Rhodes-Milner roundtable

[DAVIDENGLAND]

Does anyone know if we have a similar organisation in Britain??

[tehowe]

The Rhodes-Milner roundtable groups predate the CFR, and were its template.

This Wiki article actually hasn't been buried yet, and has some good info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes-Milner_Round_Table_Groups

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Rhodes-Milner Round Table Groups
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Rhodes-Milner Round Table Groups were founded in September 1909 in a conference at the Estate of Lord Anglesey, Plas Newydd in Wales. The framework of the organisation was devised by Lionel Curtis, but the overall idea was due to Lord Milner.Contents
1 Purpose
2 Society of the Elect
3 Organisation
4 Achievements
5 Similar organisations
6 Current organisation and membership
6.1 International Advisory Board
7 External links

Purpose
The Groups were designed to promulgate the idea of the formation of a Federal World Government, based on the unification of the British Empire and the United States of America. How successful they were in achieving this can be debated. Certainly they were successful in creating a central bank in the United States which increased British influence on U.S. economic affairs because of the connections between the Bank of England and Wall Street banks. It can be argued that they set the blueprint for future organisations such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations, the United Nations, the Trilateral Commission, and The Bilderberg Group.

Society of the Elect
Some people believe that the Round Table Groups were connected to a secret society called the Society of the Elect, which South African diamond baron Cecil Rhodes is believed to have set up with similar goals. Rhodes, who was connected to the Freemasons, was believed by some to have formed this secret society in his lifetime. Others believe that his project failed to attract converts, and was stillborn at its inception.

Rhodes first formalised his idea with William T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, when he and Stead agreed on the structure of the secret society. Like Weishaupt's Illuminati, this proposed secret society had an elaborate hierarchical structure, based on that of the Jesuits, which comprised: at the top, the position of "General of the Society"—a position modelled on the General of the Jesuits—to be occupied by Rhodes, with Stead and Lord Rothschild as his designated successors; an executive committee called the "Junta of Three", comprising Stead, Milner and Reginald Baliol Brett (Lord Esher); then a "Circle of Initiates", consisting of a number of notables including Cardinal Manning, Lord Arthur Balfour, Lord Albert Grey and Sir Harry Johnston; and outside of this was the "Association of Helpers", the broad mass of the Society. One of the puzzles surrounding this meeting is whether the "Society of the Elect" actually came into being. Carroll Quigley claims in Tragedy and Hope (1966) that Rhodes's "Society of the Elect" was not only "formally established" in 1891, but also that its "outer circle known as the 'Association of Helpers'" was "later organised by Milner as the Round Table".

In several of his wills, Rhodes left money for the continuation of the project. However in his later wills, Rhodes abandoned the idea and instead concentrated on what became the Rhodes scholarships, which enabled American, German and English Scholars to study for free at Oxford University.

Organisation
The groups are a collection of small discussion and lobbying groups in every major capital city of the world coordinated by a headquarters in London. In 1910, The Round Table Journal: A Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Empire was founded by Lord Milner and members of Milner's Kindergarten (Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr and Geoffrey Dawson) to unify the political thinking of the groups internationally. After World War II the journal was renamed The Round Table Journal:A Quarterly Review of British Commonwealth Affairs to reflect changing postwar realities.

By 1915 Round Table groups existed in seven countries, including England, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and a rather loosely organized group in the United States (George Louis Beer, Walter Lippmann, Frank Aydelotte, Whitney Shepardson, Thomas W. Lamont, Erwin D. Canham and others).

Achievements
Members of the Round Table were important in securing the Union of South Africa, which was to be the prototype for the eventual federation of the British Empire. There was much disagreement about how this could best be done, and some historians believe that far from being a force of unification, the groups only served to hasten the breakup of the Empire.

Also there were many members of the Round Table who achieved high positions in Lloyd George's government in the United Kingdom. This has led Conspiracy theorists of the New World Order to believe that the Round Table was instrumental in the formation and structure of the League of Nations. This is only partly true, as there was much disagreement as to the nature of the organisation. Philip Kerr, for one, was dead set against the idea and tried to influence Lloyd George not to make any concessions to the idea.

It is worth noting that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was actually drafted by Alfred Milner, and it was a letter to Lord Rothschild, making the Balfour Declaration, and thus British support for Zionism, a product of two people closely connected with the Round Table Groups whose goal was World Government.

Similar organisations
Lionel Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1919. A year later its sister organisation, the Council of Foreign Relations, was formed in America. It is perhaps in such organisations that the legacy of the Round Table still lives on.

Current organisation and membership
Although the Round Table still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during the First World War. Today it is largely a Commonwealth ginger group, designed to consider and influence Commonwealth policies. It also continues to run Round Table, a journal, and hold dinners and conferences.

Informally, the Round Table is known as 'The Moot'.

A list of the Round Table membership is below:
Pal Ahluwalia
Amitav Banerji
Terry Barringer
Richard Bourne (Chairman)
Stephen Chan
Stephen Cox
Alexander Evans
Paul Flather
David French
Amelia Hadfield
Meredith Hooper
Derek Ingram
David Jobbins
Alexandra Jones
Peter Lyon
Claire Martin
Sir Humphrey Maud
Alex May
James Mayall
Sir Michael McWilliam
Stuart Mole
Martin Mulligan
Alastair Niven
Mark Robinson
Prunella Scarlett
Victoria Schofield
Tim Shaw
Nicholas Sims
Tim Slack
Kayode Soyinka
Sir Robert Wade-Gery
Jennifer Welsh
Andrew J. Williams

International Advisory Board
Godfrey Baldacchino
Sir Zelman Cowen
Gajaraj Dhanarajan
Sir Henry Forde
Brenda Gourley
Cedric Grant
Wang Gungwu
Norman Hillmer
Sir Kenneth Keith
Wm. Roger Louis
D. A. Low
Don Markwell
Ali A. Mazrui
Richard Nile
M. Ohta
Ato Quayson
Mizanur Rahman Shelley
Gowher Rizvi
L. K. Sharma
K. M. de Silva
Farooq Sobhan
Sir Roger Tomkys
Bernard Wood
Ngaire Woods

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A Short History of The Round Table
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/Rhodes&SecretSocieties.html
Cecil Rhodes, founder of the De Beers diamond mining corporation, had a vision of an Imperial Federation that would re-unify Great Britain and the United States and globalise the world.

Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 12, Number 1 (December 2004-January 2005)
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com

by Will Banyan © October 2004
Email: banyan007@rediffmail.com

But for [King] George III, war would have been unknown throughout the world today. The English-speaking race would have been reorganised as a unit, with its central Parliament meeting alternately in New York and London, and it would have given peace to the world.
- Cecil Rhodes, July 19011

At the end of the 19th century the British Empire was the largest the world had ever seen, covering some 19 million square kilometres of territory and nearly a quarter of the world's population. Britain was also the pre-eminent global power, possessing the strongest navy in the world and the largest merchant fleet and dominating the global economy as the biggest investor, banker, insurer and commodity dealer.2 According to Niall Ferguson, author of Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003), this Pax Britannica was not only a force for good, but also the "nearest thing there has ever been to a world government".3 Perhaps it was, though for the millions of indigenous peoples who had been colonised, often with great brutality, and whose lands and natural resources were now being plundered by the British while they were relegated to the status of second-class subjects, the benefits of being part of the British Empire were somewhat elusive.
Yet, despite all these apparent strengths, Britain was no longer at the peak of its power, a point it reached in the 1870s. Indeed, the start of the 20th century marked the final phases of its inevitable decline. The er osion of British power was occurring on two fronts: first, through the imperial expansion of the other European powers, which impinged on its military dominance; and second, by the gradual loss of its industrial and commercial supremacy, upon which its military might had rested. The British Establishment was already reading these portents of imperial decay. The First Lord of the Admiralty, for example, had warned in 1900 that in coming years Britain "...by itself will not be strong enough to hold its proper place alongside of the US or Russia and probably not Germany. We shall be thrust aside by sheer weight."4
It was in the midst of this pervading sense of gloom that, in 1909, a movement emerged which sought to preserve British power by converting its Empire into an "Imperial Federation" or "Imperial Union".5 This movement was known as the Round Table.
The Round Table occupies a special place in most populist accounts of the New World Order, the group given a pivotal role in the World Government conspiracy. David Icke, for example, writes that the Round Table "spawned a network of interconnecting groups in many countries working toward a common aim...world government".3 The reason for this focus on the Round Table is the rather sensational analysis of the group provided by Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) in his 1966 book, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. A professor of history and international relations at Georgetown University, Quigley discussed the Round Table movement in some detail, claiming it formed the hub of an "international Anglophile network" which had exercised disproportionate influence over the American and British governments for much of the 20th century. More importantly, he personally confirmed the existence of this alleged network, citing some 20 years of studying its history, including gaining exclusive access to its documents over a two-year period; even claiming that for much of his life he was "close to it and to many of its instruments".7
For many researchers, Quigley's personal testimony has seemed reason enough to repeat his claims without exploring them much further, let alone without questioning their accuracy. Australian researcher Jeremy Lee, for instance, suggests Tragedy and Hope "exposed beyond argument" the existence of the New World Order conspiracy,8 while numerous other researchers continue to place the Round Table in key positions in wiring diagrams, linking it to the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House as though it were still a powerful organisation near or at the top of the New World Order hierarchy.9
It is not the intention of this article to join this consensus position of uncritically accepting Quigley's account of the Round Table's power-an acceptance based solely on his still unproven claims of special access.10 Nor is it the intention to embrace Gary Allen's claim that the Round Table was a "secret society... dedicated to establishing a world government".11 Equally, this article avoids the habit of more mainstream historians of minimising the role of the Round Table and relegating it to a mere footnote. Instead, this article endeavours to establish that while Quigley's claims contain some elements of truth, the Round Table's contribution to the New World Order is more complex than is commonly supposed.
In fact, the movement is an unlikely participant in the push for global governance. Founded by advocates of Anglo-Saxon racial and political superiority, their scheme for imperial federation originally intended to consolidate the British Empire to protect it from disintegration and an expected challenge from Germany, the Round Table, at least initially, represented imperialist rather than internationalist ideals.
Moreover, despite its apparent wealth and political connections and an ambitious propaganda program, the Round Table conspicuously failed to achieve its goal of imperial federation. It also fell short in its attempts to remould the League of Nations concept into a form that would support the Round Table's imperialist ambitions. The movement would also be beset by divisions between those who viewed the federation of the British Empire as an end in itself, and those who believed imperial federation should be a stepping-stone to world government.
Nevertheless, the movement's vision of a world ruled by an Anglo-American federation represented one of the first attempts in the 20th century by a power-elite clique to bypass democracy in order to achieve its goal of overriding national sovereignty and establishing a supranational form of governance. Yet, as this article seeks to demonstrate, the Round Table movement's legacy was not one of success but of failure. Its members' efforts to arrest Britain's decline by unifying the Empire soon proved futile, and their dream of ruling the world slipped from their grasp.

CECIL RHODES AND HIS IMPERIAL VISION
The Round Table was the product of two people: Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) and Lord Alfred Milner (1854-1925). This was not to be a living partnership, given Rhodes's untimely death well before the Round Table was founded and their limited contacts while he was alive, but more of a posthumous association in which Milner sought to realise Rhodes's dream of a unified British Empire. As prominent Round Table member Leopold Amery (1873-1955) later observed, "If the vision was Rhodes', it was Milner who over some twenty years laid securely the foundations of a system whose power...throughout the English-speaking world...would be difficult to exaggerate".12 While his claims of the Round Table's power can be forgiven as wishful thinking, Amery by no means overstates the importance of Rhodes and Milner.
Cecil Rhodes is better known as the founder and primary owner of the famous diamond company, De Beers; as creator of the colonies of Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe); and as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896.13 Compelled by a life-threatening heart condition to leave Britain, Rhodes had travelled in the 1870s to southern Africa where he made his fortune in the diamond-mining boom in the Kimberley region. It was there that Rhodes first demonstrated his desire for centralised control.
Rhodes believed the intense competition between the hundreds of small mining companies was damaging the viability of the diamond industry. His solution was to establish a company with monopoly control over the supply of diamonds, thus making it more profitable in the long term. In 1888 Rhodes realised his vision, collaborating with share dealer Alfred Beit and the London bankers Nathaniel M. Rothschild and Sons to buy out rival mining companies throughout the Kimberley region. The product of this collusion was a single diamond mining company, De Beers Consolidated Mines. This bold move gave Rhodes and his backers "control of the commanding heights of the Cape economy" (Thomas) and made him, "almost overnight, the most powerful man in Africa" (Rotberg).14
As Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, Chairman of De Beers and one of the richest and most aggressive imperialists in southern Africa, Rhodes commanded considerable power and his exploits earned him the admiring accolade of "the Colossus of Africa". Driven by an imperialist fervour, the Colossus embarked on a number of bold schemes devoted to the expansion and consolidation of British rule in Africa. Some of these plans were partially successful, such as the annexation of Matabeleland and Mashonaland in support of the British South Africa Company's goal of controlling all the land in the interior of Africa between the Limpopo and the Nile. Other schemes, such as his attempt to overthrow the Boer government in the Orange Free State through the Jameson Raid and his plans for a trans-African railway stretching from the Cape to Cairo, were for him personally costly and conspicuous failures.
Yet, in pursuing these various projects, Rhodes was not enacting his own ideas but using the plans of others to fulfil his broader vision. As one historian observed: "Rhodes was not a thinker; he was doer. He appropriated the ideas of others rather than conceiving ideas himself."15 Significantly, the only exception to this rule was his most ambitious grand design of all: imperial federation.
This is not an accepted fact in most accounts, including in Quigley's book where the famous British artist John Ruskin is cited as the sole source of Rhodes's enthusiasm for imperial federation. Rhodes is said to have attended the inaugural lecture given at Oxford in 1870 by Ruskin, then Professor of Fine Arts, and to have been so inspired that he kept a copy of the lecture with him for the next 30 years, regarding it as "one of his greatest possessions" (Quigley).16 The problem with this version of events is that Rhodes did not attend Oxford until September 1873, thus obviously missing Ruskin's lecture; more importantly, as Rotberg notes, there is "absolutely no evidence...that Rhodes was ever affected by Ruskin's popularity and the cult which helped spread his message of light, right and duty".17 There are certainly good grounds for supposing that Rhodes would have agreed with most of Ruskin's message that Britain's destiny, "the highest ever set before a nation", was to make it "for all the world a source of light" by founding colonies "as far and as fast as she is able to".18 There is, however, no single source of inspiration for Rhodes's dream of unifying the British Empire.
The range of influences on Rhodes's imperial thinking was legion. His favourite books included the works of Classical Greek and Roman scholars, such as Aristotle's Ethics, Plato's Republic, Plutarch's Lives, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, and Thucydides' History, or were about the Roman Empire-evident in his avid reading and rereading of Edward Gibbons's six-volume The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788). These books had exposed Rhodes to the cosmopolitanism of the Stoics and also to arguments extolling the virtues of imperialism. From these, it seems, he had concluded that it was Britain's destiny to succeed Rome as the ruler of the world.19
Another key influence was William Winwood Reade's book, The Martyrdom of Man (1872), a neo-Darwinian tome which presents a universal history of humanity supporting the argument that suffering is necessary to the achievement of progress. Rhodes had read Martyrdom, describing it as a "creepy book", but he also said, somewhat ominously, that it had "made me what I am".20
He also found inspiration in the imperialist fervour generated by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's expansion of the British Empire in the 1870s. Disraeli himself was an advocate of imperial federation.
Arguably, it was from this rich concoction of ideas and influences, rather than from Oxford itself-where he apparently learned little-that Rhodes had developed his own unique vision of imperial federation.

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RHODES AND HIS "CONFESSION OF FAITH"
Rhodes first put his vision of imperial unity to paper on 2 June 1877 in his handwritten testimony, the so-called "Confession of Faith". In the Confession, Rhodes stated he had concluded that his chosen calling in life was not marriage, travel or the accumulation of wealth, but to make himself useful to his country. Expressing his belief in the inherent racial and cultural superiority of Anglo-Saxons, Rhodes argued that only the British should rule the world:
I contend that we are the finest race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable of human beings; what an alteration there would be in them if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence... Added to which the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars.21

To this end, Rhodes put forward his own vision of an expanded British Empire that would be achieved by the formation of a secret society:
Why should we not form a secret society with but one object: the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream, and yet it is probable, it is possible.22

This secret society would have "its members in every part of the British Empire", including in the schools and universities to select new members and in the Colonial legislatures, where they would "advocate the closer union of England and colonies, to crush all disloyalty and every movement for the severance of our Empire". He also envisaged this secret society owning "portions of the press, for the press rules the mind of the people".23
Rhodes's motivation for creating his own secret society stemmed from his disappointment and contempt for Freemasonry, which he had recently joined. His disdain for the Craft had been almost immediate, demonstrated at his induction banquet in June 1877 where, as a new life member for the Apollo Chapter of the Masonic Order, Rhodes scandalised his brethren by casually revealing the mystic cult secrets of the 33rd Degree Rite.24 In his Confession, Rhodes denigrated the Freemasons as an essentially pointless organisation whose members "devote themselves to what at times appear the most ridiculous and absurd rites without an object and without an end". However, this was not a blanket rejection of secret societies, as he expressed his admiration for the Jesuits whom he believed had achieved much despite their "bad cause" and "bad leaders".25
Elements of Rhodes's Confession were incorporated into his wills, of which eight were produced over the years as his fortune and ambitions increased but his cardiovascular problems worsened, reminding the Colossus that his time in this world was short. His second will of 19 September 1877, for example, was produced following a "heart attack" he had suffered in August of that year.26 Although it had only two executors, that document clarified Rhodes's essential vision of establishing a "Secret Society" devoted to "the extension of British rule throughout the world", including the "ultimate recovery of the United States as an integral part of the British Empire". This would culminate in:
...consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.27

All that remained was to bring about this desired state of affairs, and in successive wills Rhodes continuously refined his envisaged secret society. In a letter accompanying his fourth will, written in June 1888, Rhodes instructed Lord Nathaniel M. Rothschild (1840-1915)-his collaborator and financier at De Beers and to whom he originally left most of his fortune-to obtain the Constitution of the Jesuits and "insert English Empire for Roman Catholic Religion" so the secret society could use the document as its charter.28
But Lord Rothschild, although a supporter of imperial expansion, soon proved unworthy of this task. For one, Rothschild failed to meet Rhodes's immediate demands for assistance in achieving his various schemes in Africa. This frustrated the Colossus of Africa, who had apparently believed in the great power of the Rothschild name to work the all-too-numerous miracles he required.29
Lord Rothschild also seemed unable to absorb Rhodes's ultimate imperial vision. The disappointment was obvious. Rhodes was to confide to his friend Lord Esher in 1891 that Lord Rothschild "...is absolutely incapable of understanding my ideas. I have endeavoured to explain them to him, but I could see from the look on his face that it made no impression...and that I was simply wasting my time." The fate of Britain's richest banker was to be removed from Rhodes's subsequent wills and replaced with an anonymous trustee.30

STEAD AND THE "ANGLO-AMERICAN RE-UNION"
Rhodes was to find a more understanding audience through his friendship with William T. Stead (1849-1912), editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and founder of the periodical, Review of Reviews. Stead was an ardent supporter of imperialism, conceiving it in Ruskinian terms of Britain's moral duty to the rest of the world, which he defined as the "imperialism of responsibility". He was a supporter of imperial federation, evident in the avowed purpose of Review of Reviews of "promoting the re-union of the English-speaking race".31
However, Stead had also been a member of the South Africa Committee, which was opposed to Rhodes's brutal methods of expanding British rule in southern Africa. Nevertheless, it was an article by Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette, endorsing an "Anglo-American re-union", that had prompted Rhodes to seek him out during his visit to England in April 1889. Their subsequent meeting was to have a profound effect on Stead, who was to put aside his previous reservations and write excitedly of his newfound admiration for Rhodes, proclaiming that he had never before "met a man who, upon broad Imperial matters, was so entirely of my way of thinking". Stead was especially impressed with Rhodes's "gorgeous" ideas for the "federation, expansion and consolidation of the Empire".32
The impact appears to have been mutual, with Rhodes giving Stead a gift of £2,000 to settle an adverse libel judgement and promising £20,000 to promote their ideas of imperial federation through the British media. In time, Rhodes was to show his confidence in Stead by naming him a trustee in one his wills.33 Stead was also to have an impact on the Anglo-American component of Rhodes's imperial vision. It is noted by Quigley that Rhodes accepted Stead's proposal to modify his vision of imperial federation to make "Washington the capital of the whole organisation or allow parts of the empire to become states of the American Union".34 According to Stead's own account (and Quigley's most likely source), it was during Rhodes's visit to England in February 1891 that the diamond magnate had finally:35
...expressed his readiness to adopt the course from which he had at first recoiled...that of securing the unity of the English-speaking race by consenting to the absorption of the British Empire in the American Union if it could not be secured any other way... [H]e expressed his deliberate conviction that English-speaking re-union was so great an end in itself as to justify even the sacrifice of the distinctive features and independent existence of the British Empire.

This Anglo-American arrangement thus became one of the central components of his envisaged supranational enterprise, if not an obsession. Rhodes often blamed King George III for the loss of the American colonies (see epigraph), and once lamented to Stead that "if we had not lost America...the peace of the world [would have been] secured for all Eternity!" The postscript to his will of September 1893, for example, expressed his belief that the merger of Britain and the United States would "take the government of the whole world", leading to the "cessation of all wars and one language throughout the world".36
Elsewhere, Rhodes envisaged joining the British House of Commons to the United States Congress, establishing an "Imperial Parliament" that would sit for five-year periods, alternating between London and Washington.37
Rhodes's vision can appear quite idealistic, even naïve, in its motivations. Quigley contends that Rhodes's utopian scheme for a world-dominating Anglo-American Federation was driven not by greed or other materialist wants but by a sincere belief in Britain's mission to spread its culture and values worldwide for the common good. However, Rhodes also made some quite rational calculations about British power, particularly its declining economic fortunes. He recognised that British trade was suffering due to "hostile tariffs" imposed by America and Europe. As he was to tell Prime Minister Gladstone, the only logical solution was the "further acquisition of territory", giving Britain a domain large enough to maintain tariffs against the rest of the world. "Great Britain's position depends on her trade," Rhodes argued, saying that if Britain did not "take and open up the dependencies of the world which are at present devoted to barbarism, we shall shut out the world's trade".38
Quite simply, Rhodes did not believe that free trade in itself would benefit Britain unless there were some political action to support it, preferably in the form of imperial expansion and consolidation. "Being a Free Trader," he was to write to Stead, "I believe that until the world comes to its senses you should declare war with those who are trying to boycott your manufactures." He had been particularly taken by South African politician Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr's proposal, first raised at the 1887 Colonial Conference, of an Empire-wide two-per-cent tariff against foreign goods. "The politics of the next hundred years are going to be tariffs and nothing else," Rhodes proclaimed while Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. In his letter to Stead, Rhodes identified the only possible solution: "You might finish the [tariff] war by union with America and universal peace, I mean after a hundred years and a secret society organised like [St Ignatius] Loyola's [founder of the Jesuits]."39

THE NEW WEISHAUPT
In pursuing this course, Rhodes was in many respects one of the first true modern heirs to Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati. A Professor of Law at the University of Ingolstadt and a former a Jesuit priest, Weishaupt created the Illuminati in 1776 to achieve his radical, utopian goal of transforming society. He envisaged a world devoid of "princes and nations", in which the human race would "become one family".40
Rhodes's similarities with Weishaupt are threefold: first, he came to the same conclusion as Weishaupt that creating his own secret society for the purposes of changing elite opinion was the only means to ensure that his goals could be achieved; second, he was similarly unimpressed by the Freemasons and the Jesuits, yet he copied their methods; and finally, his ultimate goal was essentially the same as Weishaupt, in that he sought to create a world order in which peace would prevail as divisions would be overcome by a global civilisation, albeit an Anglo-Saxon one.
There were a number of important differences, however, with Rhodes being influenced by Classical philosophers rather than by the Enlightenment theorists whom Weishaupt admired; this had made him into an ardent imperialist rather than the cosmopolitan idealist that Weishaupt clearly was. Unlike Weishaupt, a radical thinker who aspired to overthrow the existing political and religious order, Rhodes sought only to expand and preserve what he regarded as the absolute pinnacle of human civilisation: the British Empire.
Furthermore, Weishaupt was an academic of limited means, whose only hope of realising his vision was to use the Illuminati to try to infiltrate existing centres of power and sway elite opinion. His ambitious endeavour met with some success, but ultimately ran afoul of the Bavarian authorities, culminating in his exile and the banning of the Illuminati.
Rhodes, in contrast, with a controlling stake in southern Africa's diamond monopoly, two terms as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and feted by Britain's Establishment, had at his disposal enormous financial and political resources-and, as such, ample opportunity to act on his ideas without fear of persecution by the state because, especially in southern Africa, he was the state.

Part Two examines Alfred Milner's role in the first efforts to realise Rhodes's vision of a secret society devoted to imperial unity.

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Continued next issue ...

About the Author:
Will Banyan, BA (Hons), GradDip (Information Science), is a writer specialising in the political economy of globalisation. He has worked for local and national governments as well as some international organisations and the private sector. He is currently working on a revisionist history of the New World Order and an analysis of the War on Terror.
Banyan's six-part series, "Rockefeller Internationalism", was published in NEXUS 10/03-11/02.Will Banyan can be contacted by email at banyan007@rediffmail.com.

Endnotes:
1. Quote attributed to Rhodes in Frederic Whyte, The Life of W. T. Stead, Jonathan Cape, 1925, vol. II, p. 206.
2. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Random House, 1987, pp. 224-226.
3. Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Basic Books, 2003, p. xxiii.
4. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, pp. 226-229 (quote on p. 229).
5. Quoted in A. M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics: A Study of Lord Milner in Opposition and in Power, Anthony Blond, 1964, p. 16; and Walter Nimocks, Milner's Young Men: The "Kindergarten" in Edwardian Imperial Affairs, Duke University Press, 1968, p. 124.
6. David Icke, ...And The Truth Shall Set You Free: The most explosive book of the 20th century, Bridge of Love, 1995, p. 67.
7. See Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time, Angriff Press, 1966–1974, pp. 130-133, 144-153, 950-956; and Quigley, "The Round Table Groups in Canada, 1908–38", Canadian Historical Review, September 1962, pp. 204-224.
8. Jeremy Lee, Australia 2000: "What Will We Tell Our Children?", Pickford Productions, 1997, p. 28.
9. See, for example, David Icke (…And The Truth Shall Set You Free, p. 151), who places the Round Table at the centre of his diagram, which is in fact a copy of Stan Deyo's "Round Table of the Nine" diagram in his book The Cosmic Conspiracy (West Australian Texas Trading, 1992, p. 96). Dr John Coleman, in contrast, presents the Round Table as an offshoot of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, itself beneath the "Committee of 300"; see Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300, America West Publishers, 1992, p. 265.
10. It is hoped that an enterprising researcher will some day analyse Quigley's research notes for Tragedy and Hope, now available at Georgetown University Library, Washington, DC, to assess Quigley's claims to privileged access to files of the "international Anglophile network".
11. Gary Allen with Larry Abraham, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, Concord Press, 1971, p. 74.
12. Quoted in Walter Nimocks, Milner's Young Men, pp. 143-144.
13. For biographies of Cecil Rhodes, see: Sarah Gertrude Millin, Rhodes, Chatto & Windus, 1952; John Flint, Cecil Rhodes, Hutchinson, 1976; Robert I. Rotberg with Miles F. Shore, The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power, Oxford University Press, 1988; and Antony Thomas, Rhodes, St Martin's Press, 1997.
14. See: Thomas, Rhodes, pp. 169-181; Rotberg, The Founder, pp. 180-214; and Rob Turrell, "Rhodes, De Beers and Monopoly", Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, May 1982, pp. 311-343.
15. John S. Galbraith, "Cecil Rhodes and his 'Cosmic Dreams': A Reassessment", Journal of Commonwealth and Imperial History, Winter 1972–73, p. 173.
16. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 130. See also: Flint, Cecil Rhodes, pp. 27-28; and Millin, Rhodes, p. 29.
17. Rotberg, The Founder, pp. 85-88, 95. Thomas (Rhodes, p. 110), recognising that Rhodes arrived three years too late to see Ruskin, still speculates that "no doubt, he would have read the published text" of Ruskin's speech.
18. Quoted in Flint, Cecil Rhodes, pp. 27-28.
19. Rotberg, The Founder, p. 95.
20. ibid., pp. 99-100 (including quote).
21. Quoted in Flint, Cecil Rhodes, pp. 248-249.
22. Quoted in Millin, Rhodes, p. 32.
23. Quoted in Flint, Cecil Rhodes, pp. 250-251.
24. Rotberg, The Founder, pp. 101, 102.
25. "Confession" quoted in Flint, Cecil Rhodes, p. 249.
26. Rotberg, The Founder, pp. 101-102. The "heart attack", which is alleged to have occurred while Rhodes was in Oxford, is an unusual incident. His friends reportedly found Rhodes barricaded in his room "blue with fright" and insisting that "he had seen a ghost" (ibid., p. 102).
27. Quoted in ibid., pp. 32-33 (emphasis added).
28. ibid., p. 233.
29. Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1848–1998, Penguin Books, 2000, vol. II, pp. 360-362, 523 fn13 (including Rhodes quote).
30. Quoted in Rotberg, The Founder, p. 316.
31. Quoted in Estelle W. Stead, My Father: Personal & Spiritual Reminiscences, William Heinemann, 1913, p. 154.
32. Rotberg, The Founder, pp. 281-282; quotes in Stead, My Father, pp. 234, 236.
33. Rotberg, The Founder, p. 282.
34. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 133.
35. Quoted in Stead, My Father, p. 239.
36. Rhodes to Stead quoted in Millin, Rhodes, p. 172; Rhodes's will quoted in Rotberg, The Founder, p. 666.
37. Christopher Hitchens, Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies, Chatto & Windus, 1990, pp. 299-300.
38. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, pp. 130-131; Rhodes quoted in Millin, Rhodes, p. 171.
39. Quoted in Millin, Rhodes, pp. 172-175.
40. Quoted in Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, Talisman: Sacred Cities, Sacred Faith, Michael Joseph, 2004, p. 379.

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[DAVIDENGLAND]

Thanks for all that info guys, very interesting stuff.

It all sounds very much like the blueprint for MI5/MI6. That's who I believe is running the show over here now. We are led to believe that these 2 organisations are there to fight crime but I believe that they have much much more scope than that. Take the Blair/Brown alliance for instance, both MI5 agents to my mind. They took control of the Labour party in 1994 after John Smith the then leader died suddenly from a heart attack aged 55. Blair and Brown wasted no time after their ascension and began dismantling the party drastically, shaping it into it's present form very quickly - The New Labour Party (New Labour/Neo Conservative ??). Gone was the party of the working class, now we had a party that preached 'Meritocracy' (the guy who coined this term distanced himself from the New Labour use of it saying that their use of the term bore no resemblance to the use he had in mind when he coined it). New Labour rise to power was sealed in the run up to the 1997 General Election when The Sun newspaper (the most widely read in Britain) which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and traditionally a Conservative paper suddenly switched it's alliance and backed New Labour. All the pieces were now in place for a New Labour landslide because by that point after 17 years in power the the Conservative government had collapsed under a mountain of sleaze which amounted pretty much to their MP's lining their pocket's as fast as they could and they were also involved in various sexual indiscretions which the Murdoch owned papers gleefully exposed, nice trick.
The truth is that Labour under John Smith would have won the Election anyway. People were sick of the Conservatives and after 17yrs of watching the likes of Thatcher et al take away their rights (and the school kids milk) it was time for a more Socialist government to come to the fore and redress the balance and restore some of their rights. But alas. We got Blair/Brown, puppets by no other name kowtowing to big business and fully intent on signing us into the EU and by the back door if necessary.
The one thing I've learned from all this is you cannot trust any of the parties in Britain. They all work for the same people, MI5/MI6, because who else could possibly be masterminding this?? It's defiantly done by design.

Anyway as Alex says we're digressing.

[snowykittenz]

Heck...yes we do have roundtable groups in the UK.

They call themselves charity groups...
Some of them proboarbly dont even know what theyve gotten into when they have joined.

Alot of trouble was caused recently at my church over the roundtable logo...its a masonic symbol...yet the youth leaders were being forced to wear the roundtable logo (as they had donated money), yet werent allowed to wear the name of Jesus on their jumpers.

Alot of the leaders quit over this.

Also...heard of the Glades/Buffalos...I dont know what they are/do but theyre a secretive organisation which believe in protecting queen and country.

Masons also exist in england aswell.

Bilderberg was set up by a Lord.

So yes..the Uk has its fair share of secrecy going on in the world.