WARS OF THE 21ST CENTURY: New Threats New Fears

The left wing is alive and well and living in Paris, as evidenced by this critique from a French thinker touted as "Europe's Chomsky." Ramonet, who teaches media studies and edits Le Monde Diplomatique, analyzes recent events from Kosovo to Iraq and calls on the people to "disarm the power of finance" and reject a model of globalization in which corporations repeat the colonial processes of the old nation-states. While few would argue against gender equality and environmentalism, other proposals, like the call for a world "free from the lies told and propagated by the mass media," undermine the book's credibility with their unsubstantiated assumptions. (Apr.)