May 17 commentary "For links to the articles I read on the air, guest websites, archived shows, my commentaries, a listener's discussion forum, and the text of Mark Stanneart’s latest commentary, visit: www.rabblerousing.org."

On yesterdays morning show, when we finally succeeded in getting travis t hipp on air, he mentioned that equador was following the lead of Venezuela and Bolivia by nationalizing their oil industries. To do so, they are messing with occidental oil corp which has been taking eqiadors oil for decades, and giving the euadorian people bananas in return. Travis neglected to mention one very interesting factoid. Guess whose family owns major major stock in occidental oil corp? does the name albert gore ring a bell with anyone? Yep, the gore family and big al himself are major players in occidental oil. there may be a difference between dems and republicans at the rank and file level, and the media of course plays that triviality for all its worth, but at the level that holds the reins of power, its one good old boys club. The bush family are oil people and the gore family are oil people. Aren’t you reassured to realize that no matter who wins every 4 years in nov, ,the real agenda remains the same? We do have a remarkable continuity of purpose in our governing system. Exploitation is the name of the game. Speaking of games, remember when you played basketball on the playgrounds? You and your friends chose teams, and then one group stripped off their shirts, the others kept theirs on and you had shirts verses skins? Well politics in America is pretty much the same deal. The elite get together, divide into 2 groups, one declaring themselves dems, the other republicans, and then proceed to steal from the rest of us. It’s the great American game. And you thought that the world series, the super bowl, and the nba playoffs were Americas gift to the sporting world. Welcome to the blood sport of politics, American style.

Dateline wash dc. Reported on npr on Monday: the us govt announced it would not longer sell military arms and weapons to Venezuela. Im sure us military contractors were disappointed, unless they feel they can still sell their products thru back channels, but it does seem the us govt has learned something from their escapades in the middle east. If you are planning on eventually invading a country to take over their oil, perhaps its not such a good idea to be equipping their army in the years before your benevolent invasion. For those of you old enuff to remember the book and movie catch 22, Lt milo minderbinder would turn over in his grave. He would wonder just what has military capitalism come to ? that was fiction but we have the very real history of ww2, when the giant american based corporations of ford, Dupont, gen elec, to name a few amongst many, sold equipt vital to make war to both sides not only before the war but during. It seems that those corporations were tied to similar enterprises in nazi germany, and they all did a terrific business while young men slaughtered one another on both sides. And curiously, when our bombers flew over germany their targets did not include war industries run by those interlocked corporations. You do understand don’t you? , all together now: wave your flag and send your loved ones over to iraq, Afghanistan, and soon to iran, to bring misery to their people and oil to our corporations. The American neocons now running the us govt are the new Nazis, only without the racism. We do live on a strange planet.

Next item: On Wednesday, April 26, a Republican-dominated House committee caved in to telecom companies like AT&T and struck a blow to Internet freedom by voting to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment. Net Neutrality guarantees that all online speech is treated equally and prevents Internet providers like AT&T from deciding which websites work best on your computer. It has always been the law of the land until recently being threatened.. Without it, these companies can decide what you see and do online.. The Senate also begins hearings soon.. The full House votes on whether to preserve Internet freedom next week, and the Senate considers this issue soon after. The time to act is now. If you care about this issue you could call your elected reps. Urge them to preserve, or eliminate Internet freedom by supporting Network Neutrality--and to oppose any telecom law that doesn't protect Net Neutrality. On the other hand if you don’t want internet freedom and think the giant internet providers should decide what you cant do and read on your net, tell em that. I cant tell you how to think or act, only that if you don’t act, you may soon not have the right to think. At least not while using the internet. Your reps in this area are: Congressman Wally Herger Phone: 202-225-3076 Senator Barbara Boxer Phone: 202-224-3553, Senator Dianne Feinstein Phone: 202-224-3841
next item: The Placerville City Council voted unanimously to approve an ordinance authorizing licensed medical cannabis dispensaries.  Applicants are required to file for a permit from the police.  On-site consumption & cultivation are prohibited, as are "retail sales" of any product.   Dispensaries must operate on a non-profit basis.

Next item: the state of Alaska struck the first legal blow in the fight against a national ID card by refusing to pass legislation to bring the state in line with REAL ID requirements. The bill, SB-189, breezed through the state's rubber stamp Senate before being killed by a duo of freedom-loving legislators in the House of Representatives. Who are these heroes of the Bill of Rights? Front and center is Rep. Paul Seaton of Homer, a commercial fisherman and Chairman of the House State Affairs Committee. Through his leadership and by voting against fellow Republicans, Rep. Seaton killed SB-189 and beat back a last minute attempt to resurrect the bill by his party. The party paid him back by killing most, if not all of his own bills. The Identity Project is proud to have been involved in testifying before the State Affairs Committee and providing the information needed to make sure that the oppression of a national ID card never hits the shores of the Last Frontier. Alaska has said 'no' to a national ID card: which other state will love freedom enough to follow in their footsteps?

WHO IS TO BE "DETAINED?" Thursday, April 27, 2006Posted by Jim Hightower

Look out – here comes Halliburton again! With its own personal sugar daddy occupying the vice president's chair, this giant government contractor keeps getting multibillion-dollar, no-bid contracts from the BushCheney regime, despite having been found guilty of shoddy work, massive cost-overruns, and fraudulent billings.

Its latest windfall, however, should not merely be worrisome to tax payers, but also to anyone concerned about the Bushites' anti-democratic penchant to extend ever-more police and military power over We the People. Halliburton has been granted a $385 million contract for a most unusual project: building a network of detention centers across our country. Up to 5,000 people could be "detained" and held in each of these centers, which are to be run by homeland security authorities and possibly located on unused military bases.

"Detain," of course, is a euphemism for "incarcerate" – or "lock up." And "center" is a gentle term for "prison."

So, why does America suddenly need to spend a third-of-a-billion dollars to establish a new mass prison complex in our country? The feds and Halliburton cryptically say that the detention centers could be needed for "some kind of mass migration" or for "the rapid development of new programs." When asked what is meant by the ominous term, "new programs," a Halliburton spokeswoman said she could provide no additional information.

Another curious aspect is that the Bushites refer to this as a "contingency contract," saying that the detention centers might never be built, but that Halliburton will have the cash and authority to move quickly if and when given the go-ahead. The corporation's executive vice president says that Halliburton is "gratified," because the deal "builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency management support."

This is Jim Hightower saying... But who is to be managed, and in support of what policy?

Sources: The New York Times, February 4, 2006, www.marketwatch.com, January 2, 2006, and again, The New York Times, March 29, 2006

Dateline Australia: Australian Police have been unable to recommend a prosecution for the following scam:
A company takes out a newspaper advertisement claiming to be able to supply imported hard core pornographic videos. As their prices seem reasonable, people place orders and make payments via check.
After several weeks, the company writes back explaining that under the present law they are unable to supply the materials and do not wish to be prosecuted. So they return their customers' money in the form of a company check. However, due to the name of the company, few people will present these checks to their banks.
The name of the company: "The Kinky Sex and Fetish Perversion Company."

More on the mysteries of 911: By Suzanne Dean Deseret Morning News (Utah’s oldest daily, founded 1847) EPHRAIM utah: A Brigham Young University physicist said he now believes an incendiary substance called thermite, bolstered by sulfur, was used to generate exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center on 9/11, causing the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse.
"It looks like thermite with sulfur added, which really is a very clever idea," Steven Jones, professor of physics at BYU, told a meeting of the Utah Academy of Science, Arts and Letters at Snow College Friday.
The government requires standard explosives to contain tag elements enabling them to be traced back to their manufacturers. But no tags are required in aluminum and iron oxide, the materials used to make thermite, he said. Nor, he said, are tags required in sulfur.
Jones is co-chairman, with James H. Fetzer, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a group of college faculty members who believe conspirators other than pilots of the planes were directly involved in bringing down New York's Trade Towers.
The group, which Jones said has 200 members, maintains a Web site at www.st911.org. A 40-page paper by Jones, along with other peer-reviewed and non-reviewed academic papers, are posted on the site.
Last year, Jones presented various arguments for his theory that explosives or incendiary devices were planted in the Trade Towers, and in WTC 7, a smaller building in the Trade Center complex, and that those materials, not planes crashing into the buildings, caused the buildings to collapse.
At that time, he mentioned thermite as the possible explosive or incendiary agent. But Friday, he said he is increasingly convinced that thermite and sulfur were the root causes of the 9/11 disaster.
He told college professors and graduate students from throughout Utah gathered for the academy meeting that while almost no fire, even one ignited by jet fuel, can cause structural steel to fail, the combination of thermite and sulfur "slices through steel like a hot knife through butter."
He ticked off several pieces of evidence for his thermite fire theory:
First, he said, video showed a yellow, molten substance splashing off the side of the south Trade Tower about 50 minutes after an airplane hit it and a few minutes before it collapsed. Government investigators ruled out the possibility of melting steel being the source of the material because of the unlikelihood of steel melting. The investigators said the molten material must have been aluminum from the plane.
But, said Jones, molten aluminum is silvery. It never turns yellow. The substance observed in the videos "just isn't aluminum," he said. But, he said, thermite can cause steel to melt and become yellowish.
Second, he cited video pictures showing white ash rising from the south tower near the dripping, liquefied metal. When thermite burns, Jones said, it releases aluminum-oxide ash. The presence of both yellow-white molten iron and aluminum oxide ash "are signature characteristics of a thermite reaction," he said.
Another item of evidence, Jones said, is the fact that sulfur traces were found in structural steel recovered from the Trade Towers. Jones quoted the New York Times as saying sulfidization in the recovered steel was "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the (official) investigation." But, he said, sulfidization fits the theory that sulfur was combined with thermite to make the thermite burn even hotter than it ordinarily would.
Jones said a piece of building wreckage had a gray substance on the outside that at one point had obviously been a dripping molten metal or liquid. He said that after thermite turns steel or iron into a molten form, and the metal hardens, it is gray.
He added that pools of molten metal were found beneath both trade towers and the 47-story WTC 7. That fact, he said, was never discussed in official investigation reports.
And even though WTC 7 was not connected to the Trade Towers — in fact, there was another building between it and the towers —and even though it was never hit by a plane, it collapsed. That suggests, he said, that it came down because a thermite fire caused its structural steel to fail.
Jones said his studies are confined to physical causes of the collapses, and he doesn't like to speculate about who might have entered the buildings and placed thermite and sulfur. But he said 10 to 20 people "in the know," plus other people who didn't know what they were doing but did what they were told, could have placed incendiary packages over several weeks.

Next item: way back when the us still had the draft, I turned military age. I wasn’t smart enuff to simply tell the govt the proper lies to avoid being drafted. Back then, if you told them you liked to fondle boys, or used heroin for kicks, you escaped the draft, but I hadn’t woken up yet, so the only escape I saw from 2 years in the army, was to join the national guard. The time was between The Korean and vietmamese wars, so there was no chance I would kill anyone, unless I got really drunk, and besides I would be stationed in van nuys calif. For those of you who question my military skills I wish to point out that during my time of military servitude, the russians never once invaded van nuys. And unlike our dear president, I never went awol or avoided duty. I drank at least as much as he did, but I at least showed up for work. Ok chamba, we got a membership drive going on, the world is going to hell in a hand basket, so why are you boring us with your military history. Patience boys and girls, there is a point to this story. My fellow guardsmen were mostly guys who supplemented their incomes from their weekly jobs by serving in the national guard on weekends. In fact the universal slang term for us was weekend warriors. And that was the composition of the national guard. Guys who spent one weekend a month picking up spare income. Gung ho we were not. It was the same in every state. Fast forward to now. How many Americans will now sign up for their states national guard, knowing they aint just earning spare money on weekends? Nowadays they can and probably will be torn from job and family and sent off half way round the world to kill and be killed in oil wars, or be mobilized to spend time in the amreican deserts chasing illegal immigrants, or sent to costal cities to harass poor people flooded out of their homes because the govt couldnt be bothered to update protective levees? I suspect that enlistment in all the states national guards will plummet dramatically. It aint the cushy extra income job it once was. The times they are a changing. And when the national guards fail to meet their enlistment quotas, then what? Where will the govt get the troops necessary for their wars of aggression and fascist militarization of America? .the neocons sure as hell wont be sending their sons and daughters to do the dirty work. Don’t be surprised to learn that one option offered to captured illegal aliens is a term in the military, in order to gain legal status.