Nitpicking with "The Economist"

Sir,

I noticed that the letter that you kindly published under my name 
("Present at the creation", Jul 27th 2002 ) differs significantly 
from the one that I sent you, which is reproduced below. Beside 
mercifully improving my wobbly English, you eliminated two sentences
 (delimited by * below) which I do not regard as superfluos or irrelevant. 
I understand that "bona fide" editing of readers' letters is legitimate, 
 but in order to set things straight I have posted  my original 
message  together with these remarks at my website 
(http://www.weirdtech.com/corr/eco.txt). 

Sincerely,

Italo Vecchi


Sir,

In his survey ( "Present at the creation", June 29th) Bill Emmott fails
to address the most glaring flaw in the "new world order" spearheaded by
the United States, i.e. its lack of democratic legitimacy. Where a globalised
economy induces global social dynamics, it calls for global political
leadership. The United States are indeed providing such leadership, but
on the basis of a democratic consensus that represents about 5% of the world's
population.
The US refusal to endorse solutions to global problems that may limit its
power, from the Kyoto Protocol to a World Court of Justice, is indeed an
obvious instance of American unwillingness to subordinate its national interests
to a common consensus. *[Actually the intrinsecally anti-global and obsolete
nation state has become either a fortress of the rich or a jail for the
poor. Nation states in the "developing" world are currenltly little more
than bantustans, the vote of, say, a Nigerian carrying less weight on global
matters than the yawn of a New Yorker.]* An "internally" democratic oligarchy
exerting power on a far larger community is nothing new in history, but
whether apartheid's South Africa provides a viable model for the world's
political future remains to be seen.

Italo Vecchi
Vicolo del Leoncorno 5
Ferrara
Italy