The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies

by Jon E. Lewis

  The vast bulk of historians believe the Society folded long ago, and may never got off paper. Quigley himself rowed back from the allegation in private. What is beyond supposition is the close tie between Chatham House and the American Council on Foreign Relations, which is another organization owing its existence to Rhodes. In 1919, Edward Mandel House, wingman to US President Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles peace conference, met with members of the Round Tables, whose ideals he shared. However, House believed that Americans would not accept the leadership of a British-dominated organization, so constituted instead the Council on Foreign Relations.

  As Professor Kees van der Pijl observed in Transnational Classes and International Relations, “As a structure of socialisation through which a momentary ruling class consensus is shaped, transmitted and transformed into policy, the Rhodes– Milner Group became the model for all subsequent groups.”

  In other words, Rhodes failed dismally to create a secret society capable of taking over the world, but he did indirectly spawn the clubbable think tanks which seek to shape national and international policy. Unquestionably the NY-based CFR and Chatham House are major policy-making institutions, but to stretch their role to being the power behind the New World Order is breaking credibility.

  If the Society of the Elect/CFR/Chatham House rule the world why, you might ask the edge-of-reason conspiracists, do they need a secret plot to take over what they already have?

  Further Reading

  Cecil J. Rhodes, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, ed. W.T. Stead, 1902

  Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966

  www.moot.org.uk

  DOCUMENT: CECIL RHODES, CONFESSION OF FAITH, 1877

  The spelling and grammar errors are as the the original.

  It often strikes a man to inquire what is the chief good in life; to one the thought comes that it is a happy marriage, to another great wealth, and as each seizes on his idea, for that he more or less works for the rest of his existence. To myself thinking over the same question the wish came to render myself useful to my country. I then asked myself how could I and after reviewing the various methods I have felt that at the present day we are actually limiting our children and perhaps bringing into the world half the human beings we might owing to the lack of country for them to inhabit that if we had retained America there would at this moment be millions more of English living. I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that 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 specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives. I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence. Added to this the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars, at this moment had we not lost America I believe we could have stopped the Russian-Turkish war by merely refusing money and supplies. Having these ideas what scheme could we think of to forward this object. I look into history and I read the story of the Jesuits I see what they were able to do in a bad cause and I might say under bad leaders.

  At the present day I become a member of the Masonic order I see the wealth and power they possess the influence they hold and I think over their ceremonies and I wonder that a large body of men can devote themselves to what at times appear the most ridiculous and absurd rites without an object and without an end.

  The idea gleaming and dancing before ones eyes like a will-of-the-wisp at last frames itself into a plan. 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 the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream, but yet it is probable, it is possible. I once heard it argued by a fellow in my own college, I am sorry to own it by an Englishman, that it was good thing for us that we have lost the United States. There are some subjects on which there can be no arguments, and to an Englishman this is one of them, but even from an American’s point of view just picture what they have lost, look at their government, are not the frauds that yearly come before the public view a disgrace to any country and especially their’s which is the finest in the world. Would they have occurred had they remained under English rule great as they have become how infinitely greater they would have been with the softening and elevating influences of English rule, think of those countless 000’s of Englishmen that during the last 100 years would have crossed the Atlantic and settled and populated the United States. Would they have not made without any prejudice a finer country of it than the low class Irish and German emigrants? All this we have lost and that country loses owing to whom? Owing to two or three ignorant pig-headed statesmen of the last century, at their door lies the blame. Do you ever feel mad? do you ever feel murderous. I think I do with those men. I bring facts to prove my assertion. Does an English father when his sons wish to emigrate ever think of suggesting emigration to a country under another flag, never – it would seem a disgrace to suggest such a thing I think that we all think that poverty is better under our own flag than wealth under a foreign one.

  Put your mind into another train of thought. Fancy Australia discovered and colonised under the French flag, what would it mean merely several millions of English unborn that at present exist we learn from the past and to form our future. We learn from having lost to cling to what we possess. We know the size of the world we know the total extent. Africa is still lying ready for us it is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race more of the best the most human, most honourable race the world possesses.

  To forward such a scheme what a splendid help a secret society would be a society not openly acknowledged but who would work in secret for such an object.

  I contend that there are at the present moment numbers of the ablest men in the world who would devote their whole lives to it. I often think what a loss to the English nation in some respects the abolition of the Rotten Borough System has been. What thought strikes a man entering the house of commons, the assembly that rule the whole world? I think it is the mediocrity of the men but what is the cause. It is simply – an assembly of wealth of men whose lives have been spent in the accumulation of money and whose time has been too much engaged to be able to spare any for the study of past history. And yet in hands of such men rest our destinies. Do men like the great Pitt, and Burke and Sheridan not now to exist. I contend they do. There are men now living with I know no other term the [Greek term] of Aristotle but there are not ways for enabling them to serve their Country. They live and die unused unemployed. What has the main cause of the success of the Romish Church? The fact that every enthusiast, call it if you like every madman finds employment in it. Let us form the same kind of society a Church for the extension of the British Empire. A society which should have members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea we should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands just one perhaps in every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the rest of his life in his County. He should then be supported if without means by the Society and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed.

  Take another case, let us fancy a man who finds himself his own master with ample means of attaining his majority whether he puts the question directly to himself or not, still like the old story of vi
rtue and vice in the Memorabilia a fight goes on in him as to what he should do. Take if he plunges into dissipation there is nothing too reckless he does not attempt but after a time his life palls on him, he mentally says this is not good enough, he changes his life, he reforms, he travels, he thinks now I have found the chief good in life, the novelty wears off, and he tires, to change again, he goes into the far interior after the wild game he thinks at last I’ve found that in life of which I cannot tire, again he is disappointed. He returns he thinks is there nothing I can do in life? Here I am with means, with a good house, with everything that is to be envied and yet I am not happy I am tired of life he possesses within him a portion of the [Greek term] of Aristotle but he knows it not, to such a man the Society should go, should test, and should finally show him the greatness of the scheme and list him as a member.

  Take one more case of the younger son with high thoughts, high aspirations, endowed by nature with all the faculties to make a great man, and with the sole wish in life to serve his Country but he lacks two things the means and the opportunity, ever troubled by a sort of inward deity urging him on to high and noble deeds, he is compelled to pass his time in some occupation which furnishes him with mere existence, he lives unhappily and dies miserably. Such men as these the Society should search out and use for the furtherance of their object.

  (In every Colonial legislature the Society should attempt to have its members prepared at all times to vote or speak and advocate the closer union of England and the colonies, to crush all disloyalty and every movement for the severance of our Empire. The Society should inspire and even own portions of the press for the press rules the mind of the people. The Society should always be searching for members who might by their position in the world by their energies or character forward the object but the ballot and test for admittance should be severe.)

  Once make it common and it fails. Take a man of great wealth who is bereft of his children perhaps having his mind soured by some bitter disappointment who shuts himself up separate from his neighbours and makes up his mind to a miserable existence. To such men as these the society should go gradually disclose the greatness of their scheme and entreat him to throw in his life and property with them for this object. I think that there are thousands now existing who would eagerly grasp at the opportunity. Such are the heads of my scheme.

  For fear that death might cut me off before the time for attempting its development I leave all my worldly goods in trust to S. G. Shippard and the Secretary for the Colonies at the time of my death to try to form such a Society with such an object.

  SPACE MONOLITH

  If Star Trek taught us anything it was that the Enterprise would take much more, Captain, and that pretty much anything was possible on the final frontier.

  But space monoliths?

  When Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin entered space in 1961 he is said to have observed an alien communication beacon, dubbed the Monolith, which continued in orbit until 1972 when it was retrieved by a US military shuttle and taken for study at a clandestine base, probably Area 51. In between these dates, the Monolith almost caused the demise of the 1969 Apollo 10 mission, which took a top secret detour from its schedule as the “dress rehearsal” for the moon landings to photograph the celestial map carved on the Monolith’s surface. As Apollo 10 approached the Monolith, the crew of Stafford, Young and Cernan suffered communications and technical malfunctions resulting in a re-entry to Earth at a dangerously high speed which the crew were lucky to survive.

  Remember Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, itself based on Arthur C. Clarke’s short story The Sentinel? The one with the alien monoliths that mark (if not kick-start) the various stages of human evolution? The monolith conspiracists surely do.

  The evidence for the monolith theory is scant. Neither Gagarin nor the Apollo 10 crew ever mentioned seeing a monolith. Apollo 10 splashed down within thirty-five seconds of its scheduled landing time, meaning that the technical problems suffered were indeed very minor – and that there cannot have been time for a detour to investigate an alien artefact. One of the fuller expositions of the monolith conspiracy, by Richard Boylan in the pages of abovetopsecret.com, is based on information “disclosed to me by a reliable confidential informant, who previously worked on contract for the National Security Agency, and maintains connections within the Intelligence community. This informant, whom I shall call ‘Jesse’, has over 40 years of notes from a very close relative, who served as CIA liaison officer to the National Council on UFO/ET matters.” In other words, the “information” is third-hand from unnamed, unidentified sources.

  For years the Monolith theory went into abeyance, and just when it seemed dead in space a camera from the University of Arizona’s HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) project took a photograph of a “monolith” on Mars in 2011. Veteran astronaut Buzz Aldrin then stoked the space conspiracy theory by announcing that a similar monolith had been detected on Mars’s moon Phobos. The University of Arizona, however, roundly rejected any notion that the monolith was an alien-made structure. Alfred McEwen, professor of planetary science at the university and HiRise’s principal investigator, said: “Layering from rock deposition combined with tectonic fractures creates right-angle planes of weakness such that rectangular blocks tend to weather out and separate from the bedrock … It is not that unusual. There are lots of rectangular structures on Mars. It is striking when you see one that is isolated, but they are common.”

  Buzz Aldrin suggested that the only way to prove the matter of the Mars monolith one way or another was to pump money into space exploration and go there.

  SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA

  At around 2.00 p.m. GMT on 1 February 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere after sixteen days in space. Tragically all seven crew members taking part in mission STS-107 were killed. Barely had Columbia’s debris finished showering down on the East Texas town of Palestine (pop. 18, 458) than the conspiracy theories lifted off.

  As to whodunnit, there is an embarrassment of choices:

  •

  There was some irony – or maybe a clue – in the falling of the wreckage on “Palestine”, because the major league Columbia conspiracy points the finger at Israel. One of the Columbia seven was Ilan Ramon, an Israeli Air Force officer who had taken part in the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear facility at Osirsk in 1981. After Ramon’s death at Mach 18 it was rumoured that he had been included in the Columbia crew so he could covertly photograph Iraq on behalf of Israel’s Institute of Biological Research military in preparation for a biowarfare attack on Saddam Hussein. In this view, Ramon was “martyred” by the Israelis and US to ramp up global support for an Israeli invasion of Palestine (the one in the Middle East), Lebanon, and Iraq itself.

  The son of Holocaust survivors Colonel Ramon was the first Israeli to enter space, taking with him a scroll of the Torah. This read: “Has any nation ever heard the voice of God speaking out of the mist of the fire, as you have, and yet lived?” On due consideration of this, Palestinian organizations and the Islamic press decided that Allah had waved his hand to destroy Columbia and stop the Jews entering the celestial sphere. In the words of Abu Hamza Al-Masri, Islamic fundamentalist preacher (and terrorist, and benefit fraudster) in an interview with Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in 2003:

  The target of this event was the trinity of evil, as the shuttle carried Americans, an Israeli, and a Hindu, the trinity of evil against Islam. This is a message to the American people that Bush’s term is nothing but a string of curses cast upon them, and that it will lead to the exhaustion of their resources and the elimination of the false American dream … This is a divine message to the Israelis, saying that they are not welcome in space.

  •

  The Russian news service PRAVDA suggested that China or North Korea had hacked into Columbia’s onboard computer and uploaded a virus or worm that caused Columbia to malfunction.

  •


  An amateur astronomer by the name of Peter Goldie took photographs of Columbia seconds before its break-up which purportedly show a purple bolt heading towards the craft. Numerous conspiracists thus maintain that Columbia was shot down by a particle beam destroyer or some form of HAARP-like ray device employed by the US military. Thus a classic “false-flag” operation, the downing of Columbia was designed to create grief and anger amongst the American “sheeple” so they would support the upcoming Iraq War. There was, as every good conspiracist knew, a precedent for such a dubious mission, Operation Northwoods, which had been drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and intended to blame Cuba if anything went amiss with John Glenn’s orbit of Earth in 1962.

  •

  Aliens shoot down Columbia.

  The official investigating body, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (which comprised independent experts from academia, the space industry, the military) mundanely concluded:

  The physical cause of the loss of Columbia and its crew was a breach in the Thermal Protection System on the leading edge of the left wing, caused by a piece of insulating foam which separated from the left bipod ramp section of the External Tank at 81.7 seconds after launch, and struck the wing in the vicinity of the lower half of Reinforced Carbon-Carbon panel number 8. During re-entry this breach in the Thermal Protection System allowed superheated air to penetrate through the leading edge insulation and progressively melt the aluminium structure of the left wing, resulting in a weakening of the structure until increasing aerodynamic forces caused loss of control, failure of the wing, and break-up of the Orbiter. This breakup occurred in a flight regime in which, given the current design of the Orbiter, there was no possibility for the crew to survive.