Jake Johnson at Common Dreams writes—'Itching for a War,' Bolton Threatens Iran With 'Unrelenting Force' as US Bombers Deployed to Middle East
In a late Sunday statement warning—without any evidence whatsoever—of "troubling and escalatory" actions by the Iranian government, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton used the scheduled deployment of an American aircraft carrier and bomber task force to the Middle East to threaten Iran with military action.
The United States, said Bolton, "is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force."
Foreign policy analysts and international observers were quick to point out that the Lincoln Strike Group's deployment was announced nearly a month ago—a fact critics highlighted as further evidence that Bolton is willing to use any and every opportunity to move the U.S. closer to war with Iran. [...]
Stephen Miles, director of Win Without War, said Bolton's statement is "the latest indication that this administration is running full speed directly into a major war with Iran."
"This is Bush and Iraq in 2002," said Miles. "The time to stop their disastrous war plans is now!" [...]
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QUOTATION
“The problem was that public had no way to know that this “evidence” was part of an industry campaign designed to confuse. It was, in fact, part of a criminal conspiracy to commit fraud.”
~~Naomi Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. (2010)
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2010—Nearly 40 Million Now on Food Stamps:
The actual paper stamps were phased out more than a decade ago and replaced with a debit-card system, and the name of the 46-year-old program was changed 18 months ago to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). But most people still call them food stamps. And as of February, the latest data available, a record 39.7 million Americans were using them to put meals on the table, 13% of the population. Just a year ago, 33.8 million people were using food stamps.
Though not without its problems, the program remains one of the government's greatest successes, a key remaining part of a shredded social safety net. Even with the soaring use of food stamps because of the recession, most recipients are not jobless but rather low-wage workers. Without that backstop, many more of them and their children would be going hungry in America. A peer-reviewed study in 2009 ("Estimating the Risk of Food Stamp Use and Impoverishment During Childhood") calculated that 49% of children will receive food-stamp benefits sometime before they are 20 years old.