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White Man Declares Jihad on The IRS and Commits Terrorist Act
Tomanta
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Creating this thread to keep the discussion in the Obama thread more on topic...
This morning someone crashed their small plane into a building in Austin.
Why is this of interest? Take your pick:
* He burned down his house first
* The building has an IRS office
* He was Pretty unhappy at the IRS
It's "not terrorism" (even if everyone would be calling it terrorism if the guy had been Muslim). And it "may" have been intentional (even though all the evidence points clearly towards it being intentional)
(Also looking for a better thread title...)
This morning someone crashed their small plane into a building in Austin.
Why is this of interest? Take your pick:
* He burned down his house first
* The building has an IRS office
* He was Pretty unhappy at the IRS
It's "not terrorism" (even if everyone would be calling it terrorism if the guy had been Muslim). And it "may" have been intentional (even though all the evidence points clearly towards it being intentional)
(Also looking for a better thread title...)
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Also, was the IRS reposessing his house?
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2010/02/18/austin_police_say_a_plane.html
According to the local paper, it was on purpose.
Oh shit, a note from the guy who crashed the plane.
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2010/02/18/internet_note_posted_by_man_li.html
a) Includes his full name including middle name "Joseph Andrew Stacks".
b) calls his manifesto insane
I have money on Fox latching on to his off message commie throwaway line at the end and trying to paint this as left wing radicalism, ignoring the rest of his insane screed against the government, the IRS, and generally how unfair it was that he dodged taxes and was arrested for it.
I also predict Limbaugh latching onto the commie line, saying that apparently Obama wasn't providing enough "Hope" and "Change" for his mindless followers and this is driving them mad. Beck will say we should expect more.
From reading the first section of the letter, it sounds like him and some buddies got together in the 80s and tried to make a fake religion as a tax dodge. This guy was definitely a terrorist and crazy person.
He tried to evade taxes and still had enough money to own a plane. Not feeling any sympathy for the crazy guy.
And he kept losing...
Im pretty sure if you pay your taxes and dont try anything fishy, for the most part nothing bad happens to you. This guy kept trying to find loop holes and hung himself on them.
And how did he have a plane to crash if his life was soooo hard? Did he borrow it? Sorry but if you can affort to have a private plane, you should probably just man up and pay your taxes instead of flying said plane into a building.
edit: I obviously skimmed some parts of the article, I didn't interpret it as him dodging taxes at all. Then again, the article isn't going to say "THEN I TRIED TO DODGE TAXES AGAIN, LOL"
Austin has plenty of engineering work - AMD and Dell are the big names, but there are a ton of smaller firms as well.
He got put in jail for 4 years for tax fraud. It's not in the letter, but it's in one of the articles.
But from the other side it probably looked like "some dude tried using a loop hole that wasnt meant for him, so we caught him and made him pay"
Because if not, then I'd have to agree with the categorization that this was not terrorism. Regardless of whether or not particular political parties exploit ethnicity for specious uses of the label of terrorism, I would need some kind of intent this didn't simply stay at the level of dramatic suicide or attempted murder borne out of psychological disfunction.
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He obliquely talks about what he did in the letter and the punishments he got for it, but he paints it as the IRS jumping all over him out of nowhere. He pretty clearly states that he got involved with some anti-tax people and tried to run one of those "I don't pay income taxes because I don't interpret the law that way" schemes. It backfired and he got put in prison over it along with a bunch of fines. Then he apparently tried it again and got audited. There's a bunch of persecution-complex stuff in there about the IRS and attorneys being out to get him, but it's all pretty incoherent.
Clearly he was a very disturbed individual. You'd think his wife or (I think) girlfriend later would have realized and gotten him some help.
His letter states that he hopes more people "wake up" or whatever in the wake of what he did.
His goal was apparently to draw attention to what he viewed as the IRS' misdeeds. Gouging citizens, giving breaks to corporations and churches (he had some kind of hard on against the Catholics in particular). That's why he put out the manifesto; hoping that after the whole plane thing people would read it and rise up en-masse against the IRS.
I think one of the later lines is like "Take your pound of flesh and be done with me" or "no one notices until there's body bags" or something equally crazy. It's more like a random suicide bomber than any kind of concerted campaign.
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3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
Well, he basically said he was doing it to send a strong message to the government, the IRS in particular.
Last I heard, 2 people were rushed to Brackenridge, which is the only Level 1 Trauma center in Austin (St David's hospital is, I believe, closer, but no one was sent there) and 1 person is missing.
Yeah, people at work were like "I see more of this happening in the coming months." "yes, because so many people are destitute."
HE HAD A PLANE! How "destitute" can he be?
I don't think they've said, but I kind of doubt it.
The Ft. Hood shooter taught us that intent has nothing to do with the Terrorist label in the media... just religion.
(I fully agree that this is not terrorism. I mentioned it in the OP because the label gets thrown around way to much and, had he been Muslim, would already have been used by the media).
Sounds like terrorism to me.
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Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Has anyone seen Modernman?
In a way he's right, though. If he hadn't done this none of us would have paid any attention to him or his ramblings or even known about them. Now that he did, we are.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12