California protest builds
Bohemian Grove: They don't just play in the woods
By Deirdre
Griswold
How are the big decisions really made? The story is that
we live in a transparent society where elected bodies make
the decisions and the will of the majority prevails. But in
real life most important events have been set into motion
long before the people know anything about it.
The Vietnam War, for example. Most people in the United
States knew nothing about Vietnam--hadn't even heard of
it--when the government had already been involved in a war
there for years.
Who decided that the United States should make atomic
weapons and drop them on two Japanese cities, killing several
hundred thousand people? Not the public. They knew nothing
about it.
But a select group of corporate heads, political leaders
and technocrats knew about it. In fact, the Manhattan Project
to create the atomic bomb was agreed on during a super-secret
conclave in 1942--at Bohemian Grove, Calif.
This July 14, thousands of demonstrators will converge on
Bohemian Grove when, once again, the members of this secret
society gather for their annual two-week bash. There are
2,500 members of the Bohemian Club--all men, 99 percent
white, all connected to the very rich. Every Republican
president since Herbert Hoover has been a member, and quite a
few Democrats. George W. Bush belongs, just like his father,
George, and his grandfather, Prescott Bush.
Heads of corporations and banks like IBM, Dupont, General
Electric, Bank of America and the World Bank have also been
members. Peter Phillips of Sonoma State University wrote in
his 1994 dissertation about the Bohemian Club: "About
one-fifth of the members are either directors of one or more
of the Fortune 1000 companies, corporate CEOs, top
governmental officials (current and former) and/or members of
important policy councils or major foundations."
The International Action Center chapters in San Francisco
and Los Angeles are among the sponsors of this year's
demonstration, which has a long list of endorsers from the
progressive and anti-globalization community. Contact the IAC
at (415) 821-5782 or iac@actionsf.org for information on
buses to Monte Rio, Calif., where the demonstration will take
place.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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