Grab and Keel

From Wapo:

Green Party presidential, VP nominees freed from jail after Pa. arrests at foreclosure protest

According to POLITICS PA, in order to get on the ballot in Pennsylvania the Stein and PA based Honkala team had to produce 10 times the number of signatures that the dempubs need. They got more than 35,000:

[This year the Green Party of PA was required to submit 20,601 notarized signatures. The number equals two percent of those received by David Wecht during his 2011 run for state Superior Court.

Democratic and Republican candidates must submit only 2,000 signatures.]

Third parties get squat in the way of airtime. Since mortgage debt forgiveness is part of Stein’s platform and Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac and the Conestoga Bank are less than 400 feet apart in downtown Philadelphia, it makes sense that the team would choose  this location in an effort to dramatize their campaign. I wonder why Philly police gave the Green Party and Stein/Honkala the press? Every activist work his or her salt knows getting arrested comes with the territory. (Just ask Chris Hedges.)

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With Kofi Anan announcing his intent to let his mandate, as “UN-Arab League Peace Envoy For Syria” expire on August 31, It’s clear the Syrian bunker is growing in depth and width.

While Al Jazeera is reporting today that we USAN’s have mandated 12 million for humanitarian aid, Reuters is reporting that the US State Dept. says our government has set aside 25 million for “non-lethal assistance” and another 64 million for humanitarian assistance.

NBC had unconfirmed reports on Tuesday that we had supplied air-to-air missiles to the Free Syrian Army, something, they deny. However, there are a multitude of groups operating in Syria, including al Qaeda. There are reports that President Obama secretly authorized clandestine operations.

It’s hard to stop a killing machine once you unleash it. There are so many reasons why.

We have been feeding ours for over a decade.   Our wartime economy, which we still refuse to recognize as such, combined with the evil mess Reaganomics and BushCo left us has impoverished many of us and generally reduced our quality of life.  Maybe al Qaeda takes comfort from that, I don’t know.

However, I read several years ago, a theory that the end of World War II truncated democratization in the Middle East. Some hold the viewpoint that the forces which propelled that war, remain to be and are being, worked through in the Middle East.  I don’t think we are going to stay out of the process, whether we call it “war” or not.

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