New Preface: About The Z-D Generation

I wrote The Z-D Generation (it) in the summer of 1978 as an introduction to a book of 13 short stories, as yet unpublished, called Nuke Shrine Barbecue: Stories from the Age of Surveillance (it). The stories are set in the anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 70s, with a few inside what could be called the military-industrial-surrealist complex. The mid- and late-70s, following the fall of Richard Nixon, and the end of the Vietnam War, were a time of expectation that Investigation and Muckraking might help change America for the better. American reporters, for a change, actually took chances to bore into the core of certain secret aspects of the American Imperium. There had been several Congressional investigations that had exposed, for example, the CIA’s foreign assassination activities, and the CIA’s illegal domestic program called CHAOS, which was designed to disrupt the American anti-war movement, particularly the underground press. Army Intelligence, it turned out, placed a spy in the Chicago 7 defense camp, and the ghastly FBI Cointelpro program, designed to stir up dissension and plant lies against a wide variety of groups and American citizens, came to public knowledge during the years just before I wrote The Z-D Generation (it). Accordingly, I wrote my manifesto as a hopeful encouragement to a generation to make America better through insisting on knowing the nation’s secrets while the secrets are still warm from the oven. I had a great belief in the power of words, as seed syllables, to make a better world. Little did I know in 1978 that Ronald Reagan’s years in the White House would bring a version of the British Official Secrets Act to the USA, so that now, 23 years after I typed Z-D (it), secrets are kept more ferociously secret than ever, and maybe even secret forever.

     - Ed Sanders August, 2001.

                    1. The Age of Investigation

     "This is the age of
     Investigation and every citizen must investigate"


Eleutherarchy has taken to the airwaves
since the days of Dostoevsky,
and the Freedom is there for all

Therefore, NEVER HESITATE TO OPEN
                  UP A CASE FILE

                  EVEN UPON THE BLOODIEST OE BEASTS
                  OR PLOTS!

We still sec the day of

                    RELENTLESS
                    PURSUIT OF DIVA!

                    Interrogate the Abyss!

To go after an item of time,

                    (as Olson says: p. 134 of
                    The Human Universe & Other Essays,

                    the essence is to
                    "KNOW TILE NEW FACTS EARLY.")

                    Draw a graph or glyph
                    of your investigation target

                    surround the glyph
                    with gnosis-vectors

                    pointing to the target

and never surrender!

                    Learn everything to be known
                    about your
                    data target

then procede with Question Lists (very important
                                                             to have precise,
                                                                   written, Q-Lists)
                               toward the

                                            data-target

                                                    ^

                                                    dt

                    Then its robot-targeting:

if you get knocked down,
                               flame-mouthed, confused by the target's
                                                    hype or threats,

                    stand up, reassemble your Q-Lists,
and proceed again toward the data-target

----> ^ ----> knock down ----> ^ ----> knock down ----> ^
         dt                                       dt                                        dt

                                       Holding ever in mind
                                        The Three Adverbs

                                                   C/R/E

                          Ceaselessly/Relentlessly/Ethically.

               Not that there will be no danger, though we urge the
                              Three Adverbs upon you--
               Just keep in mind, when targeting, say a possible
               national security psychotic killer hidden in a tweed suit,

                              St. Augustine's dictum,

                         very suitable to remember,
                         stress-questioning hostile data-sources:

                              "The wicked persecute
                              the good w/ the blindness
                              of the passion that animates them,
                              while the good pursue the
                              wicked with a wise discretion"

                              The secret campaigns
                              of the FBI in recent
                              years encouraged Secret Sadism.

                              No more Secret Sadism!

                              The FBI, Military Intelligence,
                              The CIA, the dour minions
                              of National Security w/ repressionist
                              psyches,

                              must be confronted, infiltrated, exposed,
                              and transformed.

                              Art, Psychology, Openness, Love, Bravery,
                              and Relentlessness--

                              these are our tools.

                                            Not just
                                            Investigation,
                                            but
                                            Infiltration--

Demand to infiltrate the National Security grouch apparatus!

Poets, union organizers, academics, environmentalists, people of all persuasions, must demand to join, to observe, to participate in,
councils of the military, councils of the police, and organizations
of the right, in order to come into contact with the War Caste.

                                    All poets and writers should
                                    occasionally take on an investigation
                                    that requires close scrutiny of, and contact
                                    with, the police.

                                    Don't be only an image in a dossier.

(Demand to know and to talk with the police -- investigate th' investigators. Demand to know the technology, the techniques, and the personal philosophies of the secret police. Demand citizen input during working
hours in the offices of the National Security Agency, say, as well as your local Sheriff's office intelligence division, not to mention the Office of
Naval Intelligence, and the Pentagon's weapons research laboratories.
And why should not groups of United States Citizens be drawn by lot for inspection of the nation's most sensitive top secret documents, plans, and proposals? And why do we not sec women high in the councils of the War Caste yet? Why should not, during an interim period, a delegation from
the National Organization for Women serve on the National Security
Council, and have a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff?)

And do not be beaten away from the barricades of investigation
by fear, by shyness, by stonewall, or by the glowerings of
National Security grouches.