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.