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US could provide Medicare for all citizens as Canada does if some war spending ($891,971,525,495 since 2001) spared
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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 read more »
Disturbing: War thirsts for blood. Soldiers in demand. Pressure on recruiters: 17 died by their own hand since '01
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Amanda Henderson's husband Patrick worked as a recruiter at the army's recruitment station in Longview, Texas. A veteran of the Iraq war, Sgt. 1st Class Henderson struggled with the pressures placed on recruiters, who until recently were ordered to enlist at least two new soldiers each month. Forced to work long hours at a task he didn't want, Henderson hanged himself in a shed behind his house in September, 2008.
Sgt. Henderson's situation was not atypical. The Hendersons met at recruiting school and were married in January 2008. She worked at a recruiting station in Nagadoches, Texas, 70 miles away from the station in Longview where Patrick was assigned. Henderson was forced into a second recruiting assignment he didn't want after he returned from a combat tour in Iraq.
Courage! Australian PM Kevin Rudd admits going to war with Iraq was wrong, pulling all AU troops back home
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Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said there had been a "failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of the intelligence - for example, the pre-war warning that an attack on Iraq would increase the terrorist threat, not decrease it".
Mr Rudd, a former diplomat, also dismissed his prede- cessor's argument that Australia had been obliged to send troops to Iraq because of its long-standing alliance with the United States.
He said while he valued the alliance highly, it did not mean that Canberra should automatically accede to US requests for military support.
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Photos courtesy of AP and defenselink.mil/HomePagePhotos/
Original Source: Telegraph
Smart! All 4100 British troops will be out of violence-wracked Iraq by end of July after years' invasion
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A British military band performs during the handover ceremony of Basra's international airport from British forces to the U.S. forces, 420 km (260 miles) southeast of Baghdad March 31, 2009. People in the Iraqi city of Basra fear the U.S. troops taking over from departing British forces, whose relatively light touch contrasts with the U.S. military's fearsome, and sometimes trigger-happy, reputation.
HOLLYWOOD - MARCH 21: Anti-war demonstrators carry model coffins in a protest march on Hollywood Boulevard to mark the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war ground invasion on March 21, 2009 in Hollywood, California. An estimated 91,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the invasion. The US has lost more than 4,200 military service members. While violence is reportedly at its lowest point since the US invasion, suicide bombers still terrorize the people of some regions of Iraq. President Barack Obama has ordered US combat troops home by September of 2010 and all US forces out by 2012. read more »
In main town of Pakistan's tribal area along Afghanistan border, death toll rises. Pakistan urges Obama to halt missile attacks
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(Above:) Pakistani tribesmen stand beside coffins of the victims of a suspected U.S. missile strike in Zharki village, near Miran Shah, the main town of Pakistan's tribal area along Afghanistan border, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2009. Suspected U.S. missiles killed 18 people on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, security officials said Friday, the first attacks on the al-Qaida stronghold since President Barack Obama took office.
Pakistan urged President Barack Obama to halt U.S. missile strikes on al-Qaida strongholds near the Afghan border, saying Saturday that civilians were killed the previous day in the first attacks since Obama's inauguration.
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Photos courtesy of AP Photo/Hasbunallah Khan and AFP
Original Source: Huffington Post
Shoe has position in politics? Never before as it does now. Iraqis divided over jail sentence for shoe thrower
Does Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi deserve fifteen years in jail, or "a statue erected in his honor"?
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In a land replete with martyrs and miscreants, Iraqis are divided over which label applies to Muntazer al-Zaidi. The once obscure television journalist who shot to fame for hurling his footwear at then President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference late last year was sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison after being found guilty of "assaulting a foreign leader on an official visit." But despite the verdict of Baghdad's Central Criminal Court, many ordinary Iraqis still hail the 30-year-old Shi'ite shoe thrower as a national hero.