James Butler is a contributing editor at the LRB. He co-founded Novara Media in 2011 and hosted its weekly radio show for several years.
Last Thursday evening, more than twenty Metropolitan police officers broke down the doors of the Quaker meeting house in Westminster to arrest six young women. The women were attending a welcome meeting of Youth Demand, a small, non-violent activist group currently dedicated to action against climate change and the genocide in Gaza. None has been charged.
The fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017 killed 72 people, 18 of them children. Most died from asphyxiation after inhaling toxic smoke from the cladding on the block, which acted like a coat of petrol on the walls. Some died leaping from the building. Families died together, huddled under beds, having been told to stay where they were. Disabled residents died waiting for a rescue that
The first time the man heard God, he uprooted his entire life, though he was very old. Then God appeared to him in person, an event which would embarrass later thinkers. God made the man an impossible promise in the shape of a son. His wife was ninety, and she laughed. When the child arrived, it was hardly unreasonable to think it a miracle. They named the child after the laughter.
Then
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