Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
White Man Declares Jihad on The IRS and Commits Terrorist Act
Posts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9u1xCJk8oo
5:10 on the Youtube video
I like the first one, thanks!
But I don't buy the mentally ill or mentally competent stuff being thrown around. That note reads pretty sane. His motivations are very clear cut.
I thought GothicLargo was being serious
Is there any new information on possible mental status? Because until then I'm still not convinced his aims fit the bill of terrorism without confirmation that he was fairly sane.
Also he had a $230,000 house if that matters.
any person willing to kill himself by blowing up some shit and taking others with him (i.e. suicide bomber... which this guy clearly is) is completely insane.
I don't care if it's a religious ideology or tax problems that drives it, you're pretty fuckin crazy when you get to the point where you believe this action to be reasonable.
I'm pretty sure you can convict a failed suicide bomber in most countries.
Everyone says he seemed perfectly normal. He did social things with people, played in a band, and I'm sure had conversations about politics where he brought up taxes (and was probably agreed with because most people think taxes are at least annoying).
You can be perfectly sane but have a stupid idea about something. Insanity is a disconnect from reality. This guy knew completely what was up -- he just hated the IRS and taxes and acted specifically along those lines. And he wrote a note beforehand but still tried to cover his ass by burning his house up.
The act may be crazy but that doesn't make him insane.
What particular cases would you not consider terrorism?
This is to me an incredibly simplistic understanding of both terrorism and mental stability, but it will dovetail nicely to my comments below.
I'll expand my point because it's something that I'm struggling over how it applies to the given situation: I do not think that the designation of terrorism as constructed (notwithstanding ambiguity, there are a number of common features between all) can apply to an isolated individual, due to an inherent contradiction that arises. The main thrust behind terrorism is to, no surprise, terrorize. It is to coerce people, through violence, away from some action (supporting a government or occupation force, etc.). Alternatively, it is to disrupt people from indirectly performing the same action by sowing discord amongst the populace (like say, the DC snipers, by causing chaos and disruption of normal life). However, these motive components of terrorism require a person consciously planning their intent. It has to be a goal, rationally* approached within their bounded situation. It can't simply be an aftereffect that was never considered a main component of what they were doing.
Now, the other side of the coin is that anyone considering suicide as a means to anything is by definition mentally unstable. That a rationally-thinking individual, devoid of outside influences (expanded on below), would never conceive of something which goes against one of the core aspects of individual (survival). But if a person who is otherwise functioning mentally well is to be considered a terrorist and does so through suicide I think we run into this problem of trying to reconcile how he has the intent present to rise to the level of terrorism while also being mentally unstable by virtue of the fact of committing suicide.
I think you can have suicidal terrorism involving a single individual, but one in which is part of a larger community. You see this all the time with Al Qaeda in the Middle East. In these situations, you have the effect occurring above, but with one main difference. There, you also have an ideological framework combined with sociological support systems (by virtue of the community you belong to) that provide enough (probably temporary but we hardly see whether it holds up over a long period of time) psychological support to override the survival mechanism. As such, these individuals are able to form intent or are not necessarily mentally unstable by virtue of the fact of conceiving it within a larger, community-supported framework which rationalizes their actions both internally and externally.
On the other hand, you can have more clear examples of terrorism occurring in non-suicidal contexts. The DC Snipers provide an example where, since there is no violation of individual survival (he never considers suicide), intent is perfectly able to be formed.
Looking at this particular situation, the latter doesn't apply since he was never intended to survive. He cut his home ties (burning his house) and targeted a plane at a building (also unlikely to expect to survive). The latter, also, would not apply since (as far as we know) he was not connected to any larger network providing that psychological support to allow him to gain that ability to form intent to terrorize. What we do have is a manifesto as well as a (according to the video above) history of personal unemployment and stress. It's not conclusive, no, but I don't necessarily think an isolated manifesto as well as hinted personal issues definitely suggest he was a stable individual. I think it leans more towards hinting at perhaps this being an outward act of a troubled individual whose only escape mechanism he thought was to focus intently on the one core perceived element of his troubles (the IRS) and seeing no escape mechanism, snapped.
As such, I think he was a murderer (if indeed there are bodies), obviously suicidal, but not a terrorist.
* - It can be open to argument that anyone committing a crime is not inherently rational which will probably be a main objection. I would disagree, and suggest that this ignores the situations of bounded rationality that occur in which people committing crimes which require intent (such as terrorism).
Ft. Hood for one, but that's missing the point.
Using the word terrorism inspires terror! The response (from most parts, Scott Brown and the assholes at CPAC not so much) has been sober and generally pretty reasonable.
Man Flies Plane Into Austin Office Building is a much different headline than Terrorist Flies Plane Into Austin Office Building.
so... we should also stop calling Timothy McVeigh a terrorist???
we should stop calling the Protestant/Catholic violence in Northern Ireland terrorist attacks too???
At least, I don't think so. I for one would like some things to stop being labeled terrorism. The fact is things are and this thing falls into the list of things that would with 100% certainty be "TERRORIST CRASHES PLANE INTO BUILDING" if the guy was brown.
Well, right, the hypocrisy is racist. Obviously.
But the larger point stands and is more interesting.
IIRC Fort Hood is a dubious case, because it wasn't co-ordinated by more than one person as part of a larger strategy - just like this case from what is known so far.
On the other hand, the shooter was clearly motivated by religion and ideology, expressed extremist views long before the event, frequently visited Jihadist web sites, had loose connections to other extremists via his mosque, and yelled "Allahu Akhbar" as he began the attack. And of course the investigation is still underway.
Again, however, like Stack he doesn't seem to have been co-ordinating this attack with anyone else, which is the feature some people use to distinguish between terrorism and lone-gunman attacks.
Because there are important differences between murders committed over ideology and murders committed over someone's iphone?
I can see this being twisted some kind of way to have the sheeple of this country agreeing that taxes are from God and non-tax payers are the evil minions of Set that will try to kill you.
Only Godless demons that wish to rape children (why don't you have a seat?) and kill puppies don't pay taxes.
I'm employed by the Government, I make a nice wage, have all the neat benefits, etc. I'm not Randian in the sense that I don't actually believe it's possible to completely abolish taxation. I'd argue that it is necessary to a point, but it is definitely enormously out of hand.
I don't see how any person should be forced to pay for someone else. If I'd rather keep my money than fund a persons drug addiction, that should be my choice.
My mother was on welfare for six years, a drug addict the whole time, using the money for nothing other than drugs. We genuinely dumpster dived for years to get our food. These situations are not uncommon. Forcing someone to pay for that is ludicrous.
Then there is the hilarious health care issue, where every day I deal with illegals coming across the border, often brought there IN AN AMBULANCE, only to force us to bring our OWN ambulance to the border to pick them up and bring them to the hospital for some delicious health care, all on the tax payers dime.
This guy is definitely extreme, potentially insane, and reasonably hypocritical - but the amount of people that like to pretend things are perfect is amazing to me. He has a lot of legitimate gripes, coupled with plenty of illegitimate ones. If there is one thing all the traveling I have done is taught me, it's that the United States is, generally, far better off than just about anywhere else. I'm blessed to live here but that doesn't mean things are perfect
Because 9% think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully
get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, "I
have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."
Exactly. He really is his own special breed of wacko, but to call him the teabag terrorist or something is just way out of line.
Good comment here:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGJjOGI4NWM0OTUyOGE2ZTgwMzgzYzY4OWJiNThkNjk=
Margaret Thatcher
Excruciating for some people, as this thread illustrates.
Ultimately you're right; the main thing that makes something terrorism is its intent. The World Trade Center attack's intent was to incite terror in the US -- "We can strike at your country, fear us!" -- whereas this truly is a violent political act.
I personally believe the "we don't believe it's terrorism" element to ultimately mean "we do not believe a terrorist organization is involved in this." In other words, the act of one individual who is primarily acting by himself.
McVeigh was also anti-tax and anti-government, but did a fair amount of planning with other individuals. His purpose was to terrify and incite revolution. Kaczynski targeted specific individuals but ultimately was also trying to incite terror and revolution.
From what we know about Stack he seems to have acted alone and essentially "snapped" when he felt things were too rough for HIM. Some of you guys are saying that his "manifesto" is intentionally chaotic or shows that he's crazy -- personally, I see his rant as simply a very personal thing. The taxes HE had to pay were unfair. It can also be implied that he felt that the healthcare system screwed HIM over. HIS job was shitty in Austin, the IRS audited HIM specifically, and so on. He doesn't seem to have any real focus on creating revolution or intentionally terrorizing the populace -- he's specifically targeting the IRS.
I see it as him essentially committing suicide and trying to take the IRS with him. Or at least make a point that he's trying to do such a thing. Ultimately I would agree that his intent is not to incite terror, but rather to be a political martyr. I'm sure he realized he could not do a serious amount of damage with such a small plane, even though he drew obvious connections between his act and that of the World Trade Center attacks.
As for Karmer: You know taxes are used for more than welfare and drug rehab, right. That is actually an almost insignificant portion of what taxes are used for.
For fuck's sake, enough with the semantics. His actions are defined as terrorism, fucking swing with it.
That's just my opinion of course. Forcing people to pay for others failures or inability (generally refusal) to do what they should to be a productive citizen that provides for themselves.
I'm generally considered a "tree hugging liberal" by people I know, which may make my stance confusing, but I just believe people should WILLINGLY help others. Financially, volunteering, etc. Which I do
Except what Eggy was arguing was that he did not intend to intimidate or coerce.
Or you could read the long post last page and this page and come up with any kind of actual critique that doesn't simply rely on assertions that you're right.
His goal is, in rather plain words, right fucking THERE that he wants to start something, to disrupt the government / society and for people to take action via force. If that, somehow, isn't intimidation or coercion then I don't know what the fuck is.
Unless you guys are judging it based on, "Well nobody has done what he said to, so it didn't work so it wasn't coercion!" Which is a silly goose conclusion to jump to.
Since CPAC is going on (with Beck as keynote speaker!) and Austin is still pretty fresh, I wouldn't expect any talking heads declaring Stack a hero or blaming Obama's tax policy/lack of hope and change until next week.
Don't take this as an accusation, but are you familiar with the social situations that caused each of those things to be created? Medicare was created because old people can't work (even those who retire with plenty of money) and we are not a nation that euthanizes the elderly. Social Security exists because if you were disabled or old, but didn't have a job where you could realistically save money, you were suddenly destitute.
For both, it's pretty agreeable that having the entire population pay a small amount so that the elderly and disabled are not suddenly homeless or ill w/o any treatment available.
Healthcare is a big debate now because many countries see "being well" as essentially a basic human right, and that people should not suddenly lose everything because they happened to get sick. After all, rarely do individuals choose to be ill. People rarely choose to lose their jobs either, which is why we have unemployment (which does run out, after all).
You are able to volunteer, but as a volunteer you probably see that you're not able to help everyone -- and the people you help have to make an effort to show that they need help in the first place. Even then, many people are not able to volunteer and relying entirely on volunteers for all of these very common issues that exist in any large population is simply not feasible.
And this ties into Joe Stack because his entire manifesto is a very common display of cognitive dissonance that exists in many anti-tax people -- they point out the ills of society (such as healthcare, people dying, homeless people, and so on) and then go on to say that THEY don't want to pay taxes to help others. They don't see that the problem isn't taxation, but rather ineffective government.
I think this comes up all the time in other political threads, but Sweden has a very, very high tax rate -- and one of the happiest populations on Earth, because they're not stressed about all the mundane shit in life.
If a decent citizen becomes ill and doesn't have health care at that moment or the insurance won't cover it, their lives are often completely destroyed. Lazy people on welfare, though, get all the health care they want without doing anything.
A close family friend has been diagnosed with cancer. She's 32. She's been mooching off welfare for years because she has four kids off random "baby daddys." She's getting enormously expensive hospital treatments every week, for years, all payed for by us. Oh, and her cancer is probably caused by how fat she is from eating like a pig offfood stamps. She's literally a worthless citizen. This is what bothers me.
If a person with a home and assets fell into a similar situation, regardless of them paying taxes for 30 years to support people like the above, they're screwed. It just doesn't make sense to me.