Here is the second part of my review of Manfred Steger’s The Rise of the Global Imaginary (part 1 here). In the last part of the book, Steger focuses on the sometimes conflicting ideologies derived from the global imaginaries.

Starting from the collapse of the USSR, Steger argues (correctly, I think) that the first winning ideology in the decontestation game was market globalism, the ideology that managed to decontest "globalization" in the limited sense of deregulated markets on a global scale.

To explore the tenets of market globalism, Steger reviews the writings of one of its main proponents and popularizers: Thomas Friedman. Needless to say, this is painful to read as is anything related to Thomas Friedman (hence no links), however he is indeed a central figure in the promotion of market globalism. He is also a good representative of the way this ideology was promoted by the political, economic and corporate elites in the 1990s (or the transnational capitalist class as Leslie Sklair calls this group, Friedman belongs to the ideological sub-group of the TCC).  Read more 

Coss-posted from The Global Sociology Blog, a proud PB2.0 Blog!

I have already blogged a bit about Manfred Steger’s concept of social imaginary but that was before the actual publication of his book on the subject. Now that I have had the time to read the book, let me offer the following review.

Let me say right off the bat that I am a big fan of Manfred Steger’s writings on globalization. His Globalization: A Very Short Introduction is still the best introduction to globalization on the market and the one I use for my undergraduate classes. His other book, Globalism: Market Ideology Meets Terrorism is a great exploration of the ideological and cultural implications of globalization.

In his latest book, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from The French Revolution to the Global War on Terror, Steger offers another analysis of the ideological dimensions of globalization, but more in-depth than in his previous books.  Read more 

Tomorrow (Saturday) from 8:00-10:00PM EDT online, and on Fox News and CNN.

Just from the anticipation, my bucket runneth over.

Leonce Gaiter:

Democrats have been accused of antipathy toward religion, but that is not the case.

I’m glad this Obama supporter is successfully debunking myths like this one:

Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical. Our fear of getting “preachy” may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems….  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Via McClatchy,

"A Senate committee on Thursday heard appeals for the creation of a federal task force to combat polygamist sects that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described as sophisticated organized crime rings.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office has received nationwide attention for its investigation of a sect in Texas, was among those backing legislation sponsored by Reid, D-Nev. The bill would establish a task force in the U.S. Department of Justice and assist victims of polygamist groups.  Read more 

Just when it seemed like a Schleicher County grand jury might be making the kind of unspectacular progress grand juries are supposed to make in the FLDS raid on the Yearning For Zion ranch where Warren Jeffs bragged, with pictures, about his religious right to enjoy “spiritual marriages” to underage girls, somewhere between the cops being called and the day the headlines and perp walks start, a woman with serious chops in the study of religious cults pointed out exactly how the Texas Supreme Court has opened the door to all manner of religions who want to abuse children as part of their faith. Not only did the TSC order more than 420 children returned to the FLDS compound, it has now overturned damages awarded a 17-year-old girl who was injured during an “exorcism”.

PHILADELPHIA - By sending the children in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints back home, Texas has opened up the doors to groups who want religious protection for abusing children, a leading church/state scholar said Saturday.

Marci Hamilton, a professor at Princeton and Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School, told a conference of the International Cultic Studies Association that the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to release the FLDS children from foster care paired with a ruling Friday that tossed out an award for injuries a teenager suffered during an exorcism made a dangerous statement.
“When you add yesterday’s decision to FLDS, the state of the Texas has just sent out an engraved invitation to any group who wants to abuse children,” Hamilton said. The two decisions make “Texas a very dangerous place for children.”
The other decision Hamilton pointed to came down Friday, when the Texas high court overturned a lower-court ruling awarding damages to a 17-year-old girl who was held down and injured during an exorcism.

Hamilton’s remarks came at a Philadelphia conference where social workers and scholars, sociologists and psychiatrists had gathered to study cults and similar groups, including but not limited to the FLDS.  Read more 

I finally took a few minutes to read Obama’s Greatest Religion Speech Evah, and it’s at least as atrocious as one might expect. The really amazing stuff comes toward the end (no fair peeking!).

Annotated for your (and the First Amendment’s) protection.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
As prepared for delivery
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
Zanesville, Ohio

You know, faith based groups like East Side Community Ministry carry a particular meaning for me.  Read more 

Dan Fischer’s dedicating time, money, and love to the “Lost Boys” kicked out of the FLDS for such sins as kissing girls.

Here is a man who walks as did Christ: “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” — Luke 6:31. For that, his church has made him an outlaw. Shunned by his family and reviled by his sibling, the man has turned the fortunes earned through his own inventiveness to rescuing those cast out in the service of pedophilic “spiritual sealing” that binds many women — often underage women — to powerful men in the FLDS.

May he live long and prosper.
May his work continue.  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Via the Independent:

"They call it the prairie look: big hair, long dresses, and any colour you like, so long as it’s pastel. Now the women of a Texas polygamist sect are cashing in on their recent infamy by launching a children’s fashion label. The austere clothes, first showcased when inhabitants of the Yearning for Zion ranch flounced up Eldorado’s courtroom steps in an attempt to regain custody of 463 of their children, yesterday became available to the public through the organisation’s online shop.  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Ok, Correntians, this is one of these long and substantial posts of mine where one of you shows up in the comments and summarizes the whole thing in 2 lines… making me look like a blabbering fool!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts on reports - most of the time by IRIN - on the deplorable conditions under which women and girls live in many parts of the world. However, the articles have been piling up in my Newsreader, so, it’s time for one. So here we go:  Read more 

Barack Obama has crossed Focus on the Family’s radar. Perhaps it’s their increasing irrelevance, but the Religious Reich is after the Dem presumptive nominee. Dobson says Obama’s trying to misdirect believers away from “traditional” interpretations of the Bible. How does that saw about one kitchen implement calling the other go again?

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Two good pieces on Al Qaeda landed in my Newsreader this week and they both point in the same direction, albeit in different terms. The first one is from Tony Karon who questions the current relevance of Al Qaeda as the big post-9/11 bogeyman. For Karon, Al Qaeda is irrelevant and always was. In this respect, Al Qaeda is comparable to Trotsky… Huh? How does the comparison apply?

"Al-Qaeda is irrelevant, and yet U.S. hegemony in the Middle East is facing an unprecedented challenge from Islamist-nationalist groups. To understand the link between al-Qaeda’s weakness and the greatly expanded strength of groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhood and, of course, Iran, over the past seven years, it’s worth turning to the 20th century precedent: Leon Trotsky and his followers vs. the larger, nationally-focused parties of the left in the mid 20th century.

Trotsky rejected pragmatism and compromise by nationally-based leftist movements and insisted, instead, that they subordinate their specific national interests and objectives to the fantasy of “world revolution.” And as a result, long before his murder by Stalin, he found himself holed up in Mexico City, manically firing off communiques denouncing all compromise, and being largely ignored by the more substantial parties of the left world-wide. He had become an irrelevant chatterbox, caught up in a frenzy of his own rhetoric while world events simply passed him by. The same can be said of Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri — it is not al-Qaeda, but the likes of Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhood that represent the future of the nationalist-Islamist challenge to Western power in the Middle East."

What makes Al Qaeda seemingly powerful are two factors: the one mentioned by Karon, that is, the fact that the United States treats Al Qaeda as this omnipresent threat of global proportion and reacts to every action as if it were the beginnings of a terrorist apocalypse. The second one, which I think is relevant here and contributes to the first, is that fact that Al Qaeda, being a non-state group, articulates itself opportunistically to nation-based movements (Algeria, Philippines, Indonesia, or Iraq).  Read more 

I’ve been saying for 30 years that Ronald Reagan shoved the country over the edge of a slippery slope to destruction.
In 1985 the FBI looked into the FLDS, and among the “harmless” leaders of the sect they let go was Rulon Jeffs, father of jailed “prophet” Warren Jeffs.
Among the things let fester as a result:

But after stepping in at the request of Brent D. Ward, then the U.S. Attorney for Utah, the U.S. Department of Justice closed the case without filing charges.
A lawyer who represented evicted FLDS members in a related lawsuit considers the federal investigation a missed opportunity to curb the power of the sect’s leaders.
“Some of the systematic policies that adversely affected young men and young women might have been diminished or possibly stopped,” said St. George attorney Clay Huntsman. “Now it’s gotten out of hand.”
In the years since then, ex-members have alleged that boys and young men are banished for minor offenses and that Warren Jeffs has overseen a purge of fathers whose wives and children are reassigned.

Current Fibbie honcho Robert Mueller, asked about a four-state task force independently gathered recently in Las Vegas to coordinate efforts to detect, prosecute and punish crimes among the members of the international cult, said his agency would assist local law enforcement, but had “other priorities.” Kinda like Cheney, with his five deferments….

Meanwhile Salt Lake City TV reports FLDS enforcers are rumored to be stalking San Angelo’s State District Judge Barbara Walther. Texas authorities received detailed warnings about FLDS “enforcers” headed for retribution from Utah and Arizona.

Judge Walther, pictured above in an AP photo by Eric Gay, ordered the removal of more than 440 children, including some young mothers apparently under 17, from the cult’s Yearning For Zion Ranch outside Eldorado in Schleicher County on April 24. The removals came while investigators sought to find and assist the caller who phoned a San Angelo family crisis hotline claiming she and her child were undergoing mistreatment at the hands of her much-older “husband” and other “spiritual wives” in his household on the ranch.

A Texas appeals court and the Texas State Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the children should be returned to the ranch. Walther and attorneys worked out orders in one exceptional instance — the case of Jeffs’ sexually-abused 16-year-old daughter, who won’t be going back to YFZ.

Gov. Rick Perry, who indicated last month that he was proud of the actions taken by CPS, warned through a spokeswoman that Friday’s decision by the Texas Supreme Court ordering the sect children’s release could place youngsters in danger.

“The governor is concerned that the legal process by which the children were removed from their home is overshadowing the sexual abuse allegations at hand,” said Perry’s deputy press secretary, Allison Castle.

“He is very troubled that the children, especially those most at risk for abuse in this case – young girls – are being sent back to the very compound that is riddled with uncertainty, potential for harm and remains at the center of a very serious criminal investigation,” Ms. Castle said.

The sect has denied there is any greater prevalence of child abuse in its ranks than in mainstream society. It says Texas swept its more than 450 children into custody two months ago in an act of religious persecution.

Texas attorney general Greg Abbott has opened an investigation into charging Jeffs, currently jailed in Kingman, AZ, with rape  Read more 

Barack Obama is looking for support from some of the most intolerant and corrupt “Christian” right leaders.

An article entitled Obama Meets with Conservative and Progressive Religious Leaders at the Christian Broadcasting network, included a list of “religious leaders” that Obama is trying to get support from…

Most of these leaders are rabidly anti-gay and anti-choice. And they even include one “religious leader” who played a role in Monica Goodlings efforts to put more right wing Christians in the DoJ….

Here’s a partial list…

TD Jakes – One of those mega-church preachers who enriches himself (he lives in a $1.7 million mansion) while “saving souls”  Read more 

[Sarah, this is huge. If the FDLS is getting its twelve-year-old child brides airbrushed out of previously posted stories… We need to know that. Especially since it might happen to other stories, eh? Great Soviet Encyclopedia-style… —lambert]

And photographs around the Web have changed because of what’s amiss — including the ones I posted a few days ago of Warren Jeffs with one of his “child brides”, girls well below the age of consent whom Jeffs raped after a “spiritual marriage” ceremony while he was a fugitive in another rape case.  Read more 

Regular readers here will know that for my money the best thing about the Texas governor is that he isn’t W. Molly Ivins used to say the best thing about Rick Perry is his hair. Well, Governor Goodhair took a stand last night, while in France (proof he’s not W. He voluntarily went somewhere overseas!) that actually had me nodding my head and agreeing with him — and his stand is on the FLDS raid in Eldorado, and what he said was,

“I still think that the state of Texas has an obligation to young women who are forced into marriage and underage sex – to protect them. That’s my bottom line on this,” Mr. Perry said during a visit to France.

.

He also offered to take personal responsibility if the raid had “crossed a line.” Texas is out about $7 million, and if you don’t think that had anything to do with the rulings of the appeals court and the state supremes, you don’t know Texas politics.

And maybe Rick Perry’s tired enough of business as usual to defy the conventional wisdom in Texas politics. The rest of what he said is at the link, but this bit bears repeating.

Mr. Perry, speaking in La Baule, France, where he gave the keynote address at a European business conference, was asked if he will fire or discipline any state officials because of the way the case was handled.

“I think that with the knowledge that the CPS had at the time they acted, that they acted with the best interest of those children,” he said.  Read more 

John Taylor, the Mormons’ fourth president, defending the practice of polygamy: “God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven we will be ranged under the banner of heaven against the Government. The United States says we cannot marry more than one wife. God says different…”

And apparently that’s enough for the State Supreme Court of Texas, too.

Voltaire famously said, “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”I don’t think I’m prepared to go to that length to defend the statements made by the FLDS in custody hearings in San Angelo.

From the San Angelo Standard Times website, news that many of the FLDS children’s individual custody hearings — required under state statute — are now on hold pending the (indefinite) progress of the appeal to the Texas State Supreme Court, which wants the parents’ lawyers to present their evidence against Texas by 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Unlike most AP sources, though, the Standard-Times denies legitimacy to the “marriages” of the polygamous (oh, and in that CBS report last night, the next-door neighbor of YFZ reported that the people in the compound didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor when he asked whether their religion allowed a woman to have more than one husband at the same time) fundamentalists.

As the S-T puts it: Since the initial en masse custody hearing in which 51st District Judge Barbara Walther granted the state temporary custody of more than 450 sect children, CPS investigators have discovered more sect documents listing underage girls at its Schleicher County compound as “married” to adult men, Meisner said. “We were prepared to present evidence to the court today,” she said Tuesday. “We do not know if the parents or FLDS agreed to a quick solution in this case to avoid a public disclosure of that evidence.”

That evidence probably involved more pictures like the ones brought to court Friday in a custody case over an infant — photographs showing Warren Jeffs, then 52 and on the run from the law, lifting a girl who barely stood waist-high into his arms, and then kissing her — passionately, sexually, sensually, in the manner of a “you may kiss the bride” moment. The girl was twelve.

As Bringiton aptly notes in an earlier comment, the “religious freedom” of the FLDS has led to some mind-numbing comments from members of the cult.

The current hearing is in regard to the custody of an infant girl, the daughter of FLDS members. The infant’s mother, Louisa Bradford, was evasive and contradictory in her testimony but did concede that former FLDS Prophet and convicted felon Warren Jeffs had been at the YFZ compound while he was on the run and evading arrest for facilitating child rape. Watchers of the FLDS had speculated that Jeffs was using the YFZ compound as a part-time hideout, considered likely because the FLDS at YFZ are his hand-picked elite and most loyal disciples.

The infant’s father, Rulon Daniel Jessop, testified that he has no problem with his children being around and openly exposed to older men associating with underage child “brides,” including seeing them in close physical contact and deeply kissing. “Everyone has their free agency,” he stated; “It seemed a little wild to me, but you see a lot more wild things driving down the streets of the city at night. I do not consider a girl kissing a man sexual abuse.”

Just everyday living with the FLDS at the YFZ compound according to Jessup even, if the underage girl who has been “spiritually married” to a man 40 years her senior is his little sister. He identified the young girl shown in the pictures below as his sister Merrianne. The photos introduced into evidence are among several showing Jeffs embracing underage girls that were distributed throughout the FLDS community, as announcements celebrating their “spiritual” marriages.

Spiritual marriages, by the way, have no validity in the State of Texas. Bigamy is a crime here. Religiosity is no defense against charges of rape,  Read more 

Legal standards and their arguability aside, voices round the world have heralded yesterday’s triumph of the theocratic pedophilia cult over the State of Texas. Yet some courts in the state — even in Austin — and other voices advocating child welfare are holding out hope for the 400 minors found at YFZ ranch outside Eldorado, Texas, and calling for changes in the laws.  Read more 

An Austin appeals court today slapped the State of Texas and advocates for children’s health and safety in the face, ruling that authorities had not proved each and every child removed from the Yearning For Zion Ranch was individually endangered. Children were ordered returned to 38 mothers within 10 days.
Sometimes there ain’t no justice, and Texas leads the parade. (WARNING: PDF)
Since the April raid, the FLDS, which traffics in girls and women across state and national borders for its prophets’ satisfaction of their appetites for underage sex, which destroys families  Read more 

I just got off the phone with an Israeli friend, and we had some fun joking with each other about the timing of the call. I was reading this post from a very strong Obama supporter, and I complimented the author on his honesty and willingness to say what needs to be said. Short version: it’s not “anti-semitic” to point out that in critical, large, expensive media states like NY and FL, the people raising a lot of money for Dem candidates in those states, as well as pulling state-level political strings (think backroom superdelagate type games) are also “Jewish,” whatever that is supposed to mean*. Nor it is anything less than fact to say many of these fundraising powerhouses really think Israel can do no wrong, and that because of their great influence on the political process here at critical moments, overall American ME and I/P policies are warped. I’m very proud of Boo for reminding us that it’s virtually no different with Cubans in FL; I’d add other single/special interests like the so-called ’farm lobby’ in the plains states, or even the so-called gay lobby in small Eastern states in which some gays have both money and overrepresentation/overempowerment in local political circles. That’s just how politics works right now here. If you’ve got money/friends with money, and you play your cards right in your state, when the Presidential candidates come to your ’hood, you make them say what you want to hear: in Spanish, Yiddish, or flatland drawl.

But then I thought more and more about Boo’s confidence that Obama wants to do more, and better things for the Palestinians even as he takes the standard, ironclad, pro-Likudnik hardline. (Way not to impress your own people, Obama. Tone deaf much? Or do you just think they don’t matter?) Still, I think Boo could be right.  Read more 

I have been amazed (in a bad sense) by the story of the raid by the State of Texas on the Fundamentalist Mormon compound in El Dorado and the removal of 460 children. It is indeed incredible that such practices are allowed to persist in the 21st century United States.

When it comes to religious fundamentalist movements and other reactionary and fascist groups, there is no better source on the Internet than the blog Orcinus (David Neiwert’s blog, with co-author Sara Robinson). In this cas, Sara Robinson got the thankless task of reporting on this and in this post (which is well worth a read), she recommended Daphne Bramham’s book, The Secret Life of Saints - Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada’s Polygamous Mormon Sect. I fully trust Sara’s judgment, so, I got the book and, boy, it was quite a read.  Read more