The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream < By Jeremy Rifkin>435 pages. $25.95. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004.

A formal review of this important volume by a Cyrano editor is in the works. Meantime, we are pleased to present some selections from the book. CLICK HERE TO READ SELECT MATERIALS

Gangster Capitalism – The United States and the Global rise of Organized Crime

By William Bowles Perhaps the worst aspect of it all is the hypocrisy involved and don’t get me wrong here, we’ve all been taken in by it, from buying into it starting from the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ onwards even as a minority of us benefit from the ‘progress’ it has bought us at a cost that is incalculable not only to humanity but ultimately to the planet itself. [READ MORE ]

Guardians of Power

The Myth of the Liberal Media by David Edwards and David Cromwell (240 pp, 2005)

Can a corporate media system be expected to tell the truth about a world dominated by corporations? Can newspapers, including the 'liberal' "Guardian" and the "Independent," tell the truth about catastrophic climate change - about its roots in mass consumerism and corporate obstructionism - when they are themselves profit-oriented businesses dependent on advertisers for 75 per cent of their revenues? Can the BBC tell the truth about UK government crimes in Iraq when its senior managers are appointed by the government? Has anything fundamentally changed since BBC founder Lord Reith wrote of the establishment: "They know they can trust us not to be really impartial"? Why did the British and American mass media fail to challenge even the most obvious government lies on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the invasion in March 2003? Why did the media ignore the claims of UN weapons inspectors that Iraq had been 90-95 per cent "fundamentally disarmed" as early as 1998? This book answers these questions, and more.

John Pilger says...
“The creators and editors of Medialens, David Edwards and David Cromwell, have had such influence in a short time that, by holding to account those who, it is said, write history’s draft, they may well have changed the course of modern historiography. They have certainly torn up the ‘ethical blank cheque’, which Richard Drayton referred to [in the Guardian], and have exposed as morally corrupt ‘the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial...’. Without Medialens during the attack on and occupation of Iraq, the full gravity of that debacle might have been consigned to oblivion, and to bad history<...>“They have not bothered with soft targets, such as Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, but have concentrated on that sector of the media which prides itself on its ‘objectivity’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’ (such as the BBC) and its liberalism and fairness (such as the Guardian). Not since Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent have we had such an incisive and erudite guide through the media’s thicket of agendas and vested interests. Indeed, they have done the job of true journalists: they have set the record straight." [BUY THIS BOOK]

For an interview with the authors about their reasons for writing this book, please visit http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2005/12/guardians-of-power.htm

ENTROPY, By Jeremy Rifkin (Bantam Books, 1981)

Reviewed by Merritt Clifton. This volume apparently failed to impress our reviewer. "In Rifkin's cosmology, the angry Lord is thermodynamic principle. The first law of thermodynamics holds that all energy is finite, ever changing form. The second law holds that energy always moves toward equilibrium. As Rifkin points out, water flows toward a common level, at which point it can no longer fall through a turbine. On the universal scale, there presumably are no tides to keep the level seas in potentially useful motion, nor any evaporation to keep hot air rising and shit gushing downward in perpetuity..." [READ MORE]