iraq-war

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Soldier’s Engagement Ring
by LuCxeed

I’ll be gone to the battlefield
Don’t cry, my darling
Just return to me our engagement ring

I’ll be gone to the battlefield
Don’t cry. Don’t cry, my darling
Just return to me our engagement ring

From pages 53 & 54 of the book: Love’s Footsteps ~ dedicated to a Bridge for Wisdom to Walk on

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BBC: Ben Wallace, an ex Army officer & former overseas director in the security & intelligence division at UK defense firm QinetiQ - one of the companies making the full body scanner technology - said, the "passive millimetre wave scanners", which QinetiQ helped develop, probably would not have detected key plots affecting passengers in the UK in recent years. Mr. Wallace said the scanners would probably not have detected the failed Detroit plane plot of Christmas Day. He said the same of the 2006 airliner liquid bomb plot and of explosives used in the 2005 bombings of 3 Tube trains and a bus in London.  read more »

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infowars.com: Friday, January 8, 2010 - The full body scanners that President Obama last night authorized to be rolled out in airports across the country at a cost of over $1 billion dollars not only produce detailed pictures of your genitals, but once inverted some of those images also display your naked body in full living color. Airport screeners will have access to huge high definition images that, once inverted, will allow them to see every minute detail of your body. TV viewers have been misled by blurring of faces and genitals of people in the images. When it comes to the real thing, your sexual organs and those of your children will be on full display to officials sat alone in back rooms, and with a simple inversion trick, your daughter’s naked body in full living high definition color will be there to be enjoyed by screeners.  read more »

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Unless we take steps to arrest climate change, we are heading toward catastrophic consequences that will be irreversible. With changing rain patterns, we have a serious problem of food production. Diseases are moving faster and farther. How do we get governments to act cooperatively in the common interest? We saw a bit of that during the financial crisis. Now that some people are rushing ahead and saying we are out of the crisis, we are falling back on the old habits of protecting our national interests.

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BNP leader Nick Griffin: "We want to present a moral choice between those parties supporting a futile and counter-productive war and one that says we should be out of there immediately."
Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev: "I believe that there is no prospect of a military solution. What we need is the reconciliation of Afghan society."
US Senate candidate Alan Khazei: "We've lost our way, strayed from our mission", "This isn't in our interest as a nation, and it's not fair to our troops."
Gordon Brown hopes to fix Afghan pullout date.

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calling for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, from a futile and counter-productive war

British National Party leader and parliamentary candidate, Nick Griffin -  read more »

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A Photographer's Personal Journey Through War
Like many of his contemporaries, American Peter van Agtmael felt compelled to cover the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I wish these pictures could convey more of what I experienced," van Agtmael writes. "They are harsh, despite the fact that I have great affection for many of the soldiers that I met as an embedded photographer. There is much that is left out, but I see no reason to romanticize war any more than it has been and always will be. If I found any truth in war, I found that in the end everyone has their own truth."

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The health care system in Canada is funded by a mix of public (70%) and private (30%) funding. The U.S. spends more per capita than any other nation in the world, but is the only wealthy industrialized country in the world that lacks some form of universal health care. In 2006, 70% of health care spending in Canada was financed by government, versus 46% in the United States. U.S. government expenditure on health care was just under 83% of total Canadian spending (public and private).

All Canadian citizens are covered with a provincial Medical Services Plan, which receives funds from the federal government via tax transfers. The system is therefore a single-payer one, whereby everyone contributes to the care of all citizens. Individuals choose their own physicians, who decide what care is required - not the government, regardless of what you might hear on radio and TV talk shows - and they do not have to ante up large sums for emergency and intensive care or even for infant delivery. The system works very well.

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Photos courtesy of costofwar.com and docotube.com

Original Source: Wikipedia and The Seattle Times