Planet of Slums: Mike Davis
Audio: Mike Davis is the author of many books on the urban environment and how that formats our political and social existence. His recent published work -- Planet of Slums -- is a shocking review of how the other half is forced to live.Here is an interview with Davis conducted by the CBC.
Mp3 download. 23:00.
This global problem is of massive proportions:
From Planet of Slums
“What is clear is that the contemporary mega-slum poses unique problems of imperial order and social control that conventional geopolitics has barely begun to register. If the aim of the “war on terrorism” is to pursue the erstwhile enemy into his sociological and cultural labyrinth, then the poor peripheries of developing cities will be the permanent battlefields of the twenty-first century.
“Night after night, hornet-like helicopter gun-ships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring their hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts surely have the gods of chaos on their side.
