Guide to Shadowy Organizations

GOOD Guide: to Shadowy Organizations, the World Economic Forum

Matt Schwartz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:16:07 PDT

"Committed to improving the state of the world"

DOCTRINE
Davos' official motto-"Committed to improving the state of the world"-suggests a bland and universal beneficence. In reality, the conference is the primary generator of the apolitical change-the-world-through-business ethos that unites the highest echelon of global capitalism today.

HEADQUARTERS
The WEF's official headquarters is in Geneva. Write it at 91-93 route de la Capite, CH-1223 Cologny/Geneva, Switzerland. Davos is where the club gathers each January. You can go skiing there during the year, but you will need credentials-or an excellent disguise-to get anywhere near town during the forum.

MYTHICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
The "Davos Dilemma" describes a world in which soaring economic growth goes hand in hand with war and disaster. The term "Davos Man" was coined by a conservative pundit, and refers to a dangerously cosmopolitan version of Homo sapiens who lacks any national loyalties. Davos is also one of the main villains in dystopian globalization narratives pushed by Naomi Klein, Slavoj Zizek, and Adbusters.

GREATEST ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENT
Successfully absorbing the humanitarian cred of its longtime nemesis, the World Social Forum, an international conference of disempowered antiglobalization muckrakers held each year, often in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Membership
The forum is colloquially known as Davos, for the Swiss ski resort where 2,500 power brokers gather once a year to swap business cards, trade information, and plot the course of the world's future. Security measures include digital pass cards and some 6,000 guards. There are also a few hundred journalists, most of whom are kept sequestered in a media center at a safe distance from the real action.

Alumni
The 2008 guest list included Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Al Gore, George Soros, Bono, Rupert Murdoch, Lawrence Summers, the Google guys, 27 heads of state, 74 CEOs, plus the usual Davos assortment of shadowy billionaire plutocrats and Middle Eastern oil princes. Davos makes an Ivy League board of trustees meeting look like a beef-and-beer at your local VFW.

The Exposé
In 2003, Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, emailed a 2,000-word dispatch from Davos to a few good friends. It was soon forwarded around the world. The takeaway? "The world isn't run by a clever cabal. It's run by about 5,000 bickering, sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are accustomed to living in either phenomenal wealth, or great personal power. A few have both." Also: "The global economy is in very very very very bad shape."

In Their Own Words
The WEF is among the more transparent of the world's elite power conglomerates, with an especially robust website trumpeting the group's openness and benevolence. "Companies today are responsible for much more than what they produce," says Borge Brende, a former Norweigan cabinet member who now serves as one of the WEF's managing directors. "We shape the global agenda and catalyze the results to improve the state of the world." In 2008 the forum invited all 6 billion of the world's uninviteds to post their gripes on YouTube.

LEARN MORE weforum.org

GOOD Guide: to Shadowy Organizations, the Bilderberg Group

Matt Schwartz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:50:45 PDT

"Leave a message after the tone"

DOCTRINE
Open discussion and open criticism, with the kind of candor that can only exist in absolute secrecy. That means no website, no publicity, no leaks, secret meeting locations, and secret minutes with no names recorded. This also means lots of intrigue and speculation among conspiracy buffs as to the group's true purpose. Bilderbergers have said their meetings are too short and membership too varied to generate much consensus, let alone plans for world domination. They do, however, get lots of quality information early-Bilderbergers are said to have heard of U.S. plans to attack Iraq in June, 2002.

HEADQUARTERS
Bilderberg has a phone, a post-office box, and one full-time staffer in Leiden, a town in southern Holland. Write to this outpost at Bilderberg Meetings, P.O. Box 3017, 2301 DA Leiden, The Netherlands.

MYTHICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
The second Iraq war, NATO's strikes against Serbia, and the creation of the European Union are all said to have been test-marketed in cozy Bilderberg chats.

GREATEST ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENT
Defying the conventional wisdom that everything eventually leaks onto the record, this Dutch wall of silence has remained intact for 54 years. The greatest testament to Bilderberg's power may be its ability to inspire lunatics from across the political spectrum. Everyone from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden has worked the group into their rhetoric.

Membership
An annual meeting of 130 emerging and established players from politics and business-almost exclusively Europeans and Americans-who gather at luxury hotels for four days of off-the-record conversation. Bankers and defense ministers are especially well represented. A few press barons and celebrity reporters are invited along too, as long as they agree not to write about it.

Alumni
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, one of Bilderberg's two founders, was a member of the Nazi Party and Hitler's SS. Veteran scenesters include David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and a strong U.S. neocon contingent. Jacques Chirac and Ariel Sharon have attended, as did Colin Powell during his time as Secretary of State. Bilderberg's gatekeepers have a strong record of spotting young political talent-Tony Blair and Bill Clinton both attended the conference when they were still cutting their teeth in the provinces.

The Exposé
A British writer named Jon Ronson came a few feet away from crashing Bilderberg's 1999 meeting in Portugal before being chased off by security guards. In 2007, the group invited Mehmet Ali Birand, a journalist from the Turkish Daily News, to cover its meeting in Istanbul. Birand's story reports, "There were neither secret plans made, nor secret sentences uttered, nor secret decisions taken." It contains no names and no quotes.

In Their Own Words
Bilderberg has no website, no public email address, and no name on its voicemail. The eight-page fax we received from Maja Banck, Bilderberg's executive secretary, only deepened the group's mystique. Why are the meetings held in secret, we asked. "A meeting to be open must be confidential," Banck replied. What does she make of the conspiracy theories? "Reality speaks louder than fiction."

GOOD Guide: to Shadowy Organizations, the Bohemian Grove

Matt Schwartz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:46:19 PDT

"Weaving spiders come not here"

DOCTRINE
Each year's encampment begins with "the Cremation of Care," the ceremonial burning of a shrouded effigy named Dull Care on a giant owl-shaped altar. This announces the beginning of a recess from the long year of shrewd business when members sing around the campfire, piss in the woods, and engage in other boyish frivolities. "Weaving spiders, come not here," is the club's motto, which roughly translates as "Leave the PowerPoint at home," though a few webs are woven at the lunchtime Lakeside Talks, off-the-record lectures on current affairs.

HEADQUARTERS
The grove's pride, 2,700 acres of virgin redwoods, is merely the summer retreat of the Bohemian Club, a venerable six-story men's club at 624 Taylor Street, a few blocks away from San Francisco's Financial District.

MYTHICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
Providing a secure, undisclosed location for high-level whoremongering, buggery, witchcraft, and the antidemocratic vetting of presidential candidates.

GREATEST ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENT
In his memoirs, Richard Nixon traces his ascent to the presidency back to a Lakeside Talk he gave at the 1967 encampment. In a less generous moment, he called the Grove "the most faggy goddamn thing that you could ever imagine," though he admitted attending "from time to time."

Membership
About 1,500 corporate and political titans-plus a smattering of entertainers-who encamp for two weeks of revelry each July in a grove of redwoods an hour's drive north of San Francisco. Many of this retreat's most prestigious attendees are guests of the Bohemian Club, not full members. Membership is by invitation, and waiting-list purgatory can last for a decade or more.

Alumni
George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, and Walter Cronkite have all been grove regulars, along with some Cabinet members, media moguls, and European heads of state. Many past guests have also been Trilateralists, including Trilateral Commission founder David Rockefeller. Nineteenth-century Bohemians bestowed membership on Mark Twain and Jack London to crack jokes with California's gold and railroad tycoons.

The Exposé
The Grove's claims to exclusivity are undone by the number of nobodies-at least four-who have managed to infiltrate the encampment and report their findings. The investigative journalist Philip Weiss successful passed himself off as a Bohemian for Spy in 1989 and eavesdropped on Kissinger at a pay phone, dropping names to a lady friend. Professional paranoiac and radio host Alex Jones shot live video of the 2000 cremation ritual. What's more, Peter Martin Phillips, a professor of sociology researching power elites, attended the encampment as an invited guest.

In Their Own Words
"It's not that we're secretive," says the amiable Matt Oggero, the general manager of the Bohemian Club. "We're just private-a private social club. Questions of who our members are or what they do at meetings-those are questions I can't answer." Oggero did, however, provide a four-page document testifying to the innocuousness of the club's secrets.

GOOD Guide: to Shadowy Organizations, the Order of Skull and Bones

Matt Schwartz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:09:56 PDT

"Rari quippe boni" ("The good, alas, are few")

DOCTRINE
Bones runs on a mix of solemn and mock-solemn bonding rituals imported from 19th-century German academic societies. The knights must address one another by ritual names (Boaz, Thor, Hamlet, etc.) inside the tomb, never use these embarrassing cryptonyms outside, and pay a fine if they mess up. Drinking alcohol inside the tomb is verboten, though boisterous Bonesmen have won temporary leave on holidays and anniversaries. The order prepares its novices for the rough-and-tumble of postgraduate realpolitik with two years of "boodleball," a violent blend of soccer and hockey played on the tomb's dining-hall floor.

HEADQUARTERS
The tomb is at 64 High Street, in New Haven, Connecticut. Vacations are spent frolicking with their elders in upstate New York on Deer Island, a retreat on the St. Lawrence River owned by the Russell Trust Association, the Bones corporate entity. Send your correspondence to: Skull and Bones c/o RTA Incorporated, P.O. Box 202138, New Haven, CT 06520.

MYTHICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
According to the docu-fictional movie The Good Shepherd, the CIA itself was born over late-night scotches in the cabins of Deer Island. The tomb is legendary for its trove of looted memorabilia, including a counterrevolutionary trophy case containing numerous famous skulls, including those of Pancho Villa, Che Guevara, and Geronimo, chief of the Apaches. An old letter between Bonesmen suggests that Geronimo's skull was stolen from its resting place by presidential sire Prescott Bush.

GREATEST ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENT
The CIA denies having sprung from Bones's loins, but a number of knights were on the staff of the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's forerunner. There were also a remarkable number of Bonesmen among the mid-century military, executive, and intelligence elites.

Membership
Each year, 15 Yale juniors are inducted into the Bones "knighthood" via a secret ritual that reportedly involves mock burial and the confession of sexual histories in a vault-like "tomb" on campus in New Haven. Women became eligible in 1991. The legendary five-figure Skull and Bones cash prize, deliverable on graduation, is a myth.

Alumni
Perhaps the oldest of all American old-boy networks, Bones's rolls boast three presidents (Taft and both Bushes), one almost-president (John Kerry), plus dozens of Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, ambassadors, governors, senators, and generals. Cornell University, FedEx, Time, and the New York Mets were all founded by knights, as were countless hedge funds, buyout firms, and holding companies.

The Exposé
Yale alum Alexandra Robbins interviewed several anonymous Bonesmen (also known as the Knights of Eulogia) for her 2002 book Secrets of the Tomb, a thorough and clear-eyed general history. Ron Rosenbaum, who lurked on High Street for a 1977 Esquire article, took a more obsessive approach in 2001, covertly videotaping parts of the Bones induction ceremony. It's still up on YouTube and resembles a typical frat hazing.

In Their Own Words
"We have a basic policy of not commenting to the press," says a courtly Henry P. Davison, treasurer of the Russell Trust Association. "I can't really say why. It's just a good policy to have." Calls to the cell phone of Coit Liles, who receives a $41,170 annual salary for serving as RTA's "administrator" in New Haven, were not returned.

WATCH youtube.com/watch?v=LGqAGuw23CM

GOOD Guide: to Shadowy Organizations, the Trilateral Commission

Matt Schwartz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:34:51 PDT

"Novus ordo mundi" ("New world order")

DOCTRINE
Originally the commission believed it could plot out the blueprint for a peaceful "international system" where no single country vied for supremacy. At the time it sounded nefarious; today it seems hopelessly naïve. These days, Trilateral has been reduced to a global chamber of commerce. Hands are shaken, various task forces publish their research in the form of "Triangle Papers," but history seems to have trampled the hope that a roomful of businessmen could convert the global game of tug-of-war into something more like cat's cradle.

HEADQUARTERS
The commission operates through three "secretariats" in Washington, Paris, and Tokyo. Its Washington address is 1156 15th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20005.

MYTHICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
Hatching schemes to dissolve all borders and replace national sovereigns with a world government known as the "new world order."

GREATEST ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENT
With its talk of an interconnected world and commitment to the neoliberal ideal of free trade over force of arms, the commission laid much of the groundwork for Davos, a more diverse cabal of international elites.

Membership
Three hundred and fifty businessmen, labor leaders, politicians, and scholars from North America, Western Europe, and Japan make up the commission. Paranoia about its powers peaked when Jimmy Carter appointed more than a dozen Trilateral members to senior posts in his administration. Since it was founded by David Rockefeller to be a Japan-friendly, more liberal alternative to Bilderberg, conservative Cold Warriors argued it was a threat to U.S. sovereignty. The commission's mystique has since been eclipsed by Davos, though it still occupies a hallowed place alongside black helicopters, false moon landings, and other shibboleths in the far-right imagination.

Alumni
In its heyday, the commission drew the cream of Washington, including George H. W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Alan Greenspan. But like the Bohemian Grove, the commission has dated itself by failing to become international or draw much talent from the information economy. Today the list is still graced by a former Federal Reserve chairman and a former Wall Street Journal publisher, but the closest thing to a household name among the group's leadership is Kobayashi. Except he works for Xerox, not Keyser Söze.

The Exposé
Trialogue, the group's publicly available in-house journal, contains original research and reports on meetings. Even a letter Pope John Paul II wrote to the commission can be found on the Trilateral website. Yet instead of smothering the conspiracy theories, these documents have only furthered speculation.

In Their Own Words
Like its Swiss counterpart in Davos, the Trilateral Commission has responded to charges of cabalism with a highly confessional website, replete with names of members, downloadable reports, and an FAQ that lists more denials than a red-handed politician. To wit: Is the Trilateral Commission trying to establish a world government? A "club" for the benefit of the rich countries only? A conspiracy to control the U.S. government? No, no, and no.

UNOFFICIAL "Novus Ordo Mundi" is not Trilateral's official motto.

LEARN MORE trilateral.org

GOOD Guide: to Shadowy Organizations, the Freemasons

Morgan Clendaniel — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:50:00 PDT

"Ordo ab chao" ("Order from chaos")

DOCTRINE
Freemasonry espouses the values of "brotherly love," "relief" (i.e., charity), and "truth" (i.e., good morals). The masonry part comes from the idea that by applying to our lives the precepts of ancient master builders we can all benefit-of course, those precepts are proprietary Masonic knowledge.

HEADQUARTERS
In the United States, each state has a Grand Lodge with smaller, subordinate lodges, but every Grand Lodge is independent, as are foreign Grand Lodges. The United Grand Lodge of England, which has some sway over international Freemasonry, especially in the United Kingdom-can be found in London at 60 Great Queen Street. In Washington, D.C.-where the most powerful American Masons probably practice secret handshakes-the lodge is at 5428 MacArthur Boulevard, NW.

MYTHICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
The quintessential shadowy organization, Freemasons have been connected with almost any conspiracy you can think of, from powerful Jews of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Satan worship to the faked moon landing-not to mention nearly all the other groups mentioned here.

GREATEST ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENT
The Shriners (the Masonic subgroup with the fezzes and little cars) have donated almost $10 billion to building hospitals and supplying free health care for children. A commonly cited statistic is that U.S. Masons give $2 million to charity every day.

Membership
Though Freemasonry is alleged to have been founded by the men who built Solomon's Temple, its first recorded appearance is more than 2,000 years later, in 1717. Today, any man over 21 who believes in "a supreme being" can join the ranks-after forking over a small fee, passing a cursory background investigation by fellow lodge members, and then engaging in a fairly tame ritual involving hammers, chisels, blindfolds, and references to the building of the temple.

Alumni
Freemasonry counts innumerable historical figures among its membership, including Voltaire, Atatürk, Salvador Allende, and Winston Churchill. George Washington was an especially committed Mason, leading to many of the founding-of-America-as-Masonic-plot theories. In fact, many signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were Masons, along with 13 other presidents (Jackson, both Roosevelts, and Truman among them) and more than 30 Supreme Court justices.

The Exposé
An Anti-Masonic political party ran presidential candidates in 1828 and 1832. Since then, Masons have tried to moderate their secrecy with transparency about their aims, if not their practices. Most lodges offer tours. There is even a Freemasons entry in the For Dummies series, but if there were something to hide, one of the 5 million members worldwide probably would have let something slip by now. Still, Dan Brown's upcoming Mason-themed novel, The Solomon Key, will probably reignite some of the fire.

In Their Own Words
Ronald Steiner, the head of the communications umbrella for the Grand Lodge of New York, says, "We do have some handshakes and means of recognition. But we would like the world to know who we are and what we are, and hope that they will recognize that we are a force for good in this troubled world."

GOOD Guide: to the Shadowy Organizations That Rule the World

Matt Schwartz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:35:29 PDT

Every so often some aluminum-foil-hatted nut will pull you aside at a party and tell you the Freemasons are a powerful secret society bent on controlling the world. He'll point to the all-seeing pyramid on the one-dollar bill, run down the list of Masonic presidents, and trace supposedly Masonic symbols on the streets around the Washington Mall. From these premises he will argue that the gentlemen you may have seen strolling into your local lodge on a weekday night are actually officers of a 291-year-old international conspiracy.

I am a Freemason. I can't tell you much, but I can assure you that all of the above is pure paranoid fantasy. A meeting of Masons is as benign as a meeting of good friends around the fireplace. And yes, I know, that's exactly what a Mason would say, which is why conspiracy theories are so hard to kill off. It is impossible to disprove the notion that somewhere out there is a roomful of people, bound by an oath of secrecy, pulling the invisible strings that make the world dance. The only way to know for sure is to become one. Along the way you learn things that can't be shared. This sounds rather ominous, of course, and the endless cycle of paranoia, curiosity, and secrecy is again renewed.

In the 19th century, the Masons were the favorite scapegoat of frightened jingoists who found themselves at the mercy of history and wanted someone to blame for their problems. In the early 20th century, it was the Jews-I'm one of those, too. These days, the conspirators of choice are the internationalist elites who arrive by chartered jet to mingle with their fellow Murdochs, Soroses, Gateses, and Wolfowitzes (I'm a few dinner parties away from becoming one of these).

With that in mind, we present six organizations that have been accused of plotting world domination, along with an assessment of who they are, what they do, and just how powerful they actually are. From what we can tell, no group on this list is running the world from behind its locked doors. But those without keys can never be sure.

The GOOD Guide to Shadowy Organizations

The Freemasons

The Trilateral Commission

The Order of Skull and Bones

The Bohemian Grove

The Bilderberg Group

The World Economic Forum

They Win Medals!

Jaime Wolf — Tue, 1 Apr 2008 18:39:06 PDT

Olympians headed to Beijing are bound to be anxious. Anxious about the city's air quality, anxious about crazy chemicals in the local food, anxious about anything that might affect performance in their chosen event. But such concerns are minor compared with the mortifying possibility faced by U.S. competitors in table tennis: that they will come to the table armed with only Ping-Pong-level skills. Table tennis has been an Olympic event since the 1988 Games, in Seoul, South Korea, and is the only sport in which Chinese players have consistently dominated (they won three of four possible gold medals in 2004 and all four in 2000). The event is going to be accorded newfound prominence this summer-presented in gleaming, high-tech facilities at Peking University, it will be the hottest local ticket of the Games, and the Chinese media will cover the competition breathlessly.

As Dan Seemiller, the U.S. Olympic Men's table-tennis coach, puts it, "If you're playing at home in the basement, it's Ping-Pong. But for anyone who's serious about it as a sport-the physicality of it, and the speed-then it's table tennis." At 53 years of age, Coach Seemiller is a well-traveled veteran of the circuit, a five-time U.S. singles champion, the author of a popular book on table-tennis strategies and, according to the rankings of the International Table Tennis Federation, the 445th best player in the world. Now it's his job to ensure that we make a respectable showing in an event where (to mix sporting metaphors) we're fighting above our weight. As a full-time coach at the South Bend Table Tennis Center, in the shadow of Indiana's University of Notre Dame, he has labored for the past decade to develop young players and raise the sport's profile.

Seemiller recognizes the quixotic nature of devoting his life to becoming world class at what is considered a marginal endeavor. "Table tennis is more accepted culturally in Europe and in Asia," he says. "They have pro teams and we don't, so it's hard for our players to compete at that level. Most of our players have another job or are in school." The best U.S. player, Ilija "Lupi" Lupulesku, a medalist for the Yugoslavian team in 1988, ranks only 148th in the world (one of two Americans in the top 300, and one of five in the top 400)-and he recently announced that he won't be competing. Nonetheless, Seemiller remains bullish on contenders like the 44-year-old veteran David Zhuang from New Jersey, and the lanky 21-year-old prodigy Han Xiao, a senior at the University of Maryland. (Perhaps not coincidentally, both are Chinese-American.)

Despite appearances, the Chinese have not always ruled the sport. Prior to World War II, Hungarians were preeminent in world competition, but in the mid-1950s, the Japanese ace Hiroji Satoh invented a new variety of devious spins by gluing a foam-rubber cushion to his paddle. His sudden success led to a new craze, and to the subsequent establishment of serious training programs and government-sponsored table-tennis infrastructures across Asia.

"I'd be surprised if anyone other than China took the gold," Seemiller tells me. "Wang Hao has been untouchable lately, and frankly, anyone from China-Ma Lin, their number two player, or Wang Liqin, the defending world champion-is intimidating."

"It's potentially embarassing because they're at a different level," he admits. "But every player has weak points." He pauses. "It's going to be a pretty amazing Olympics."

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