Secrets of the Tomb: The Order of Skull & Bones

“The Order of Skull & Bones is the Wizard of Oz! Presidents are just assassinated! There is no conspiracy!”

“It’s just necessary for us barbarians ‘to be able to make sense of the world!’”

“Whitewash, Smokescreen, Disinformation and Modified Limited Hang-out”

Recent Yale graduate Alexandra Robbins’s new book, Secrets of the Tomb - Skull and Bones, The Ivy League, And The Hidden Paths of Power portends to be an exposé, but in reality is a response by Bones to its critics, an apologia and. more skullduggery. Ms. Robbins, who claims to be a member of one of Yale’s seven senior secret societies (she never reveals which one) writes:

“The rumors and conspiracy theories about Skull and Bones. are widespread and deep-rooted. The most fascinating thing I learned through my interviews with members of Skull and Bones is that the majority of rumors were carefully planted by the Bonesmen themselves.”

Ohio's Contreception Grade

Ohio received an “F” from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) for its policies regarding contraceptives. Governor Bob Taft’s office refused to comment, but a look at the www.naral.org website for Ohio’s laws, shows that our state does not have a policy, law or regulation requiring private health insurance plans to provide coverage for contraceptives. State workers’ health insurance plans, however, cover oral contraceptives and Depo Provera. State employees may also choose plans that cover Norplant, IUDs and diaphragms.

Star Artist

Some people are pioneers, innovators. They cannot help it and no matter how much they may try to suppress their genius, their flaming intellect, there is nothing that can be done about it. Jim Shepard was just such an entity, except he didn’t suppress anything and truly answered to no one.

On October 16, 1998 this seminal artist took his life — and yet instead of focusing on that final act, I think the focus needs to be placed on the work this man did during his thirty-nine years of extreme and bombastic living. His music — his art — the steaming body of work he left for us to listen to and dance to and grind and sink to creates a jarring impact. Like a meteor, he burned his own fiery trail; made every note he played, every fretboard he scraped his own.

A Democratic Socialist Perspective: Campaign Finance and Taxpayer Protection

“ I would rather err on the side of being too generous.”

That is what Columbus City Councilman Richard Sensenbrenner said in 1999. He wasn’t talking about generosity to help the less fortunate or the working people of Columbus. City Council had just approved tax abatements totaling $3 million for the Brewery district. It was pointed out by opponents that the area was not blighted, and would be developed anyhow, without any tax abatements. That is when Mr. Sensenbrenner made the statement quoted above. Coincidently, the beneficiaries of the abatements, Casto Development and Schottenstein, are among the biggest political campaign contributors. Combined, they gave more than $112,000 from 1998 through 2000 to Columbus City Council members and Mayors Coleman and Lashutka. Capital Square Ltd., a business subsidiary of Dispatch publishing, was a partner with Schottenstein in the Brewery district deal. Over $53 million in tax abatements were approved from 1998 to 2000 for companies that contributed to political campaigns. The political campaigns of the public officials that granted the abatements.

Big Contributors

Ticky Disclosure: The Chamber anonymously tips the scales of justice

Last June, in a cleverly calculated political pseudo-event, Governor Bob Taft and his sidekick Secretary of State Ken Blackwell announced their long awaited “campaign reform proposal.” Their rhetoric stressed the importance of achieving “full public disclosure” of anonymous money flowing into Ohio political parties as well as electioneering communications. Still, Ohio does not require that political parties disclose of money, even corporate money, coming into their coffers.

The question of whether “electioneering communications” can be kept private however, is under litigation in Ohio. Both the Ohio and U.S. Chambers of Commerce asserted their right to run so-called “issue ads” that looked a lot like attacks on judicial candidates in the 2000 election. as long as the ads bogus “issue ads” focused on smearing judicial candidates, but never mentioned “magic words” like “vote for,” “elect,” “support” or “defeat” any specific candidate.

Questions that won’t be asked about Iraq

Soon we hope to have hearings on the pending war with Iraq. I am con- cerned there are some questions that won’t be asked, and maybe will not even be allowed to be asked. Here are some questions I would like answered by those who are urging us to start this war.

1. Is it not true that the reason we did not bomb the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War was because we knew they could retaliate?

2. Is it not also true that we are willing to bomb Iraq now because we know it cannot retaliate, which just confirms that there is no real threat?

3. Is it not true that those who argue that even with inspections we cannot be sure that Hussein might be hiding weapons, at the same time imply that we can be more sure that weapons exist in the absence of inspections?

4. Is it not true that the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency was able to complete its yearly verification mission to Iraq just this year with Iraqi cooperation?

5. Is it not true that the intelligence community has been unable to develop

'Free societies do not intimidate by cruelty and conquest' and other great quotes from Bush’s big speech to the UN

1. “Our principals and our security are challenged today by outlaw groups and regimes that accept no law of morality and have no limit to their violent ambitions.”

• Conservative commentator Samuel Huntington has pointed out that many people worldwide consider the U.S. to be “the single greatest external threat to their societies” (Foreign Affairs, 1999).

• Under Bush, the U.S. stands in violation of international law for its bombing of Afghanistan and ongoing bombing of Iraq (violating Article 51 of the UN Charter); its treatment of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners (violating the Geneva Convention); and for its “first strike” nuclear weapons doctrine (violating the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Bush has declared his willingness to commit another grave breach of international law by bombing Iraq without authorization from the Security Council.

• The Bush Administration has also undermined the U.S. Constitution by declaring the War Powers Act (requiring Congressional authorization to launch a war) irrelevant.

Big Oil’s war on Iraq

“Doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t.”

That’s how a Bushwhacked-sounding Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz described the box President Bush has put Iraq in to American journalist Norman Solomon.

Solomon is one of the few American journalists who has tried to get Iraq’s side of the crisis over whether the Mideastern country’s purported “weapons of mass destruction” are such a threat to world peace that the United States has a right to take preemptive military action against it.

Of the many tragedies of last year’s terrorist attacks on America, one of the worst was that it turned a war wimp like President Bush into an international bully. Bush is intent on telling the world what to do, and if the rest of it won’t go along with him he will go it alone.

Media greenspace at risk

A significant Columbus civic and cultural resource has been quietly vanishing and is at risk of disappearing altogether. Columbus public access television, once a national model for citizen creativity, free speech and activism, may simply fade away unless we urge the City of Columbus to preserve and fund it.

As this article is written, the City is contemplating the future of the medium and, through the Cable Commission, is taking public comment and hearing proposals to manage the station. The problem for would-be managers is that the City appears set on diverting cable franchise fees into the general fund rather than equipping a facility and hiring staff to train community producers and conduct community outreach. While the City has the ultimate control of these funds, diverting them reverses longstanding and hard-won support of this civic resource.

Concert promoters under attack with broad threat of 20 years in prison

The Senate is poised to pass legislation that would give federal prosecutors broad new powers to shut down RAVEs, hemp festivals, marijuana rallies, concerts and other events and punish business owners and activists for hosting or promoting events. Because of its broad language, the proposed law would also potentially subject people to enormous federal sentences if some of their guests smoked marijuana at their parties or barbecues. This includes promoters of national acts that perform at the Nationwide and Schottenstein arenas, as well as the Promowest Pavilion.

The bill, known as the Reducing American’s Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act (RAVE Act), was just introduced in the Senate on June 18th and has already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is moving very rapidly and could be passed by the Senate as early as this week. While it purports to be aimed at ecstasy and other club drugs, it gives the federal government enormous power to fine and imprison event promoters, even if they’ve never smoked marijuana.

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