DINNER is the highlight of a G8 summit. Attempts at tackling world poverty may come to nothing, but the host country will at least lay on a world-class supper for the world leaders and about 5,000 hangers-on.
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What started off as an economic idea-sharing session in 1975 has become an annual festival of hypocrisy, with the leaders incarcerating themselves in a luxury resort chosen for its safe distance from protesters.
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Having dealt with hunger and disease last year, the G8 leaders now want to introduce democracy to the Middle East. Laughably, this will be done by means of a communiqué to be spat out of their luxury hotel at some point. The outrage in the Arab world has been as ferocious as it was predictable. The leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Tunisia and Morocco have rejected guest invitations to Sea Island, many furious about being "preached to."
Here is the problem. The G8 has gone beyond being useless. It is now rubbing the faces of the poor in the wealth of their rivals and exacerbating the very international tensions which it sets out to relieve.
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