The Good Club

Okay, this story gave me a bit of the willies. I am not in the least one of those "new world order"/black helicopters paranoiacs. But I do see something sinister about a group of billionaires dedicating themselves to taking on religion while pushing "reproductive health care" in the third world. From Times Online:


Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation

America's richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a 'disastrous' environmental, social and industrial threat

SOME of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.

The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.

Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.

The informal afternoon session was so discreet that some of the billionaires’ aides were told they were at “security briefings”.

Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the summit was unprecedented. “We only learnt about it afterwards, by accident. Normally these people are happy to talk good causes, but this is different – maybe because they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal,” he said.

At a conference in Long Beach, California, last February, Gates said: “Official projections say the world’s population will peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable initiatives, such as better reproductive healthcare, we think we can cap that at 8.3 billion.”

“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said a guest. “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.”

Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” he said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

it's easy to label that meeting as sinister. However, if one of its end products is funding worldwide distribution of birth control with no strings, I'm all for it. My suspicion is the subject matter in those meetings will evolve into possibly funding procedures you and I object to on moral and criminal grounds.

Ugh. That story gave me the willies, too, Joe. The phrase "nothing as crude as a vote"
kinda stuck out.

is that they'll push free birth control and free abortion, etc., and then they'll run into "religious objections" and see it as part of their mission to dismantle religion.

-- that was my take on it, too. Very unsettling!

"let's cap it at 8.3 billion". I am all for keeping the human population in balance with the abilities of the Earth to sustain it, but, "capping it" sounds like we are getting ready for Soilent Green. Hmmm, it tastes just like chicken.

And talk about ego. I'm not saying that these people are stupid by any means, but they're not exactly the think tank I would design to address such large issues .

to them that 'Rich' is not a synonym for 'smart' or even 'well-informed'.

This is truly sinister.

You mean IQ does not increase with wealth?

Seriously though, I feel like I'm abut done with Oprah now. I used to be a big fan, then there was that whole weird thing with that guru type guy last year--I'm over it.

When she flayed the writer (Was his name Frey?) for not writing a correct memoir, even less so. When I've watched her show in the past, I always left with a feeling of 'what's the big deal? we've made her a superstar for THIS?'.

Thank goodness she's poised to help save the world now.

As I clicked on the CNN website this morning I was reminded of this thread as the leading story was about the perils of climate change. After reviewing the original article that was shared, I noticed that Ted Turner was in "The Good Club". Perhaps the timing of the leading story about climate change on CNN and the recent Billionaire Club meeting is just a coincidence, but one that I find disconcerting nonetheless.

I have more thoughts about this thread that I hope to share later if I can find the time.

Peace to you.

but the ultimate answer to this problem is people turning to God and becoming selfless. As the population grows we, as a race of beings, seem to be turing more toward secual authority for our answers.

and one I look forward to his developing. It is eyebrow-raising, to say the least, when the billionaire leaders of the internet/mass media unite to focus on one issue. You can't help but think it will affect "content" on their web pages and television programs.

...this has happened before, wealthy individuals getting together to taken on social causes. However, the contrast is imformative.

During the 20's and the 30's, following anti-trust legislation, the captains of industry gathered to discuss their obligations of Christians. They challenged one another to right social in-justices. This gave rise to improvements in health care and education. I mentioned this before, a great example is Milton Heresey and what he created in Hersey, PA (google him).

What worries me is what is the premise for the "Good Club", do any of them have a faith in anything beside their own ability?

I find the two Bill Gates quotes that John Harlow, the author of the TimesOnline article, to be in conflict with one another.. The first quote was, “ healthier families, freed from malaria and extreme poverty, would change their habits and have fewer children within half a generation.”

This makes sense to me, and seems to fit the image that is portrayed in the media of the Gates Foundation, one of a foundation that is trying to tackle the plights affecting the most vulnerable of our planet. If you look at the history of our own country with regards to prosperity and family size, I think the data would support his comment.

The second quote attributed to Gates was, “Official projections say the world’s population will peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable initiatives, such as better reproductive healthcare, we think we can cap that at 8.3 billion.”

John Harlow suggested that these two quotes are similar, but I would disagree. The phrase reproductive healthcare certainly is a general term, but it is often used by agencies promoting abortion services, as a method of family planning, which is why I, and probably some of you, find the reported fruits of this meeting so unsettling. I disagree with John Harlow that the two quotes are similar because the mission of the first quote is clearly life giving, while the mission of the second quote is seemingly life ending.

Additionally, I can find no evidence to support the argument that providing “reproductive healthcare” translates to freedom from poverty. Historically in this country, Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood have made that argument for 80 years, yet the ethno-racial socio-economic hierarchy of North America has remained the same, despite a disproportionate effort to provide “reproductive healthcare” to poor African Americans.

One other comment I have pertains to the article that was on CNN’s website within days of the article about the Billionaire Club (http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/05/29/annan.climate.change.human/index.html), about the imminent climate catastrophe that is looming. As I said in my other post in this thread, the timing of this report from Ted Turner’s news outlet caught my attention, as he was in attendance at the Billionaires Club "secret" meeting. In addition to that, the article suggests that the human cost of climate change is 300,000 people per year. It seems to me that the Gates foundations mission would be to try to reduce the number of deaths by life giving means, rather than accelerate that rate under the guise of “reproductive healthcare”.

I realize my thoughts are quite scattered, but ultimately I am left wondering what the true motives and mission of these moguls are. My guess is that the truth at the heart of the Gates foundation and this Billionaire’s Club lies somewhere in between the two directions that are portrayed in the quotes attributed to Gates. If their motives are truly benevolent, then there really should be no need for secrecy.

In my heart I have to hope that they will choose the purely benevolent course for their philanthropic ventures.

Peace to you.

that it's been almost a century of being told that all those Planned Parenthood offices in Harlem and Watts, etc., were going to raise the standard of living in such places. And there's absolutely no evidence that it's had any such effect at all.