>Joe W wrote: Doug, it is a no-brainer assumption that if a coterie
>of powerful elites (supposedly accountable elected leaders and
>corporate bosses) meet exclusively and regularly, going to great
>lengths to bar public scrutiny, that they are likely up to no good,
>at least from a proletarian perspective. This is why thousands of
>leftist activists have protested the G-8 Summits, the World
>Economic Forum Meetings and so forth.
Again, we know pretty much what they're up to in their meetings. Protesters gather because the ruling class is gathering in one place and there's lots of media there.
>What Peter Phillips of Project Censored says below about another
>notoriuos redoubt of 'paunchy elites'; the Bohemian Grove, also
>pertains to the Bilderberg Group and puts the lie to your claim that
>these sorts of entities are unimportant (it also reveals an
>inexplicable unconcern on your part about critiquing institutions
>that perpetuate class inequality):
Most of the Project Censored awards are real yawns.
Greg Palast got one for an annotation of Argentina's World Bank country report <http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=192&row=1>. Palast made a big deal out of having discovered the document. But there was nothing it it that anyone who followed the WB and IMF at all would be surprised by.
>"Private men's clubs, like the San Francisco Bohemian Club
>[Bilderberg Group], have
>historically represented institutionalized race, gender and class
>inequality. English gentlemen's clubs emerged during Great Britain's
>empire building period as an exclusive place free of troublesome
>women, under-classes, and non-whites. Men's clubs were the place
>where English
>elites could co-mingle in homogeneous harmony. Copied in the United
>States, elite private men's clubs served the same self-celebration
>purposes as their English counterparts. As metropolitan areas
>emerged, upper-crust white males created new clubs throughout the
>Americas. These private
>men's clubs continued the European traditions of elitism, race superiority and
>gender exclusion."
>http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/bohos/San_Francisco_Bohemian_Club_Power_Prestige_and_Globalism.html
Bohemian Grove is where the big boys go to sniff each other's butts and feel good about themselves. Groups like that are important for who's invited and who's not - i.e., for admission to the ruling elite. But that more anthropology than anything else. Phillip Weiss had a great piece in Spy in the late 1980s about his infiltration of a BG meeting. They say racist, bigoted shit around the campfire, walk around nude, and piss on trees. Are you surprised? About the nude part, maybe, but not much else. What's interesting is how mundane it all was, not profound. It's got a lot in common with what you'd hear at a country club, or at the VFW.
All this conspiracism and paranoia miss the fundamental point that most of what goes on in the world goes on in the open. What's taken as "normal" is part of the problem. This stuff is a distraction.
Doug