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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.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

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4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Because a TSA agent failed to notice his metal detector was unplugged, hundreds of passengers at JFK Airport in New York had to go back and be rescreened, including those already on two planes on the runway, causing hours of delays.

Doesn’t this make you feel safer? Because a TSA agent failed to notice his metal detector was unplugged, hundreds of passengers at JFK Airport in New York had to go back and be rescreened, including those already on two planes on the runway, causing hours of delays.

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

  • Chris L

    While I don’t exactly expect to find Delta Force operators or trained Mossad agents working for the TSA, I do expect to find people who can manage the complex machinery that is a wall socket. The cashier at my local super market would notice if her cash register was unplugged, but that’s only because she’d be held accountable if it weren’t.

  • Patrick

    The culprit of the massive error was Alija Abdul Majed, a TSA agent assigned to Lane No. 1 for the morning shift.

    A Port Authority source said whoever caused the malfunction was long gone and there was no way to be sure that every passenger who passed through the powerless detector was accounted for and hadn’t gotten on a flight.

    Someone could have slipped something through and left it behind for a future use by someone else. the whole of the airport needs to be searched by competent security teams.

    Or this could have been a test of our responsiveness. It only took a few hours to catch this so we should be fine. Nothing could happen inside of a few hours.

  • wade

    this event ,as well as other recent flaws, is a Scare Tactic to make everyone “embrace” more scrutiny.

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