June 24 - A bomb exploded on a bus in Istanbul and police suspect it detonated prematurely while being transported to another location (Turkey bus explosion kills four.) A smaller blast earlier in Ankara wounded two.

A NATO summit will be held in Istanbul early next week.

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June 19 - Hidden in the middle of this article, Leaders accept EU constitution, is confirmation that not all the media is ignoring the real message behind last week's votes in Europe:

Leaders had hoped for a deal Friday to boost the EU's credibility in the eyes of a skeptical public, a week after an electoral drubbing and six months after their last attempt collapsed in acrimony over voting rules and other issues.

11:44 There is a post at Expat Yank that is absolutely priceless: Chirac wrecks relations with someone else.

15:30: John reports on the elections in Spain: the Socialists won 25 seats with 43% of the votes and the Partido Popular won 23 seats with 41% of the votes. Voter turnout was 46%. Read the post - it has some pretty solid analysis of the voting patterns.

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June 12 - From the Daily Telegraph (UK) comes a report on Danish UN aid worker Michael Soussan who, in his testimony before a US Congressional probe into UNSCAM, blasted the UN's 'shameful silence' over the evils of Saddam:

To Mr Soussan's dismay, the most vocal critics worked alongside him at the UN. The genocide charge was levelled by an assistant secretary general in charge of humanitarian work in Iraq.

His colleagues blamed the Security Council - especially the United States and Britain - for the suffering of Iraqis, ignoring evidence that Saddam was stealing food from his own people's mouths.

They could hardly ignore the wickedness of Saddam's regime. Foreign UN staff could sense the terror in Iraqis they met, and saw for themselves the gilded excesses of the Ba'athist elite.

But somehow that wickedness was taken as a given, then promptly smothered in a warm soup of moral relativism.

"We have a notion of sovereignty at the UN that doesn't distinguish between governments that deserve sovereignty and those that do not. And that really skews our moral compass," Mr Soussan told The Telegraph.

"[My colleagues] devoted most of their moral outrage towards the United States and the UK," he said. (Emphasis added)

Mr Soussan does not deny the pain caused by sanctions from the first Gulf war in 1991 to 1996, before oil-for-food sales began. A quarter of a million children died, by conservative estimates.

But during those five years, it was Saddam who refused offers to sell his oil and import humanitarian goods under UN supervision. "[He was] banking that images of dying babies would eventually force the international community to lift the sanctions altogether," Mr Soussan told Congress.

By 2000, there was no limit on the amount of oil Saddam was allowed to sell, and few limits on the civilian goods he was allowed to buy.

Iraq was under sanctions only "to the extent that they couldn't import military goods", he said.

Yet still Saddam claimed sanctions were killing 5,000 infants a month, parading tiny coffins in the streets to ram the point home. "The UN did not stand up to this propaganda. It cowered in the face of this notion that the sanctions were killing Iraqi babies," Mr Soussan said. (Emphasis added)

The failure of the U.N. to take responsiblilty and tell the truth is responsible for much of the hatred of the world towards the USA, but we are supposed to "take it" for the good of an international community which has no values, no morals, but does have some dandy committees.

Iraqi babies no longer die due to malnutrition, watered-down drugs, expired pharmaceuticals and lack of equipment in medical facilities, but that fact has nothing to do with the U.N. and everything to do with action that was condemned by the U.N.

UN staff did not speak out when Saddam refused to buy high protein foods recommended by UN experts, or spent oil-for-food millions on sports stadiums, or broadcasting equipment for his propaganda machine.

The UN turned a blind eye to signs that Saddam was bribing cronies at home and abroad with black market oil vouchers, and was skimming billions from funds meant for food and medicine, demanding secret, 10 per cent "kickbacks" on humanitarian contracts.

The UN recently claimed it "learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme only after the end of major combat operations" in 2003.

A lie, said Mr Soussan, recalling the hapless Swedish company that called in 2000, seeking UN help after being asked to pay kickbacks. The Swedes' plea was quickly lost in red tape and inter-office turf wars. After a "Kafka-esque" flurry of internal memos, the Swedes were told to complain to their own government.

Now top UN officials are under investigation. Mr Soussan hopes the shock will force a major debate on how to deal with rogue regimes.

"The oil-for-food programme was a deal with the devil. The problem is, that we didn't act as if this was the devil, we acted as if this was a legitimate regime," he said.

If such major questions have to wait, a little more transparency would help, for starters.

"If the UN had just stood up once, held a high-level press conference, and said, 'We think the Iraqi government is cheating its people', then the UN would not be in the mess it is now," he said. "It would then be an accuser, rather than the accused." (Emphasis added)

Iran is piling on: they have rejected any further restrictions on their weapon programs and demands to be recognized as a nuclear power:

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi accused France, Britain and Germany -- who have drawn up a tough new document that accuses Iran of not cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency -- of bowing to pressure from the United States.

Some of those nuts live in the United States. One of those nuts in running for president: Senator John Kerry, who actually believes that we can pursue detente with North Korea and Iran as we attempted with the Soviet Union.

President Reagan's final gift to the USA may have been the timing of his death which not only coincided with D-Day, a major military offensive in the fight against fascism, but also led to the recollection that he defeated communism by his firm resolve to stand up to the Soviet Union and match them missile for missile rather than meekly pretending they were anything less than evil.

Detente failed. Unyielding principles won, and we were dealing with comparatively sane people in the Soviet Union. Would anyone dare to make the same claims about the North Korean or Iranian governments?

Canadians who are pretending to be terrified of social conservatives coming to power in Canada would, if they were honest, be lying prostrate on the floor in a cold faint at the mere thought of Iranian social conservatives but they aren't because it's all about the propaganda, not the reality.

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June 9 - "Thousands of nails" on the sidewalks after an explosion in Cologne (Blast injures 16 in Cologne) has caused police to consider a bomb to be the source of the blast.

16 people were injured, including 4 seriously and 1 critically.

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June 8 - Someday (if I'm really, really, bored and have run out of excuses to avoid vacuuming) I'll try to figure out why a country like Germany which declares itself more pacifist than a lamb would be outraged when we try to withdraw troops from there. What enemy do they fear? I thought their polls indicated that they consider us to be the biggest danger to peace ... akin to Hitler and all bad and nasty things in this world. So why would they want us to stay?

Surely it couldn't have anything to do with all those US dollars that bases in Germany add to the German economy, could it? Surely such enlightened people would be willing to take a little hardship just to get rid of those dreadful Yankees! Wankers.

Anyway, the uproar is premature, as this DoD announcement makes clear (Myers: No Final Decision Yet on U.S. Posture in Germany.)

Of course, if we don't pull out, I'll be outraged. Poland is a friend and staunch ally, and I look forward to building stronger ties with her.

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June 8 - This is interesting: 'Key Figure' Among Madrid Bombing Arrests:

ROME — In coordinated sweeps, Italian and Belgian police arrested at least 17 suspected Islamic extremists, including an Egyptian who was alleged to have a key role in the March 11 bombings (search) in Madrid, authorities said Tuesday.

Officials at Spain's National Court said Rabei Osman Ahmed (search), a 33-year-old Egyptian, was detained in Milan late Monday and said to be planning further attacks.

A senior Spanish law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described him as a "key figure" in the Madrid commuter train bombings that killed 191 people.

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu (search) said Osman Ahmed was "probably among the principal authors" of the Madrid bombings, and that he "was preparing other attacks."

Osman Ahmed was arrested on a warrant issued Monday by Judge Juan del Olmo, the magistrate leading the investigation into the bombings, said the officials at Spain's National Court. They said they would request his extradition on multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.

Osman Ahmed was identified by people living near a decrepit rural cottage where the bombs used in the attack were assembled, the Spanish court officials said. Fingerprints of several key suspects were found in the cottage.

One other suspect was arrested in Italy, while 15 were apprehended in Belgium — including Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Moroccans, officials said. One other person was held for questioning in Italy, authorities said.

The suspects arrested in Belgium apparently were not involved in the Madrid bombings, but the investigations in Italy and Belgium were closely linked, said Daniel Bernard, a Belgian federal prosecutor.

He said Belgian investigators were tipped off by Italian authorities.

That sound you hear is air escaping from the faulty balloon the Democrats and assorted pundits sent up which claimed that the war in Iraq divided allies and diverted attention from the war on terror.

European countries will coordinate and cooperate on stopping terrorists because it is in their best interests to do so. No nuance or subtley is required, but may be so freaking obvious that only an elitist or an intellectual could miss it.

June 9 - 18:15: Six more have been arrested in northern Spain in connection with the March 11 train bombings in Madrid.

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