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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
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 shuts down conservative channel during its annual conference

banned by YouTube
No free speech for conservatives on YouTube!

Blacklists are back and YouTube’s got ’em! The American Conservative Union (ACU) was banned by YouTube this week, a ban that coincided precisely with the ACU’s annual convention, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), thus preventing it from airing content from the event.

The ACU, which hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), received “a strike” on their account from YouTube on July 9, preventing them from uploading new content for a week. This includes ACU’s CPAC 2021 Part 2 in Dallas, Texas, and Trump’s CPAC speech scheduled for Sunday, the organization said in a statement.


In addition, YouTube unilaterally deleted a CPAC video featuring Trump’s announcement of a lawsuit against big tech companies like Google and YouTube for their censorship of conservative speakers. As the Google company routinely does when it blackballs conservative content it does not like, it vaguely claimed there was “‘medical misinformation” about COVID-19 during Trump’s speech, without specifying the exact statements that gave offense.

The old ACLU motto, when that organization believed in free speech, was “the answer to bad speech is more speech.” Thus, rather than censor anyone from saying anything that YouTube doesn’t like or disagrees with, the platform could highlight alternative statements by others. That would still be unethical and biased, but at least it would not be engaging in censorship and thuggery.

Nah. Companies like Google and YouTube aren’t into free speech and open debate. They are for oppression and rule without opposition. They are afraid of open debate, because probably they know they would lose the debate quite badly in such circumstances. Instead, their answer to anyone who says anything they don’t like is to move to silence them.

All this provides more reason to stop using Google as your search engine. It takes literally ten seconds to make any one of several more secure search engines your default, such as DuckDuckGo, MyPrivateSearch, or Qwant. People should also get off Gmail and find another email service.

The goal in all this is not so much to put these oppressive companies out of business, but to create viable competitors. Competition always helps the little guy, and makes the big guy have second thoughts about doing evil, as it might come back to bite them.

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

2 comments

  • Nada

    Free speech has always been a red herring. At least the lolbertarians at Samizdata finally said the quiet part out loud:

    “Free speech was, after all, built on the right to blaspheme.”

  • I de-Googled years ago after some incident that I no longer even recall (might have been prop 8 related – or that could be why I got rid of Netscape). The exception: I have two gmail accounts. They’re both very old and well known (to people who know me). Changing them would be painful, but I’m about to move, so that seems like a good reason to start a new email address – even if I don’t immediately decommission the old ones.

    Anyone have a suggestion for an alternative? Work uses Office360, so outlook.com is a known-to-me option, but is Microsoft really any better than Google?

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