More glowing reports of freedom on the march in Iraq. This from the July 7 New York Times, reprinted the following day in the International Herald Tribune.

Shiite theocracy takes hold in Iraqi oil city
By Edward Wong The New York Times

BASRA, The loudest sounds from musicians' row these days come from explosions.

Ahmed Ali walked through a shop that had sold musical instruments before it was gutted by a bombing a week earlier, the latest in a series of mysterious attacks in this narrow alley in the past six months, he said. The men here, just a block from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, sell instruments by day and perform at weddings in the evening.

Following the July 5 attack by presumed Islamic militants at the disputed Indian holy site of Ayodhya, protests have broken out throughout India. Over 2,000 were arrested in Delhi, where police used tear gas, and critics charge the protests have been particularly violent in states controlled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A previously unknown armed group, the Fatherland is First Popular Revolutionary Command (Comando Popular Revolucionario La Patria es Primero), has claimed responsibility for the July 6 assassination of former Guerrero state government secretary Ruben Robles Catalan, whose driver was also killed in the attack.

As this fairly comprehensive account from The Australian makes clear, the notion that the London attacks were carried out by a heretofore unheard-of "Secret Organization of the Jihad of al-Qaeda in Europe" originates from reports on the websites of Germany's Der Spiegel and the Italian news agency ANSA that a communique claiming responsibility in that name appeared on an unnamed Islamic militant website. The quoted rhetoric is entirely plausible:

Collected by Mazin Qumsiyeh:

http://www.masnet.org/takeaction.asp?id=2594
http://mpac.org/home_article_display.aspx?ITEM=790
http://icna.org/pr_london_attacks.htm
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050707/dcth034.html?.v=19
http://isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=220

See our last post on the attacks.

Jul. 7, 2005 22:59 | Updated Jul. 8, 2005 1:08
Arab world shocked at London attacks

By ORLY HALPERN

Some in the Arab world expressed shock at the bombings in a city for which many felt great affection and which is home to numerous Arab exile groups, newspapers and businesses.

In another sign that the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox is seeking to capitalize on the Zapatista rebels' new political direction to finally resolve the ongoing Chiapas headache, his government announced yesterday that it will release some 800 indigenous prisoners, finding that they were either innocent or had been manipulated into committing a federal crime, the daily El Universal reports July 7.

A large area of downtown Edinburgh was evacuated today when police found a "suspicious package" on a bus, the Scotsman reports. The alert was called off after police conducted what they callled a "controlled explosion" on the bus. Given the London blasts and continuing protests against the G8 summit in the Scottish capital, police are taking no chances. Meanwhile, the Scotsman reports that following yesterday's brief breach of the security perimeter around the Gleneagles resort, police have sealed off the protesters' encampment at nearby Stirling, trapping some 5,000 within the cordon.