Atheists today are too often castigated as materialistic calculators whose lack of spirituality sucks their universe empty of all beauty.
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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Bangladesh: demonstration against women’s rights
The protesters marched against moves by the government to ensure equal property rights for women.
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More Koran rage in Afghanistan
Hundreds of demonstrators marched to protest not the murder of uninvolved UN workers and compatriots but the burning of one copy of a book.
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UN official blames Jones, and Jones alone
“I don’t think we should be blaming any Afghan. We should be blaming the person who produced the news – the one who burned the Koran.”
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Salafis’ turn to democracy alarms Egypt
“If the constitution is a liberal one this will be catastrophic,” said Sheik Abdel Moneim el-Shahat, scoffing at new demands for minority rights.
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Karzai announced the Koran burning on Thursday
“Karzai’s speech itself provoked people to take such actions,” said Qayum Baabak, a political analyst in Mazar-i-Sharif.
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Comment is Free asks a disgusting question
Is Terry Jones morally responsible for the murders in Afghanistan?
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David Willetts says women took men’s jobs
Women who would otherwise have been housewives had taken university places and well-paid jobs that could have gone to ambitious working-class men.
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Stanley Fish gets something not wrong
He is bothered by “the spectacle of a court declaring with a straight face that the state-mandated display of crucifixes has nothing to do with religion or indoctrination.”
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George Johnson on Laurence Krauss’s Feynman bio
In “Quantum Man” we see a master mathematician who could concentrate on a problem for hours and then recast it in a surprising new manner.
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Afghanistan: 10 UN workers killed by mob
The incident began when thousands of protesters poured out of the Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif after Friday prayers…
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To say religious schools exclude is nonsense
Because they exclude only the non-religious, and who cares about that?
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Nick Cohen notes: they missed the story
The Arab uprising is annihilating the assumptions of foreign ministries, academia and human rights groups with true revolutionary élan.
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Gingrich predicts an atheist US dominated by Islamists
He said so at Pastor John Hagee’s Texas megachurch. Srsly.
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Howard Jacobson at Index on Censorship
“It’s not just writers who are the enemy now; it’s language itself.”
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Louis Theroux revisits Westboro Baptist church
The family regard it as their duty to “rejoice in all of God’s judgements” – murders, natural disasters, the loss of loved-ones to carnality and fornication.
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Spain investigates the stolen babies problem
Franco set the precedent, and then it became a racket.
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Whither higher education?
And what is it, anyway? An expensive but meaningless credential, a ticket to debt, vocational training, or education?
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British mum finds Allah in her potato
See? Those brown lines where it’s starting to rot? That’s Allah.
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Mona Eltahawy on Eman Al Obeidi
And revolutionary women in Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia…