Michael Meiers' The Second Holocaust

[Connie Smith]

Before reviewing this latest (and, he avers, last) book of Meiers' I want to note that I read his initial work about Jonestown [WAS JONESTOWN A CIA MEDICAL EXPERIMENT? A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE, Mellen Press, 1989] half a dozen years ago. While copies of that book are difficult to find and often 'pricey' the expense is well worth it, if for no other reason than to assure potential readers of this latest book that Meiers is capable of writing a copiously footnoted scholarly treatise on the subject.

Michael Meiers is old now; although he's never stopped researching Jonestown he has, in this book, neglected to cite sources whenever he makes specific claims/charges, relying instead upon a rather skimpy bibliography comprised of books, newspaper articles, television programs, etc. There is no Index, either.

Compared to its forerunner, this book is scant -a mere 155 pages- but its brevity does not reflect a paucity of new information nor a simple rehashing of the old. What it *does* reflect is that Meiers has devoted nearly forty years of his life to exposing Jim Jones and the U.S. government's direct involvement in the creation of Jonestown, its horrific demise and -most alarmingly- its true purpose.

But Meiers has done himself a tremendous disservice by [seemingly] having published this book without the assistance of a sincere editor, for while many of his claims are compelling -and even plausible- the lack of proper citations and his frequent use of BOLD TYPE to underscore a point diminishes what he's so eager to convey. (I felt the same way about Douglas P. Horne's five-volume opus: he devoted far too much time/space to 'editorializing/pontificating' throughout what could've otherwise been a concise expose of the ARRB's efforts -or lack of them.)

Honestly, if I had not read Meiers' first (stellar) book about Jonestown I would've dismissed this one after its first chapter. The disorganized writing bears the hallmark of one who knows so much that he cannot, without the objective red-pencil of a sympathetic editor, stay focussed, coherently state facts and then rely upon the reader to fully comprehend their gravitas and implications. So one feels rather cartoonishly bludgeoned by all the BOLD TYPE 'road signs' and becomes inclined to view this book as a rant -the final, somewhat resentful ravings of an old man to whom almost no one has paid any attention, despite his being the only person ever to spill truths about Jonestown.

I've stated all the above in order to assure you that despite The Second Holocaust's lack of literary polish it is still well worth reading and, unlike its predecessor, is readily available and affordable:

http://www.amazon.com/Second-Holocaust-E...ael+meiers

Meiers is convinced -and argues strongly- that HIV/AIDS was created at Jonestown; a bio-weapon specifically targeted to infect/eliminate people of African descent and homosexuals -the very groups that comprised the bulk of Jonestown's population.

Meiers also has an entirely different [reasonable] 'take' on Mark Lane's presence at Jonestown on the eve of "The White Night" than the one I've held for many years. (I've been in the Mae Brussell 'suspicion' camp: Why was Mark Lane allowed to act as Marguerite Oswald's attorney [on the record] before the Warren Commission? Why was he allowed to address that body at all? And then there he is at Jonestown's destruction. Howcome? There have been other important Lane 'propinquities' as well. What forces placed this one man in so many crucial roles as an advocate/spokesman again and again?)

Meiers also has much to say about the Moscone-Milk assassinations that occurred at San Francisco's City Hall offices ten days after Jonestown's mass 'suicides'. (Meiers opines that assassin Dan White's 'missing year' prior to the killings was spent being brainwashed as a Manchurian Candidate-type patsy.) It *is* odd that the public protests which broke out in San Francisco's Castro (gay) District after Dan White's aquittal in 1979 were immediately dubbed "The White Night" riots by the media. Isn't it?

I was a young adult in the SF Bay Area when all this went down. I well remember then-Supervisor Dianne Feinstein's ashen [klonopin] stare as she dully informed local media microphones that the Mayor and a fellow Supervisor had been shot and killed. "The suspect is Dan White," she added, before exiting the podium. Nobody had even 'absorbed' the enormity or consequences of Jonestown yet, and suddenly here was a new horror, coming on the heels of so many political murders in the 1960s - which none of us were 'over'.

While I lament that Meiers was unwilling to entrust this book to a competent editor, I value and am inclined to believe what it offers as truth, raw/disjointed as its content often is. As is stated on the book's rear cover, "Today Meiers is long in years and short in days. This is his life's work, his last work, and a definite must read."

If you're at all interested in Jonestown's true raison d'etre, or Jim Jones's background/affiliations, or the many 'programs' the U.S. government has underwritten with an eye toward Absolute Control of its (and others') population, you'll not be disappointed by this book's disclosures.

Just remember to ignore/skate past the BOLD TYPE!

[David Guyatt]

Connie, does he make a strong case in his book that HIV was, in fact, created at Jonestown?

I know exactly what you mean about writers overdoing things in the bolding department. It is very off putting.

[Anthony Thorne]

I've also read this book (or 90% of it - a good portion of it is a condensation of his earlier volume, expanded and extended in the new volume into some eye-opening and startling areas, and as I'd just re-read the earlier work I jumped through a couple of chapters). Taken with the first volume, it's an important book - Meiers notes at the outset that he spoke to William Colby the day before Colby went missing, and suspects Colby's death was related to the AIDS / Jonestown research that Meiers had raised with the former CIA director. Flipping through the pages right now, the bold type mentioned by Connie is certainly there, but it's perhaps not as prevalent as some might worry - half of the instances of it are to bold phrases like 'MK-ULTRA" and "THE NEW YORK TIMES". It does pop up though in the manner Connie mentioned, and the book would have been smoother without it.

Meiers' earlier volume is heavily footnoted - the new one has an 8-page bibliography at the back, but no footnotes. Connie has summed up my feelings about the book - in light of his earlier publication, I'm inclined to trust his assertions in the new one. Each ties into the other and elements (such as the alphabet homicides) that are alluded to in the new book, receive a much more detailed overview in the earlier volume. Jonestown is essentially viewed as a CIA testing ground for various programs, and AIDS was just one element of those. It was created prior to the White Night, tested on the residents over an extended period leading up to the massacre, then let loose on the public after the Jonestown deaths eliminated the evidence of the test.

The frustrating thing about these works is that they have to be read jointly and in their entirety for Meiers' assertions to really take hold, and for the logical steps of his argument to cohere in the reader's mind. Jim Jones is shown (across hundreds of pages in the earlier work) to be a sadistic, murderous and hideously brilliant overseer of some particularly nasty CIA black operations, and it's only in light of the many observations about Jones and his work that you can follow Meiers down some of his more loosely documented arguments later in that book, and throughout some of the new one. Again, though, having absorbed both books, I'm inclined to believe what he writes.

An online scan of the earlier book is now floating around, as is a partially completed transcription of that scan into Word doc format. I'd suggest forum members who are keen to read the first book be patient for the moment, as I suspect at some point the text will become more widely available.

The background of the AIDS virus and its probable creation by members of the Pentagon and right-wing national security nuts like Kissenger is covered in Donald Scott's THE EXTREMELY UNFORTUNATE SKULL VALLEY INCIDENT, linked below.

http://www.amazon.com/Extremely-Unfortun...1553695542