From AP, July 23:

Republican John McCain on Wednesday credited the recent $10-a-barrel drop in the price of oil to President Bush's lifting of a presidential ban on offshore drilling, an action he has been advocating in his presidential campaign.

The New York Times' City Room blog reports a strange spectacle from 6th Ave. July 17:

As thousands of people, mostly of Tibetan and Nepalese ancestry, streamed out of Radio City Music Hall on Thursday afternoon, where they had gone to hear the Dalai Lama give a lecture on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, they found themselves in a chaotic scene on the Avenue of the Americas.

In the most significant sign of de-escalation we've yet seen, Iranian diplomats are to meet in Geneva this weekend to discuss the Islamic Republic's nuclear program with representatives of six world powers—including US Undersecretary of State William Burns. The establishment of a US diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time since 1980 has even been broached. (AFP, July 18) Wasting no time, the once-admirable Benny Morris places an op-ed in the New York Times July 18, with the cheerfully Orwellian title "Using Bombs to Stave Off War," making the case for Israeli air-strikes—and even nuclear strikes—against Iran.

Michael I. Niman, writing for ArtVoice of Buffalo, NY, July 16, reports on repression by federal law enforcement at this year's Rainbow Gathering in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest. The annual back-to-nature gathering—held in a different state each year, with a July 4 silent peace meditation in place of fireworks—has been in a long-running struggle with the Forest Service over access to the public lands. This year the feds took off the gloves—and the media played the "blame the victims" game:

The US Interior Department July 16 opened 2.6 million acres of potentially oil-rich territory in northern Alaska to exploration, but deferred for ten years a decision on opening 600,000 acres north of Teshekpuk Lake that is the summer home of thousands of migrating caribou and millions of waterfowl. Drilling leases will be sold later this year for much of the northeast section of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), holding an estimated 3.7 billion barrels of oil, according to Tom Lonnie, Alaska state director for the Bureau of Land Management, in a conference call with reporters.

The insidious thing about Al Gore is that he superficially sounds pretty good to environmentalists—so much so, that his ideas are even blasted as extremism by right-wing idiots. But if you scratch them, there is always less there than meets the eye. Let's examine. From the NY Times, July 16:

Gore Calls for Carbon-Free Electric Power
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore said on Thursday that Americans must abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within a decade and rely on the sun, the winds and other environmentally friendly sources of power, or risk losing their national security as well as their creature comforts.

It is axiomatic that the closer Obama gets to the White House, the more beholden to oil interests and imperial designs he will become—and therefore the more equivocal his opposition to the Iraq occupation. Watch this process in action. Andrew Malcolm writes for the LA Times' Top of the Ticket blog, July 16:

With all eyes on the Tribal Areas, the insurgency in Pakistan's bordering Baluchistan province continues. A roadside bomb wounded seven security personnel and two passers-by in Mastung district July 15. (AP, July 15) On July 4, an eight-year-old beggar was killed when a bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded at a crowded market in Quetta, Baluchistan's capital. "The blast killed an eight-year-old girl and injured her beggar mother who were sitting near the motorcycle parked by some unknown man," a police official said. (AFP, July 4)