Plane crashed into a building in north Austin

Sorry to hear someone died other than the idiot. It's amazing that only one person died so far because that explosion seemed huge. Some people may have just been lucky and away from their window cubicles or something.

 

What? Did you read what you quoted?

 

does this mean I won't get my Refund on time?

 

I don't know what the codes were like back in 1983 but this standard for any multi-story non-residential building.

Just wanted to highlight this as this goes back to the 9/11 conspiracy theories. I often see those pushing conspiracy theories the argument that no steel building has ever collapsed from fire and that a building fire like at the WTC never gets hot enough to melt steel. Its common knowledge and written into the building codes that steel performs poorly in fire, even poorer than heavy timber. What happens isn't that the steel melts but it becomes elastic and loses its strength at a far lower temperature than its melting point. Think of a steel girder like a piece of caramel. Just holding caramel in your hand it will soften and you can stretch it but it will only turn to liquid at a much higher temp. Steel is the same way and even at the temps of a house fire exposed steel will weaken.

 

I suspect in the media if it was an Arab or a Muslim that this would be labeled terrorism but besides that to follow JV's point I think the issue is whether this is a harbringer of other acts.

If I follow JV's point I think he is saying that this is a isolated incident and since this guy wasn't affiliated with any other organization the threat from this incident quite literally dies with him. I'm not quite sure I agree with that. For one its too early to absolutely say that he has no ties to any other organization but at the sametime if a single act is part of a larger trend I don't think it can be completely dismissed as not being terrorism. For instance Al Qaeda is no longer a centrally controlled organization but a more of a movement of indepent groups and individuals who claim the Al Qaeda branding. Also Al Qaeda's power now is primarily for providing motivation. So for instance a guy like Hassan who hasn't been shown to have taken orders or gotten material support from Al Qaeda is still considered a terrorist because he might've derived some motivation from Al Qaeda and embraces an ideology along the lines of Al Qaeda. With the attack in Austin this guy doesn't appear to have taken orders or gotten support from any other group but his views sound like they may have been influenced by anti-government views that have been around for a long long time and influenced people from McVeigh, to Eric Rudolph and to the man who ambushed three cops in Pittsburgh a few months ago. As part of an ideological movement Joseph Stack may be as much of a terrorist as Hassan was.

 

Repped. I think you make a good point that Stack may be part of a larger anti-government ideology. I don't know if I'd call it a movement due to lack of organization. But, he might be a harbinger of a more significant revolutionary effort, which would make this terrorism under my definition. I don't see that realistically developing though. I think what makes muslim terrorism much scarier than these guys is that the muslim terrorists are much more organized and much more popular than the anti-government types.

 

I've driven by the building a few times now and I am truly amazed that only one other person was killed. I am interested to hear more stories of what it was like inside the building at impact.

 

good post, made me re think my ideas on what a terrorist is. But then this leads to the question, "What would something like Colibine be considered?"

 

A group of kids with the same agenda, killing and instill terror as a means of sending a message/gaining vengeance, and at the same time setting the tone for future school shootings that would derive influence from them.

According to some posters on this board, this would be considered terrorism--I wouldn't be inclined to disagree, honestly, but I still think that what this guy did was terrorism as well. America's view of terrorism definitely involves "groups" and "organizations," but the overall meaning of the term is when an individual or a group/organization, commit a violent act/an act of force in order to send a political or ideological message (something our friend here most definitely had) to a government. This guy had a very anti-government leaning, had an agenda, and then went through conveying it by crashing a plane into a building (undoubtedly alluding to a prior act of terrorism). How one can deny this being an act of terrorism... I just don't know.

 

They were making the case on This Morning America that the perpetrator was not a terrorist. I disagree with their assessment.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35519143/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts

Daughter: Pilot in Texas IRS crash was a hero
She says building attack 'inappropriate,' but hails his anti-tax views

AUSTIN, Texas - The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into an IRS building in Texas has described her father as a hero.

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, told ABC's "Good Morning America" the plane attack was "inappropriate." But she praised his anti-government and anti-tax views.

Asked if he considered her father a hero, she said "yes." She spoke in a telephone interview Monday from Norway, where she lives.

Bell says her father was not a hero for taking a life, but "because now maybe people will listen."

Authorities say the 53-year-old Stack targeted the IRS office building in Austin last week, killing employee Vernon Hunter and himself, after posting a ranting manifesto against the agency.


Victim's son is alarmed
Hunter's son, Ken Hunter, said he was alarmed by comments that called the pilot a hero. He said that if Stack had come in and talked to his father, he would have done his best to help.

"My dad didn't write the tax law," he said. "Nobody in that building wrote the tax law."

Ken Hunter said his dad would likely have tried to save his co-workers from the burning building before escaping himself.

"He was full of life. Probably the best teacher I had in my life," Ken Hunter said. The elder Hunter had been missing and presumed dead since Thursday, when Stack slammed his plane into the Austin building where Hunter worked as a manager for the IRS.

The crash caused a large fireball that destroyed much of the hulking glass building where Hunter's wife, Valerie, also worked as an IRS employee. She was not wounded.

Stack apparently targeted the lower floors of the building that houses IRS offices after lashing out at the agency in a ranting manifesto posted on a Web site shortly before Thursday's attack. In the note, Stack claimed the government and the its tax code robbed him of his savings and ruined his career.

Standing outside Hunter's house in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park, Ken Hunter said he wanted to tell people about his father after hearing about Stack's life and his anti-tax crusade. He was alarmed by comments from Stack's friends who said he was a good person and Internet postings calling the pilot a hero.

"People say (Stack) is a patriot. What's he a patriot for? He hasn't served the country. My dad did two tours of Vietnam and this guy is going to be a patriot and no one is going to say that about my dad? That's what got me started talking. I couldn't stand it anymore," Ken Hunter said.

'The only answer'
In the note, Stack wrote that he realized "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer." He apparently set fire to his home before taking off Thursday from an airport 30 miles north of the Texas capital. His current wife and her daughter were not at home at the time.

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said his wife, Sheryl Stack, and her daughter had left the couple's home Wednesday night and stayed at a hotel but would not elaborate. Acevedo said police had no reports of domestic violence at the home.

Stack's daughter from his first marriage, Samantha Dawn Bell, said the Web manifesto didn't sound like the father she knew.

"It's not him. The letter itself sounds like it's coming from a different person," she said in an interview from her home in Norway.

 

Inappropriate? INAPPROPRIATE?!? Are you friggin' kidding me? Showing up to a formal dinner in a tuxedo t-shirt is "inappropriate". Trying to kill innocent people is criminal, if not completely psychotic.

What kind of world does she live in where intentionally slamming your plane into a building in an effort to kill as many people as possible because you got caught trying to skirt tax laws is the act of a hero? This woman is as delusional as her dad. I hope the Feds keep her under surveillance, since it sounds like she's heading down the same path he did.

 

Let the games begin:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/528055

 

"How can you call someone a hero who after he burns down his house, he gets into his plane ... and flies it into a building to kill people?" Hunter told ABC." "My dad Vernon did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad's a hero."

I'm confused. How can a 53 year old man do 2 tours of Vietnam? He was 16 when the war was over. He was 19 when the last Americans were completely pulled out. I think someone's "facts" are as skewed as their logic - all for the blindless love of a parent.

 

vernon hunter was 67. pretty ****ing callous words for a victim of terrorism, dontcha think?

 

Hunter (the victim) was 67. The moron pilot guy was 53.

 

Sorry -- misread the age vs the person.

 

Would it be wrong to put the daughter on the "Watch List" and not be let back into the country

 

Yes, it would be. Why would you do that, man?

 

I think I used to work with this guy a while ago in Austin for an aviation company. He kind of reminded me of Gil from the simpsons if it was the same guy.