On July 27, US District Court Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. of Los Angeles ordered the government to free Southern California Muslim community leader Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan, a Palestinian who has spent two years detained on an immigration violation. Department of Justice lawyers responded to the judge's order by filing a last-minute motion on July 28, seeking an emergency stay and claiming that Hamdan is a danger to the public and that he might flee while his deportation case is pending in the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Hatter denied the request the same day, but it was unclear when Hamdan would actually be released from the Terminal Island detention center where he has been held since his arrest on July 28, 2004.

The first one we've all heard about. From DPA, July 30:

Muslim charged in Jewsh center shooting
A Muslim man who allegedly killed a woman and wounded five others inside a Jewish community centre in Seattle, Washington, gained entry by holding a teenaged girl at gunpoint, police said Saturday.

Rejecting a dialogue with Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the striking teachers and their supporters in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca occupied the streets around the state government buildings in the capital for a third day July 29, blocking the entrances. The state government has been forced to operate out of hotels on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. One of the hotels was also blockaded by some 70 members of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), the group coordinating the protests.

The really amazing thing about China is that both the knee-jerk right-wingers who love to hate it and the idiot leftists who love to love it are both laboring under the illusion that it is Communist. The self-serving capitalist elite that run the country do so in the name of a "Communist Party." But nothing is less Marxist than to assume that this, or the elite's occassional bursts of anti-Western rhetoric, have anything to do with the fundamental economic structure—which is obviously, oppressively capitalist. This illusion is especially surreal in the face of growing, seemingly spontaneous and uncoordinated revolt by Chinese workers and peasants. The left in the West should be offering vigorous solidarity to the rebelling workers and peasants in China. Certainly not cheering on their oppressors. From Forbes via CorpWatch, July 27:

From Reuters, July 29:

The United States sent its most explicit warning yet to Horn of Africa foes Eritrea and Ethiopia on Saturday to stay out of the escalating crisis in Somalia where they are believed to be backing rival sides.

Pushed from the headlines by multiple crises in the Middle East, genocidal warfare continues in Congo even on the even of elections. This July 28 New York Times op-ed piece by Aidan Hartley, a television journalist who witnessed a massacre of a village by UN "peacekeepers" earlier this year, is a rare exception to a general media blackout.

Congo’s Election, the U.N.’s Massacre

The Democratic Republic of the Congo will hold its first legitimate elections in four decades on Sunday. The United Nations peacekeeping mission there has played the role of electoral midwife, so if the vote is free and fair it will be among the global body’s greatest successes on the continent.

This Associated Press account interprets al-Zawahri's latest communique as calling for Sunni-Shi'ite unity against the US and Israel, taking a tip from the cementing of the Hamas-Hezbollah conjunction since the Lebanon crisis. If so, al-Zawahri's followers in Iraq don't seem to have gotten the word. From AP, July 28:

Al-Qaida's No. 2 expands call for holy war

CAIRO - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader called yesterday for Muslims to unite in a holy war against Israel and to join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq."

Hamas may be rallying around Hezbollah at the moment, but the Sunni-Shi'ite lovefest sure doesn't seem to have extended to Iraq. From AP, July 28:

Rockets strike an upscale Shi'a district, killing dozens
Rockets and mortars rained down an upscale, mostly Shi'a area of Baghdad yesterday, collapsing an apartment house, shattering shops and killing at least 31 people -- part of the rising sectarian violence President Bush has vowed to stop.