Talk:34th G8 summit

Correcting in-line citation

The following text is to be found in the "2005 summit" subsection of the "Accomplishments" section,

"Assistance to Africa was put at the top of the 2005 summit by British Prime Minister Tony Blair;[45] but nothing came of it because Blair was forced to return to London after terorist bomb explosions disrupted London's public transportation system.[44]"

I can not find anything in the refference 44 to validate the second statement "nothing came of it". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.242.74 (talk) 00:14, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, correct. The reference is unrevealing. The problem you've now identified is easily remedied by an better citation,

"British Prime Minister Tony Blair positioned assistance to Africa at the top of the agenda for the 2005 summit; but those well-intentioned plans were thwarted because Blair was forced to return to London after terorist bomb explosions disrupted London's public transportation system. According to those at the discussion about African issues, it was not as fruitful as the regular G8 sessions and had a "fragmented" character, mostly due to the lack of time. Each of the visitors stated his position and then the eight leaders gave their reaction, with practically no substance. A credible analysis of the summit suggested the G8 Gleneagles Summit of 2005 stands apart from the other G8 summits ....

It would have been a regular summit if not for the terrorist attacks on London, as odd as it may seem at first sight. Although the tragedy took away a considerable portion of attention that would have otherwise been directed to the world richest and most powerful countries (it still feels as though one should add "plus Russia"), the attacks provided for the relative success of the summit ... due to the necessity to demonstrate the united front against terrorism and to achieve somewhat tangible results that terrorists could not prevent an elite club meeting that was in fact an encounter of the willing to help developing countries reach economic prosperity and political stability and security. In other circumstances, the outcome could have been more modest.<:ref>Panova, Victoria. "Impressions of the 2005 Gleneagles Summit," G8 Information Centre, 2005 Gleneagles Summit Analytical Studies. July 18, 2005.</ref>

This new text and citation may be a little better. --Tenmei (talk) 00:22, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Notable statistics

Which statistics are notable enough to include here? i just tried cleaning up a bit what was here before. i've copied the following from my user talk page, since i think this is a better place for the discussion. Boud (talk) 21:43, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

• Do you have any thoughts about the difference between notable statistics and trivial ones? I can readily admit that I was uncertain about adding this kind of information, but sometimes I've noticed that small things provide a kind of mental "hook" for coming better understand a complex subject or as a memory aide. This comes up all the time in articles which attract Japanese manga links, but the sober nature of this subject means that the judgment call is a little more difficult.

• Neither the fate of future African development nor global warming are likely to be affected by the number of dishes at the first formal dinner of the summit, but this kind of trivial detail really grabbed my attention -- and indeed, it must have caught the attention of the editors of the Times of London who published the news story cited in this section. But ... well, do you see my point?

• If you have some wise words to share, I'd appreciate it. If not, don't give it a further thought. Since you took the time to help improve the section in which I'd posted this plausibly questionable data, I thought it worth the effort to ask an open-ended question ...? --Tenmei (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

It's true that small things can provide a mental hook for remembering a certain subject. But it can also be argued that the standard propaganda/public relations model in the richest democratic countries systematically gets people to focus on trivial facts and sells politicians like it sells toothpaste, and that this distracts from the real issues. This is not a conspiracy theory, it's a model checked against empirical data mainly based on market arguments.

On the other hand, if you look for wikipedia policies, you'll probably find that trivia are discouraged.

However, it seems to me that most of the facts are not so trivial. Even the stuff about their heights and ages is not necessarily trivial, though according to wikipedia policy, we should in principle cite external research by someone claiming that these are non-trivial. Why they might not be totally trivial is that socio-psychological selection factors apparently favour taller people becoming leaders, and there are also many social factors either for or against younger or older people becoming leaders. Anyone over 18 and up to the age of 120 or more is legally eligible to be elected a prime minister or president in (i guess) most of the G8 countries. But none of them are younger than 40 or older than 71. Is this discrimination? A failure of democracy? Anyway, other people will probably join in this discussion. Boud (talk) 21:43, 7 July 2008 (UTC) edited Boud (talk) 21:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I removed the ages and heights and was reverted; I can't see them as anything more than pointless trivia. The others, while they need cleanup, are at least relevant to the summit. You might find an article such as heightism more suited for statistics on the heights of leaders (along with sources that analyze them). --NE2 09:53, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you're right, of course; but can you see yourself setting this issue aside for a couple of weeks? Sometimes with trivial points like this, it makes sense to mull things over a bit. In this case, the heights and ages have perhaps more relevance than in some other setting? The one-to-one, individualized personal relationships between these leaders are difficult to quantify or analyze; and I'm just a little reluctant to discard anything too casually. Can you see my point? --Tenmei (talk) 10:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

If you don't want to "casually discard" it, we can move it over to the talk page so it can be easily moved back if necessary. --NE2 12:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• Ages: Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda (age 71) and Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi (age 71) are the oldest G8 leaders; and the youngest is Russian President Medvedev (age 42).
  • Japan's Prime Minister Fukuda's wife, Kiyoko (age 64), is the oldest among the G8 first ladies; and French President Sarkozy's new wife, Carla Bruni, who did not attend, would have been the youngest at 40.
• Height: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the tallest G8 leader at 182 centimeters, while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is the shortest at 157 cm.

point about 2005 summit seems irrelevant in article on 2008 summit

Not all demonstrations were agitating in opposition to some issue. At the 2005 Scotland summit, for the first time the tens of thousands of people protesting outside were actually supporting the summit's agenda of African aid.[2]

It seems to me this sentence is out of place in this article. If there's evidence that there are demonstrations with people supporting the "summit's agenda" in this case, then please give a reference. IMHO we should remove this. Boud (talk) 21:56, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Good point. The newly edited version might be a step towards improvement, but I'll look for an even more specific, on-point citation. Good enough? --Tenmei (talk) 23:14, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Also the last...

Honestly curious, not trying to bait any U.S. editors, but since we're including "It is also the last for U.S. president George W. Bush" in the lead, do we intend on updating that statement should any of the other attendees lose their status as Head of Government between now and the 35th summit? GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 19:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

You make a valid point, of course. The POV is that of the International Herald Tribune -- not necessarily reflecting the perspective of American editors (see in-line citation). In any case, it may be that the sentence you've questioned should be eliminated during post-summit editing? For now, perhaps this codicil will address any superficial qualms:

"It is also the last for U.S. president George W. Bush, whose term-limited office denies his return to a future G8 summit."

As it happens, Bush is today the senior G8 leader, which only means that he is the person who has been the leader of a G8 country the longest. Arguably, it could be said that the revised sentence may make a relevant or even necessary point in that context; but maybe this is not enough of a reason to retain the sentence. Others can make that judgment. --Tenmei (talk) 21:15, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

In the context GeeJo's question creates, it's perhaps relevant to take note of just one sentence in the current version of the article about the 33rd G8 summit at Heiligendamm in Germany:

"This was the first G8 summit for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and the final one for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin."

I wonder if this single sentence from the article about the 2007 summit might help us establish a broader perspective from which to evaluate this one sentence about President Bush in 2008? --Tenmei (talk) 05:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Kosovo

Are there any news if the Kosovo issue will be discussed in this summit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.161.76.219 (talk) 11:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Google is your friend. --haha169 (talk) 05:14, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

what should be the section title which was "Ancillary activities" ?

i don't think the section title "Ancillary activities" has much meaning or is useful. It means "something else happened" without giving any idea of how relevant it is to the whole set of issues of what the G8 is supposed to be about.

i've put Citizens' responses and authorities' counter-responses but of course maybe people can find a better title. The whole focus of the G8 is about 7 men and 1 woman, supposedly representing 8 democratic countries, meeting up and claiming to deal with serious world problems. Since democracy is about citizen participation in decision-making and freedom of speech, the citizens' responses and the authorities' counter-responses are surely part of the whole theme.

Maybe there are better titles than this one, but i think that "Ancillary activities" adds no useful meaning to the structure of the article. Boud (talk) 14:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Boud's suggestion may not be best, but it is certainly much better. The reasoning convinces me to modify the tentative boilerplate for the 35th G8 summit and the 36th G8 summit. --Tenmei (talk) 15:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

i didn't realise that the articles existed already! But they look OK as early drafts a long time before the events themselves occur... :) Boud (talk) 15:20, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

5-yearly -> pentannual?

From the article:

In 2008, Japan hosted both the G8 summit and the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD-IV) -— a 5-yearly gathering of African leaders and their development partners.

Could "5-yearly" better be described as "pentannual"? Google gives over 200 hits - many of those used in the same context as here. Although it could be ambiguous as to whether it is five times a year, or every fifth year. --Bobber0001 (talk) 19:08, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

For now, what about putting that precise, but still unfamiliar word in parenthesis; or would it be better to use the more specific word with an explanation in parenthesis -- as in (recurring in five-year cycles)? I've edited the relevant phrase using the second of these options. --Tenmei (talk) 23:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

"quinquennial" means every five years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.191.246.96 (talk) 00:20, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Introduction, 3rd paragraph (summarising Citizens' responses and authorities' counter-responses)

Tenmeisan, one of the sections of this article is Citizens' responses and authorities' counter-responses, so IMHO a summary of it should be present in the introduction. If you can make a more concise, but still correctly referenced and NPOV summary of the section for the introduction, then please do so. However, it seems to me that it can hardly be omitted. Whether or not it is true that the G8 has caused the world problems that it claims to wish to solve, the fact is that tens of thousands of citizens respond to each meeting and try to hold debates, and that authorities respond in different ways to the citizens' debates than to the leaders' debates. It's also a fact that the G8 states all are, in principle, democracies with freedom of speech and human rights protection, so the two facts (1) that citizens meet and propose policies and actions for resolving major world problems and (2) that authoritarian means are allegedly used to exclude them from the debate are both notable, it seems to me. This is not a meeting of Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot and Pinochet and Suharto, none of whom claimed to be leaders of democracies AFAIK. If they were still alive and leading their countries and they met together, then we could expect that citizens would be afraid to organise parallel debates and demonstrations and that authoritarian means would be used to repress dissent. In that case, we probably could not say much about what the citizens' groups' proposals for solving problems are because they would be arrested and/or killed before they have a chance to communicate it, and it could also be argued that their repression is "normal" in those countries (at those places/epochs) and would not be as notable as it is in the case of a G8 meeting in the early XXI century, a time when a much higher standard of respect for freedom of speech and human rights is widely considered to be "normal". Boud (talk) 15:33, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

i think we should remove "arguably valid". To me that means "i, boud, or i, tenmei judge that these reasons could at least be credible". In principle that's not relevant to wikipedia... :) Either we could cite a reference or respected personality claiming that they are valid, or the easiest IMHO is just to remove "arguably valid". Readers have to judge the validity of all claimed facts and reasons in wikipedia for themselves, based on their intuition and/or following references and/or independent experimental verification. And readers already should have their own judgments of whose point of view is more likely to be valid: leaders' or NGOs' or maybe both, etc. Boud (talk) 15:51, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Boud -- As a result of your comments above (and your persuasive approach in other exchanges on this talk page), I can begin to see that I misconstrued and mis-valued the reasons for including this aspect of the subject in the introductory paragraphs. In that context, my continuing objections are intended to be flexible and modest. The broader issues affect how we may need to re-edit the introductions of many of the earlier articles about G8 summits -- especially the 2001 Genoa summit (27th G8 summit), which probably takes on new relevance in light of the fact that Berlusconi will again be the host leader at the 2009 summit.

Please note that I have added the first and last sentences of the intital draft of this paragraph to the template text for 35th G8 summit (2009) and 36th G8 summit (2010). Appropriate and complete in-line citations in this paragraph have been exported to these new sites as well. --Tenmei (talk) 16:27, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

The words "arguably valid" have been replaced by "compelling." Is this NPOV? No, not really; but my guess is that this seems to be one of those rare instances in which words can skate freely along a very fine knife edge. As you know, I reverted the first appearance of this text in the introductory section; but when you restored it, I was forced to assess whether yours could be an arguably valid position, but I've only reached tentative conclusions at this point.

Someone removed "compelling", and i agree with the removal. i don't think whether or not i personally support the position of the protestors is relevant for this wikipedia article, and it's not up to us to decide how valid it is. This article is not about world problems, it's about 8 of the most powerful people in the world meeting up along with thousands of citizens meeting in parallel, and all of them claim to be dedicated to solving some of the world's biggest problems. The problems themselves and claimed causes and solutions are in other, existing articles. In fact, one way to raise the quality of this article would be to look for the appropriate wikipedia articles and link them in appropriately. Assume that people working on those articles have NPOVed them, and summarise the results here if that's needed, or else just link. Boud (talk) 00:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

One of you edit summaries questioned the introduction of a comparative -- "more than":

"...the G8 summit represents more than "an arbitrary meeting" of governments ..."

In this case, what I may have thought the writer intended is not so important. If the intended meaning is at odds with my edit, then I've effectively pointed out that the words need to be re-written to minimize the likelihood that anyone else will similarly misunderstand. That being said, I would have thought the writer was trying to point out that a G8 summit is more than the sum of its parts, which elevates both the venue and the event into focal points for activist pressure. In part, that's what I thought this paragraph was trying to explain -- that any G8 summit is more than merely "an arbitrary meeting." Perhaps I've awkwardly put the cart before the horse; but there you have it. --Tenmei (talk) 17:23, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Regarding "more than an arbitrary meeting", (which should be better written "more than just an arbitrary meeting"), i do see your point. However, i think the meaning is that what is criticised is the arbitrariness as opposed to something which has some social/political/legal legitimacy. One way to put it could be that the G8 seem to claim that they are the Global Government but there is no Global Constitution which says that they constitute the Gobal Government. In contrast, the new United Nations Human Rights Commission was created according to some procedures which were a compromise from many years of negotiating and debating among national governments from all over the world and between them and citizens' groups. Whether or not these procedures are good enough, the procedures are presumably not just "i'm the strongest, so i decide". Anyway, i think that adding "more than just" to "an arbitrary" is changing the meaning that the authors intended. Boud (talk) 00:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

authorities' counter-responses

i don't see how we can NPOV-edly remove the following phrase and claimed human rights violations against some of them during massive police/military operations. Over 40 dissidents were arrested before the summit started and nineteen or twenty Koreans critical of the G8 leadership were detained at New Chitose Airport for at least 24 hours. During a "non-violent demonstration where no acts against property or people took place" according to a legal observer, at least four people were arrested, including a Reuters cameraman. (references will fail on this talk page) from the 3rd paragraph of the introduction. There may be a way of making it shorter, or maybe of adding more material in paragraphs 1, 2 and 4 which summarise the notable content of the article so that the introduction is not dominated just by the protests and the authorities' reactions to them. But i don't understand how we can just remove it. Boud (talk) 01:17, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

See the next section. Making a summary of anything is difficult. But i think that adding a paragraph on what the leaders claimed they got done puts the citizens' demos/debates and authorities' counter-responses in more balance in the introduction. Boud (talk) 02:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

New 3rd paragraph in the introduction about the results of the meeting - needs work

i've done a rough version of summarising the "results" of the meeting, based on the existing subdivisions of the article itself lower down. Trying to make this summary made it obvious that there's a lot missing from the main parts lower down - probably g8 leaders and citizens' groups disagree on nearly all the issues following the g8 official communique, apart from those like the ACTA on which the g8 apparently kept the results of their discussions secret... Anyway, i'm saying "probably" and "apparently" here because i haven't looked for/added references about my guesses. IMHO this paragraph should be easier to improve than the citizens and authorities paragraph. Boud (talk) 02:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Boud -- Your approach elevates the quality of this article and its corollaries. In marked contrast, the concepts which informed my edits and comments were rather more simplistic. In this, you lead and I follow. Your thoughtful strategy would seem to move towards a more comprehensive, better balanced 34th G8 summit ... which inevitably raises the bar for 35th G8 summit and 36th G8 summit. I'm persuaded that this may be worth investing more time and care than I'd earlier planned.

In the near term, I guess my plan is to continue to distribute the tentative format of the Hokkaido summit article across the 30+ array of summit texts. As I follow the further evolution of your work on the introductory paragraphs and elsewhere in the text, I suppose I'll find other ways to partner with you in what could possibly develop into a long-term project. In any event, now is a good time to tell you frankly that I think your contributions do "arguably" enhance the usefulness, value and depth of Wikipedia's G8 summit coverage. --Tenmei (talk) 13:48, 11 July 2008 (UTC)