Cabal

A cabal is a group of people united
in some close design together,
usually to promote their private views
and/or interests in a church, state, or
other community, often by intrigue .
Cabals are sometimes secret societies
composed of a few designing
persons, and at other times are
manifestations of emergent behavior
in society or governance on the part
of a community of persons who have
well established public affiliation or
kinship. The term can also be used to
refer to the designs of such persons
or to the practical consequences of
their emergent behavior, and also
holds a general meaning of intrigue
and conspiracy . The use of this term
usually carries strong connotations of
shadowy corners, back rooms and
insidious influence; a cabal is more
evil and selective than, say, a faction ,
which is simply selfish; because of
this negative connotation, few
organizations use the term to refer to
themselves or their internal
subdivisions. Amongst the exceptions
is Discordianism , in which the term is
used to refer to an identifiable group
within the Discordian religion.

The term cabal derives from
Kabbalah (a word that has numerous
spelling variations), the mystical
interpretation of the Hebrew
scripture, and originally meant either
an occult doctrine or a secret.

Association with Charles II

The term took on its present meaning
from a group of ministers of King
Charles II of England (Sir Thomas
Clifford, Lord Arlington, the Duke of
Buckingham , Lord Ashley , and Lord
Lauderdale), whose initial letters
coincidentally spelled CABAL, and
who were the signatories of the
public Treaty of Dover that allied
England to France in a prospective
war against the Netherlands . [1]
However, the Cabal Ministry they
formed can hardly be seen as such;
the Scot Lauderdale was not much
involved in English governance at all,
while the Catholic ministers of the
Cabal (Clifford and Arlington) were
never much in sympathy with the
Protestants (Buckingham and Ashley).
Nor did Buckingham and Ashley get
on very well with each other. Thus
the ” Cabal Ministry ” never really
unified in its members’ aims and
sympathies, and fell apart by 1672;
Lord Ashley, who became Earl of
Shaftesbury, later became one of
Charles II’s fiercest opponents. The
theory that the word originated as an
acronym from the names of the
group of ministers is a folk
etymology, although the coincidence
was noted at the time and could
possibly have popularized its use. The
group, who came to prominence
after the fall of Charles’s first prime
minister, Lord Clarendon , in 1667,
was rather called the Cabal because
of its secretiveness and lack of
responsibility to the “Country party”
then run out of power.

SOURCE wikipedia

#CONSENSUS 2015