Word: summiteering
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...priority these disparate, confused groups share, however, is bringing the annual G-8 meeting to a grinding halt. They managed to shut down all the road and rail access to the summit Wednesday, and interrupted it Thursday. Some skeptics at think-tanks and college campuses around the world have suggested that may not such a bad thing. The annual G-8 meeting is an anachronism that no longer pursues the economic agenda for which it was created, they argue; it doesn't include some of the world's most important economies (China and India are not in the club...
...Germany summit cost $134 million, much of it spent on security. Measured by the organizers' outlay or by the media coverage the event receives, it appears as if the protests themselves have become the point...
...True, the onset of the G-8 meeting prompted Bush last week to announce new initiatives on climate change, fighting AIDS in Africa, and sanctions over Darfur. And the summit symbolizes the participants' willingness to work together to solve the world's major problems, for whatever that's worth. But policy discussion at the summit is largely symbolic. Bush would certainly have rolled out the AIDS money anyway, and he and Putin will meet elsewhere to talk about missile defense...
...each year, the summit seems to get more expensive and harder to justify. The protesters find new ways to beat the security preparations; the media plays its part by focusing largely on the activities of the protesters and those ranged against them; and the resulting escalation raises the chances of someone getting hurt or killed, as happened several years ago in Genoa...
...Countries certainly waste money on worse things. If the costs keep rising and people regularly get hurt, the summit should be shut down. But if the purpose of holding the G-8 has become the carnival of complaint that accompanies it, so be it. And if Channing Jones wants to hump several miles across a field to try and convince governments to help the common people...