Paul Smith's Blog

This morning Ted Grant, aged 93, died. I'll borrow some stuff about him from Wikipedia: He formed a new, small tendency in the Labour Party, called the Revolutionary Socialist League which in 1957 was recognised at the official British section of the Fourth International and in 1964 founded the paper Militant. The group at first grew only very slowly, but by 1983, when it was known as the Militant Tendency, it was a significant force in British politics, and Grant was expelled from the Labour Party....

That can be the only demand of the peoples of the Middle East, including the people of Israel. For that don't know Israel has now attacked both Gaza and Lebanon in recent weeks, killing over 300 civilians and setting both countries back decades. Let us keep in mind this are both utterly defenceless countries that would not stand a chance in a full blown conflict with Israel. The bourgeois press in the west have blamed this on militants in both countries capturing Israeli soldiers....

Just watched an excellent video documentary "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" on the coup in Venezuela in 2002 made by a team of Irish journalists who luckily were there throughout the events. You can watch it on Google Video. Although it has had some broadcasts around the world (the BBC for example) it has been subject to a massive campaign of suppression. Violent threats being made towards the Venezuelan Amnesty International branch if the Amnesty International Film Festival in Vancouver for example decided to show it and numerous other attempts to cover it up....

It's started, they were 24 hours off the mark but I guess they've just dug out some crappy soundbites to try and back up their nonsense. Of course I'm talking about anti-socialists. Couple of blogs caught my attention Blogging4Merton: I normally make it a rule never to attack people in the Labour party, but I make an exception when it comes to the John Mc Donnell ludicrous leadership bid when Tony Blair stands down....

It is time to reclaim Labour. John McDonnell, Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs has decided to stand for Labour Party leadership, his statement in full: It is becoming increasingly apparent that Tony Blair will announce his resignation as leader of the Labour party over the next 12 -18 months. Some have argued that instead of an open democratic election for the leader of the party, there should be a smooth transition or virtual coronation of his successor....

How many people do you think died due to the Chernobyl nuclear incident? 25 thousand? 100 thousand? 1 million? 4 million? In Britain a lot of noise is being made by Greenpeace and other organisations campaigning against building more nuclear power stations. They use Chernobyl as an example of thousands or millions of people being killed due to nuclear power stations. They for one ignore the fact that meltdowns in that fashion can no longer happen in modern nuclear power stations....

Check out this video of a chimpanzee playing Pacman. OK he's not very good at it, but how many other animals would even understand they're moving something on the screen? Just look at his face at the end of the clip, so human. What is the chance that we would have other animals that are just so human on the Earth? Evolution can explain it and predicts species would be very similar to other species....

Here are the new icons, which in typical Microsoft fashion weren't used in the public beta, just like they're holding back the new Vista sounds until RTM, d'oh! The crazy curved corner matching the crazy curved corner in the actual applications is a nice touch, makes a nice change from the boring old square icons.

Just stumbled across a channeler called J.Z. Knight. She claims to channel the spirit of a 35000 year old warrior called Ramtha, who fought against Atlantis. When she goes into her "trance", when she's actually being possessed by this spirit she starts speaking with an Elizabethan (the Queen's English, well the American stereotype of it) English accent. Why would a 35000 year old spirit speak English? Secondly why would it have an Elizabethan accent?...

One thing creationists often trot out is how improbable the universe is. There's really two separate parts to this. One being how improbable it is that the world around us seemingly so perfectly fits human life. Creationists generally use the word "perfectly" but it's clear we're not perfectly suited to the Earth as a whole, a desert isn't a very nice place for a human for example. The Earth doesn’t fit perfectly with life, life just managed to change enough to survive....