Mike Davis has done it again! His new book Planet of Slums is awesome—in the root sense of that word. (I’m not sure if it’s out yet—I’m reading a review copy.) So far (I’ve read half of it), the book stands as the most important Marxist critique of globalisation since Empire (by Negri and Hardt, 1999). Here is one of the many passages that blew my fucking mind this morning:

“..Any realistic hope for the mitigation of Africa’s urban poverty has faded from the official horizon. At the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in October 2004, Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and hair apparent to Tony Blair, observed that the UN’s Millennium Development Goals for Africa, originally projected to be achieved by 2015, would not be attained for generations: “Sub-Saharan Africa will not achieve universal primary education until 2130, a 50 percent reduction in poverty in 2150, and the elimination of avoidable infant deaths until 2165.” By 2015 Black Africa will have 332 million slum-dwellers, a number that will continue to double every fifteen years.

Black Africa equals Trouble Everyday