America’s administrators have seriously slipped up. Today us foreign policy stands exposed in all its Neanderthal crudity. This comes as no surprise to those observing the superpower in the arena of global environmental negotiations although the mainstream media has done a remarkably good job of keeping it from the rest of the world. Such extreme self-centredness was on lavish display at the United Nations Conference of Environment and Development (unced) in 1992. This behaviour has become typical over the next ten years: systematically the us has undermined any attempt to define global environmental problems in the context of rights, equity and social justice (see box: Between the two Bushes and Diagnosis of a unilateralist).

Instead of global democracy the laws of the White House mafioso rule the world. In the on-going war the us administration