The use of contractors in Iraq since 2003 is estimated at $85 billion. This doesn’t include any figures for 2008 so it could have topped $100 billion by now.
The matter is being called into question following complaints of corruption and over-pricing. The involvement of private companies with killing and torture has raised anger in Iraq, and what happens to employees themselves and their families when they are killed or injured is not governed by military procedures.
The use of contractors is unprecedented and not confined to the U.S. We learned recently of the suicide of one of the security guards among the five British personnel kidnapped in Iraq. While one of those taken was a computer expert the other four were acting as his bodyguards.

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The Israeli administration allows its army to do anything it likes, including upholding actions deemed illegal by its own courts. Today’s news from Bil’in shows that while they are attempting to degrade the Palestian people – here exercising non-violent protest, in fact they only demonstrate their own degradation. As another articles, a tribute to the Palestinain poet Mahmoud Darwish, posted today shows Jewish people do not universally support the attitude of the extremist right wingers with their message of Zionism. If this action is a demonstration of what these superior beings are about they need to go away and think again. Any normal human being would hang their head in shame.
Toilet water – the new kind of weapon used against the people from Bil’in
Bil’in’s Protest 8/08/08
Today,8 August 2008, after the Friday Prayers, the inhabitants of Bil’in, Israeli, and international peace activists participated in a demonstration against the wall. They raised Palestinian flags and signs with slogans that condemn the policies of the occupation. The slogans condemned the construction of the wall, the confiscation of Palestinian lands for the construction of settlements, the road closures, and the seizure of Palestinian villages, towns, and cities. The protesters also carried signs with slogans against the killing of innocent civilians, especially children. In addition, the slogans condemned the attacks on detainees, in particular, shooting at them while detained, hand cuffed and blindfolded.
The protest started from the centre of the village, and the protesters chanted similar slogans in addition to those that called for national unity. Upon arrival to the wall, the protesters while raising photos of the murdered children, Ahmed Husam Yousef Musa and Yousef Ahmed Amera, attempted to cross the wall in to their land. The action was a symbol of protest against the monstrous violations that Israeli soldiers commit against Palestinian civilians. Israeli soldiers murdered Ahmed 10 days ago, 29 July 2008, and Yousef 3 days ago, 4 August 2008 – both while participating in non-violent protests against the construction of the segregation wall in Ni’lin.
Today, the protesters succeeded to arrive at the location of the wall, and they repeated chants and slogans against the occupation soldiers and their officers that command them to shoot unarmed civilians. Soon after, confrontations started, the soldiers started firing tear gas, and sprayed us with toilet water. We would like to take a sample for analysis. Many people immediately had to be sick after being sprayed with this water. This is not the first time they use water, but this time was the first that they used water from the toilets. In addition to the water, the soldiers use many types of weapons on the Palestinians. For example they use many types of gas, many types of rubber bullets, clean water, water mixed with gas, scream, saltball, sackbeans. All of these are new weapons.
From a different point, the Israeli Supreme Court gave 45 days (52 as of today) to the Israeli army to correct the current track of the segregation wall that passes through the village. Israeli Chief Justice, Dorit Beinisch, and two of her fellow colleagues, condemned the Israeli government’s neglictance of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year, which ordered the correction of the current track of the wall.
Chief Justice Beinisch confirmed to the Israeli government representative, Avi Lisht, her ruling to correct the track of the wall and added; “we ruled that the current track cannot sustain as it does now.”
The people of Bil’in submitted a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court in 2005, hoping to prevent the Israeli occupation army from confiscating their lands. The confiscated lands would be used to build the segregation wall and further annex the remaining of the land in favor of constructing the illegal settlement, ‘East Metateaho’.
On July 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court decreed the illegitimacy of constructing the wall on Bil’in’s lands, and further ordered the government to propose a different track of the wall without harming the nature of the village. A year after the ruling, and because the Israeli government did not act in accordance with the ruling, the people of Bil’in through their advocate, Mikhael Sfard, decided to return to the Supreme Court. The Israeli government further continues the same policy without acknowledging the Supreme Courts ruling.
Thank you for you continued support,
Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
Head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bilin
Email- ffj.bilin@yahoo.com
Mobile- (00972) (0) 547847942
Office- (00972) (2) 2489129
Fax- (00972) (2) 2489129
www.bilin-ffj.org

The following tribute to Mahmoud Darwish, known as the Palestinian National Poet, was sent to me by Jewish Voice for Peace:
Mahmoud Darwish died on Saturday after a heart surgery at a US hospital. He was often called the Palestinian “national poet”. In his poems, he used Palestine as “a metaphor — for the loss of Eden, for the sorrows of dispossession and exile, for the declining power of the Arab world in its dealings with the West.” (“A Poet’s Palestine as Metaphor,” NY Times, Dec., 2001).
Darwish’s official website
Some of his poems can be found online.
A sample of his work is the following:
—-
I Come From There
I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.
***
I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up
To make a single word: Homeland
———
Of several articles I read, I like the one below, a May 2002 interview in the Progressive Magazine.
Racheli Gai and Judith Norman
—————-

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The following is from George Rishmawi, our friend in Bethlehem. George accompanied us in Ramallah and Bethlehem in January 2004. I met him in Birmingham earlier this year. The illegal land grab continues as Israeli soldiers fail to protect Palestinians and their international supporters holding a Christian service.
Original Message —–
From: George N. Rishmawi
To: PCR List
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 5:31 PM
Subject: [rapprochement] Israeli Settlers try to re-occupy land in Beit Sahour
Dear All,
The Israeli settlers are trying to re-occupy a land that belongs to Beit Sahour in Ush Ghrab site. Please see the article below,,, your full support is needed… the
presence of the settlers will prevent the construction of a hospital for children.
or go to this link
http://www.imemc.org/article/56403
Besides, IMEMC and AIC produced a film about the site,,
Ush Ghrab; Liberated Land under Attack click the link or copy & paste it into your browser
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9ZaFwi6WBo
Israeli settlers prevent a Christian service in Beit Sahour, assault worshippers
Over two hundred Israeli settlers assaulted Palestinian and International worshippers who were holding a prayer service at Ush Ghrab park in Beit Sahour Wednesday evening.
As the mass started the settlers, who organized an activity in the same site, started to provoke the worshippers and asked them to leave, eyewitnesses reported.
Settlers also threatened some of the local and international journalists who were present. The Israeli soldiers who were there asked the internationals and the
Palestinians to leave the park and did not attempt to stop the settlers when they started to force everyone to leave, the witnesses said.
The city council of Beit Sahour is planning to build a children hospital in the site in cooperation with intentional organization CURE. However, the Israeli army imposed a military order on the designated area and the settlers started to frequently plan activities on the site and claimed that the land belongs to them and that they want to built a settlement on this land.
The worshippers raised their prayers for the sake of the children of Bethlehem in order to have the planned hospital built.
The settlers, who come from the neighboring illegal settlements of Har Homa and Efrat and others in the Bethlehem area, erased murals that some Palestinian and
international activists had made a week ago and wrote some racist graffiti, calling for the death of Arabs.
Ush Ghrab was occupied by the Israeli army in 1967 and was used as a military base. In 2006 the army abandoned the site and the city council in Beit Sahour
rehabiliatated the site and turned part of it into a public park, and had a plan to build a hospital on the rest of it, in addition to some other facilities that would server the local community in Bethlehem.
—

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