The Group of Eight (G8) is an international forum for the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan , Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Together, these countries represent about 65% of the world economy. [1] The group's activities include year-round conferences and policy research, culminating with an annual summit meeting attended by the heads of government of the member states. The European Commission is also represented at the meetings.
Each year, member states of the G8 take turns assuming the presidency of the group. The holder of the presidency sets the group's annual agenda and hosts the summit for that year. The presidency for 2007 belongs to Germany, which will host the 33rd G8 summit in Heiligendamm from June 6 to June 8.
~~~~~
As the annual summits are extremely high profile, they are subject to extensive lobbying by advocacy groups, street demonstrations by activists and, on rare occasion, terrorist attacks.
The most well-known criticisms center on the assertion that members of G8 are responsible for global issues such as poverty in Africa and developing countries due to debt crisis and unfair trading policy, global warming due to carbon dioxide emission, the AIDS problem due to strict medicine patent policy and other problems that are related to globalization. G8 leaders are therefore pressured to take responsibility to combat problems they are accused of creating. For example, Live 8, a series of concerts in July 2005 to coincide with the 31st G8 summit , was intended to promote global awareness and to encourage G8 leaders to "Make Poverty History." Live 8 organizers have also proposed that G8 member nations adjust their national budgets to allow for 0.7% to go towards foreign aid as outlined in Agenda 21 of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.
Another criticism revolves around the membership of the G8. With the exclusion of the People's Republic of China, the G8 no longer represents the concentration of economic power it did when it was created.[6] Also, recent nominal GDP figures published by the World Bank suggest that Spain has replaced Russia as the eighth largest economy in the world. [7] The lack of representation from the 'global south' leads many critics to label the G8 as an institution to continue western economic domination. [citation needed]
Of the anti-globalization movement protests, the largest and most radical was that of the 27th G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Summits since have been hosted outside of major cities. The opening day of the 2005 summit meeting in Scotland was accompanied by a series of synchronized terrorist bombings in London, killing dozens and derailing the summit agenda. A previously unknown Islamist group claimed responsibility for the bombings.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Anti-globalization is a term most commonly ascribed to the political stance of people and groups who oppose certain aspects of globalization in its current form.
"Anti-globalization" is considered by many to be a social movement, while others consider it to be an umbrella term that encompasses a number of separate social movements. In either case, participants are united in opposition to the political power of large corporations, as exercised in trade agreements and elsewhere, which they say undermines democracy, the environment, labor rights, national sovereignty, the third world , and other concerns.
Most people who are labelled "anti-globalization" reject the term, preferring instead to describe themselves as the Global Justice Movement, the Movement of Movements (a popular term in Italy), the "alter-globalization" movement (popular in France), and a number of other terms.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Alter-globalization (or Alter-mondialization from the French altermondialisme) is the name of a social movement which supports the international integration of globalization but advocates that values of democracy, economic justice, environmental protection, and human rights be put ahead of purely economic concerns.
The term was coined against accusations of
nationalism by
neoliberal proponents of so-called globalization, meaning a support of both
humanism and
universal values but a rejection of the
Washington consensus and similar neoliberal policies. It is henceforth similar to the
Global Justice Movement expression.
![[iphone]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AK475_pjMOSS_20070626175439.jpg)
The U.S. military is the most technologically-sophisticated fighting force on the planet. And it is being lead by a man less computer-savvy than my 93 year-old grandmother.
Applications for the Table
(Score:3, Interesting)