Clandestine meetings, involving some of the richest people in the world, to discuss how the world is over-populated sounds like a good plot line for a new book or film, doesn't it? Some of the most powerful people in the world don't sit around a table discussing how to change the future of the planet. That's just a conspiracy theory.
Except it isn't.
Participants to the secret meeting, funded and attended by Bill Gates, included:
- George Soros
- Warren Buffett
- David Rockefeller
- Ted Turner (Founded CNN)
- Eli Broad
- Edythe Broad
- Michael Bloomberg
- Oprah Winfrey
- Peter Peterson
- Julian Robertson Jr
- John Morgridge (CEO of Cisco)
- Tashia Morgridge
- Patty Stonesifer
Odd, I'd want to be home if the richest people in the world were coming over for tea.
Sir Nurse is a British Nobel prize biochemist and, at the time, was president of the Rockefeller University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his joint discovery of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle. A year later, Nurse became President of the Royal Society in the UK.
He is currently the Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. The Institute works closely with a number of organisations, including the Wellcome Trust and Imperial College London. (Coincidentally, the meeting occurred just as the Swine Flu crisis was kicking off and Mr. Gates was being advised by Neil Ferguson from Imperial College. Yes, that Neil Ferguson. Neil estimated that 65,000 people in the UK would die from Swine flu but in the end it only claimed 457 lives.)
Crick also thought that it is likely that "more than half the difference between the average IQ of American whites and Negroes is due to genetic reasons, and will not be eliminated by any foreseeable change in the environment." He also said "evidence for the equality of different races did not really exist. In fact, what little evidence there was suggested racial difference."
In another letter in 1970, Crick suggested that in an attempt to solve the problem of people who are poorly endowed genetically, "sterilization is the only answer and I would do this by bribery."
Anyway, I got distracted by eugenics, back to the meeting.
It was considered so secret that the billionaires' aides were told they were at "security briefings". Apparently, they didn't want to be seen as a global cabal, so discretion was of upmost importance.
Each participant was given 15 minutes to talk and then they discussed an "umbrella cause" that could harness all their interests. A number of issues were discussed but "taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation was a priority".
- Another guest said there was "nothing as crude as a vote" but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat. "This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers," said the guest. "They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming."
With such incredible wealth and with such amazing advancement in technology, the 'Good Club' should be feared. They can pretty much do anything they want and a great example of this is Bill Gates planning to block out the sun by spraying dust into the atmosphere.
For all we know they could all be a bunch of psychopaths or sociopaths (to get to the positions they have means it is quite likely). What if they are and believe the world is over-populated? It is a worrying thought. Surely, if all they were doing was planning on how to save the world, they would be transparent and encourage everyone to help them on their mission.
Perhaps they are part of a group of disparate thinkers that want humans to disappear all together? A recent "The Atlantic" article highlights this issue being discussed by an increasing number of people :
From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity's reign on Earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. The revolt against humanity is still new enough to appear outlandish, but it has already spread beyond the fringes of the intellectual world, and in the coming years and decades it has the potential to transform politics and society in profound ways. |
In the 21st century, Anthropocene anti-humanism offers a much more radical response to a much deeper ecological crisis. It says that our self-destruction is now inevitable, and that we should welcome it as a sentence we have justly passed on ourselves. Some anti-humanist thinkers look forward to the extinction of our species, while others predict that even if some people survive the coming environmental apocalypse, civilization as a whole is doomed. Like all truly radical movements, Anthropocene anti-humanism begins not with a political program but with a philosophical idea. It is a rejection of humanity's traditional role as Earth's protagonist, the most important being in creation. |
Transhumanism, by contrast, glorifies some of the very things that anti-humanism decries—scientific and technological progress, the supremacy of reason. But it believes that the only way forward for humanity is to create new forms of intelligent life that will no longer be Homo sapiens. Some transhumanists believe that genetic engineering and nanotechnology will allow us to alter our brains and bodies so profoundly that we will escape human limitations such as mortality and confinement to a physical body. Others await, with hope or trepidation, the invention of artificial intelligence infinitely superior to our own. These beings will demote humanity to the rank we assign to animals—unless they decide that their goals are better served by wiping us out completely. |
- The revolt against humanity has a great future ahead of it because it appeals to people who are at once committed to science and reason yet yearn for the clarity and purpose of an absolute moral imperative. It says that we can move the planet, maybe even the universe, in the direction of the good, on one condition—that we forfeit our own existence as a species. Both [anti-humanists and transhumanists] call for drastic forms of human self-limitation—whether that means the destruction of civilization, the renunciation of child-bearing, or the replacement of human beings by machines. These sacrifices are ways of expressing high ethical ambitions that find no scope in our ordinary, hedonistic lives: compassion for suffering nature, hope for cosmic dominion, love of knowledge. This essential similarity between anti-humanists and transhumanists means that they may often find themselves on the same side in the political and social struggles to come.
The simple question remains - if this group is an altruistic one, with ethical and virtuous ideals, why the secrecy? Even if it was a mistake at the time, why not come out once the meeting had been discovered and say 'hands up, we met in private for these reasons, probably not the best way to go about it but we are concerned about X and have proposed to do X to solve the problem. I hope you are all onboard and will come up with other ideas to help. This is a global problem so we need everyone on the planet to come up with solutions'.