The Bohemian Grove club: America's ruling elite at work and play
http://wsws.org/articles/2000/dec2000/bohe-d27_prn.shtml
By Richard Tyler
27 December 2000
The World Socialist Web Site has noted the political and personal bonds
linking members of the US Supreme Court with the incoming Republican
administration (see: “Family ties, political bias linked US Supreme Court
justices to Bush camp”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/dec2000/sup-d22.shtml). It is also worth
noting that several of the justices, or their spouses, share another common
bond with the Bush camp—participation in the activities of the highly
secretive Bohemian Grove club.
Every year since 1879, the club holds its two-week Annual Summer Encampment,
dubbed by President Herbert Hoover “the greatest men's party on earth.” The
gathering takes place on the exclusive 2,700-acre Bohemian Grove in Monte
Rio, about 70 miles north of San Francisco, California.
Club membership, which is open only to males, is estimated at 2,700. Those
belonging have included every Republican president since Calvin Coolidge, as
well as a smaller number of Democratic presidents. The club mixes top-level
politicians with the extremely wealthy, including the CEOs of many Fortune
500 corporations and global financial institutions.
Many of the interests represented in the club membership are subsidized by
lucrative government contracts, including the military, oil, banking, the
utilities and the media.
A list of members reads like a veritable “Who's Who” of the American ruling
elite. It includes former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George
Shultz; S.D. Bechtel Jr., who heads the family-owned global engineering and
construction corporation; Thomas Watson Jr. from IBM; Ralph Bailey of Dupont;
former president George Bush; A.W. Clausen of the World Bank; CBS anchorman
Walter Cronkite; and William F. Buckley, editor-in-chief of the conservative
National Review magazine.
The club mixes extended bouts of eating and drinking with “artistic”
pursuits—staging plays written and performed by members—along with mock
“pagan” rituals. The annual gathering starts with the “Cremation of Care”
ritual, the burning of an effigy of the club's mascot as members stand
chanting in their red-hooded robes before the base of a 40-foot stone owl
altar.
The “Lakeside Talks” held as part of the gathering offer the members an
opportunity to hear lectures on a variety of topics, usually including
several on contemporary political issues. It is said that the Manhattan
Project, responsible for building the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was
conceived at the Grove in 1942.
A brief listing of the topics discussed in recent years indicates the general
tenor of the talks:
In 1997 the president of the American Enterprise Institute, Christopher
DeMuth, delivered a lecture entitled, “The Triumph of the Market and the
Politics of Affluence.” The same year, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia,
who played an instrumental role in handing George W. Bush the presidency
earlier this month, spoke on “Church, State and the Constitution.”
The next year, James A. Baker, former secretary of state under Bush senior
and head of George W's legal challenge in Florida, expounded upon “The
Imperative of American Leadership”. William Perry, the former secretary of
defense under Clinton, outlined a “Preventative Defense and American Security
Strategy for the 21st Century.”
The 1999 lecture programme seems somewhat prophetic in light of the
successful Republican effort to steal the 2000 presidential election.
Washington Post political correspondent David Broder spoke about “Direct
Democracy—Curse or Blessing.” He shared the lecture programme with General
Colin Powell (“America's Promise—Leading Armies and Leading Kids”) and
Walter Hussman, publisher of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (“Lying, Cheating,
Stealing in the Media”).
Those who attended the 1999 gathering were said to include George Bush
senior, together with his sons, George W. and Jeb Bush, the Governor of
Florida. Also present were Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Newt Gingrich.
This year's Bohemian Grove gathering saw the return of George Bush the
father, together with his former secretary of defense and now
vice-president-elect, Richard Cheney.
According to the New York Times, US Supreme Court Justice Sandra O'Connor's
husband has also participated in the activities of the Bohemian Grove.
One does not have to subscribe to an outlandish conspiracy theory to imagine
a conversation among the California redwoods beginning, “Now, gentlemen, I
want to ask what you can do to help my son become the 43rd President...”
