by Uri Dowbenko
 

What if you were tapped -- invited to join the world’s most powerful secret society -- the Order of Skull and Bones -- a membership so exclusive that it virtually guarantees success in the material world?

What if you could join the ranks of global movers and shakers like George Herbert Walker Bush (Director of CIA, US Ambassador to the UN, and President of the United States), George W. Bush (party animal and cokehead screw-up, Governor of Texas and future President of the United States), and other members of the Power Elite of industry, education, banking and media?

Would you do it? And what would be the consequences?

Written by John Pogue (US Marshalls) and directed by Rob Cohen (Dragonheart, Daylight), "The Skulls" is an entertaining albeit cursory look at the hidden world of secret societies.

Luke McNamara (Joshua Jackson, "Dawson’s Creek") is a working class guy, who happens to be the varsity crew team captain at an Ivy League school, obviously Yale University. His best friends are Will (Hill Harper), a student journalist, and the rich and blonde Chloe (Leslie Bibb).

Invited to join a super-secret society called the Skulls, Luke’s priorities and friendships start to change.

His soul-mate -- he’s bonded to a Skulls’ chum by revealing his most intimate secrets -- is Caleb Mandrake (Paul Walker), a rich kid with a strong track record for getting into trouble and getting bailed out by his father, Litten (Craig T. Nelson). It’s really hard not to think of Bush Jr. and Bush Sr.

Senator Leveritt (William Petersen) is Litten’s own soul-mate, who is blackmailed when he doesn’t want to play ball with Mandrake anymore.

When his friend Will is killed, Luke’s world is turned completely upside down.

The real life analogue of the Skulls is the Order of Skull and Bones, a Yale-based secret society which has spread its tentacles throughout the highest echelons of government, finance and industry.

America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones (Liberty House Press, Box 80650, Billings, MT 59108) by former Hoover Institution historian Antony C. Sutton remains the classic must-read history of this group and its inordinate influence in global affairs.

"Those on the inside know it as the Order," Sutton begins. "Others have known it for more than 150 years as Chapter 322 of a German secret society. More formally for legal purposes, The Order was incorporated as The Russell Trust in 1856. It was also known as the Brotherhood of Death. Those who make light of it, or want to make fun of it, call it Skull and Bones, or just plain Bones."

"The American chapter of this German order was founded in 1833 at Yale University by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft who in 1876 became Secretary of War in the Grant Administration. Alphonso Taft was the father of William Howard Taft, the only man to be both President and Chief Justice of the United States."

"The Order is not just another campus Greek letter fraternal society with passwords and handgrips, common to most campuses," Sutton continues. "Chapter 322 is a secret society whose members are sworn to silence. It only exists on the Yale campus. It has rules. It has ceremonial rites. It is not at all happy with prying probing citizens known among inititiates as outsiders or vandals. Its members always deny membership... Above all the Order is powerful, unbelievably powerful. If the reader will persist and examine the evidence to be presented [in the book] which is overwhelming, there is no doubt his view of the world will suddenly come sharply into focus with almost frightening clarity."

In real life, The Order meets on Deer Island in the St. Lawrence River and,

"the most likely potential member is from a Bones family who is energetic, resourceful, political and probably an amoral team player. A man who understands that to get along you have to go along. A man who will sacrifice himself for the good of the team."

According to Sutton, who in 1983, received an eight-inch batch of documents including the membership list, the Order is a secret society dominated by old line American families and new wealth which has existed from 1833 to the present.

These families include:

  • Lord (1635, Cambridge, Mass)

  • Bundy (1635, Boston, Mass)

  • Phelps (1630, Dorchester, Mass)

  • Whitney (1635, Watertown, Mass)

  • Perkins (1631, Boston, Mass)

  • Stimson (1635, Watertown, Mass)

  • Taft (1679, Braintree, Mass)

  • Wadsworth (1632, Newtown, Mass)

  • Gilman (1638, Hingham, Mass)

  • Payne (Standard Oil)

  • Davison (JP Morgan)

  • Peabody (General Electric)

  • Pillsbury (Flour Milling)

  • Sloane (Retail)

  • Weyerhaeuser (Lumber)

  • Harriman (Railroads)

  • Rockefeller (Standard Oil)

Sutton writes that The Order has penetrated every segment of American society -- law, education, media, publishing, business, industry, commerce, church, banking, Federal Reserve System, foundations, think tanks, policy groups, legislatures, political parties and the White House-executive branch of the US Government.

"Among academic associations, the American Historical Association, the American Economic Association, the American Chemical Society and the American Psychological Association were all started by members of The Order or persons close to The Order," writes Sutton.

"These are key associations for the conditioning of society," Sutton emphasizes. "The phenomenon of The Order as the first on the scene is found especially among foundations."

The Carnegie Institution, the Peabody Foundation, Slater Foundation, Russell Foundation, Sage Foundation and Ford Foundation were all associated with Daniel Coit Gilman, a member of the Order who was also the first president of Johns Hopkins University.

Interestingly enough Sutton points out that,

"during the past one hundred years any theory of history or historical evidence that falls outside a pattern established by the American Historical Association and the major foundations with their grant making power has been attacked or rejected -- not on the basis of any evidence presented, but on the basis of the acceptability of the argument of the so-called Eastern Liberal Establishment and its official historical line."

Likewise, alternatives to the politically correct version of news events and history is typically condemned as "conspiracy theory."

The reality, however, remains that despite the Big Media Cartel’s cover stories, alternative history provides an independent appraisal of realpolitik and the real-life criminal conspiracies, treacheries and intrigues of the Power Elite.

"There is an Establishment history, an official history, which dominates history textbooks, trade publishing, the media and library shelves," writes Sutton. "The official line always assumes that events such as wars, revolutions, scandals, assassinations are more or less random unconnected events. By definition events can never be the result of a conspiracy. They can never result from premeditated planned group action. An excellent example is the Kennedy assassination when, within 9 hours of the Dallas tragedy, TV networks announced the shooting was not a conspiracy regardless of the fact that a negative proposition can never be proven and that the investigation had barely begun."

Every thinking man and woman must now decide between two paradigms:

  • the Randomness of History (taught by Establishment teachers) vs.

  • the Conspiracy of History (taught by Real Life experience)

Do events just happen? Or are they often "programmed" by unseen hands?

The most important point of Professor Sutton’s book is his contention that the Order can manipulate history itself through the control of the so-called Hegelian dialectic process.

"The operations of the Order cannot be explained in terms of any other philosophy," Sutton affirms. "Therefore the Order can not be described as ’right’ or ’left,’ secular or religious, Marxist or Capitalist. The Order and its objectives are all of these and none of these."

The current world situation has been deliberately created by these elites who manipulate both the so-called "right" and the so-called "left." By controlling the resulting "synthesis" -- the end result of Hegelian "thesis" and "antithesis" -- a Globalist New World Order is produced. You can call it techno-fascism or techno-feudalism, but the result is the same -- a global consolidation and mega-corporate transnational centralization of power, capital and resources.

And how does it work? By using "managed conflict" or "crisis management" a crisis or problem is produced. Then the crisis is "managed" and the problem is "solved" with an outcome that is invariably favorable to the goals and agendas of the Global Power Elite.

"College textbooks present war and revolution as more or less accidental results of conflicting forces," writes Sutton. "The decay of political negotiation into physical conflict comes about, according to these books, after valiant efforts to avoid war. Unfortunately, this is nonsense. War is always a deliberate creative act by individuals."

 

"Revolution is always recorded as a spontaneous event by the politically or economically deprived against an autocratic state," he continues. "Never in Western textbooks will you find the evidence that revolutions need finance and the source of finance in many cases traces back to Wall Street."

Professor Sutton’s prodigious body of work includes the heavily referenced history, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, which explains how investment bankers, such as Ernest Chaukley Houghton Peabody, Andre Meyer and including Skull and Bones member Prescott Sheldon Bush, father of George Herbert Walker Bush and partner of investment banking firm Brown Brothers, Harriman, financed the Nazi War Machine through New York City-based Union Banking Corporation, a joint Thyssen Bank-Harriman operation.

Professor Sutton’s landmark history entitled Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution describes how Wall Street bankers initially financed the communists, and The Best Enemy Money Can Buy describes how the Power Elite continued to financially support the Soviet Empire during the historical charade called "The Cold War."

In America’s Secret Establishment, Professor Sutton writes that,

"just as we found the Bush family involved with the early development of the Soviet Union, then with financing the Nazis and behind the scenes in Angola, so we find a Bush active in construction of the new dialectic arm: Communist China."

When President Nixon appointed George "Poppy" Bush (The Order 1948) as US Ambassador to the United Nations in 1971, the scene was set for the development of China as the next superpower -- with the help of advanced American technology. Note: The Order specializes in long-range global planning.

Since then, "Poppy" George’s older brother, Prescott Bush, has been managing Bush Family investments in China. Using Asset Management International Financing & Settlement, Ltd and other corporate fronts, he has brokered deals with Los Angeles based Hughes Aircraft as well as other joint ventures with the repressive, human-rights abusing, murderous Chinese government.

Sound familiar? Remember the Bush Family’s involvement with the thugocracies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Empire. It’s all in the family -- so to speak.

"Are you ready to be reborn?" the secret society’s initiate is asked in the movie.

Then the elaborate rituals and male-bonding ceremonies of illuminati-style networking begin -- being caged with your fellow ’soul-mate" and asked to reveal your worst fears, then covering up the crimes and murders of your secret society buddies. After all even the younger Mandrake confesses, "My father always covers for me."

Though disparaged by mainstream reviewers, "The Skulls" is an entertaining look at a dark and disturbing subject. With the golden hues of an affluent youth, the film reflects the charmed lifestyle of the young and the elite -- expensive cars, unlimited bank accounts and even the ubiquitous sex slaves, babes in illuminati land, who march in during the Skulls’ festivities.

And, for the eternally optimistic, it even has a happy ending. You can walk away from the Illuminati. And even live.

"If it’s secret and elite, it can’t be right," Luke concludes.

As author C. Wright Mills says in The Power Elite, these are the elite groups which network for the rest of their lives.

"He was a Skull the day he was born," says a talent scout in the film.

He could have been referring to 3rd generation Bonesman, George W. Bush, the soon-to-be Emperor of America. His father George Herbert Walker Bush, as well as his grandfather, Prescott Bush, are both Boodleboys, i.e. members of the Order of Skull and Bones. Don’t hold your breath for Barbara Walters to ask George Bush Jr. about his membership in the Order. He really can’t answer that question -- you know. It’s against the rules.

A resounding and heartfelt special thanks to Tony Gosling for allowing us to borrow content. Mr. Gosling is the true embodiment of a journalist.