Lionel Blue maundering on Thought for the Day looks like golden age of secularism.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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French Hijab Ban Widely Accepted
Bizarre headline bears no relation to article.
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Eve Garrard Reviews Michael Ignatieff
Rights are far more ethically significant than a useful device to ensure that executive power is not abused.
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Jon Pike Reviews Ted Honderich
‘book ought to have done very serious damage to his reputation as one of Britain’s leading philosophers.’
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South Asian Earthquake Toll Jumps to 73,000
Relief commissioner Farooq Ahmed Khan said more than 69,000 were injured; expects casualty toll to rise.
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Anniversary of Murder of Theo van Gogh
Killer said he murdered out of religious conviction, would kill again in the name of Islam if given a chance.
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Doug Ireland on Michel Onfray
The brightest star among the younger French philosophers.
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Van Gogh Commemoration Calls for Unity
“We must not abandon each other,” Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende told a gathering in Amsterdam.
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Furtive Political Campaigns are the Wrong Kind
A retreat into the mire of a furtive, grubby campaign of individual acts of anti-Semitic discrimination.
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P. Charles Wants Yanks to Appreciate Islam
Wants to be defender of ‘faiths’ not ‘faith’.
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Watered-down ‘Issues-led’ Science Curriculum
If you are taught about issues without facts, you’ll learn uninformed prejudices of the day.
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Football Fatwa
Do not play in two halves. Play in one half or three halves to differentiate yourselves from the heretics.
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Super-charged Placebo Effect
However traditional treatment is not invalid, it’s just that the nonsense helps.
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Times Gets Early Start on Xmas Moaning
South Lambeth taking the Christ out of Xmas.
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Stamp Based on 17th Century Picture ‘Offends’
Royal Mail apologised for ‘unintentional offence’ to Hindu ‘community’ caused by the stamp.
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Kabbalah Director Busted for Cancer Cure Promise
Selling bottled water and prayers for £30,000.
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Hey, the Return of the Caliphate Wouldn’t be so Bad
This thing about sharia is just some silly mix-up.
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Atheism not Postmodern Enough Shock
Oxford don calls NSS website a ‘museum of modernity, untroubled by the awkward rise of postmodernity’.
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Joan Bakewell, Others on Religious Hatred Bill
‘The bill creates a climate where self- censorship will be almost unavoidable.’
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Irshad Manji on the Universality of Human Rights
When we sanctify those constructs called cultures, we make them static, we end up with group-think.