Scroll down to read this post.

 

Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short pre-Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. 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.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. 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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


Today’s blacklisted American: YouTube blacklists group exposing Chinese genocide in its Xinjiang region

The Bill of Rights cancelled on YouTube
No free speech allowed on YouTube.

Today’s blacklisting victim is not really an American, but since it is an American company doing the blacklisting I think the story is applicable. It appears Google-owned YouTube has decided to remove videos on the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’ channel that expose the genocide and ethnic cleansing that China is doing to as many as a million people in its Xinjiang region.

Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’ channel has published nearly 11,000 videos on YouTube totaling over 120 million views since 2017, thousands of which feature people speaking to camera about relatives they say have disappeared without a trace in China’s Xinjiang region, where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years.

On June 15, the channel was blocked for violating YouTube’s guidelines, according to a screenshot seen by Reuters, after twelve of its videos had been reported for breaching its ‘cyberbullying and harassment’ policy.

The channel’s administrators had appealed the blocking of all twelve videos between April and June, with some reinstated – but YouTube did not provide an explanation as to why others were kept out of public view, the administrators told Reuters.

Following inquiries from Reuters as to why the channel was removed, YouTube restored it, explaining that it had received multiple so-called ‘strikes’ for videos which contained people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to the missing, violating a YouTube policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from appearing in its content. They reinstated the channel on June 18 but asked Atajurt to blur the IDs.


The channel does not want to blur the ID information because it is being given voluntarily and adds real credibility to the testimony in the videos. Rather than bow to YouTube’s censors, the channel has started to back up “content to Odysee, a website built on a blockchain protocol called LBRY, designed to give creators more control.” Almost a thousand videos have been moved, and can be seen here.

As usual, YouTube claims the censorship was merely a mistake made by automated software, and was not aimed by the content of the videos. Yet somehow, such mistakes seem to only happen to those opposed to communism or leftist dictatorship, either by China or by leftist thugs anywhere in the U.S. For example, YouTube has done nothing about videos that have personally made threats or slandered the founders of this human rights channel. Moreover, it seems at ease with the reality that pro-China groups manipulate its algorithms to silence their opponents.

Atajurt representatives fear pro-China groups who deny that human rights abuses exist in Xinjiang are using YouTube’s reporting features to remove their content by reporting it en masse, triggering an automatic block, [sharing] videos on WhatsApp and Telegram with Reuters which they said described how to report Atajurt’s YouTube videos.

This tactic is routinely used by the left, both on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, to shut down sites and people they don’t like. And these corrupt social media sites, dominated and controlled by leftists, seem quite happy to comply.

Once, the kneejerk response of all Americans to oppression and genocide was horror and full support for the people being oppressed and murdered. For an American company only a decade ago to provide any aid or comfort to China for these atrocities would have been considered inconceivable. No longer. Now we have many Americans — in corporate businesses and allied with these communist dictatorships — far more interested in looking the other way, or even helping with such oppression or genocide, if doing so helps those particular political causes. Ideology now trumps all.

And what are the good people in these big corporations doing? They are doing nothing, out of fear they might lose their jobs. In the end, however, this cowardice will get them nothing, for soon the genocides and oppression will spread and grow to engulf everyone. They will then not only lose their jobs, they will likely lose everything.

Just ask the surviving Germans in ruined Germany in 1946.

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

6 comments

  • Geno

    I believe Nikita Khrushchev said it so well, “We will bury you, and you will sell us the shovel ! ” .

  • Jeff Wright

    China sells us the shovel. The Russians wanted a straight up fight. There is a pecking order in Asia…and ironically, those from Vietnam are the untouchables…as it were-with occidentals in their minstral shows.

  • philip

    Communist China also has a very long history of persecuting black people living in that country. Blacks aren’t permitted to have jobs, be housed, nor allowed to purchase food or merchandise, making them homeless. When seen in the street they are stoned or attacked usually by the tyrannical regime’s police and are forced into the mountains, caves, hills, forests—anywhere to seek shelter and hide. Due to Communist China’s ban of allowing any black person to work they aren’t able to flee the nation for lack of money in addition to the borders being heavily patrolled. Reviled and heavily persecuted for a very long time and largely hidden from the world’s eye, interracial (black chinese) are often referred to as “black devils”. Communist China’s horrid racism within the country against black people is purposefully hidden and denied, as seen with their treatment of the captive Uyghur people forced into Communist China’s slave labor camps/factories with women being cruelly sterilized including other atrocities.

  • Chris Lopes

    Blaming your “mistakes” on a piece of code is so convenient. In a sane world, the answer would be “well change the code so it doesn’t do that.” We don’t live in sane world, so the reply is “one must not disturb the sacred code, for it is all knowing and powerful!” That it’s doing exactly what THEY want is just a coincidence.

  • Bandit

    China sells us the shovel but then it breaks like the second time you use it,

  • pzatchok

    There is no oppression in China.

    Those people left all on their own. China just didn’t keep track of where they went.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *