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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five 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. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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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.


Bill to trim BLM/Forest Service power

Good news: A new bill has been introduced in Congress to take all law enforcement powers away from the BLM and the Forest Service on federal lands and transfer those powers to local sheriffs.

It is always better to have control and power decentralized as much as possible. Having these lands administered and controlled by a bureaucracy in Washington has never made make sense, and was always really a power play between the federal government and the states.

This bill is part of a larger movement coming from the western states to restrict the power of these environmental agencies, who happen to control a vast majority of the territories of those states. With Congress increasingly shifting to the right in recent years, expect this movement to accelerate.

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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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

4 comments

  • D K Rögnvald Williams

    Bet my wife that Obama vetoes this bill if it passes.

  • Wayne

    DK
    -It has to get out of the House first & I doubt Mitch will bring it up in the Senate.
    While Chaffetz does have an admirable 82% Conservative-Review score, he has been unreliable for some key votes recently.
    While I applaud any effort to trim back the State, these type of Bills are often election-year “show-votes” at best.

  • Max

    Be careful what you wish for. When government steps back, it’s usually a faint for an aggressive move forward that you were not expecting. Like the Hydra, you think you’ve cut off one head only to have two grow in its place. Here is a bill from a former BLM employee that changes everything.
    http://libertylineup.com/2016/03/21/video-explains-utah-lands-bill-dlm/
    The BLM is about to morph into a new creature!
    I believe a sheriff in Arizona just got his powers affirmed by the Supreme Court? This Bill will probably restrain or eliminate his powers if Arizona passed a similar bill without knowing what was in it… House Bill 459 is coming to a state near you.

  • Max

    As an update, The new bill has been signed into law by the Utah governor. The BLM will now be known as the DLM. It has its own police powers, yet to be formed and defined, that answers to a committee appointed by the governor. (appointed from a list suggested by the federal government? of cronies that will dictate what mining, water rights, grazing,?…that will be performed on former BLM land?)
    As the law is written, policing powers will still reside with the sheriff, or city police for local crime but will have no authority over the CLM police force on BLM land. When they arrive, The sheriff must give way if asked to leave.
    Get your bids in now before the land wars begin. Hopefully, highest bidder be a US citizen. China hads just allocated $10 billion for foreign acquisitions of land, (mining and farms) chip technology and other worthy holdings. Germany, England, and Saudi Arabia have also made purchases and are not far behind China in the rush to own everything…
    Remember the good old days when Japan was buying up properties everywhere? It appears that we will be following their lead as we decline.

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