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The book is available here.Preface
When I started posting these essays and poems on the internet in late 2006 I had the rather optimistic idea that eventually they might help me come to grips with the events of 9/11. This goal has been achieved to some extent, since I feel I have reached a point of understanding of what happened on that day beyond which I am not likely to progress significantly.
I wrote the first few essays under the general title "The Logical Reconstruction of Reality" because I felt, and still feel, that the events of 9/11 changed our perception of reality profoundly, and that this is true for all of us, except perhaps the perpetrators themselves and their collaborators (if that distinction is worth making).
I am not talking about the details of what happened and more importantly, what did not happen (see the 9/11 Commission Report for this). I have relied from the beginning on the work of David Ray Griffin for these details, and I agree with his conclusions. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel.
What I have tried to do, especially since Griffin and many others have provided overwhelming evidence that 9/11 was, indeed, an "inside job," is take this conclusion as the cornerstone for reconstructing the view of the world that we now have to live with and in. The key essay in this respect is probably "MITOP and the Double Bind."
"Made It Transparent On Purpose" is indeed speculation, pure "conspiracy theory," since I have no evidence for it whatsoever. On the other hand, I doubt whether any such evidence will be forthcoming in the foreseeable future, and that, too, is an important part of the reality we now face. At some point, when all the evidence is in that is likely to be coming in, and I fear we have just about reached that point, one has to "speculate" about how the world works, especially that considerable part of it that is controlled by other human beings. (9/11 was not, after all, an act of God or nature.) The alternative would be to exist with no more understanding of our situation than a beast in the field.
I prefer to call this common sense rather than speculation. I have consistently rejected the attempts, which are rampant, to locate the source of evil in some real or imagined construct (Illuminati, Bilderbergers, "Zionists," etc.), because I feel that speculation of this sort is worse than useless (see "Deep State Doublethink" and the essays on anti-Semitism). In the end, though I still have my disagreements with Noam Chomsky, I have found that a rapprochement between "conspiracy theory" and the "institutional" analyses) of people like Chomsky is not only possible but urgent. The most negative aspect of progressive political struggle today I find to be not the difficulty or even impossibility of ascertaining the truth about various events, but the lack of ability or will on the part of truth-seekers of various stripes to overcome their factionalism and unite for a common cause, of which there are a great many (see "Progressive Summit").
The poems date from 1987 and also deal mostly though not exclusively with political themes, such as the war in Vietnam and the JFK assassination, as well as 9/11. Conspiracy is thus obviously a common thread, as it was in my earlier book Looking for the Enemy (2008). What has changed since 9/11/2001, in my view, is the willingness, even the desire, of the conspirators while remaining anonymous as individuals to make the nature and consequences of their actions transparent to all who dare to see. The logic of this notion of "transparent conspiracy" may not be immediately apparent, conspiracies being by definition secret, but as I wrote in "Sunrise at Buchenwald"):
Reason is but a mode the mind abides in.
The rest is dark, like blood.
Let us hope that in this poem, written in a dark moment, I have exaggerated. We can still fight back. I hope we do, and that the necessary coalescence of progressive forces takes place before the worst occurs again.
