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US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos share a joint op-ed in the New York Times July 23, "Colombia's Gains Are America's, Too," shamelessly trading off the apparent hostage rescue operation to shill for the pending US-Colombia free trade agreement. Let's deconstruct this exercise in sinister propaganda:

There's a lesson here. But how many people are going to get it? From AP, July 23:

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Rising prices at the gas pump appear to be having at least one positive effect: Traffic deaths around the country are plummeting, just as they did during the Arab oil embargo more than three decades ago.

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.