Anyone read Jim Marrs? His new book is pretty messy but has some good spots

[alp227]

I just finished reading conspiracy journalist Jim Marrs' new book The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy: How the New World Order, Man-Made Diseases, and Zombie Banks Are Destroying America. (Someone posted about it on DU last month.} My impression of Marrs from reading it is that he's a libertarian who despises pretty much every liberal or conservative government action, as this book takes a free-market leaning and attacks the actions of every president since Nixon. Recurring themes:
- Big Pharma is harming America, and alternative medicine is better and persecuted
- There's an unreported globalist takeover of American institutions
- Public schools and the mainstream media are turning the American people into unquestioning zombies
- The Federal Reserve should be audited.

Really disturbing is that Marrs included Obama's nontroversial speech to public schools (which he refers to in another page as "government schools" the pejorative conservative term) within "media control and fearmongering" next to Tasers, the PATRIOT Act, and government control of the news.

Marrs also devotes a section of his book, "Leader Control", to attacking the Obama administration including the high salaries of the first lady's staffers and even takes James O'Keefe's undercover ACORN video seriously. Also he presents the Kenneth Gladney hoax (Gladney is a Tea Party supporter who claims that SEIU members beat him) as fact. He seems to try to appeal to everyone of every political orientation as he cites sources ranging from ProPublica to WorldNetDaily to Bill Moyers as commentary about public affairs. There's a reason whyLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit actor and former Air American radio host Richard Belzer and The Wall Street Journal are quoted on the book jacket praising Marrs' past work.

On the brighter side, Marrs has many excellent criticisms of the expansion of national security under George W. Bush and the PATRIOT Act. Marrs also has written books questioning the official reports regarding the JFK assassination and 9/11 attacks, and what do you think about those books and Marrs' theories in general if you've read his work?

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. He appears on target about a lot of things, he is on my reading list often.

But then he veers off into grey lizards and loses me.
so I have a mixed reaction to his stuff.

[alp227]

2. thanks, what i was thinking too

I mean I'm searching DU for some of the Obama topics that Marrs discussed and wow...apparently he's trusting discredited wingnuts. And his book seems hypocritical as he advocates questioning global warming yet glorifies environmentalism and organic food. He also advocates a lot of psuedoscience too.

[Mimosa]

3. Heck yes. CROSSFIRE is a must read.

Crossfire had ignited Oliver Stone's longstanding curiosity about the assassination of President Kennedy. I have read it maybe 3 times and followed the footnotes and done research. Crossfire led to much research including the movie JFK and the recent book by James Douglass "JFKand the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters."

If people don't ever read Crossfire they may possibly remain 'in the dark' about why America has changed so radically after the mid to late 1960s.

Here's a D.U. thread on the topic:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=209x6350

I'm not a close 'bud' to D.U.'s Octafish. But he is a major expert on this topic and related issues.

[Schema Thing]

4. I met him recently

spent a few hours with him; nice guy. But you wouldn't want him on a jury (well, actually you might, if it were your trial and you were guilty and you had a creative tale to establish doubt), nor would you want him investigating a crime committed against someone you love.