[Marxism] RE: [PEN-L] A very significant improvement?

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mistake Prone
John Kerry as 'Pragmatic Choice'

            

Bizarre secrets of Bush club exposed
By Philip Delves Broughton in New York
(Filed: 25/04/2001) 


THE bizarre rituals of one of America's most exclusive clubs, which counts both 
President Bush and his father among its members, have been laid bare by a 
hidden camera.

The all-male Skull and Bones club at Yale University has long been held up as 
an example of the powerful cabals that run America from behind the scenes. 
Fifteen new members in their final year at Yale are initiated annually and 
remain in the club for life.

Besides the Presidents Bush, the club has among its members Wall Street 
businessmen, ambassadors, politicians and judges. Soon after he entered the 
White House, George W Bush held a private dinner for his year of Bonesmen, as 
they are called.

The initiation rites at the club, however, have always been a mystery. 
Initiates simply disappeared into The Tomb, the club's gothic building at Yale, 
and emerged as Bonesmen, set up with a network that would see them through life.

A night-vision camera, however, planted by fellow students at Yale caught this 
year's initiation. For Mr Bush, it will reinforce his image as an establishment 
scion rather than man of the people.

It shows one member posing as George W Bush, wearing a cape and speaking in a 
Texas twang threatening an initiate: "I'm gonna kill you like I killed Al 
Gore!" Initiates are then seen kneeling and kissing a skull at the feet of the 
members, while they are bombarded with sexual insults and shouts of "Run 
Neophytes".

The group then joins in chanting the Skull and Bones mantra, part of the ritual 
since the club's founding in 1856: "The Hangman Equals Death/The Devil Equals 
Death/Death Equals Death."

During the initiation, new members undergo a mock throat-cutting ceremony and 
then take turns to lie in a coffin and recount their personal and sexual 
histories to forge a bond of secrecy within the club. Having died as 
"barbarians" they step from the coffin reborn as members of "The Order".
 
 
The secret society that ties Bush and Kerry
(Filed: 01/02/2004) 


Revelations that leading candidates for the US presidency were "Skull and 
Bones" members have provoked claims of elitism. Charles Laurence reports from 
New York


The "tomb" stands dark and hulking at the heart of the Yale University campus, 
almost windowless, and shuttered and padlocked in the thick snow of winter 
storms.

 
Yale's candidates for the White House pictured in their student days and the 
'Skull and Bones' mascot  

Built to mimic a Greco-Egyptian temple, it is the headquarters of the Order of 
the Skull and Bones, America's most elite and elusive secret society - and it 
has become the unlikely focus of this year's presidential election. It turns 
out that four leading contestants for the White House in November's election 
were 1960s undergraduates at Yale: President Bush and Democratic rivals 
Governor Howard Dean, Sen John Kerry and Sen Joseph Lieberman.

What is more, two are "Bonesmen". Both Sen Kerry, now the Democrat front 
runner, and President Bush belong to the 172-year-old society, which aims to 
get its members into positions of power. This presidential election seems 
destined to become the first in history to pit one Skull and Bones member 
against another.

The phenomenon of the "Yalies", as Yale alumni are known, has provoked an 
intense debate over apparent elitism among Americans amazed that - in a 
democracy of almost 300 million people - the battle for power should be waged 
among candidates drawn from the 4,000 who graduated from Yale in four different 
years of the 1960s.

"To today's Yale undergraduates it seems quite extraordinary," said Jacob 
Leibenluft, a student and a reporter on the Yale Daily News, the campus 
newspaper. "For some it's a source of pride, to others it's a source of shame."

In fact Yale, with annual tuition fees of $28,400 (£16,000), has long sent 
graduates to the top of all professions from the campus in New Haven, 
Connecticut, where it was founded in 1731.

The Skull and Bones is the most exclusive organisation on campus. Members have 
ranged from President William Taft to Henry Luce, the founder of the Time-Life 
magazine empire, and from Averill Harriman, the businessman and diplomat, to 
the first President George Bush.

Alexandra Robbins, a Yale graduate and author of a book on the Skull and Bones, 
Secrets of the Tomb, said: "It is staggering that so many of the candidates are 
from Yale, and even more so that we are looking at a presidential face-off 
between two members of the Skull and Bones. It is a tiny club with only 800 
living members and 15 new members a year.

"But there has always been a sentiment at Yale to push students into public 
service, an ethos of the elite making their way through the corridors of power 
- and the sole purpose of the Bones is power."

The four candidates' time at Yale spans the period from 1960, when Sen 
Lieberman began his studies, through Sen Kerry's arrival in 1962 and Mr Bush's 
two years later, to 1971, when Mr Dean graduated - a period that swung through 
the bright hopes of the Kennedy presidency to tumult and bitterness over 
Vietnam.

Mr Lieberman and Mr Kerry served on the same committee to oppose resistance to 
the Vietnam war draft, but otherwise the four appear not to have known each 
other at the time. They all studied history and political science, however, and 
had some of the same professors and academic mentors.

Robert Dahl, the then head of the political science department, said: "Many of 
us had the sense we were preparing future leaders, but I don't think any of us 
had any idea we were teaching so many presidential candidates."

While at Yale all four showed hints of the varying character traits that would 
eventually propel them, on different paths, towards the top of American 
politics.

Mr Lieberman, the grandson of immigrants, arrived from a state school, probably 
a beneficiary of an unofficial 10 per cent quota of places for Jews that Yale 
then operated. Politically ambitious, he chaired the Yale Daily News, the most 
sought-after student position on campus.

Sen Kerry is remembered as "running for president since freshman year". One of 
his contemporaries said: "He was obsessed by politics to the exclusion of all 
else. At that age, it's a bit creepy." He dated Janet Auchincloss, the 
half-sister of Jackie Kennedy, the First Lady, won the presidency of the Yale 
Political Union, and was initiated into the Skull and Bones before joining the 
United States Navy for service in Vietnam.

In laid-back contrast, Mr Bush achieved only a "C" grade academically and took 
little interest in politics. He joined a "sports jock" fraternity and followed 
his father into the Skull and Bones.

By the time Mr Dean arrived in 1967, Yale was admitting women and setting more 
store by applicants' academic merit than their social background. The future 
Vermont governor showed a disdain for Yale politics and resigned from a 
fraternity order in a dispute over a coffee bar.

Whether the four men's Yale backgrounds is a plus with voters is uncertain. Mr 
Dean seems embarrassed, once saying he studied "in New Haven, Connecticut" to 
avoid mentioning Yale by name. Mr Bush makes light of his student years, 
apparently revelling in his reputation for socialising, not studying.

The Skull and Bones connection is more troublesome. Mr Kerry laughed nervously 
when questioned about his and Mr Bush's membership on television. "You both 
were members of the Skull and Bones; what does that tell us?" he was asked. 
"Yup. Not much," he replied.

Not surprisingly, the club's rituals fascinate many Americans. Robbins's book 
describes a social club with arcane rules, a hoard of relics ranging from 
Hitler's silver collection to the skull of the Indian chief Geronimo - plus a 
resident prostitute.

She says initiation rites include a mud-wrestling bout, receiving a beating and 
the recitation by a new member of his sexual history - delivered while he lies 
naked in a coffin. Elevation of a Bonesman creates opportunities for his 
fellows, and Robbins says that President Bush has appointed 10 members to his 
administration, including the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

She recently surveyed 100 of the estimated 800 living Bonesmen on their 
preferred election winner - Sen Kerry or President Bush. Perhaps not 
surprisingly, given that both are pledged to advance the interests of fellow 
Bonesmen, "They answered that they didn't care. Whichever way it went, it was a 
win-win for them."

 29 January 2004: Yankee Kerry is on a roll, but the South awaits 
 28 January 2004: Kerry pulls in voters as candidate most likely to scare Bush 
 25 April 2001: Bizarre secrets of Bush club exposed 



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