Who was that group of eminent persons and retired australian defence chiefs that produced the September 26 2002 letter to major australian newspapers warning the Howard Government against joining the US in going after Saddam Hussein without a UN sanction?
This Council of Elders was described as a sort of para- parliamentary Roman Senate in Bears Bar #91 article entitled Leading Australians Criticise Unilateralism. The article compared the schism among the powers-that-be with the war of wits between Cicero and Caesar. This is a competition between elites. Both the nascent US Empire and its symbiotic antagonist the UN were born of the British Empire. Speaking with the voice of higher authority, the australian elders group is no mere ad hoc or temporary committee but closely connected with the UN. They share its origins in the Round Table network of gentlemen and scholars founded by Cecil Rhodes and Lord Milner.

At least one of them Bob Hawke is a Rhodes Scholar. According to Douglas Davis writing in Jerusalem Post January 12 1999 (jpost.com/com/Archive/12.Jan.1999/News/Article-9.html) the real author of the Balfour Declaration, the famous 1917 letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild that laid the groundwork for establishing the state of Israel, was Leopold Amery. - This has been disclosed in just-published research by William Rubinstein, professor of modern history at University of Wales, who says Amery hid his Jewish background.-

Leo Amery was a senior figure in the Establishment and in the Milner Group set up by Cecil Rhodes as a sort of Round Table or think tank formulating policy for the Empire. Robert Scally in The Origins Of The Lloyd George Coalition published in 1975 by Princeton University Press wrote: "The Webbs and Leo Amery, a Milner disciple, Fabian and Times' military correspondent in South Africa, conceived the idea of forming the Coefficients Club in November 1902. The criteria applied by Amery and the Webbs in choosing the personnel of this brains trust arose directly out of these goals. It seems possible that the club was originally imagined as the brains trust of Rosebery's National Efficiency program. Thus the twelve original Coefficients constituted a kind of non-party Shadow Cabinet of experts, roughly paralleling the general structure of departmental functions as follows: Sidney and Beatrice Webb (Local Government and Labor); L Amery (Army); Sir Edward Grey (Foreign Policy); R Haldane (Law); Sir Clinton  Dawkins (Finance); W Hewins (Economy); Bertrand Russell (Science); Pember Reeves (Colonies); Commander Carlyon Bellairs (Navy); Halford Mackinder (Empire); Leo Maxse (Press); and HG Wells (a kind of Cultural Minister without Portfolio)."

The Coefficients were politicians, economists, and intellectuals most of whom had already gained some foothold in the corridors of power. Wells took up the Coefficients idea for his most cherished oriental fantasy: the remodelling of the Fabian Society into what he named The Order Of The Samurai. This order of eccentrics would 'embody for mankind a sense of the State'." The idea would appear in various guises in his later works but in the back of his mind was the wish to create a "constructive social stratum" which would become the new directive element of a worldwide empire, a Power Elite or Ruling Class along the lines of the philosopher- kings conceptualised by Plato.

In his book The New Machiavelli, in which the elitists appear as members of a group mysteriously named The Pentagram Circle, Wells recorded their enthusiasm: "The more complicated and technical affairs become, the less confidence will the elected official have in himself. We want to suggest that these expert officials must necessarily develop into a new class and a very powerful class in the community. We want to organise that. It may be the power of the future. They will necessarily have to have very much of a common training. We consider ourselves as amateur unpaid precursors of such a class." British Prime Minister Lloyd George said after reading Wells' book: "He is the only writer whose opinions on politics interest me in the least." Milovan Djilas was to apply Wells' term The New Class to the nomenklatura of the soviet system. But it applies equally well to the left-leaning rationalist universalists running the West today. Full story users.cyberone.com.au/myers/quigley.html (no www).