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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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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.


The real solution to the Gaza war

If Israel and the rest of the world wants peace in Gaza, the only true solution will be to remove Hamas as the rulers there.

Yes, there would be costs to regime change in the Gaza Strip. But the choice is not between a costly policy and a cost-free one. The choice is between the costs of removing a terrorist group from power and the costs of leaving it injured but able to fight another day. To prevent a fourth war, to bolster ties with the Sunni powers, to improve the chances of a two-state solution, to help the Palestinians, above all to secure Israel, the decision is clear. Destroy Hamas. End the war. Free Gaza.

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

  • Cotour

    The king and his true believers are beginning to be revealed as being naked, and they do not like it. How do I substantiate this conclusion?

    1. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/netanyahu-don-guess-article-1.1889469

    and

    2. http://www.businessinsider.com/nancy-pelosi-confronts-tom-marino-border-bill-daca-2014-8

    Netanyaho (who is an actual leader of men) bitch slaps Obama and tells him to keep his mouth shut and Pelosi, when confronted with her and her party’s failures while SHE was in THEE leadership position goes ballistic and confronts another congressman on the floor (the truth hurts). How do you know that she understands her own incompetence? Just like how you judge the president, not by what he says but by what she and he does. They are both IMO not un American actors but anti American actors. Whether they understand what it is that they are doing or not, and I believe that they certainly do understand what they are doing, they are neither acting in the interest of the American people who pay for everything and suffer the offences to their naturally born rights and their sovereignty or the Constitution that they have sworn to up hold. They are the true Marxist / socialist believers and need to have their debut on the world stage ended in the coming elections in November.

  • Chris Kirkendall

    Well said. I can only imagine what Netanyahu, a brave & bold man who was a decorated soldier, must think of Obama. He knows Obama only gets tough with American allies who actually have U.S. & mutual interest at heart, while he bows & scrapes before Arab leaders & tells Medvedev “I’ll have more ‘flexibility’ after my reelection”. The contrast is stark: Netanyahu is a strong leader, Obama is pathetic…

  • Dick Eagleson

    Removing Hamas is de minimus. Israel should also remove the rest of Gaza’s Palestinians to the West Bank and annex Gaza to Israel. If the Palestinians want to be a nation, they can start by accepting the punishment commonly doled out to those nations that launch aggressive wars and then lose – loss of land.

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