Kevin Phillips' take on the Skull & Bones thing

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

I read Phillips' last two books and he's been on Cspan a lot recently. He says he was a moderate Republican that has become an independent, basically because he thinks the Bush family has highjacked the Republican party. He has NOTHING good to say about Bush Sr. or Jr. or any of them. The books appear to me to be factual, detailed and well-researched.

On Cspan, someone called and asked him what he thought about the Skull & Bones club and he said (paraphrasing) that he had looked into as much as he could and determined that when Bush Sr. was in college, there appeared to be truly a secretive connection to power and intelligence circles. He could not determine any indication that this exists in modern times or back in the Sixties when Bush and Kerry were inducted into it.

I'm bringing this up because people seem to talk about it in relation to conspiracies, but there really don't appear to be any facts there.

[sallyseven]

1. Hooray

This has been all over this forum for too long. It doesn't mean nay more than any frat or even the school you went to. The CEO is from Brown and so are you then they look at your application with a different eye. That is the nature of things. Are thy right maybe not. Has it worked? We don't know. If your a smart person and more competent you will succeed.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

2. Very true

My husband used to hire people and he thought the program at the large university where he went was excellent, so tended to hire people from that program and school. It happens all over the place, not just with the Ivy league.

[Algorem]

3. I was in the Boy Scouts, therefore Skull and Bones is the same thing.

[WitchWay]

5. ...thats the spirit!

All of them are just talking out of their tinfoil hats again!

Skull and Bones is just a fraternity, a little social club that happens to have roots in the opium trade, and war profiteering, big banking and the oil industries and ties into the CIA....and, by the way, they have two presidential candidates running, along with "representatives" in major mainstream media to help them along.
And some of its members include Bushes and Cheneys...(not to mention rockefellers,
It's funny but, theres this cute little ritual of always helping out a fellow bonesman anytime in their lives when they need political or financial assistance. It's all about nice, fraternal feelings, cuz when there membership pledges lifetime oaths to everyone in this little club for the most wealthy and powerful.


http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=conspiracy

CONSPIRACY: Dictionary Entry and Meaning
Pronunciation: kun'spirusee
Matching Terms: conspiracy of silence

WordNet Dictionary
Definition: a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act (especially a political plot)
a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act
a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose

Synonyms: cabal, confederacy, confederacy
See Also: agreement, band, circle, coconspirator, conspiracy of silence, conspirator, Gunpowder Plot, lot, machinator, plot, plotter, secret plan, set, understanding

[Algorem]

22. Viet Nam and heroin.Just a coincidece.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

9. But I'm not saying that

I'm saying someone who seems to be a reputable source of information says he hasn't found any facts. I am saying there don't appear to be facts that indicate that Kerry is part of some conspiracy, as some people are saying.

Now, Bush, on the other hand, Phillips has all kinds of interesting things to say about his involvements.

[WitchWay]

14. sorry.

sorry, my fault. I'm so tired right now...

I really found Phillips interesting, and I do think its really important that this book is coming out.

The Bushes really are an evil family.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

17. It's Ok!

No need to apologize.

[tobius]

4. thanks for presenting the facts- My pet peeve is crying wolf

I think that sometimes the types of charges leveled here at DU can backfire. ( wellstone's plane was taken down with an experimental magnetic weapon, a missile was shot at the towers a split second before impact,..etc)



Do you think this refutation would have come up if Kerry wasn't a member?

[WitchWay]

6. refutation

Do you think Kerry will refute Skull and Bones?

[tobius]

7. no, why? nt

[boobooday]

8. Okay, but still

Can't we just get a little variety?

Even if they aren't an evil organization, does it really make sense in this great and vast country to get FOUR presidents in a row out of the same fraternity?

What are the odds?

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[Eloriel]

10. Oh, boy -- the one fact there is a biggie

when Bush Sr. was in college, there appeared to be truly a secretive connection to power and intelligence circles.

I don't know why that didin't occur to me, the "intelligence circles" part. Our "intelligence circles" have been at the very heart of the growth of fascism and fascist tendencies in this country. After WW2, Allen Dulles (close friends with Prescott Bush) recruited masses of Nazis right into our own CIA, and elsewhere.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

20. I mean that he said the facts

DID indicate that there was a connection in the past, but not in the Sixties or now. He found nothing to connect Kerry to secrets or to connect Bush to secrets through S & B. However, Bush is obviously connected to a lot of secrets through his father.

[ScrewyRabbit]

11. You don't have to be a conspiracist

to recognize that people in the establishment tend to go to the same schools, belong to the same organizations, run the same kinds of corporations, hire each other, etc.

I'm not saying I like it that way, just that I don't think you need to posit deep secret societies to explain connections.

[WitchWay]

12. what's wrong with skull and bones

I actually heard Kevin Phillips on Democracy Now discuss his book. I don't think Kevin Phillips went into Skull and Bones because he doesn't need to. He had enough dirt on Bush without having to go there. But the fact that he doesn't indicate that there are activities going on now, doesn't mean that there aren't going on. He just hasn't indicated them.

First of all, I think that its troublesome simply that Kerry joined an organization that is pure elitism. It has such a seedy and unethical past. I don't find his membership ethical. Heck, even if he renounces it now -- I've got to wonder what he's been doing in it all these years.

It is elitist, anti-democratic, secretive and disdainful of anyone not in the upper echelons of society. IT makes me question his characters, values, and general attitude towards ordinary people like myself. Why does he need to be in a secret society? (And why are these types of association any different then Cheney's secret energy task force?) What are his loyalties to this organization? He needs to disclose if he has pledged any loyalties to Skull and Bones.

For those who lack power, wealth and privelege in a society, secret societies are not benign, chummy little clubhouses. For people who lack access to power, who are poor, who lack privelege and who rarely get any sort of preferential treatment, Skull and Bones and other secret societies (especially any predominantly consisting of rich, white men) are downright suspect and scary. John Kerry needs to answer for this, if only it shows a lack of sensitivity to a whole lot of people. It's obvious to me that he just doesn't care, or understand where most Americans are coming from.

[Algorem]

13. "Kerry was picked (to be in Skull and Bones) because he was viewed as

a future political leader"-Boston Globe.They just thought a future political leader would be fun to hang out with at Yale,that's all,right?Was talked into going into the officer program and Viet Nam(along with 3 other Boners) by notorious war pig/Boner William Bundy.No secretive connection to power and intelligence circles? http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061503.shtml

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

16. How do you know he wasn't changed by the experience

and went in a different direction? How do you know it wasn't just some kind of club at that point? There is no way to really know.

This is from the end of the article:

"With Pershing leading the way, the quartet of bonesmen headed into military training. In early February of 1968, Kerry shipped out to the Gulf of Tonkin aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate. By then, the antiwar movement was heating up, and Kerry carried with him the memory of seeing demonstrators in Los Angeles beaten by police.

snip

On Feb. 17, 1968, the telegram said, Richard Pershing had died due to ``wounds received while on a combat mission when his unit came under hostile small-arms and rocket attack while searching for remains of a missing member of his unit.''

Kerry was devastated. The war was no longer an abstract policy issue. One of his best friends, bearing one of the most famous names in US military history, had died trying to find a fallen comrade. Kerry couldn't attend the funeral because he was so far at sea. Instead, he wrote to Pershing's parents, then to his own.

``Dearest Mama and Papa,'' Kerry wrote in his stylistic script. ``What can I say? I am empty, bitter, angry and desperately lost with nothing but war, violence and more war around me. I just don't believe it was meant to be this cruel and senseless -- that anyone could possibly get near to Persh to take his life. What a Goddamn total waste. Why? . . . I have never felt so void of feeling before. . . . With the loss of Persh something has gone out of me -- he was so much a part of my life at the irreplaceable, incomparable moments of love, concerns, anger and compassion exchanged in Bones that can never be replaced.''"

[Algorem]

19. That's what I'm wondering.Of course,30whatever years later he gets con-

vinced into another bullshit war by another Bonesman,George W. Bush.Did he really change at all?

[starroute]

15. But isn't it just a bit weird that Senator John Heinz was also S&B?

I don't mind coincidences -- but too many coincidences get me itchy between the shoulderblades.

That aside, it's clearly true that Skull and Bones isn't what it once was. Probably the strongest case for S&B influence could be made in connection with the OSS and the early days of the CIA -- and that in itself suggests a certain conspiratorial mindset on the part of the society.

But the last of that bunch got out of Yale around 1950. After that, the evidence for any heavy-duty aims to rule the world becomes a lot more elusive. I'm sure Kevin Phillips has done his homework on this and he's probably spot on.

[King of New Orleans]

18. Senator John Heinz III wasn't in S&B

His father John Heinz II (class of 1931) was but for whatever reason John Heinz III was not a member of S&B, though he did attend Yale.

[starroute]

21. Then I stand corrected -- that's something of a relief

It looks as though someone once claimed online that the younger Heinz was also S&B -- probably confusing him with his father -- and the claim got picked up and spread around, which is how I ran into it. But the more serious discussions of S&B only mention the father.

I'm glad to have been corrected.