Cover Story =

black robes marching in a procession up to a giant statue of the Great Owl Moloch, and public displays of drunkenness, the ‘Grovers’ are usually entertained by serious speakers at their ‘lakeside lectures’. “There is a famous photograph taken in 1995 of past and future presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush casually dressed, giving one of these lectures to fellow Grovers. It is claimed that every Republican president since Herbert Hoover has been a member, and most, but not all, Democrats.”

The Round Table One of the oldest but now defunct, the Round Table was unique among secret societies as it had the distinction of having been founded and sustained with African money via its founding father, Cecil John Rhodes. According to Burnett and Games, the Round Table was the secret society behind the then dominant British Empire which helped it maintain its control over the world. “This became the template for all future secret groups that never bothered themselves with the immature practice of dressing up in robes, but wore suits and wielded control over financial and commodity markets.” The Round Table was the brainchild of Cecil Rhodes who made his fortune in South Africa and gave his name to Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe. “The history of the Round Table,” according to Burnett and Games, “was first published in 1966 by Prof Carroll Quigley in his massive book, Tragedy and Hope. A professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Quigley devoted only 30 pages of his 1,300-page book to the Round Table, yet said later that those 30 pages cost him his US government contracts to lecture. At the time his book was published, one of his brightest students at Georgetown was the future president, William Jefferson Clinton. “Quigley revealed: ‘I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims, and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies, but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known’.” So what was the Round Table? This secret group was first written about by Prof Quigley in his earlier book called The Anglo-American Establishment. Though written in 1949, the book was not published until 1981, four years after Quigley’s death. He revealed that the Round Table was founded “one wintry afternoon in February 1891” when “three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London... These men were organising a secret society that was, for more than 50 years, to be one of the most important forces in the formulation and execution of British imperial and foreign policy”. The three men were Cecil Rhodes, William T. Stead (a famous British journalist), and Reginald Baliol Brett (friend and confidant of Queen Victoria and future adviser to both King Edward VII and King George V). A fourth man was soon added – Alfred Milner who would take over the leadership of the group when Cecil Rhodes died in 1902. The Round Table aimed to “unite the world, and above all the English-speaking world, in a federal structure around Britain”. According to the group, “the goal could best be achieved by a secret band of men united to one another by devotion to the common cause and by personal loyalty to one another... This band should pursue its goal by secret political and economic influence behind the scenes and by control of journalistic, educational and propaganda agencies”.

12n NEW AFRICAN February 2008

Opponents? Not quite: Both George Bush and his 2004 Democratic ‘opponent’ John Kerry are Skull & Bonesmen – same stable Below: The Grand Master: David Rockefeller, founded the Trilateral Commission in 1972 while still chairman of the CFR