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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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Woke heads of Merchant Marine Academy who banned painting of Jesus fired

USSMA Superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan
USSMA Superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan

Fight! Fight! Fight! The two top officials whom Biden brought in to head the Merchant Marine Academy and who then proceeded to cover a painting of Jesus because some leftists complained about it — painted originally by a private citizen for the academy’s chapels — have now been relieved of duty.

The two fired individuals were superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan and deputy superintendent Rear Admiral David M. Wulf.

While the Transportation Department didn’t pronounce that the leaders were fired, Restoration News obtained a text message sent by Admiral Nunan’s husband that confirms it was not Nunan’s choice to leave.

…There is no lack of cause for these removals—parents, midshipmen, and alumni applaud that these leaders are no longer in charge. Brooke Garrison, USMMA alumna and parent of a recent graduate, told Restoration News that she is “very thankful Nunan is gone.” Garrison said, “Joanna Nunan started implementing her woke agenda from day one.”


Nunan had been appointed by Biden’s transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, having no experience running an educational facility. Previously she had been the Coast Guard Academy’s head of human resources and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Her focus on DEI was quickly revealed, when in early 2023 when she had the Jesus pained covered because a small number of people stupidly complained that the painting suggested the military endorsed Christianity.

The problem was that the history of the painting said otherwise. As I explained in my post about this story in 2023:

Also known as “Jesus and Lifeboat,” the piece was painted in 1944 by U.S. Maritime Service Lt. Hunter Wood to hang in the chapel built at the USMMA Basic School in San Mateo, California. When the San Mateo campus closed in 1947, officials say the painting came to the Academy, and was installed in its current location, which served as the Academy’s interfaith chapel from 1942 to 1961.

The painting was always intended to hang in a chapel. Moreover, it had existed at the academy for more than sixty years without anyone complaining. Just because today there are some close-minded intolerant anti-religious bigots around with loud mouths doesn’t justify removing the painting now.

Under Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth common sense and freedom now rule, and the idiotic censorship of religious images has ceased. More important, the petty dictators who imposed that censorship have been removed.

One by one the control freaks that took over our country beginning in 2020 and instituted a new blacklist culture of oppression and censorship are being removed or penalized, and are being replaced by the very people they oppressed and censored. I will have more such stories throughout this week.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Phill O

    Keep the good news coming!

  • Jeff Wright

    I have heard it said that the Merchant Marines had losses similar in scope to D-Day–true?

  • Sayomara

    My only issue with the way this is stated is time on a wall should not be only justification for keeping up a picture. Chaplin’s are a key part of the armed forces. Their is no need hide from Christ or any other religion. This is a clearly Christian chapel new or old pictures should be welcome. Because it part of the fundamental rights of the soldiers or in this merchant marines to practices there religion.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

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