Category: Essays And Commentaries

Long essays or op-ed length commentaries on the issues of the day or on topics of special interest.

Alternatives to PayPal for supporting Behind the Black

12:24 am

In the past two days a large number of my subscribers have suddenly canceled their PayPal subscriptions to Behind the Black. I am certain this sudden activity is because these subscribers have also canceled all of their business with PayPal, because of its announcement that if it doesn’t like what someone says or writes, it will literally steal up to $2,500 from that person’s PayPal account. See this article describing the sudden exodus from Paypal due to this unethical policy.

For the past two years I have been steadily adding additional payment options so that neither I nor my supporters will have to depend on PayPal. These have included Patreon, Zelle, and mailing a check to me directly.

I have now added one more, Gabpay. This payment service has been formed by the same people who created Gab as a free speech alternative to Twitter. Gabpay appears to work almost identical to PayPal, but its fees are less and it has no intention of stealing anyone’s money because it doesn’t like what someone says or writes.

Thus, regular readers can now support Behind The Black in one of five ways:

  • Send me a check payable to Robert Zimmerman c/o Behind The Black, P.O.Box 1262
    Cortaro, AZ 85652 . With this method every dime you contribute goes to me.
  • Subscribe or donate through Zelle, using my email address zimmerman @ nasw dot org. This method also charges no fees. Every dime you spend goes only to me.
  • NEW! Donate through Gabpay, using my email address zimmerman @ nasw dot org. Gabpay takes a cut of about 2%.
  • Subscribe or donate at my Patreon website, which takes a cut of about 12%.
  • Subscribe or donate through Paypal using the buttons in the tip jar elsewhere on this page. PayPal also takes a cut of about 12%.

I encourage my regular subscribers on both Paypal and Patreon to consider switching to Zelle. Several subscribers have done so, and have found the process simple and easy, while also guaranteeing all of your donation reaches me. If you use Zelle to either newly subscribe or switch your old subscription, please use my email address to send me a separate email telling me the monthly amount of your subscription and your chosen payment date. Zelle does not send notifications for such things.

Regardless, I celebrate my readers who are quitting PayPal. It has proven itself as unethical as companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, all of which I avoid at all costs. Rather than sit back like sheep, these readers are proving that they are free citizens willing to fight. Kudos to you all!

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The dam is about to break on the COVID shots

12:02 pm

Democrats might soon enter the Truth booth
Advocates of the jab are about to be forced, against their will,
to enter that door.

The research continues to pour in every day showing increasingly that the COVID shots that Democrats and Joe Biden forced down the throats of ordinary Americans are not only relatively ineffective at stopping COVID, they are downright risky to take, especially for the young and healthy.

One story however — having nothing to do with this scientific research — suggests strongly that the left’s fantasy-world about the jab is about to break, and break in a big way. These mind-numbed robots are suddenly discovering directly and personally how harmful the jab can be, in the worst possible manner.

Before I tell you about this one story, however, we first must review some of the new research and data that has popped up in just the past week. (For the substantial previous research about the harmful risks and uselessness of the COVID shots see Part 1 of my three part series on the COVID lie from the end of September, with parts 2 and 3 here and here.)

First, the uselessness of the jab:
» Read more

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Part 3: Against the COVID liars and their strong-arm edicts the wheels of justice are grinding forward slowly

1:43 pm

Renewing the Declaration of Independence
Renewing the Declaration of Independence

In the first two parts of this series I very carefully outlined the ugly corrupt lie of the experimental COVID jab, and then followed up with a detailed summary of the lies put forth to justify imposition of the many COVID mandates.

Today, in this concluding essay, we will take a look at the battle by many to resist and end those COVID mandates, a battle that is increasingly successful because the mandates themselves were both immoral and illegal. They desecrated all the fundamental tenets and principles that underlie all American culture and law.

First however an addendum to yesterday’s essay, where I noted that “The royalties possibly received by Fauci and others in the government for their work developing the COVID jab — that the government then mandated — boggles the mind.” Shortly after I posted that essay, this story hit the web:

Fauci’s Net Worth Doubled During Pandemic, As Americans Struggled to Make Ends Meet

In 2021 alone Fauci earned almost two million dollars in royalties, travel perks, and investment gains. We still do not know however exactly what companies paid Fauci this money, or the precise amounts, because, according to the organization Open the Books which obtained this data, NIH has redacted that information.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is very rotten in the state of COVID”. The only reason I can fathom for keeping the source of those royalties secret is if their unveiling would reveal a serious conflict of interest. Fauci was one of the most visible government officials pushing the COVID shots on adults and children. Was he also making money on each jab? The public has a right to know.

Now, on to the fight against the illegal and immoral COVID mandates.
» Read more

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Part 2: How the liars spread the ugly corrupt lie of the COVID jab

4:01 pm

Yesterday I outlined in detail how a growing body of research as well as a great deal of blatantly obvious public data is increasingly demonstrating that the COVID shots carry with them some risk, and that in many cases, especially for those younger than 50, the risks outweigh the relatively minor benefits the jab provides against the Wuhan flu.

Though this data was unknown when the COVID shots were first made available, the amount of uncertainty and risk was great enough to make it unconscionable for any politician or health official to require anyone to get the jab, no matter what. And yet, led by President Joe Biden, government agencies and big corporations nationwide demanded employees get the jab, or be fired.

The result: tens of thousands of individuals, especially the young and healthy, have died unnecessarily from the COVID shots, since COVID itself could never have killed them.

Today I am going to outline the lies perpetuated by politicians and government health officials almost from day one of the Wuhan panic that worked hide these basic facts. Many times these lies were committed with the best of intentions. Many times the liars honestly and sincerely believed the lie was their only course of action.

And in too many cases, the lies were merely lies, said simply to protect the individual from scandal and possible prosecution, should the truth come out.

No matter what the reason, however, these lies were not only dishonest, they were morally wrong, and resulted in routinely bad policy that only made the Wuhan epidemic far worse than it ever had to be.

To begin, let us look at the lies of some specific individuals.
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Part 1: The ugly corrupt lie of the experimental COVID jab

2:16 pm

Joe Biden: dictator
Joe Biden: claiming the power to tell us what medicines we must take

On September 9, 2021, President Joe Biden announced harsh mandates nationwide that forced millions to get COVID shots. You had no choice. If you refused, you would be fired from your job and made a non-person, forbidden in all ways from participating normally in society.

“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said, making a direct appeal to the 80 million people who he said were still unvaccinated. “Your refusal has cost all of us.”

…”It’s simple [said an official]: If you want to work for the federal government, you must be vaccinated. If you want to do business with the government, you must vaccinate your workforce.”

Those mandates — unreasonably based on very uncertain knowledge at the time — have now been found to have killed thousands of people who did not need to die.

And worst of all, the people imposing those mandates were lying, and knew they were lying.

Killing young adults

For a large majority of the population that either voluntarily chose to get the COVID jab or were forced to submit under duress, the shots and boosters at this point appear to have been harmless. Most people have exhibited no negative symptoms once jabbed, and have so far been able to go on with their lives as if nothing had changed.

The problem is that for many, that jab was a death sentence, with the executioner often arriving unexpectedly but quickly, and completely unnecessarily.
» Read more

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The rising federal Gestapo

1:18 pm

The Houck Family: Targets of FBI harassment and arrest
The Houck Family: Targets of FBI harassment and arrest.
The little boy in the center clearly needs to be frog-marched to prison.

It can happen here. Anyone who denies this is merely guaranteeing that tyranny in America will arrive sooner.

Worse, it is happening here, right now, at this very moment. The Houck family to the right has been in the news the past few days because on September 23, 2022 they found their home surrounded by an FBI SWAT team with guns drawn, pounding at the front door to arrest the father, Mark Houck, for a minor pushing incident that had occurred months earlier that was so minor the court had dismissed the lawsuit against Houck almost immediately. Notwithstanding its utter triviality, the Biden administration, its Justice Department, and the FBI decided it gave them a great chance to intimidate and frighten someone who happened to also be a conservative and religious activist.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Republicans and conservatives increasingly unwilling to talk to pollsters out of fear

12:45 pm

Joe Biden's
Joe Biden’s anti-conservative rally on September 1, 2022

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: According to pollsters, the vicious almost slanderous attacks by President Biden against Republicans and conservatives — following decades of similar harsh language from Democrats nationwide — is causing these voters to increasingly refuse to talk to pollsters about their opinions.

In a Twitter thread, Trafalgar Group chief pollster Robert C. Cahaly said that President Joe Biden’s recent attacks on so-called “MAGA Republicans” will make polling supporters of former President Donald Trump even harder to poll than in previous years. Cahaly pointed out that in the last two presidential election cycles, name-calling and threats from prominent Democrats contributed to the phenomenon of the “shy Trump voter.” But as the 2022 midterms have begun in earnest, Biden’s escalating rhetoric against Trump supporters, accusing them of embracing “semi-fascism” and being a threat to America, will make these voters even harder to reach in polling.
» Read more

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The new in-space repair and refueling industries that are about to revolutionize space exploration

2:57 pm

Robot repair, as imagined in 1979
Robots doing work in orbit, as imagined in 1979

When Orbital ATK announced in 2016 that its robotic Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) — designed to dock with and extend the life of defunct commercial communications satellites — had won its first contract with Intelsat, that contract award only came after several years of persistent campaigning.

In fact, Orbital ATK had had great difficulties getting any satellite communications company interested. At the time, all communication satellites were in geosynchronous orbit, were expensive to build, but lasted routinely from 10 to 15 years. The satellite companies didn’t see a need to fix them when they ran out of fuel. It seems better to launch a new replacement.

Even after winning that contract with Intelsat, it was still four years before that MEV docked with Intelsat’s satellite, bringing it back to life. In the interim Northrop Grumman (which had purchased Orbital ATK in a merger) had managed just one other contract, even as it had announced upgrades to the MEV to allow it to service many satellites, not just one.

The satellite industry seemed in those days to be largely resistant to the concept of repairing and refueling its older satellites.

No more. We are on the cusp of a major revolution in satellite operations, driven first by innovations like the MEV, but accelerated greatly by the new satellite companies launching low orbit constellations. These new companies are willing to take risks, and thus have also shown an eager desire to link their satellites to a variety of in-space services that they themselves did not wish to provide, from satellite repair and refueling to tug services to space junk removal to quick and controlled de-orbit technologies.

The variety and innovation of this new industry is somewhat astonishing, especially considering how young an industry it is.
» Read more

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The Ukraine’s big victory this past week was no accident

9:01 am

The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022
The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022
The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022. Click for full map.

In the past week the Ukraine has scored a major victory in its effort to drive Russia from its territory, pushing the Russians back across a wide swath in the areas north and east of the city of Kharkiv. The two maps to the right, created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and simplified, reduced, and annotated to post here, show these gains, with the top map from their August 30, 2022 analysis and the bottom from their September 11, 2022 update. Red or pink areas are regions controlled by the Russians. Blue areas are regions retaken by the Ukraine. Red-striped areas are regions captured by Russian in its 2014 invasion. Blue-striped areas are regions inside Russian-occupied territories that have seen strong partisan resistance.

The green lines on both maps mark rivers that act as important military barriers. The blue arrows on the lower map east of Kharkiv show the Ukrainian military push this past week, first to the east to the river Oskil. From there the forces moved north and south. To the south the Ukrainians used the Oskil river to their left as a wall protecting them from Russian forces. That same river acted to pin the Russians down in the south, forcing them in the past day to quickly retreat to the east across the one remaining bridge under their control, but in the process abandoning large amounts of armaments that the Ukrainians can now use.

In the south, the Dnipro River also acts as a barrier for the Russian occupying forces north of Kherson.
The Ukrainians have spent the last month or so aggressively attacking the handful of bridges that cross this river, thus restricting Russian transport to and from its northern forces. As the Ukrainians made these attacks, they were remarkably public about their plans to follow up with a major campaign in the south to retake Kherson and all territory north of the Dnipro.

In that public campaign lies the key to this whole counter-offensive. As ISW noted in its update of September 11, 2022:
» Read more

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The evidence continues to pile up: The government’s strongarm policies against COVID were utter failures

2:05 pm

The modern basis of medical research in the dark age
Health policy during the Wuhan panic

Since my last COVID update in June, the number of research papers has continued to show, with increasing force, the total and utter failure of every single one of the draconian edicts imposed on the pubic by leftist governments both in Democratic Party controlled states in the U.S. as well as worldwide.

Below are a small sampling of this accumulating research. Read it and weep.

My sorrow however comes from knowing that this knowledge was patently obvious from day one. This new research really isn’t new, it confirms what was well known, and was confirmed quickly as early as March 2020. However, when skeptics like myself, mostly on the right, desperately tried to stem the panic, it was all to no avail. The government’s edicts were always wrong, but no one wanted to listen. The data below merely confirms what all the data, before and during the Wuhan panic, was already telling us.
» Read more

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The Ukrainian War: After Six Months

1:11 pm

The Ukraine War as of May 5, 2022
The Ukraine War as of June 6, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022
The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022. Click for full map.

It is now more than three months since my June update on the war in the Ukraine. It is also six months since Russia first invaded.

No new updates were necessary because little had changed, as indicated by the two maps to the right, adapted from maps created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). For their full interactive version go here.

On both maps red indicates territory controlled by Russia, light pink areas that Russia only tentatively controlled, light blue areas recovered by the Ukraine from Russia, and blue-striped areas regions of documented Ukrainian resistance within Russian-controlled territories. The red-striped regions were regions grabbed by Russia during its 2014 invasion.

The top map is from ISW’s June 6th assessment. The bottom map comes from its August 28th assessment.

Though I don’t solely rely on ISW for information (it tends to favor the Ukraine in most of its analysis), its maps have repeatedly appeared reliable and accurate, which is why I use them here.

As you can see, in three months not much has changed. Russia continues to grind away in the middle regions, gaining territory slowly but steadily. The Ukraine meanwhile has either stopped any further Russian advance in the north or south, or has chipped away slightly at Russian holdings in these regions.
» Read more

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How SLS reveals the difference between state-run propaganda and real journalism

10:10 am

The cost of SLS

On August 29, 2022, NASA will attempt the first launch of a government-built, government-owned, and government-designed rocket in more than a decade. The rocket’s development took more than eighteen years, moved in fits and starts due to political interference and mandates, cost more than $50 billion, and has been both behind schedule and overbudget almost from day one. Along the way NASA management screwed up the construction of one multi-million dollar test stand, built another it will never use, mismanaged that test program, dropped a rocket oxygen tank, and found structural cracks in an early Orion capsule.

This dubious achievement, even if the launch and month-plus-long mission of the Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back is a complete success, is hardly something to tout. NASA claims it and this rocket will make it possible for America to explore the solar system, but any honest appraisal of SLS’s cost and cumbersome design immediately reveals that claim to be absurd. SLS can launch at best once per year, and in truth will likely lift off at a much slower rate. It will also eat up resources in the American aerospace industry from technology better designed, more efficient, and more capable of doing the job.

Worse, the generally sloppy management of this program, with numerous major errors in design and construction, raises serious questions about the safety of any future manned flight.

And yet, as this launch day approaches, the American established press is going ga-ga over SLS. Below are just a small sampling:
» Read more

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