Search 13,001 Media Articles
A lawsuit brought against the Bohemian Club has revealed the inner workings of one of America’s most secretive clubs, headquartered in San Francisco. Three valets who worked for years at the private club's infamous summer camp at Monte Rio in Sonoma County brought the complaint. The complaint alleges a litany of unlawful labor practices at Bohemian Grove, including “nonstop” 16-hour work days, during which employees were not provided bathroom and lunch breaks, and a failure to pay minimum wage and overtime. Every summer for 150 years, a 2,700-acre clearing in the ancient redwoods near the Russian River becomes a gathering place for the world's elite. The Bohemian Club's summer camp is shrouded in mystery but is rumored to end with a ritual that involves a human effigy and the burning of a giant sacrificial owl. The all-male club has successfully kept much of its activity, and its member list, secret over the years, but the new complaint, filed with the U.S. District Court in Northern California on June 6, shines a light on how the camp allegedly operates. The lawsuit claims that the camp hosts three events every year: the Spring Jinx, the Spring Picnic and the Summer Encampment. Bohemian Grove itself is split into over 100 separate camps. The camp's operations are so secretive the plaintiffs in the case don't yet know exactly whom they are accusing, instead referring to some of the defendants as John Doe.
Note: Read more about Bohemian Grove. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on secret societies from reliable major media sources.
Bechtel - a behemoth among closely held companies - has been the worlds builder, benefiting from vast government contracts for engineering and infrastructure work in difficult places while it nurtured relationships with power brokers in Washington. In The Profiteers, journalist Sally Denton seeks to unravel the history of Bechtel. Her story is one of how a dynastic line of rulers from the same American family conducts its business and how its system of networking now pervades US capitalism. Anecdotes of Bohemian Grove, the secretive retreat that became an all-male summer camp for US corporate, political and military elites to toast marshmallows, skinny-dip in the river north of San Francisco and dress in drag for skits, elucidate the chummy nature of big business. As of 2014, [Bechtel's] reported revenue was $37bn, with projects and employees in 37 countries. The corporations embrace of Saudi Arabia as a lucrative client and its decades-long and contorted experience in Iraq also makes sense of some aspects of US foreign policy - as well as its intelligence-gathering operations. The life and times of John McCone, a former Bechtel executive who later served as CIA director in the US administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, is chronicled deftly here. It is worth noting: McCone was and is critical to Bechtels dominance today. He devised the idea of cost-plus contracts for the toughest jobs sought by government. Contractors are guaranteed a profit in such deals.
Note: Bechtel was at the center of a major Iraqi reconstruction scandal in 2007. More recently, major defense contractors have been publicly congratulating themselves for steering US policy towards militarism. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.
When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died 12 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s. The names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort [remain] largely unknown. Members of the worldwide, male-only society wear dark-green robes emblazoned with a large cross. Some hold titles, such as Grand Master, Prior and Knight Grand Officer. Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John Poindexter and C. Allen Foster, a prominent Washington lawyer who traveled to the ranch with Scalia by private plane, hold leadership positions within the Order. In 1695, Count Franz Anton von Sporck founded the society in Bohemia, which is in modern-day Czech Republic. The societys U.S. chapter launched in 1966 at the famous Bohemian Club in San Francisco, which is associated with the all-male Bohemian Grove - one of the most well-known secret societies in the country. In 2010, Poindexter hosted a group of 53 members of the Houston chapter of the International Order of St. Hubertus at the Cibolo Creek Ranch. In a statement after Scalia died, the U.S. Marshals Service said that Scalia had declined a security detail while at the ranch.
Note: Read more about Bohemian Grove and the other strange secret societies populated by the elite.
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" is the motto of San Francisco's Bohemian Club. The motto is supposed to represent the club's edict against doing business during its annual Bohemian Grove retreat, which commences Thursday on 2,700 acres 75 miles north of the city. The "weaving spiders" motto also provides cover for a club that discriminates against women. Business titans have long bankrolled the retreats. A roster of 2010 members released by norcaltruth.org - the club does not release its membership list - includes a couple of Rockefellers and the ubiquitous Koch brothers. Hence conspiracy theories about sinister deals cut amid the redwoods. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is a member. William R. Hearst III, trustee of the Hearst Corp. ... is a member. Sonoma State sociology Professor Peter Phillips attended the retreat in 1994. The club was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. "They're very clearly talking politics and business constantly." No weaving spiders? "I proved the opposite, quite clearly. I heard conversations about business. 'If GE comes in on the deal, we can get the Japanese to join' - three men walking down a trail together." Phillips' summation [is] that the retreat presents powerful "men celebrating their male eliteness, which is kind of how the world works."
Note: For more major media articles on powerful secret societies that work secretly to gain control, click here.
Every July, some of the richest and most powerful men in the world gather at a 2,700 acre campground in Monte Rio, Calif., for two weeks of heavy drinking, super-secret talks, druid worship (the group insists they are simply revering the Redwoods), and other rituals. The people that gather at Bohemian Grove who have included prominent business leaders, former U.S. presidents, musicians, and oil barons are told that Weaving Spiders Come Not Here, meaning business deals are to be left outside. One exception was in 1942, when a planning for the Manhattan Project took place at the grove, leading to the creation of the atom bomb. The club is so hush-hush that little can be definitively said about it, but much of what we know today is from those who have infiltrated the camp, including Texas-based filmmaker Alex Jones. In 2000, Jones and his cameraman entered the camp with a hidden camera and were able to film a Bohemian Grove ceremony, Cremation of the Care. During the ceremony, members wear costumes and cremate a coffin effigy called Care before a 40-foot-owl. The Sonoma County Free Press, which has published investigative stories on the grove since at least the 1980s, says activities include plays and comedy shows in which women are portrayed by male actors, and Lakeside Talks, in which high-ranking officials speak about information not available to the public. The group calls them public interest talks. Protests take place at the Bohemian Grove nearly ever year.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on other powerful secret societies, click here.
It is time again for the annual Bohemian Grove encampment. Here, in 1942, the Manhattan Project was conceived. Here, in 1967, Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan were said to have settled on who would first seek the presidency. And here, in 1981, Caspar Weinberger, then the secretary of defense, gave a lakeside talk that seemed to hint strongly of the military buildup to follow. Yet the ritual on this day includes only one protester, bearded, lanky Brian Romanoff, 28, who has been working mostly alone since the two-week encampment began on July 16. He says he has adopted a nonconfrontational approach, better to spread the truth about the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Two words: controlled demolition. But why has interest flagged in the goings-on at Bohemian Grove, where the likes of the singer Jimmy Buffett, Colin L. Powell and former President George W. Bush are said to assemble? The answer, boys: Mary Moore, 75, the areas silver-haired earth mother of activism, is focused on other matters. So its just not the same. A former beauty queen from San Luis Obispo, Ms. Moore moved to a wooded Sonoma County enclave in the mid-1970s. Although active in liberal causes, she knew nothing of the annual elite-male getaway in her community until she read The Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats: A Study in Ruling-Class Cohesiveness, by the sociologist G. William Domhoff.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on other powerful secret societies, click here.
David Rothkopf's Superclass [can be viewed] as a map of how the world really works. Rothkopf, a former managing director of Kissinger Associates and an international trade official in the Clinton Administration, has identified roughly 6,000 individuals who have "the ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide" ... with a growing allegiance ... to each other rather than to any particular nation. Rothkopf [cites] the Pareto principle of distribution, or the "80/20 rule," whereby 20 percent of the causes of anything are responsible for 80 percent of the consequences. That means 20 percent of the money-makers make 80 percent of the money and 20 percent of the politicians make 80 percent of the important decisions. That 20 percent belongs to the superclass. Superclass ... is as much about who is not part of the superclass as who is. As I read Rothkopf's chronicles of elite gatherings -- Davos, Bilderberg, the Bohemian Grove (all male), Fathers and Sons (all male) -- I was repeatedly struck by the near absence of women. When Rothkopf summarizes "how to become a member of the superclass," his first rule is "be born a man." Only 6 percent of the superclass is female. Superclass is written in part as a consciousness-raising exercise for members of the superclass themselves. Rothkopf worries that "the world they are making" is deeply unequal and ultimately unstable. But it's likely to take more than exhortation. In the words of former Navy Secretary John Lehman, "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." Why would the superclass want to give it up?
Note: The website www.theyrule.net allows visitors to trace the connections between individuals who serve on the boards of top corporations, universities, think thanks, foundations and other elite institutions. For lots more on secret societies, click here.
Who rules the world? The rise of nation states produced national ruling classes. It would be odd if the current integration of the world economy did not produce new global elites business people and financiers who run global companies and global politicians who steer supra-national organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund. David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that these elites constitute nothing less than a new global superclass. They have all the clubby characteristics of the old national ruling classes, but with the vital difference that they operate on the global stage, far from mere national electorates. They attend the same universities. They are groomed in a handful of world-spanning institutions such as Goldman Sachs. They belong to the same clubs the Council on Foreign Relations in New York is a particular favourite and sit on each other's boards of directors. Many of them shuttle between the public and private sectors. They meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at Davos and the Trilateral Commission or for the crme de la crme the Bilderberg meetings or the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California. Mr Rothkopf is anything but a crank, and he is right when he says that, these days, the most influential people around the world are also the most global people. He is also admirably ambivalent about his subject. He worries about surging inequality the richest 1% of humans own 40% of the planet's wealth and about the rumbling backlash against so much unaccountable power.
Note: For reliable, verifiable information the secret societies of which the global elite are a part, click here. Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf is available here.
The Bohemian Club's ambitious plan to log its famed Bohemian Grove on the Russian River [in northern California] hit a snag last year when opponents argued that the ritzy club's redwood holdings were too large to qualify for a streamlined permit from the state. In a new move, the all-male San Francisco club has offered to donate 160 acres as a conservation easement to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation of Missoula, Mont., effectively whittling down the size and making it eligible for a state exemption to log in perpetuity without extensive environmental review. Opponents of the plan, including the Sierra Club and some former Bohemian Club members, say the club's action is nothing more than a thinly veiled end-run around state law that offers the special permit to small, noncommercial holdings. At the heart of the controversy is the 2,700-acre redwood grove, where the club's secret membership, including U.S. presidents, kings of industry and celebrities, have gathered for spring and summer retreats for more than a century.
Note: For a treasure trove of revealing reports on secret societies from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside an exclusive California retreat for government and business leaders Saturday to challenge the right of a "ruling elite" to make policy decisions without public scrutiny. The annual Bohemian Grove retreat has attracted powerful men such as Ronald Reagan, George Bush, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, philanthropist David Rockefeller, former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It's also become a magnet for all types of activists who increasingly use the event to network and organize their campaigns. The men who attend the Bohemian Grove retreat spend two weeks performing plays, eating gourmet camp grub, listening to speakers and power-bonding at the 2,700-acre compound near the Russian River in Sonoma County. The retreat is organized by the exclusive San Francisco-based Bohemian Club. The club and event are shrouded in mystery, much like Yale University's most-famous secret society, Skull and Bones, whose members include President George W. Bush and his presidential rival Sen. John Kerry.
Note: This article strangely has been removed from the San Francisco Chronicle website. To see it in the Internet Archive, click here. For an informative five-minute ABC news clip on the power elite gathering Bohemian Grove reported in 1981, click here. And for reliable information on the most secretive meeting of the world's elite reported by the major media, see our Bilderberg Group compilation available here.
The Middle Ages had the Knights Templar. The 18th century had the Masons and the Illuminati. Our modern age has golf-playing businessmen. [Jon] Ronson, a 35-year-old British writer, humorist and documentarian, kept reading and hearing about the "tiny elite [that] rules the world from inside a secret room" -- so he decided to go in search of it. He met with extremists of many stripes: Ku Klux Klansmen with a PR bent, Muslim rabble-rousers ... and others convinced that a New World Order meant the end of the world. He sought out the industrialists of groups such as the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove. He wrote about his experiences in "Them." Ronson's extremists seem rather normal. Some are very much aware of how their views marginalize them. The people of "Them" are people who are all too human -- even if they would deny others their humanity. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you. Ronson doesn't deny that many of the extremists in "Them" are, well, extreme. Many have put together half-baked theories that blame the troubles of the world on wealthy businessmen, usually a code word for Jews. Ronson, who's Jewish himself, sometimes found it awkward to listen to their views. Conspiracy theorists tend to be fearful, less educated, less tied in to the power structure. Meanwhile, the leaders of corporations and countries do meet as part of conferences sponsored by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. While researching a Bilderberg Group meeting, [Ronson] was chased through parts of Portugal by shadowy security men. He found out just how thin the membrane between "us" and "them" may be.
Note: Them is by far the most balanced, entertaining book you are likely to find on conspiracy theorists. It pokes a lot of fun both at the conspiracy theorists and at the powerful secret groups which he finds to be deluded almost as much as the conspiracy theorists themselves.
