China forces abortion of seven-month-old baby

More evidence of what a ghastly dictatorship China is comes from today’s Daily Mail newspaper in the UK.

The Mail examines the case of Feng Jianmei, who was forceably injected with a chemical to induce the abortion of her seven-month-old child.

This sounds like the sort of thing the Nazis got up to. The reason Feng was thus brutalized was because she already had a child.

Local birth-control authorities ordered her to pay a fine of £4,000 as a punishment for becoming pregnant again.

She didn't have the money, she said, so a team from the local family planning authority in Shannxi province came to collect her from her home and take her to hospital for the forced abortion.

Recounting the horror, Feng said she told the family planning department she could not pay the fine because her mother-in-law needed money for cancer treatment.

At the hospital she was restrained and given an injection that would be lethal to the foetus. None of her family was allowed to be present during the traumatic time, she said.

Feng said that her father-in-law heard about her being taken away but when he rushed to the hospital he was prevented from entering the obstetrics ward.

Local media said it was most likely that Feng had been injected with a chemical commonly known as Lifannuo – a powerful bactericide used in the late 1980s and early 1990s when China’s one-child policy was strongly pursued by authorities.

Human rights in China? Not likely.

Alex Salmond, Tom Harris and Downfall

I have to confess I feel ever so slightly sorry for Tom Harris, the Labour MP, who has resigned from his post as the Labour Party’s new media adviser.

Harris posted a Downfall-spoof on YouTube, depicting the Scottish Nationalist leader Alex Salmond as Hitler.

It appears to have caused a bit of a stir, and not only among the legendarily humorless Scots. Media outlets everywhere are currently wheeling out the big guns (or not) to tell us all why this is so inappropriate.

Well, yes and no. I personally thought Harris’ video was quite amusing and probably made a fair point about Salmond. Though it wasn't as funny as the one with Gordon Brown as Hitler...

TV's experts seem keen to go further than just slapping Harris for Salmond baiting, suggesting that making jokes about Hitler is in some way mocking the Holocaust.

I wonder what they make of The Great Dictator, then?

Charlie Chaplin's film mocked Hitler and dictators generally, to an extent in the same way that the Downfall clips do.

Chaplin made the Nazis look ridiculous, as far as he could defusing the aggression of all the goostepping, saluting and bullying and making it appear deranged.

Those getting irate about those Downfall clips should bear that in mind.

D-Day veteran falls victim to Nazi bullet

D-Day veteran Percival (Dai) Tilley died in an accident partly caused by a leg injury he sustained on the Normandy beaches 65 years ago.

Welsh Guardsman Mr Tilley, 91, was hit in the leg by a German bullet on 6 June 1944 and suffered weakness in that leg all his life.

He was on his way to a reunion with his old army comrades, wearing his Welsh Guards blazer and tie, when the leg gave way at the top of a staircase. He fell 20ft to the bottom and suffered from fatal head injuries.

Mr Tilley's leg wound from 1944 was cited as a 'contributory factor' in the accident by the inquest in Cardiff.

Coroner Mary Hassell said: 'He had a compromise to one of his legs and this gave him a problem going down the stairs.

'He was clearly enjoying himself and looking forward to seeing his friends when he just fell down the stairs and hit his head.

'His injuries were absolutely unsurvivable but fortunately this all happened very quickly. I very much doubt Mr Tilley knew any of what was going on.'

Heinrich Himmler sent postcards home to mum

Wonder what a handwriting expert would make of Heinrich Himmler's postcards?

Adolf Hitler's henchman had a very spiky script, as the postcards he sent to his mum reveal.

The content is typically banal. 'Dear Mum, Here in Warsaw having a lovely time. Right mess outside the hotel, though. Looks like a bombsite. Some interesting churches and castles. Saw some great runes. Locals aren't very friendly.'

The postcards were from a cache of documents taken from Himmler's holiday home in southern Germany by a US serviceman after the war ended. Not sure, though, why he had the postcards at his home when he'd sent them to his mother. Maybe forgot to post them.

The collection of postcards is expected to sell for around £40,000 at auction.