Jim Murphy, cabinet minister overseeing pope’s visit and practising Catholic, called the memo absolutely despicable, vile, insulting, an embarrassment.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Not so much crawling to the pope
“The obsequious apology of this government to the pope is wrong.”
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Nigeria: Senator allegedly marries 13-year-old girl
Women’s groups staged a protest outside parliament Tuesday urging the senate to investigate the matter.
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Carlin Romano doesn’t like Massimo Pigliucci’s tone
He’s so ferocious, so sarcastic, so scientistic.
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Global population of Catholics growing
Declining in Europe but rising everywhere else.
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National Prayer Day – everyone should be disinvited
Why should Franklin Graham have all the fun?
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Atheists and Asbos
Paul Sims and I consider the punishment of Harry Taylor.
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The church is campaigning to block compensation
It is lobbying hard against statute of limitation reform.
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Believers without belief
The idea is going viral: Michael McGhee, Theo Hobson, Andrew Brown all claim that belief is practice.
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Kenan Malik on “Eurabia”
Secularism and fundamentalism are not ideas stitched into people’s DNA. They are like any values: people absorb them, accept them, reject them.
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Open Democracy on Fred Halliday
For 40 years his knowledge of global politics and forensic analytical skills were in the service of rational argument and universalist political values.
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Fred Halliday 1946-2010
His twenty plus books and his wide ranging, powerful essays and journalism provided a constant source of inspiration.
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Grayling replies to Gray
Anxious to appear original while in fact pushing a familiar counter-Enlightenment line, Gray has often entertained us with his assaults on logic and historical fact.
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Eugene Volokh on Harry Taylor’s sentence
An appalling restriction on freedom of speech; not a content-neutral prohibition on leafleting in particular places: the conviction was based on the content and viewpoint of the speech.
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John Gray Reviews A C Grayling
The inevitable ‘Hampstead dinner party’ is cited.
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Colombia: cardinal defends church secrecy
Reporting rapist priests to the police would have been like testifying against a family member.
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Legal victory raises profile of Gaylor and FFRF
‘Society is becoming more secularized. It’s becoming acceptable to be atheist and agnostic. And there are more of us.’
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Foreign office apologizes to Vatican
Facetious memo suggested pope should do something useful; FO cites disrespect, grovels.
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Ben Goldacre on evidence-based voting
Alongside the science of individual claims, it’s also worth looking at what the parties say about science itself.