Are The G8 Countries Morally And Intellectually Bankrupt?

The most recent summit of the world's seven largest economies plus Russia looks like the most disappointing in history

It's just as well they have the backdrop of pristine alps, forests and a shimmering lake to spruce things up. For the current G8 summit gathering of world leaders in the French resort town of Evian looks, at best, irrelevant. At worst, our leaders look powerless to end a worrying global economic downturn or to lift a finger to stop the bloodiest war of the new century.

With Japan and Germany both now in recession and France and Italy dangerously near, only Britain, Canada and the US will post anything over 1% growth this year. With stock markets depressed and property values stalling throughout the industrialized world, some economists believe we may now be on the brink of a new Great Depression. The media industry is already suffering from the worst advertising recession since the 1930s.

Not a single new idea as to how to reflate the global economy has come out of Evian, where journalists have had little to cover aside from a mind-numbing and largely meaningless series of initiatives over how to combat terrorism and prevent illicit arms trafficking. Meaningless because not one G8 nation will agree to stop selling arms to the third world. And while a new Bush initiative would give US forces sweeping powers to stop ships at sea thought to be carrying illicit weapons, a pitiful $800 million has been set aside to deal with huge stockpiles of Russian chemical weapons and nuclear waste over the next decade.

Meanwhile, in Congo, 4 to 5 million people have died in a nightmarish civil war lasting more than three years - the worst genocide since the madman Pol Pot ruled Cambodia. Only now is a peacekeeping plan being drawn up. Too little, too late.

The G8 countries are displaying, as usual, a lack of political or moral will to do anything other than serve the immediate aims of the richest of the rich in the global family. And they cannot even handle that task very competently. No wonder 75,000 people protested and rioted in France while the meetings got underway.