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From the Scotsman:

United States marines found what was believed to be the body of a Western woman as they continued their offensive in the shattered Iraqi town of Fallujah yesterday.

The body has yet to be identified but only two Western women, British aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, from Poland, are known to have been kidnapped in Iraq.

The mutilated body was discovered lying in the street covered with a blood-soaked cloth during a security sweep through the centre of Fallujah.

A US marine officer said he was “80 per cent sure” it was a Western woman.

Update: here’s more at the Australian (via Jihad Watch):

As hundreds of insurgents who escaped the US onslaught of Fallujah regrouped for further attacks across Iraq, the body of a blonde-haired Caucasian woman with her legs and arms cut off and throat slit was found last night in a street in the battle-torn city.
The discovery of the woman wearing a blue dress and with her face shockingly disfigured was made as US marines moved through the south of Fallujah, hunting the remaining diehard rebels after a week of fierce fighting to regain control of the city.

“It is definitely a Caucasian woman with long, blonde hair,” said a military official, who cut open a cover that had been over the corpse. Two Western women are known to have been kidnapped in Iraq. Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq, was seized last month and has blonde hair.

Margaret Hassan, 59, director of Care International in Iraq, was also abducted last month and has chestnut-coloured hair.

“It is a female … missing all four appendages, with a slashed throat and disembowelled, she has been dead for a while but only in this location for a day or two,” said Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the Navy Corps, who inspected the body.

For the Guardian-reading classes, it’s an article of faith that the French do things better. They’re more civilised, they eat better……they know how to live. These articles write themselves. Anglo-Saxons: MacDonalds…tasteless…constant snacking…driven…joyless…zombies. French: leisurely meals…slow cooking…eating with the family…laughter…joie de vivre…sophistication. When it comes to the “French paradox” – how come they eat all those fatty foods and drink all that wine and still have less heart disease than us – I’m open-minded. There do seem to be benefits from drinking red wine, and I’m happy with that, though I can’t help thinking it’s one of those myths that’ll soon be exploded when it turns out that they measure things differently over there. But when it comes to young Parisian women, and how come they’re all so chic and slim – the subject of this Observer piece which retreads all the old cliches – a clue may be found in this comment from one of the interviewees: “most French women smoke instead of eating”.

Well exactly. End of story.

artist Hiroshi Motomiya, whose work contains serious social commentary.

Japanese apologists claim that the Rape of Nanking is a fabrication or that the number killed was small and not unusual for wartime.

In October, the Right-wing Sankei newspaper denounced Mr Motomiya’s account of “the fictional, so-called Nanking Massacre”.

The author who did most to publicise the horrors perpetrated by the Japanese was Iris Chang, whose body was found recently after a presumed suicide.

From the Amazon review of her book:

After fierce fighting in Shanghai, the Japanese occupied the old Chinese imperial city of Nanking on 13 December 1937. Over the next six weeks, the Japanese massacred more than 300,000 Chinese and raped more than 80,000 women. But these bare figures don’t begin to describe the atrocities. The Japanese indulged in execution contests to see who could behead the most civilians in the shortest time, they burned their victims, they buried them alive, they set dogs on them. No form of mutilation and torture was too extreme or bizarre and no one escaped. Men, women, children and babies were all butchered.

A Japanese edition of her book was cancelled after threats to the publisher.

e tensions between Japan and China, already locked in disputes about contested islands and gas fields. […]

The incident comes at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries, which are likely to become increasingly competitive in their hunt for natural resources to power their economies.

The two sides held inconclusive talks last month on gas exploration projects in the East China Sea.

China has also reportedly been angered by a Japanese defence ministry paper which speculated on reasons China might attack. It cited disputes over natural resources and territory, as well as a wider conflict involving Taiwan.

st slowing down, Iran’s arming itself with long-range missiles has far reaching repercussions vis-a-vis Israel as well. The experts who analyzed the Iranian missile program have reached the conclusion that it intends to equip the Shihab 3 with a nuclear war head. They found an almost total resemblance between the size and shape of the Iranian warhead to the Scud-B developed by the Soviets. The combination of an ambitious missile program and nuclear weapons, on which the Iranians are laboring, may pose a threat to Israel that would lead to a complete change of the power balance and stability in the Middle East.

Therefore, if Schmucker’s theory is correct and the Iranians cannot develop on their own a missile whose range exceeds 1,100 km (the range to Israel), then stopping the technology and equipment spill from Russia and China into North Korea and Iran would also put off the Iranian threat to Israel. The problem is that urgent action must be taken, because the transfer of missiles and technology to Iran is continuing in the meantime, and it is possible that in the not-so-distant future Iran will have enough missiles to create a strategic threat to Israel.

Examining the international bodies’ attempt to prevent the missile technology spill, and analyzing the activity of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), leaves no room for hope that international pressure will stop the cooperation between Russia and China on the one hand, and Iran and North Korea on the other. The problem is that the leaders of Europe are still not convinced that time is running out and that they must act swiftly and resolutely. They believe that it is possible to persuade Iran to stop developing nuclear arms in diplomatic ways.

The agreement they reached with Iran to suspend the uranium enrichment will not necessarily put an end to the Iranian program. They are ignoring Russia and China’s part in helping Iran for the meantime, and the Iranian missile development program is not even on their agenda.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is standing alone as a barrier, albeit a penetrable one, in the face of Iran’s attempts to equip itself with long-range missiles and nuclear arms. Sadly, this is not enough, and in the end Israel might find itself facing a nuclear Iran.

From the Scotsman:

Sudanese government forces stormed a refugee camp in Darfur, attacking men, women and children, within hours of Khartoum signing a security agreement with rebels that was supposed to bring peace to the region.

BBC television footage showed Sudanese security forces entering the El Geer refugee camp near Nyala, bulldozing it, firing tear gas at women and children, beating some of the male inhabitants and moving others to a nearby camp.

The violence came hours before Jan Pronk, the United Nations’ Sudan envoy, arrived to visit the camp, the BBC said. At one point during his visit a plastic bullet was fired at a cameraman standing next to a UN vehicle.

George Somerwill, a UN spokesman in Khartoum, confirmed the move into the camp. “In the early hours, four small truckloads of police drove into El Geer camp and they knocked over some of the shacks which the [inhabitants] have constructed,” he said, adding that police fired shots in the air.

It is the second time the camp has been attacked in a week and casts new doubts over Khartoum’s willingness to crack down on violence in the region.

Casts new doubts over Khartoum’s willingness to crack down on violence in the region? Since the government is sponsoring the violence, which is ongoing, I imagine that yes, there is room for some doubt about their good intentions.

Mr Blair told the House of Commons yesterday that time was running out for the Sudanese government to comply with international demands for action.

Mr Blair said that if officials in Khartoum did not ease the crisis in the remote western region of the country, “they need to be well aware of the fact there will be a serious response from the international community”.

Britain hopes the UN Security Council will adopt a resolution next week promising international support and possible debt forgiveness if the Sudanese government reaches peace agreements with rebels in the south and in western Darfur.

This would set an interesting precedent: any government saddled with crippling debts could start slaughtering its citizens in the hope that the international community would forgive the debts if they’d promise to stop. Sounds as sensible as Jimmy Carter’s deal with Kim Jong Il to provide aid to North Korea if they’d agree to abandon their nuclear programme.

countless so-called counter-revolutionaries and their families were taken away to labor camps. This was apparently not an isolated incident. Resentment against Kim is deeply entrenched in the population. Even a few of Kim’s 450 hand-picked bodyguards, referred to as the “2-16 Unit,” in honor of the dictator’s birthday, apparently attempted to shoot their boss in the mid-1990s. Generals pushing for economic reforms planned a coup in 1992.

Private Eye outdoes itself today. The cover has a picture of Bush, under the heading “Bush Re-elected”, saying……wait for it…….”Four Moron Years!”

Yep, cutting-edge humour at its best.

Inside in the Hackwatch section they have a go at Mark Steyn, a pet hate figure, because of his regularly stated belief that Osama Bin Laden was dead. Not a particularly unusual position to hold, as it happens. Maybe they don’t like him because he’s consistently sharp and funny, unlike the Eye nowadays.

f normal human beings. And it is clear that the existence of the normal Iraqi human being and these is mutually exclusive. It is either “them or us”, as you say.

“We are the democratic voice of an ever growing number of Flemings who, in an entirely non-violent way, want to put an end to Belgium,” Mr Vanhecke [the Party chairman] said on Tuesday.

“Our electoral strength is causing panic amongst the Belgian establishment. We will establish a new party. This one Belgium will not be able to bury; it will bury Belgium.”