Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

It is pretty clear that Russia and Georgia are at war (see excellent background article here). It is not like there were no warning signs that Russia did not enjoy having its power challenged, as happened with the independence of Kosovo where the UN ignored Russia's opposition and went ahead with support for the new republic over its objections. Then, a few weeks ago, I posted on the fact that it seemed that Russia was engaging in a new Cold War in an attempt to reclaim some global military leadership. The invasion of parts of Georgia in support of independent movements in Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia should be read in that context.

As usual, I find Michael Mann's conceptualization of different forms of power useful to understand what is going on here. As Jonathan Steele puts it in the Guardian, this is not just an economic war, a "pipeline war", but a war of political influence. Political power, more than economic, might be at work here: Read more…

Jeremy Seabrook has a very pessimistic but, I think, powerful column in the Guardian in light of Barack Obama's world tour. It centers on Obama but has wider implications for the way we consider political leadership in the global context. For those of us who regularly read Seabrook, it is a well know fact that he is vehemently opposed to corporate globalization (he writes for the New Internationalist as well) and is a subscriber to the Habermasian school of Crisis of Legitimacy in the political sphere. This column is no departure from this.

His starting point here is the focus on personality politics: Read more…

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Christian Chavagneux and Ronen Palan's Les Paradis Fiscaux is a great (and mercifully short) introduction to tax heavens, banking secrecy and the offshore financial world. And it's in French. For my non-French readers, not to worry, hopefully, my review will give enough substantial information... or, y'all could learn French! However, I have preserved what I think are the best quotes in the original language so as to preserve their value.

The book's central thesis is that the development of offshore financial centers since the 1960s is an integral part of the dynamics of contemporary globalization, both in the financial and productive sectors. Tax heavens are now a pillar without which contemporary economic globalization could not function.

And surprisingly, they have not been studied to the extent that they should have been. For orthodox economic literature, tax heavens are a product of overtaxation in industrialized countries or a simple manifestation of informal economies. Both views are faulty according to Chavagneux and Palan. Read more…