Thread by markomalley.
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.
These members, along with Gates, have given away more than £45 billion since 1996 to causes ranging from health programmes in developing countries to ghetto schools nearer to home.
They gathered at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan on May 5. 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. . .
Thread by me.
KANSAS CITY, Missouri, May 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Although the University of Notre Dame has defended its invitation of President Obama for the sake of dialogue on abortion, Obama's own remark Sunday that the opposing views were "irreconcilable" brought dialogue to a "screeching halt," said Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, MO.
"I think the message of the day was this - that the President of Notre Dame said that they had invited the President of the United States and decided to honor him for the sake of dialogue," said Bishop Finn in an interview with the diocesan newspaper the Catholic Key earlier this week.
"The President got up and said that the differences that we have on abortion - namely the Catholic Church's staunch opposition to abortion and his staunch support of abortion were 'irreconcilable,'" he continued. "And at that moment, it would seem to me that the dialogue came to a screeching halt.
"Father Jenkins' expressed desire for dialogue, whether it was well-founded or justified, at that point got thrown back in his face. The President shut the door on dialogue by saying that there was not going to be any change in his position on abortion and he understood that there was not going to be any change in the Church's position on abortion.
"I am glad that Mr. Obama was so clear."
Asked whether the Church could join with the Obama administration "in common effort," Finn replied that while the two share many goals, "We're fighting for our lives - literally. We are attempting to protect real unborn children by the thousands. We're fighting for the right to exercise a rightly-formed conscientious difference with public policy."
Bishop Finn warned against "taking a 'wait and see' approach" to advancing the pro-life and pro-family cause. "I think the rug is already being pulled out from under us," he said. "If we sit back and allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of peace and cooperation in regards to these things, then we will lose these battles and, later, wonder why."
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