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An interesting DSR (Disturbing Search Request): the Ranter is the 8th highest result on Arabic Google for “Arab composer tongs”. That is all.

It now seems that the US authorities in Iraq are serious in their request for more British troops. We are told that the 1st Battalion the Black Watch is to be sent north to the Iskandariyah area in order to relieve US Marines for an offensive against Fallujah. For a start, the Watch are getting…

And then it was all over, and Alexandra Palace was littered with rainlashed leaflets, and everyone dispersed. What did we learn? First, the size problem. The various Social Forums have tended to measure their success by the number of people and organisations who attend. This was greater than ever before. Obviously, if you want to…

I’ve never really subscribed to the London sport of transport whingeing, but this is getting silly. This was meant to be simple. No venture to the northeast frontier at Alexandra Palace, but a string of earnest discussions at the University of London’s centre in Malet Street, as familiar to me as anywhere else in London.…

The European Social Forum in London’s fabulous Alexandra Palace. Yes. This is the Las Vegas of ranting, an annual chance for the broad left and in fact any freak with £30 to discuss the world’s deadly serious problems with deadly serious people. I hoped to make a day of it, but then, London happened. Ken…

Papua New Guinea’s biggest-circulation newspaper, the Post-Courier, has an interesting update on the “King of Papala” story here. “The trio claim they are members of the Independent State of Mogilano, the Singapore Royal World Bank, the Royal Assembly and National Kingdom of Solomon Islands and now the Royal Kingdom of Papala. The Royal Kingdom of…

In Germany, an exhibition has opened displaying selected images from the Stasi’s immense library of surveillance photos and film built up over forty years of repression. The few I’ve seen, here, are promising, showing a bizarre humour and a kind of sinister glamour.

The Guardian’s nickname arises from its alleged tendency towards original and amusing typo errors. Everyone has a fave, for example the near-legendary occasion when they managed to review a production of Doris Godunov. One of the paper’s former editors claims that the reason for this reputation is buried in a British Railways working timetable from…

Human Rights Watch report on the men detained at “undisclosed locations” by the US intelligence services. (Thanks to Nick Barlow) [Unfounded Speculation]I have a little theory about this, which I won’t push too hard without corroboration. If you had to move prisoners around the world secretly, wouldn’t a couple of aircraft not belonging to the…

Answering heavy criticism of his speech to the effect that he walked around Brixton for two hours without seeing a policeman, Michael Howard yesterday penned an article in the Guardian ranting against what he calls “selective statistics”. He is angry about the British Crime Survey, the scheme created by the Thatcher government in 1981 which…