Confronting fate: The futility of fighting conformity

Coming in contact with people from my past now that I’m back in Beaumont, I find a certain sameness we share. It’s through them that I’ve noticed this phenomenon, but I certainly don’t think it’s out of the ordinary. In fact, when it comes to word choice, interests, appearance, and religious, political, and moral values, I find people have far more in common than I initially tend to notice.

To some extent it is regionalism. When I visited Michigan about a year ago when I planned to attend law school at Michigan State the following fall, I did find a certain change in assumptions. The depressed economy and racial homogeneity created a culture that was indifferent on issues like immigration and racial equality and more focused on economic issues such as foreign policy, labor laws, and corporatism. While I was there, the US congressman’s office was vandalized and an anti-war protest commemorating the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq included obscene slurs and gestures against the local police, shouting matches with dissenting pedestrians, and hilariously naïve chants such as, “No more warfare! The system needs welfare!”

The “system” needs welfare? I’m guessing they mean they want more handouts and wish to increase regulations on businesses that created their economic problems in the first place, but with people who love to call anyone to the right of Dennis Kucinich a fascist, I imagine most of them probably didn’t really know what they were screaming about.

What most concerns me about the common threads we share is that maybe even though I think I’m a beautiful, unique snowflake, I might actually be pretty much like everyone else. Though I engage in slightly contrarian behaviors and possess atypical viewpoints, my deviations are inconsequential. They represent diversity within accepted norms. I worry that my ideas are in some sense forced, the product of contrived chance – like I’m just flipping a coin to avoid going with the flow of the majority.

Stepping back, I can point to consistency within my ideas that do suggest I am not a product of mere chance. By bucking convention I can argue that I am less a creation of my environment and swayed instead by logic and reason.

But what nags me, what sits in the back of my mind, is the understanding that the universe is a convolution of cause and effect relationships. Whether or not it has a first cause, each perceived action has a corresponding reaction. All these relationships are bound by consistent physical laws.

I’ve argued that a higher proportion of atheists possess Calvinist ideas than Christians. In other words, religious people have more room for freewill in their belief systems than non-theists. Our reliance on science over magical thinking leaves us lacking the anthropocentric contrivance that we are in control of the universe and a supernatural man in the sky loves us, wants us to be happy, and provides us with freedom.

So where does that leave me? Do I create my environment or does my environment create me? My hope is that my acknowledgment of these relationships can provide me some respite from its forces. To know that fate is my enemy may be my only chance to overcome it.

The Bollich Social Security Plan

Social Security Plan

1. Abolish Social Security
1. Reasons

i. Social Security is a pyramid scheme. It relies on a pay-as-you-go system where only those already receiving benefits gain in the short-run. Younger workers pay for the old.

ii. There is no trust fund. Money to pay for social security benefits comes immediately from payroll tax and the surplus is put into general revenue and written off as an IOU.

iii. Social Security discourages savings by placing the burden on government instead of the individual.

iv. The 6.2% payroll tax for employees is a myth. The actual figure is 12.4%. Employees are paid a salary 6.2% lower than they deserve in the first place due to the real costs to employers.

v. Over the span of 1935-2000, the rate of return for social security was well under 5 percent (2 percent?) while the returns on stocks was 10.2 percent a year and the return on bonds was nearly 6 percent.

vi. Due to the regressive payroll tax cutting off at $90,000 and the greater ability of wealthy individuals to invest excess income, the system most negatively effects lower and middle class income earners.

2. Plan

i. The U.S. government could easily issue bonds in the amount of the total Social Security liability ($8.1 trillion), deposit the bonds in the accounts of all current retirees and payers of the payroll tax (to the extent of their payments to date), abolish the payroll tax and close the system.[1]

ii. This would increase the national debt from $5 trillion to $13.1 trillion (in name only)[2] but would also save $400 billion a year in Social Security payments.

iii. Rescind the Bush tax cuts and use money to create a means-tested welfare program to target those who are actually poor.

2. Deregulate Pharmaceutical Industry
1. Reason

i. The elderly are the biggest victims of the greed of the pharmaceutical industry.

2. Plan

i. Allow more generics into the market, encouraging competition and resulting in lower costs for consumers.

ii. Allow competition from foreign producers, most notably Canada.

iii. Clearly, protections would be put in place to make sure drugs are safe and accurately labeled.

3. Create Culture of Savings
1. Reasons

i. Social Security has left individuals dependent on government for their retirement security.

2. Plan

i. Offer financial incentives to schools who initiate programs to teach children about savings.

ii. Provide community programs for older citizens.

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[1] http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3421

[2] The debt actually stands at $13.1 trillion when taking Social Security into account.

The Pentagon, Larry Silverstein, and the Continuing Government Cover-Up

After over a year of investigating the 9/11 attacks, I feel safe in debunking one of the most popular theories – the idea that the Pentagon was not hit by American Airlines Flight 77. Somehow, myself and many other “investigators” failed to acknowledge the wealth of eyewitness evidence, as well as the comparative evidence to the World Trade Center attacks. In the WTC attacks we don’t see wreckage from the plane outside the building. That’s because, like in the Pentagon, the plane went all the way into the building, meaning any remaining debris would be inside the structure. There is photographic evidence of debris as well as eyewitness testimony here: http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/pentahole_dimensions_est.htm.

With that said, and with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report coming out, there is still one very important lingering question: Did Building 7 in the World Trade Center complex really come down primarily due to fire, with some amount of structural damage from debris from the two main towers?

It would be easier to accept this conclusion at face value if it wasn’t for the testimony of Larry Silverstein, owner of Silverstein Properties, the company leasing the WTC complex on the day of the attacks.

In the PBS documentary about 9/11, America Rebuilds, Silverstein says, “I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.’” (For the video clip go to http://www.infowars.com/print/Sept11/FDNY.htm. Scroll down to UPDATED -- HI RES!! Watch the Video Clip and click on the link.)

This evidence is not mentioned in either the FEMA report or the more recent report from the NIST. Not only that, we have the CBS broadcast of Dan Rather saying, “It’s reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen too much on television before when a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.” (For video of this go to http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc7.html, scroll down to “Other media coverage of the collapse...,” and click on the video on the right.)

It is also important to note that Larry Silverstein made a fortune off the destruction of the World Trade Center. In July 2001, he purchased a 99-year lease on the complex costing an intitial $616 million and $115 million a year after that. These amounts were to total $3.2 billion. After the attacks he was awarded an insurance payment of over $3.5 billion and then sued for an additional $3.5 billion claiming the two planes constituted two separate terrorist attacks. (For more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Silverstein, and more: http://globalfire.tv/nj/03en/jews/wtc-silverstein.htm.)

That the official 9/11 story still does not account for Silverstein’s testimony, his impeccable luck, or the luck of traders who placed an unprecedented number of put options (bets the stock would fail) on American Airlines and United Airlines just days before the attack, shows that our government either doesn’t care about these things or doesn’t want us to know.

If I’ve peaked your interest at all you might want to join the Denton 9/11 Questions Meetup Group at: http://9-11.meetup.com/228/.

A Smoking Gun, Disinformation, or Just a Prank?

For starters, read this article from American Free Press on Rense: http://www.rense.com/general63/TWIN.HTM.

The article alleges that a Timothy McNiven has claimed the U.S. Army devised a plan in 1976 to take down the World Trade Center using passenger jets and even goes so far as to say box cutters were mentioned in the plan. He is supposedly a "a 29-year U.S. Defense Department operative still under contract with the government."

Well, I tried to find some information on this Timothy McNiven. First off, he is apparently involved in the Mariani vs. Bush lawsuit. Okay, I found Ellen Mariani's complaint (full text) with mention of McNiven:

51. Plaintiff’s basis for alleging Defendants had prior knowledge “terrorists” could highjack commercial aircraft and attack the United States is not only due to Defendant GWB’s continued withholding of facts and public records necessary for the “911 Commission” to perform its public duty, but, supported by the sworn affidavit of Timothy Stuart McNiven, former United States Army participant in a 1975 Congressional funded military study which purpose was to “identify security lapses and submit corrective actions” to Congress. (See Exhibit “B”).24

52. Based upon review of Affiant McNiven’s sworn statement Plaintiff asserts Defendant USA, et al., charged with defending America had prior knowledge before “911” that the events of this infamous day in American history could take place and did. Hence, Defendant USA’s failure to implement the findings of the study was grossly/criminally negligent and Defendant’s “failing to prevent” the attacks of “911” raises other serious national security and public trust matters important for Plaintiff to obtain justice in this case. Affiant McNiven’s testimony and the chilling similarities of the study’s scenarios to the actual events of “911,” support a basis Defendants were grossly/criminally negligent in failing to prevent “911.” Affiant McNiven’s testimony also provides the “nexus” to include Defendant George H. Bush, Sr., (hereinafter “Defendant GHB”) as a critical party to this litigation as Defendant GHB as CIA Director at the time of the study and reasons for its not being implemented are very relevant for Plaintiff to find the answers as to why her husband was murdered on “911.” Plaintiff believes, Defendants’ GWB and his father, GHB, hold the answers for the entire nation to be informed of the truth as to “911” and why it occurred and was not prevented.25

53. Plaintiff asserts the facts and circumstances as set forth in Affiant McNiven’s statement provide the foundation to call into question all Defendant GWB’s official and private national security advisors’ apparent ill-willed “advice” which once full discovery is achieved, will prove not only that Defendants were grossly negligent in failing to prevent the “911” attacks, they were also criminally negligent wherein this Court, for the good of the nation, must grant any and all declaratory and injunctive relief to hold Defendants’ accountable for all crimes proven in this civil action. For these reasons, Defendant GWB cannot and must not be afforded “Executive Privilege” or any other governmental immunity from defending this lawsuit as the “national security” interests of Plaintiff and the American People outweigh the “national security” interests of “individual Defendants” in this matter.26

Now I'm making some progress. I found McNiven's website: www.codenamegrillfire.com. Here's the first paragraph of the introduction:

I am United States Defense Department Intelligence Operative "Grillfire" aka US Government Federal Agent Timothy S. McNiven; in 1976 I took part in a Democratic - Republican Political Party US Congressional Commissioned Military Study to Improve US Air Travel Security while stationed on Strassberg Kasern in Idar-Oberstein,W.Germany assigned to C-Battery 2/81st FA, US Army 1975-76. The purpose of the Study was to Identify Security Lapses and Submit Corrective Actions to the US Congress; on September 11,2001 the Security Lapses that were used to carry out the Attacks were the same ones that were submitted to the US Congress for Correcting "25 Years" before.

For those who don't know, this isn't the first smoking gun of an actual plan for such an attack. On March 13, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a document to Secretary of Defense with plans on how to provoke a war with Cuba. One of the ideas set forth was to crash a passenger plane over Cuba and blame it on Castro to create enough fervor for an invasion. The Bay of Pigs invasion had taken place less than a year before in April of 1961.

That's all I have time for right now. I'll get back to this when I get out of class.