the same MGM that operates its film studio in Hollywood, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
4. First the Russian wins, then the American; Russia beat the U.S. to space, the U.S. supposedly beat Russia to the moon
5. Rocky was born in July; the moon landing occurred in July
6. The main character is called Rocky, though this is not his real name; the astronauts brought back moon rock, which conspiracy theorists denounce as fake
7. The Russian has 9 lines of dialogue in the film; Buzz Aldrin was the backup pilot for Gemini 9

Was director Sylvester Stallone telling us he helped fake the moon landing? Any rational thinker could tear these things apart as nothing but coincidences, misread Cold War symbolism, or easily explained events (MGM produced Rocky IV).

It is not so hard to imagine something similar holds true with The Shining. Also, the average distance from Earth to moon is nearly 239,000 miles. Apollo 11 ventured 242,114 miles (389,645 km) from Earth.

Conclusion

The belief in a fake moon landing requires one to cast aside all the positive evidence for the actual landing:

The testimony of thousands of people who participated in the planning and execution of the mission.

The people independent of NASA and the U.S. government that observed and confirmed the landing (Bochum Observatory in Germany, Jodrell Bank Observatory in the U.K., a technician at a Kentucky radio station that picked up astronaut transmissions, the Soviet Union itself, etc.).   

The samples of moon rock available to many for independent investigation regarding their authenticity and extraterrestrial nature. In 1970, President Nixon gave samples to all 50 states and 135 nations.

Finally, though conspiracy theorists may call them fake, we have images of the Apollo 11 landing site taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Likewise, though skeptics may say it was placed on the moon later on, the Apollo 11 astronauts left a mirror on the moon that can still be seen on Earth by firing a laser at it and waiting 2.4 seconds for a reflection.

Given the choice between strong positive evidence and weak negative evidence, the choice is not difficult.

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Residents of Flint, Michigan drank poisoned water for over a year.

In mid-2014, Republican governor of Michigan Rick Snyder, Flint’s city manager appointed by Snyder, and other state officials decided to change Flint’s primary water supply source. Flint River would replace Lake Huron, and save the state millions.

Michigan, like other states — especially those controlled by Republican administrations — has accrued large deficits while shifting the tax burden from large corporations and the wealthy onto low- and middle-income earners.

Snyder, for example, “dug himself into a $454.4 million deficit,” giving “away billions of dollars in tax credits to major corporations…all while squeezing more from the average citizen – some $900 million more, while corporations paid $1.7 billion less in 2014.”

The Flint River was, according to CNN, a

…notorious tributary that runs through town known to locals for its filth.

“We thought it was a joke,” said Rhonda Kelso, a long-time Flint resident. “People my age and older thought ‘They’re not going to do that.'”

Flint native and filmmaker Michael Moore called it “a body of ‘water’ where toxins from a dozen General Motors and DuPont factories have been dumped for over a hundred years.” Sewage was reported leaking into the river in 2011.

A 2011 city-funded study determined the river would need anti-corrosive treatments before it was safe to drink. Such a treatment was a requirement by federal law. Virginia Tech researchers believe the water could have been made safe to drink for $100 a day.

The Flint River was nearly 20 times more corrosive than Lake Huron, due to high salt levels and pollution, but Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality failed to treat the water. As one leaked DEQ email from April 2015 put it, “Flint is currently not practicing any corrosion control treatment at the water plant.”

Evidence suggests the DEQ “rigged water test results” to make it appear safer than prior research had indicated, and refused to follow federal procedures mandating the collection of water samples in homes at high risk of lead poisoning.

Residents filed a class-action lawsuit, and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office and the EPA are investigating.

The corrosion ate away at Flint’s iron water mains, turning drinking water brown and foul. It further eroded lead pipes that deliver water to homes, poisoning drinking water with lead as well, invisible to the naked eye.

Flint residents, most of whom are black, paid the price. They report experiencing “skin lesions, hair loss, high levels of lead in the blood, vision loss, memory loss, depression and anxiety” (CNN). “The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River” (Washington Post).

The Post notes:

According to the World Health Organization, “lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”

Residents bought bottled water en masse. They also rocked the city with protests.

Governor Snyder was informed of the health concerns in February 2015. He ignored them. Administration officials, in private memos, said the issue would “fade in the rearview” after a new water system was completed in 2016, while at at the same time acknowledging this would be “a public health concern with chronic, long-term exposure” and that there existed “public panic.” They assured themselves that safe water acts did “not regulate aesthetic values of water,” so the smell, taste, and look of Flint’s drinking water could be dismissed, while at the same time they discussed how the corrosion of iron pipes was to blame.

Some of his officials were worried, however. Snyder’s own chief of staff wrote in July 2015 to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, “These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us.” The director of that department, Mark Miller, wrote to his colleagues on July 22, “Sounds like the issue is old lead service lines.”

The EPA had picked up on the concerns long before. “State officials seemingly failed to heed repeated warnings from the Environmental Protection Agency as far back as February about potential problems with Flint’s water system” (The Detroit News). Emails show “the EPA and the state engaged in a secret conflict over whether or not corrosion control was necessary in Flint, despite it being a federal requirement.”

The EPA, while clearly fighting to get Michigan to abide by federal rules, also faces criticism for staying silent for months and being too slow to act.

Instead of moving quickly to verify the concerns or take preventative measures, federal officials opted to prod the DEQ to act, EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman told The Detroit News… Hedman said she sought a legal opinion on whether the EPA could force action, but it wasn’t completed until November [2015].

When an internal EPA memo highlighting the concerns was leaked in June 2015, the EPA promised to “verify and assess the extent of lead contamination issues,” while the spokesman for DEQ told a reporter “anyone who is concerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax” and the DEQ attacked the author of the memo and his findings.

(The state likewise attacked the doctor that discovered high levels of lead poisoning in infants and children, saying her work was wrong and that she was causing hysteria; later the state admitted she was right.)

For failing to make public the EPA’s knowledge right away, and for withholding findings from Flint officials because reports were unfinished, Hedman resigned this month.

The issue was still being blown off months later. On August 31, a Michigan state official declared in a private email, “[The] city has bigger issues on their agenda right now.”

Flint finally switched back to its former water supply in October 2015 (a spokesman for the governor claimed Snyder “did not become aware of the severity of the problem with lead until October 1” and moved to fix this “aggressively the next day”), and the DEQ admitted it had made a mistake, saying, “Our actions reflected inexperience.” The director resigned in December.

Snyder declared a state of emergency this month, and the Michigan National Guard arrived in Flint to distribute bottled water. Michael Moore, and others, are petitioning for the imprisonment of Snyder and others involved.

As tens of thousands of children face irreversible brain damage, behavior issues, and organ problems, the Flint crisis, an entirely man-made disaster, demonstrates how strict federal regulations and harsh punishments are sometimes hugely important, not just for private corporations but also state governments — and sometimes don’t come fast enough.

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The conservative magazine Forbes reported last week that “one in three American families have no savings at all…56.3% of people have less than $1,000 in their checking and saving accounts combined.” Further,

…just 37% of Americans have enough savings to pay for a $500 or $1,000 emergency. The other 63% would have to resort to measures like cutting back spending in other areas (23%), charging to a credit card (15%) or borrowing funds from friends and family (15%) in order to meet the cost of the unexpected event.

Why is this? Forbes explains, “Americans are terrible savers.”

Yes, clearly the only explanation can be innate foolishness, bad choices, the irresponsibility of the poor. This follows conservative ideology neatly: the poor are seen as people with “special flaws” that those better off are “immune to,” as one homeless man, Lars Eighner, observed.

Research a bit deeper and one finds larger problems in American society that may offer a more accurate and complete explanation.

In 2013, Socialist Appeal reported very similar statistics (“40% of Americans have less than $500 in savings. 28% have a grand total $0.00 set aside in the bank for emergencies”) but felt it sensible to include that an estimated “77% of Americans say they are living ‘from paycheck to paycheck.’”

Well there’s an interesting bit of information. Might low incomes, living paycheck to paycheck, help explain empty bank accounts?

Why doesn’t Forbes mention, as CBS News noted, that 48% of Americans now live in poverty or at low income?

That’s over 145 million people, and should come as no surprise, considering in 2013 50% of all jobs in the U.S. paid $34,000 annually or less, according to the Economic Policy Institute. 40% of U.S. workers make under $15 an hour.

Though it varies slightly by state, $34,000 is about $24,000 after taxes, or about $1,980 in take-home pay a month. The cost of living also varies by state (the burden on the poor is much greater on the coasts), but the median cost of just a single-bedroom apartment in the U.S. eliminates about half that take-home pay.

And as Forbes itself reported in early 2015, rent costs are rising rapidly, about twice as fast as wages since 2000. It noted the median cost of rent in cities like Charlotte ($1,235), Denver ($1,827), Los Angeles ($2,460), New York ($2,331).     

The Center for Economic and Policy Research determined in 2012 that only 24.6% of American jobs are “good jobs,” defined as employment that pays at least $18.50 an hour, plus options for health care and retirement planning.

$18.50 hourly is about $38,000 a year (roughly $27,000 after taxes, $2,250 monthly). With exploding health care, education, housing, and other costs, it’s clear the majority of workers, those in “bad” jobs, fight an uphill battle:

20.2 million Americans spend more than half of their income on housing, a 46% rise since 2001. Electricity bills have risen faster than inflation for 5 years running, and water bills have tripled over the last 12 years… According to Bloomberg, since 1978, tuition and fees for college have risen by more than 1,000%, medical expenses by 601%, and food prices by 244%.

At the same time, since 1980, worker wages either stagnated or fell; the bottom 50% of Americans now own just 2.5% of the nation’s wealth.

Even those with a college education struggle to find good jobs: in 2014, a massive 46% of employed college graduates under 27 were working in a job that did not require a college degree, and about 15% had part-time work but wanted full-time work.

The testimonials of ordinary Americans explain the challenge of surviving in such an environment. A woman in Kansas City, Missouri making low wages, Kahtea Bobo, lived “in a rat-infested, slumlord house in the inner city” and once “passed a bad check to a store. Her choice was to pass a bad check or not feed her family.”

Those are the kind of choices too many citizens must make. That is how precariously over half the nation lives, surviving paycheck to paycheck.

Conservatives insist it is all about personal choices: just don’t be a “terrible saver” and all will be fine. This is easy to say, but ignores the all-important context of economic realities.

There are different types of choices available to different people, dependent on socioeconomic status. One choice is that of people who are not too terribly poor—choosing between buying a new car or saving for retirement, emergencies, or college.

But the other is the choice of the very poor—between paying the rent and paying the water bill, between paying for gas and paying for groceries. Impoverished and low-income Americans often don’t have the choice to save: they have to spend everything they make right away on increasingly expensive groceries, electricity, water, gas, and rent.

All this is not to say that Americans, including those in poverty or low-income, never make “unwise” choices (non-essential expenses) like “eating out at restaurants, “buying coffee from a coffee shop rather than home brewing,” or buying a new television or phone. But to focus solely on how the poor are “terrible savers,” without any explanation of American economic conditions, only vilifies and stereotypes millions of our neighbors.

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