Free Republic

On October 26, Zohran Mamdani held a rally at Forest Hills Stadium—a venue that sits right across the street from my apartment. It was hard not to despair as tens of thousands of New York’s most caffeinated and clinically unstable activists flooded my quiet, tree-lined Queens neighborhood like a swarm of earnest locusts. I decided to treat the ordeal as fieldwork. Stepping outside with what I told myself was a neutral disposition, iPhone Notes app at hand, I talked to his devotees, observed their rituals, and tried, against all odds, to understand what gospel this man was preaching that could...

Go to the link

Artisanal mining was not illegal in the DRC prior to the 1980s, but diamonds could only be sold within the mining zone, or in adjacent villages. It was illegal to sell diamonds in Kinshasa and in the main urban areas in the Kasai provinces, although this was not fully respected. Corrupt officials allowed a limited trade to exist, but government attitudes vacillated and harsh measures were taken intermittently to purge the diamond fields of prospectors, especially in areas around or within the concession of La Société Minière de Bakwanga (MIBA), the diamond mining parastatal. MIBA provided the bulk of Zaire’s...