Even as Bush-appointed US officials admit that "America's standing abroad had deteriorated to such an extent that it would take many years to restore it", the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds Americans "supportive of the president's handling of the war against terrorism". What can one conclude but that perhaps Americans truly are as stupid as much of the world thinks we are... *sigh*

But does Bush care? Apparently not. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA), the House appropriations subcommittee chairman who requested the report, called the Bush Administration's response to the findings "lackluster" and "disappointing."

As somewhat of a follow-up to my recent post regarding Israel and Palestine ("On the life and death of Rachel Corrie") I want to highlight several recent articles from The Electronic Intifada. The first, "The bittersweet lives of Palestine's children", is heart-wrenching, a simple recounting of the simple goings-on of one family—but a family living out its life in what anyone who takes the time to look can only describe as very distressing conditions...parents and children and extended families, trying to go about the business of living and learning and loving, despite the terrible weight of oppression, disenfranchisement, and constant violence...

The next article highlights hypocrisy on the part of Israel: "If it's against Jewish law, why is Israel doing it?". However I don't find this at all surprsing, because I don't see Israel as a "Jewish" state in a religious sense. I'm pretty sure that it's officially a secular state, and I think its leaders have little if any interest in Orthodox Jewish laws and codes—their concerns are those of politicians: power, wealth, prestige, personal gain... A film I saw that took place in Israel seemed to indicate that the Israeli state is, if anything, suspicious of Orthodox or particularly ferverent religious Jews...

Finally, regarding The Wall, "The US Media and the Wall: Thomas Friedman and 60 Minutes", of which I think few Americans are even aware...hopefully this will change a little with this recent media coverage... It just boggles my mind how Americans can blindly support Israel without really having a clue as to what it is actually doing...

One bit of good news I did see recently is that Sharon seems to have indicated that Israeli settlers will have to leave the occupied territories—hooray!!! Here are 3 NYT articles on the subject:

My comments: Apparently much doubt remains as to whether action will result from talk on Sharon's part, but we can certainly hope! Not surprisingly the settlers themselves aren't keen on the idea (apparently they claim that "a unilateral Israeli withdrawal would embolden terrorists"—huh??? A unilateral Israeli withdrawal is exactly what the "terrorists" are fighting for! I can't fathom what would make these wacko settlers think it would result in more attacks!), but I think it's entirely tough shit for them, because they never should have moved into the occupied territory to begin with!! If they didn't, they should have known that what they were doing was wrong and that eventually they would have to leave. As for the Palestinians, they're not holding their breath, but as a Palestinian cabinet member put it, "If Israel wants to leave Gaza, no Palestinian will stand in its way."[!]

My comments: It does seem strange that he's always been a strong supporter of the settlement movement, and now he's making these big claims—I hope it's not all a ruse... Yasir Arafat claimed Sharon was only planning on removing 17 trailers: "What, so they can replace them with another 170?"

So Bush can lie all he wants, take us into a perposterous war based on lies and falsified evidence, make all kinds of promises he fails to keep, but a FedEx courier makes a mistake, and 30 top students from Berkeley don't get to compete for Fullbright awards??! What a farce! Punishing the students for a mistake that is the fault of FedEx and/or Berkeley is totally unfair and wrong. Where is the sanity?! Fuck the Bush administration! Arrgh!