The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a 1907 novel by Joseph Conrad, relating a bleak and darkly comic story of spies, terrorists, anarchists and agents provocateurs plotting and counter-plotting in the back streets of London in the early 20th century. It...

Espionage or spying is a practice of gathering intelligence about an organization or a society that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. It is also the use of spies in a war. Unlike other forms of...

Emergence: Labeled Autistic summary and related information.

In philosophy, systems theory and the sciences, emergence refers to the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theory of complex...

Controversies about Opus Dei

AssassiNation is the sixth album by Krisiun, released in 2006 on Century Media. It is dedicated in memory of Doc and Dimebag...

The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin or Assassins) were an offshoot of the Ismā'īlī sect of shiite Muslims. After a quarrel about the succession of leadership in the ruling Fatimide dynasty in Cairo around the year 1090, the losing...

Zealot summary and related information.

Conspiracy (political)

Thug may refer to: Thug, (ठग), a member of the defunct Indian cult Thuggee Thug, slang for a gangster or a petty thief Thug, a gardening term meaning an over-vigorous plant that spreads excessively Thug, a wooden bat used in the naturists' game...

A cabal is a number of people united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in a church, state, or other community, often by intrigue. Cabals are sometimes secret organizations 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. Its usage 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. Among the exceptions is Discordianism, in which the term is used to refer to an identifiable group within the Discordian tradition.

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. It was introduced into English in the publication of Cabala, a curious medley of letters and papers of the reigns of James and Charles I that appeared in 1654.^[1]

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 signers of the public Treaty of Dover that allied England to France in a prospective war against the Dutch.^[2] It must be said, however, that the so-called Cabal Ministry 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 very unified in its members' aims and sympathies, fell apart by 1672; Lord Ashley, who became Earl of Shaftesbury, later became one of Charles II's fiercest opponents. The explanation 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 out of power.

In 1777 in America a supposed conspiracy, known as the "Conway Cabal," took place. A series of criticisms of General George Washington's leadership abilities as commander-in-chief during the American Revolution has been regarded as a cabal, but little evidence exists for it being an actual conspiracy.

During the rise of Usenet, the term gained great notice as a semi-ironic description of the efforts of people to maintain some order over the chaotic, anarchic Usenet community; see backbone cabal. As in this specific case, references to an alleged cabal often fall within the realm of conspiracy theory.

One recent example of the use of the word Cabal came in an accusation by former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, who claimed that the Bush administration's foreign policy is run by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" implying a sinister intent.^[3] Currently on the Comedy Central program The Daily Show, the phrase "a global cabal of Jews" is referenced from time to time, as a spoof on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The existence or otherwise of cabals has led to the Internet phenomenon originating on Usenet, "TINC" (standing for There Is No Cabal). In the Computer Game Blood the dark cult of Tchernabog is called the Cabal , and is the protagonist Caleb's main enemy. Many Masonic conspiracy theories have pictured Freemasonry as an international secret cabal; the propaganda of this vision was satirised in the Sacred Order of the Stonecutters episode of The Simpsons:

World on Fire/Market-dominant minorities