Some paranoia but essentially the sons of belial in the centre.

[Guest guest]

http://www.freemasonwatch.freepress-freespeech.com/

 

The New York Observer

 

At Skull and Bones, Bush's Secret Club Initiates Ream

Gore

 

April 23, 2001

 

by Ron Rosenbaum

 

It's the primal scene of American power, of Bush family

values. For two centuries,

the initiation rite of Skull and Bones has shaped the

character of the men who

have shaped the American character, including two

Presidents named Bush.

 

And last Saturday, April 14–for the first time ever–that

long-secret rite was

witnessed by a team of outsiders, including this writer.

 

Using high-tech night-vision video equipment able to

peer through the gloom into

the inner courtyard of the Skull and Bones "Tomb" in New

Haven, The Observer

team witnessed:

 

• The George W. effect: intoxicated by renewed proximity

to Presidential power,

a robed Bonesman posing as George W. harangued initiates

in an eerily

accurate Texas drawl: "I'm gonna ream you like I reamed

Al Gore" and "I'm

gonna kill you like I killed Al Gore."

 

• Privileged Skull and Bones members mocked the assault

on Abner Louima by

crying out repeatedly, "Take that plunger out of my

ass!"

 

• Skull and Bones members hurled obscene sexual insults

("lick my bumhole") at

initiates as they were forced to kneel and kiss a skull

at the feet of the initiators.

 

• Other members acted out the tableau of a throat-

cutting ritual murder.

 

It's important to remember this is not some fraternity

initiation. It is an initiation far

more secret–and far more significant, in terms of real

power in the United

States–than that of the Cosa Nostra. If the Bushes

are "the WASP

Corleones"–as the ever more stingingly waspish Maureen

Dowd has

suggested–this is how their "made men" (and women) are

made.* It's an

initiation ceremony that has bonded diplomats, media

moguls, bankers and

spies into a lifelong, multi-generational fellowship far

more influential than any

fraternity. It was–and still remains–the heart of the

heart of the American

establishment.

 

Further revelations turned up by the Observer Bones

Investigation Unit include:

 

• The words to the secret Skull and Bones "death

mantra."

 

• Copies of the Skull and Bones tax returns, obtained

through Freedom of

Information Act requests, raise questions about the

legitimacy of the secret

society's claim to charitable tax-exempt deduction

status–particularly relevant

considering recent criticism of the Bush tax plan for

favoring the privileged few.

 

• A possible explanation emerged in the course of the

initiation ceremony for

George W.'s decision to run for President in the first

place.

 

`the devil equals DEATH'

 

The Observer Mission Impossible expedition had its

inception several months

ago with a phone call from Peggy Adler, the research

associate on my previous

Skull and Bones piece in The Observer (July 17, 2000).

She is the demon

investigator and former Iran-contra committee staffer

who, among other coups,

cross-referenced corporate boards to crack the "RTA

code," the corporate shell

game by which the corporate shell of the Skull and Bones

society, the Russell

Trust Association, shielded its paper trail from prying

eyes by changing its name

to RTA Inc.

 

Ms. Adler said she had been approached by a member of

the Yale community

who wanted to share with us a remarkable coup of his

own: He had found a way

last year, in April of 2000, to audiotape the Skull and

Bones initiation ceremony.

And he wanted to know if we'd be interested in an

attempt to videotape it this

time.

 

And so one afternoon last December, shortly after the

Bush electoral victory had

been certified, I met with the intrepid fellow; he

booted up his laptop and let me

listen to the sounds of a ceremony that had been the

subject of fevered

speculation for nearly two centuries now.

 

Of course, there is more to Skull and Bones than the

mystical mumbo-jumbo of its

rituals. The rituals are less important than the

relationships–the bonds of power

and influence that develop between Skull and Bones

initiates after they graduate.

But the relationships are first forged by the rituals

and fact that the founders of

Time Inc. and the C.I.A., as well as several Secretaries

of State and National

Security Advisors–the men who made the decision to drop

the Hiroshima bomb,

invade the Bay of Pigs and plunge us into Vietnam, the

Tafts, the Bundys, the

Buckleys, the Harrimans, the Lovetts–all took part in

this initiation ritual may have

something to do with the real world power of those

bonds. The unspoken

understanding, the comfort level with the clandestine,

the nods and winks with

which power is exercised.

 

The initiation ceremony begins the process of

inculcating into the elect of the elite

(just 15 out of 1,300 in every Yale class) the same

mystical sense of mission that

allowed the British Old Boy network to rule a worldwide

empire.

 

The whole phenomenon is rarely looked into beyond the

exotic ritual trappings

(although Evan Thomas and Walter Isaacson talk about the

world-wide web of

Bones foreign policy mandarins in The Wise Men). But

it's something I've been

investigating off and on for a quarter of a century now.

I am the Ahab of Skull and

Bones, pursuing the white whale (or white male)

leviathan to the utmost depths.

As an undergraduate at Yale I lived next door to the

Skull and Bones Tomb, and

back in 1977 I published the first outsider's

investigation into Skull and Bones, its

rituals and its influence on American political culture

(an updated version of that

piece, revised to include my chilly exchange with George

and Barbara Bush on

Air Force Two, can be found in my recent nonfiction

collection, The Secret Parts

of Fortune).

 

And so it was momentous for me to actually hear the

sounds of the Skull and

Bones initiation on that laptop. But in listening to it,

awe gave way to a mixture of

puzzlement and embarrassment–and an even deeper,

unsatisfied curiosity.

 

In part it was the fact that the ritual was heard but

not seen. My Yale source had

found a previously unexploited perch from which to

record the sounds of the

ceremonies, but could glimpse them only incompletely. He

reported a figure

dressed like the devil, another one in a hooded-skeleton

costume and others in

robes. The thing that stood out for me, listening to it,

was what I've come to think

of as "the death mantra."

 

Yes, the death mantra–here it is, the three-line Skull

and Bones initiation-ritual

theme that has bound three Presidents (including the

present one) to their secret

society:

 

`THE HANGMAN EQUALS DEATH!

THE DEVIL EQUALS DEATH!

DEATH EQUALS DEATH!'

 

Most of the speculative lore about the Skull and Bones

ritual has centered on its

death fixation. Beyond the obvious skull-and-crossbones

insignia, of course, the

most persistent story is that initiates spend their

senior year in the basement

crypt of the Bones Tomb taking turns lying in a coffin

and, in two long, intense,

psycho-drama autobiographical sessions in said coffins,

recount their personal

and sexual history to the other 14 chosen ones. The

better to bond for life with

those they know best and prepare for their destiny as

stewards of the ruling class.

 

The death-centered imagery, the injunction to initiates

that they must "die to the

barbarian world" and be reborn in the Elysian company of

the elect of "The

Order," as they call it, is what makes Skull and Bones

as radically different from a

college fraternity as the Gambino family is from

the "hunting and fishing club" that

was their nominal headquarters.

 

The hangman equals death. The devil equals death. Death

equals death ….

 

What the hell is going on there? Is it a puzzle in

logic, like "All men are mortal.

Socrates is mortal …"? Does it solve out to "The hangman

equals the devil?"

 

Could one detect a capital-punishment theme here–the

hangman as executioner

presaging George W.'s prolific execution rate as Texas

governor? "George W.

equals death," you might say.

 

And what about the devil? (Well, the figure dressed like

the devil.) Is that the

secret they've been covering up ever since the society

was founded in 1832, the

offshoot of a German secret society: devil worship? A

fulfillment of the paranoid

fantasies of the fundamentalist right, who believe the

Eastern establishment is a

front for Satanic conspiracy.

 

Probably not, but it made me more eager to participate

in this year's caper: the

attempt to see as well as hear it, to capture it all on

video–for educational,

historical and journalistic purposes to document a

defining rite of passage of the

American ruling class.

 

Oh, yes–before we get to the night-vision videotape,

there was one more thing,

the embarrassing part of the audiotape, the OOGA-BOOGA

part. Part of the

ceremony on the tape involved an initiation master

ordering the neophytes to

fetch bones and uttering the (I guess) fake Tarzan-

movie "native" chant "OOGA

BOOGA." It left me feeling embarrassed for Skull and

Bones. Hard to ever take

seriously again anyone whose defining life-mission

moment includes an OOGA

BOOGA.

 

But as it turned out, "OOGA BOOGA" was not evident in

this year's ceremony, as

far as we were able to tell. Perhaps it was an

improvisation, like this year's

impersonation of George W. ("I'll ream you like I reamed

Al Gore") was.

 

The Observer Mission Impossible Force met to plot

strategy an hour before

sunset on initiation night, Saturday, April 12. It is

not widely known, but Tap Night,

which occurs on Thursday, is not generally the same as

initiation night. The good

stuff happens on Saturday night, and already limos are

cruising the quiet streets

that crisscross the Yale campus, conveying initiates of

other secret societies to

their rituals. Bones initiates come on foot, knock on

the massive triple-locked

wooden door of the Tomb and are conveyed to the first

stage of the ritual. But we

are getting ahead of ourselves.

 

Let me just mention how much I admired the intrepid Yale

members of the

Observer Bones Task Force for displaying the kind of

curiosity, initiative and

heretical, skeptical impulse apparently absent on most

Ivy campuses, if you

believe David Brooks' recent Atlantic Monthly cover

story on get-along-go-along

premature careerists. The guys on my team will make more

of a real contribution

than any of the smug secret-society types.

 

First on the agenda was a quick examination of the Bones

income-tax filings,

which an outside consultant to the team had obtained

through Freedom of

Information Act requests. He and Peggy Adler pointed out

to me a couple of

dubious assertions on the Form 990's (Return of

Organization Exempt from

Income Tax), which called into question certain of the

grounds for charitable

exemption. In particular, there was the assertion in the

1997 RTA Incorporated

filing (Part VI, line 80b) that the organization was

not "related … through common

membership, governing bodies, trustees, officers etc. to

any other exempt or

non-exempt organization."

 

Contradicting that assertion is information on the

filing of the Deer Island Club

Corporation. Deer Island is the private island of the

Skull and Bones Society,

located in the St. Lawrence River. It is the place where

Bones members bring

their families for summer get-togethers. It is wholly

owned and run by Skull and

Bones members, apparently contradicting Bones' claim

of "no relationship" to

another exempt organization, and appearing to contradict

the strictly educational

and charitable mission for which RTA gets its exemption

for Skull and Bones.

 

The consultant argues in a memo that the purpose of the

80b question on the

Bones deduction claim form "is to prevent tax exempt

charities from undertaking

non-charitable activities by hiding them in another

corporation. This is of course

precisely what RTA Inc. is accomplishing through the

Deer Island Club

Corporation. In order to conceal this arrangement

however RTA Inc. denies its

connection to the DICC."

 

In fact, he goes on, "RTA and the DICC are so closely

linked that for all intents

and purposes RTA Inc. does own Deer Island despite its

claims to the contrary."

 

I'm not going to go into the whole tax issue here.

Perhaps the Bones shell

corporation has a good and valid reason for claiming

that it has no connection to

the Bones private-island country club.** Perhaps this

sort of thing goes on all the

time among the private charities of the privileged. I

don't think Deer Island will

become George W. Bush's Whitewater. But one might think

that a scrupulous

White House counsel would want to look at the kind of

tax information George

W.'s secret society is filing on his behalf.

Particularly since he's promising

enormous windfalls for the privileged, the tax breaks

his secret society takes

should be utterly beyond suspicion. Does the President,

I'd like to know, claim his

Skull and Bones dues as a charitable deduction, when the

only charity seems to

be providing a club house and country house for the

privileged? The RTA filing

claims Skull and Bones exists "for the benefit of Yale

University." But Yale–which

celebrates three centuries of luminous atainments this

weekend–ought to

question what "benefit" it gets from chants of "lick my

bumhole" and the mockery

of Abner Louima.

 

Anyway, as night came falling and we choreographed the

evening's caper, I felt

that we were carrying on an old-fashioned, longstanding

tradition: the natural

reaction of the democratic (small D) tradition to

elitist power that conceals itself

within the cloak of privilege and secrecy. And for me,

it was a culmination of my

own quarter-century quest, one that had become

personalized lately by the fact

that our Skull and Bones President had been a classmate

of mine at Yale.

 

`run, neophyte, run!'

 

At last, zero hour approached. For two centuries, the

outside world had wondered

and fantasized about what was about to happen, what

actually went on in the

fabled Skull and Bones initiation. There's a long

tradition of Yale secret societies

(including Bones) raiding other secret societies to

capture their ritual artifacts. In

the 1970's, an all-woman break-in team published

photographs of the Bone's

Tomb's interior. But tonight, for the first time ever,

we would attempt to capture

the actual secret initiation ritual and bring it to

light for anthropological study. Our

team's equipment included three night-vision-capable

digital-video cameras, one

tape recorder, a stepladder and two walkie-talkies. (I

could never get mine to

work.) Because of a recent injury which limits my

mobility, I was stationed at a

listening post with my tape recorder while the video-cam

team proceeded to their

more perilous perch at the forward base (as those of us

in special ops call it). We

planned to rendezvous afterward for me to view the tape.

 

We split up just as the whoops and groans, the screams

and moans began to

emanate from inside the Tomb and the masters of the

Skull and Bones initiation

began establishing the posts they'd man for the occult

psycho-drama to come.

 

From my post, I could see through an open window shadowy

figures walking very

close above my head. Later I'll put my audio impressions

together with the

video-cam record the other team obtained for a more

complete picture, but first

let me transcribe some of the notes I made from

listening in. Fragmentary as they

are, they capture some of the strangeness, and perhaps

the kind of disorientation

the initiates themselves experienced there in the

courtyard of Skull and Bones.

 

First, there was the guy posing as George W. He seemed

to be a bit disgruntled

at being given this role–a feeling he expressed by

calling out in his George W.

drawl to another "Patriarch" (as they're called): "I got

the power to bomb the crap

out of China and they give me this station."

 

Then someone–one of the initiates?–called out "Uncle

Toby!" (Many Bone ritual

personae are taken from Laurence Sterne's Tristram

Shandy– you gotta give

them credit there for good taste.)

 

"Uncle Toby!" the cry repeated.

 

"Shut up, neophyte."

 

"Take that plunger out of my ass, Uncle Toby."

 

Presumably, this mocking Louima reference was a ploy to

scare initiates into

thinking Uncle Toby was going to give them the plunger

treatment.

 

That cheerful rectal theme was followed up by:

 

"I'm gonna ream you like I reamed Al Gore!" from the

George W. imitator.

 

Followed by "Help me! It's the devil!"

 

And then "George W." really getting into it: "I'm gonna

kill you like I killed Al Gore."

 

Silence. Then a door opened. Voices–half of them, it

seemed, women–were

screaming: "Run! Neophyte! Run, neophyte!"

 

(The neophytes are, of course, the new initiates.)

 

From my post, I could only see hooded figures racing

about in the darkness

above my head, accompanied by cries of:

 

"Run, neophyte!"

 

"Find the femur!"

 

And (again): "Take that plunger out of my ass, Uncle

Toby!"

 

Then silence for awhile. The neophyte seemed to have

gone back inside the

Tomb. After which one of the Patriarchs complained, "We

ought to get better

blood than this fuckin' syrup, man."

 

It was only later that I learned what the blood was for:

the whole throat-slitting

"barbarian" tableau after the skull-kissing.

 

But first there was a different kind of kissing being

referred to. There were cries

of "Lick my bumhole, neophyte!Lick my ass,

neophyte!Do you like my bum,

neophyte?" (Despite these heartfelt pleas, we did not

witness any of those acts

being consummated.)

 

The bumhole tribute was followed by more cries of "Get

the femur!" and at least

part of the death mantra I'd heard before: "DEATH EQUALS

DEATH."

 

Following which, "George W." chimed in with "I'm the

President of the

motha-fuckin' U.S.A."–apparently just for the sheer

pleasure of saying it. (He was

sounding more like the real George W. all the time.)

 

It began to be clear that what was going on outside in

the courtyard was the

climax of an initiation ceremony that began inside the

Tomb. There, it's reputed,

the initiates must first enter into a coffin and "die to

the barbarian world," to the

world of "savages" (all but the Skull and Bones elect),

in order to be reborn as a

member of "The Order." Then comes the skull-kissing and

the throat-slashing.

 

Two hours later, after all 15 of the initiates had burst

out to be harangued and

scared, I approached the rendezvous point with the night-

vision camera team.

This was the moment of truth: The night-vision team

wasn't sure what their

digicams had picked up. With their own eyes they'd

gotten evocative glimpses,

but the playback on the camera's swing-out view screens

would be the first time,

so far as we knew, any outsider had really seen the

legendary ritual. A ritual three

Presidents, a few Supreme Court justices, maybe a dozen

Senators (including

2004 Democratic Presidential contender John Kerry–which

would mean a

head-to-head, Skull-to-Skull smackdown with George W.),

several Secretaries of

State, literary and cultural luminaries including John

Hersey and William F.

Buckley, had all undergone.

 

The footage was ghostly, it was grainy–but from the

angles of the night-vision

cams, we were able to piece together a narrative of what

happened when the

initiates emerged one at a time from the preliminaries

inside the Tomb.

 

First they were led forward by a figure in a devil

costume. Not really a sinister,

Satanic-looking figure but, as one of the team put

it, "More like Satan's Little

Helper."

 

A shrill, menacing and sometimes blood-curdling chorus

of cries and screams

and imprecations accompanied the emergence:

 

"Hurry, neophyte!Run, neophyte!"

 

"Find the femur, neophyte!" Along with the

occasional "Lick my bumhole!"

"Remove the plunger!"—type outcries.

 

The devil figure pulled them into a white tent in the

courtyard where, we think, they

found their femurs and emerged with what looked like a

thigh bone, although it

was impossible to tell whether it once belonged to a

human or not.

 

When they reemerged from the tent, they were led to the

centerpiece of this part

of the ritual.

 

They were forced face-to-face with a shocking tableau: a

guy holding what

seemed like a butcher knife, wearing a kind of animal-

skin "barbarian" look,

stood over what seemed to be a woman covered in fake

blood and not much

else. The neophyte then approached a skull a few feet

away from the

knife-wielder-and-victim tableau. The neophyte knelt and

kissed the skull, at

which point the guy with the knife knelt and cut the

throat of the prone figure. (Well,

pretended to cut the throat.)

 

I'm not sure what it all means. I've yet to decode the

mystical significance of this,

although I do love to think of former President George

Bush kissing the skull.

Obviously, it has something to do with subservience.

Kiss the skull of power. Bow

down to The Order. But what about the "barbarian"

cutting the throat of his victim?

 

Does it mean "One dies to the barbarian world"? Does it

mean "Death to the

barbarians"? Does it endorse cutthroat tactics? Is that

how they enforce silence

and secrecy?

 

I plan to continue my relentless study of the

hermeneutics of the Bones rituals,

myths and symbolism based on these new revelations, and

perhaps with the help

of a Bones graduate who feels the time has come to lift

the veil on the silly (and

no longer even secret) symbolism of their society.

(Contact me privately c/o The

Edgy Alliance, 577 Second Avenue, Box 105, N.Y., N.Y.

10016.)

 

All that death imagery, though: Maybe it's meant to be a

first ritualistic

confrontation with Mortality, the skull as a memento

mori designed to instill in the

"neophyte" a sense of the gravity of one's mission in

life.

 

In that regard, consider the direct relevance of at

least one aspect of the ritual to

George W. That recurrent phrase: "Run, neophyte, run!"

 

Think about it. When George W. was first considering the

fairly serious shift from

baseball-team owner (whose major achievement was trading

away Sammy

Sosa) to governor of Texas, or when he was considering

the shift from one-term

governor of Texas to President of the United States,

what decided him–what

made him think he could pull it off, despite years as a

semi-permanent neophyte?

Could it be that what he heard, echoing in his brain,

down the corridors of the

years, was the injunction from that long-ago April night

when he was a Skull and

Bones initiate? When he bent down to kiss the skull and

heard, resounding in his

ears, the command: "Run, neophyte, run!"

[Guest guest]

on 3/9/03 8:12 AM, saktidasa at saktidasa wrote:

> http://www.freemasonwatch.freepress-freespeech.com/

>

> The New York Observer

>

> At Skull and Bones, Bush's Secret Club Initiates Ream

> Gore

>

> April 23, 2001

>

> by Ron Rosenbaum

 

 

foregive me if I take this with a grain of salt.

[Guest guest]

Hello Tony and Everyone,

 

I am often busy and miss many posts. I don't see how

this sort of stuff posted below by Tony (currently in

his Saktidasa incarnation) belongs in a spiritual

Sangha (at least not this Sangha).

 

Despite the clearly stated list charter and despite my

asking contributors to stay away from political

issues, it seems difficult for some to do so.

 

My question to those who violate the list spirit and

charter is, "Why are you here?Can't you find some

other more appropriate outlet for your views?"

 

In any case, members are not welcome to post whatever

they like here. Enough is enough.

 

I will start un subscribing individuals without notice

who continue to violate the list spirit and impose

their will.

 

My advice to those who wish to discuss politics and

political figures is to go somewhere else and do it.

 

Thanks

Love to all

Harsha

 

 

--- saktidasa <saktidasa wrote:

> http://www.freemasonwatch.freepress-freespeech.com/

>

> The New York Observer

>

> At Skull and Bones, Bush's Secret Club

> Initiates Ream

> Gore

>

>

 

=====

/join

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more

http://taxes./

[Guest guest]

, Harsha <harshaimtm> wrote:

> Hello Tony and Everyone,

>

> I am often busy and miss many posts. I don't see how

> this sort of stuff posted below by Tony (currently in

> his Saktidasa incarnation) belongs in a spiritual

> Sangha (at least not this Sangha).

>

> Despite the clearly stated list charter and despite my

> asking contributors to stay away from political

> issues, it seems difficult for some to do so.

 

Namaste Harsha,

 

Yes I apologise for not what I said but for where I posted it. It was

as the lawyers say opened up somebody introduced a political figure

into the posts. In response to my posting of a Nostradamus quatrain

which seemed eerily appropriate to the present dangerous situation.

 

As you are no doubt aware I consider Ahimsa not to be so much as non

violence but as 'resistance to violence and evil'. In my life I have

researched behind many organisations and at the median levels they

are always altruistic. It seems to me that this place of duality

would have duality and it is in expression in the world today. The

greatest danger to the spiritual developement of the ordinary person

is sometimes the very person trying to help them.

 

However you are right and so am I. This shouldn't be on your list it

is not the subject matter. I should not so easily be

provoked.....ONS........Tony.

[Guest guest]

Dear Harsha et All

It seems to me because we live in a world of dulality at present, and

that may well change, war and peace are the two side of the same coin.

 

Basically we cant have one without knowing the other.

 

Possibly we are getting to the point in evolution where we have

suffered so much as a race that the only course free for us to take

is to find peace in our own hearts and with that the love and

compassion will flow through all.

A rising tide lifts all boats ( President Kenedy)

 

My personal endevour is to see Gods will flowing through all. I dont allways suceed.

 

At least I now know that every time I take up a position I am identifying with an illusion.

A personal perception founded on my personal conditioning you could say.

 

The Book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle seems the most logical and

heartfelt way forward for this self.

Much Love

Chris H