Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul, was arrested early in the morning of Wednesday, 19 March, on two charges – one related to corruption and the other to terrorism. He released a video of himself shortly before the arrest, talking to the camera while nonchalantly adjusting his tie. ‘Hundreds of police officers have arrived at my door,’ he said. ‘I entrust myself to the people.’ The previous day, his diploma in business administration from Istanbul University was nullified, supposedly because of irregularities in his transfer from a private university in Northern Cyprus in 1990. More to the point, someone without a university degree cannot run for president.
France is the most visited country in the world, with over 100 million tourists a year. To welcome the merry hordes, property owners have converted vast amounts of housing into holiday rentals. There are more than 800,000 such listings in France; Paris alone has 60,000. Finding a place to rent to live in is a lot harder. Last year, France passed an ‘anti-Airbnb law’ that cuts tax breaks for holiday rentals and gives more powers to local authorities to regulate short-term lets and put quotas on tourist accommodation.
Last month, the Rwanda-backed March 23 Movement set up shadow administrations in key areas it has conquered in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The rebels are closer to taking full control of the region’s minerals, especially its coltan reserves, which according to UN observers at the end of last year were providing them with $800,000 a month.
NYPD officers policing a protest outside Columbia University on 24 March. Photo © Kena Betancur / VIEWpress
There’s nothing surprising about Trump’s attack on the universities, or on the liberal law firms that he also despises. What is shocking is the ease with which his attack has so far succeeded. Like the academics and politicians in Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, American college administrators and lawyers are responding to Trump’s bullying as if it were an opportunity to carry out ‘reforms’ – and as if they were secretly relieved that their hand has been forced by the Leader. This is a tale not so much of capitulation to an authoritarian leader as of collusion with him.
Tom Lowenstein, the poet and ethnographer, died on 21 March. His fieldwork in an Iñupiaq village in north-west Alaska began in the 1970s and resulted in seven books. Some were orthodox monographs; others, including Ancient Land, Sacred Whale and The Structure of Days Out used a combination of verse and prose (as well as personal observation) to take the measure of a complex society dealing with the onrush of modernity. His last piece for the LRB was a verse ‘conversation’ with Murasaki Shikibu, the 11th-century author of The Tale of Genji.
The anthropologist Margaret Mead was just over five feet tall and had to stand on a suitcase to be seen above the lectern when she delivered her 1967 keynote address to the President’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped (now the Office of Disability Employment Policy) in Washington DC. Mead began her lecture by referring to archaeologists’ observations of a healed fracture in an ancient human skeleton, noting that this is the point in hominid evolution at which ‘we know we are approaching what we regard as true humanity.’ It takes time and respite for bones to heal; a body that lived beyond a break is evidence of people taking on extra burdens to feed and tend those who were ill or disabled. In a Green Paper published earlier this week, the Labour Party unveiled its plans to cut five billion pounds from the budget for health and disability benefits.
A house in Deir al-Balah destroyed by an Israeli bombardment. Photo © AP / Abdel Kareem Hana
I woke up yesterday morning to a message from a friend in Karachi. It just said: ‘They’ve started again.’ I did not wonder who ‘they’ were. He could only have been referring to Israel. And I knew what they must have started again: mass killing in Gaza. The fact that he had sent me a message meant the bombing had to be much heavier than it had been for the weeks since the 20 January ceasefire. I sent a message to my friend Marwa in Gaza to see if she was OK. ‘Hamdulillah we are fine.’ Only then did I check the news.