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For Immediate Release July 5, 2011
Contact: Mary K. Moore Bohemian Grove Action Network
In spite of this rather strange video (click for YouTube link), there is no organized protest this year at the annual Bohemian Grove encampment in Monte Rio, Calif. The gathering this year of the financial, corporate, government and military elite begins on Friday, July 15 and if/when we receive the schedule for the LAKESIDE TALKS we will pass it on. For over thirty years the focus of the protests by BOHEMIAN GROVE ACTION NETWORK have been the daily talks given during the summer gathering which are often public policy talks without public scrutiny. That focus has not changed and any sensationalistic claims about what is going on inside are NOT being made by our group.
Click here for a link to another video from a program last year by the History Channel. My comments on this program are below.
Response to: History Channel DECODED on BOHEMIAN GROVE by Mary Moore
>
> The inaccuracies in the History Channel's Decoded program about Bohemian
> Grove started immediately when, in the opening, Brad Meltzer listed Bill
> Clinton as a member. Since he claims to have obtained a membership list
> which he could have easily checked that didn't bode well for his attention
> to detail. (not that Clinton wouldn't fit in but he is NOT a member). They
> quickly dispatched with the only actual serious information used from the
> interviews with Peter Phillips and me. (maybe 3 minutes each out of 3 hours
> of interviewing) and proceeded into Alex Jones fantasyland. It is not true
> that Alex is the only person to successfully infiltrate the Grove over the
> years: in fact he is very late to that claim although that has never stopped
> him from making it.
>
> We got Rick Clogher in there in 1980, the first year we protested through
> the help of a union steward with a raised consciousness who we quickly
> dubbed our "deep throat". Rick's extensive and serious article appeared in
> MOTHER JONES the following year. Then in 1982, Michael Dressler and Garrett
> Connelly from TIME MAG went in with help from our guide and watched
> Kissinger give a Lakeside Talk on the "Challenges of the '80s" They wrote a
> story that got killed by some editors who happened to be in attendance. Then
> in 1986 we helped reporter Phillip Weiss get inside and he wrote an
> excellent article for SPY MAGAZINE that is to this day one of the best ever
> pieces of reporting on Bohemian Grove. In between and after those three
> examples many other national, regional and local reporting happened, some
> superficial and some serious, by journalists who were able to get the word
> out through research and hard work without setting foot in the place.
>
> It is simply not necessary to "get inside" in order to figure out that the
> Lakeside Talks are public policy speeches floated without any public
> scrutiny to the elite of the corporate, military, financial and government
> circles. The main emphasis of this Decoded show was on "getting inside" the
> Grove so they could find out the "real truth" like it would all be laid out
> for them amidst the rustic camps in the middle of winter. I mean, what in
> the world did they expect to discover? According to Alex, maybe some burned
> bodies of babies at the foot of the owl?? Yet two thirds of the show was
> taken up with the adventures of these three fools who call themselves the
> "decoders" and couldn't decode their way out of a paper bag. So they were
> quickly arrested after floating down the river (with the "help" of national
> nut case Alex Jones) and somehow our local newspaper forgot to check the
> Sheriff files that day so their arrest was never reported. Decoded bailed
> them out.
>
> And while I don't disagree with the conclusion of the show's sage, Brad
> Meltzer, that the secrecy of the place drives people's curiousity, that
> isn't the final answer when it comes to the Grove. We've known that answer
> since the first year we protested there and anyone actually paying attention
> knows it too. Like the WikiLeaks cables, the content of the inside ideas
> floated each year at the summer encampment (many of which play out in
> subsequent years) affect you and I and our lives. Caspar Weinberger's 1981
> speech on Rearming America is only one example that got mentioned in this
> show. There are so many more with implications for the rest of us so yes,
> the secrecy is appalling but more important are the topics and the power of
> the men who talk about them behind closed doors. Decoded did nothing to lift
> that cover and in fact left the impression that if the secrecy ended all
> would be cool.
>
> And the biggest irony is that while the "Decoders" were beating the bushes
> at the Grove looking for their answers all they had to do was look at the
> footage sitting on the floor of their editing room.
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