As promised, Davis rolls out the opposite polarity to Planet of Slums: the inverted slum or gated Emirate.  His description bristles with empirical insight, but the rhetorical antithesis between the 'global slum' (analysed from an 'objective' distance) and gilded/fortified hyperluxury (apparently experienced firsthand) remains problematic, especially as Davis is admirably insistent on the antislum's dependence on cheap indentured labour inside it. 

What mutations in the circulatory logic of capital and spectacle have occurred since September 11th? In their 2005 book Afflicted Powers: Capital in a New Age of War, Bay Area collective Retort argue that neoliberalism has moved from an era of austerity programmes and agreements to one of all out war – over air, land, and media. Here Anustup Basu reviews their book and traces the demise of a Kantian modernity based on ‘enfranchisement and eternal peace’ and the rise of one based on ‘weak citizenship and perpetual conflict’

After the Iranian ‘revolution’ in 1979, film became public enemy number one. Viewed with suspicion, this infidel medium became the target of state repression and, at the same time, the site of a necessary and astonishing inventiveness. As a result, (some) Iranian cinema has been subject to widespread celebration throughout the film festivals and art house cinemas of the West.

David Mandl reports on the Policy Analysis Market (PAM), yet another perverse Pentagon brainchild

National outrage can be a trigger for an eloquent art show. With a catalogue entitled LAND GRAB, Israeli architects Eyal Weizman and Rafi Segal secured the cancellation of their architectural project, 'A Civilian Occupation: the Politics of Israeli Architecture', as Israel's official entry in the World Congress of Architecture (Berlin, 2002). It was banned by the same Israeli Association of United Architects who had commissioned it.

According to Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, cities have always reflected the dominant military techniques of their times. With the demise of the linear warfare between nation states and the advent of non-linear wars waged against internal ‘terrorists’, cities have become our primary ‘battle spaces’.

Zoe Young explores post-war issues in the Middle East

In 1996, a family of squatters died, demolished along with their Beirut home by the private company reconstructing the post-war city.

Joyce Song investigates strategies of land representation and administration in the occupied territories of Palestine, where strategies such as the non-recognition of villages, and the placement and building of settlements, roads, and walls, she argues, advance political decisions under the guise of ‘innocent’ urban planning

Nat Muller talks to Palestinian filmmaker Azza El Hassan. Based in Ramallah since 1996 her films include The Place, Sinbad is a She, Title Deed from Moses, Arab Women Speak Out and News Time.