A small private plane flew into a building in Austin, Texas that houses the FBI, IRS, and CIA. From eyewitness accounts, it was flying at or near full throttle and it caused a suspiciously large explosion. It may have been packed with explosives. The aircraft has a reputation for being very safe. It’s looks we just had a mini-9/11, but this time in Texas. Of course, we don’t know anything for sure just yet, but things don’t look good. Prepare for Crazy DEFCON 1 on steroids.
Fortunately, Dick Cheney is no longer in charge.
Update [2010-2-18 12:28:15 by BooMan]: Apparently, the building that was hit houses the IRS. The FBI shares the address but is housed in a different building. No word on the CIA. Also, a commercial plane that was headed to San Francisco has been diverted to Salt Lake City after a bomb threat.
Update [2010-2-18 12:59:3 by Steven D]: from CNN:
12:42 p.m.: The pilot of the plane had set his house on fire beforehand, stole the plane and crashed it intentionally, a federal official told CNN.
Update [2010-2-18 13:7:34 by Steven D]: More from Epoch Times:
Eyewitness reports indicate that the pilot flew his Cherokee 140 over a neighboring apartment complex and rammed the office building at full speed.
An NTSB report indicates that the pilot set his house on fire before taking off. The building he hit contains an IRS office, and a neighboring building contains an FBI office. There is some speculation that this was his intended target.
Initial reports are that the pilot might be Joseph Andrew Stack, a software engineer. His wife Cheryl and his daughter were rescued from the burning home. The pilot might have stolen the plane from Georgetown airport.
Police received to a domestic disturbance call from that Stack home before the fire or the plane theft were reported.
Sounds like an emotionally disturbed individual, and not an Al Qaeda type planned event in my opinion.
and no signs of engine distress.
Now they are saying he set his house on fire before the flight. May not be terrorist related–just another crazy person hopefully.
If it was an attack, I’ll bet on the home grown terrorists.
Now they are saying he set his house on fire before the flight. May not be terrorist related–just another crazy person hopefully.
who is saying that?
CNN for one.
How do you know Cheney wasn’t in charge? š
From AP, a few minutes ago.
And that WAS meant to be a joke.
Here’s more:
Whatever happened, doesn’t look like anyone wants to make a mini-9/11 out of it. That’s fortunate.
Ah, tax season on Planet Tejas.
Just for the record, Boo, the BBC says the FBI sees no indication of a deliberate attack.
After reading this post I though “Oh shit” but then went to the NY Times and LA Times and saw almost nothing about it. Was expecting big headlines. Then I saw the LA Times had a small three paragraph story about it.
Glad it is not being overhyped. This is one great thing about living under Obama. His administration doesn’t try to scare us all the time.
The only reason it is not being overhyped is that they figured out very quickly that it was not a Muslim, or Arab, or other Middle-Easterner who did it.
Although I for one would favor a preventive roundup of all Texans. Just in case.
We could set up internment camps for them in the San Fransisco Bay Area. Hey, how about Alcatraz?
Unless we’re in the midst of a media/government conspiracy, Boo,looks like a Murdoch-level overreaction on your part. Nobody else is saying anything like what you speculated.
Looks like it was indeed a “lie-first” reflex by government and the media. My bad. I don’t know that it qualifies as “terrorism”, but it sure was no accident as the “official sources” suggested earlier.
Whether it qualifies as terrorism depends on intent. An act of rage and/or despair is not terrorism. Nor is an act on the part of someone with a deranged mind. In fact, a person who is deranged might be incapable of forming the intent required to commit a terrorist act.
I disagree.
All acts of “terrorism” …at least on the part of those who are resorting to the tactic because they are being in some way ripped off or murdered…are acts of “rage and/or despair”.
Now…that doesn’t work the other way around, of course. Most of the wealthy or comfortably middle class who go off the handle for no apparent reason are simply crazy on some level. But they have not been driven to their acts by an ongoing confrontation with an immeasurably larger foe who is robbing them.
The real reason behind all revolutionary acts is on some basic level “rage and despair”. Sometimes it is just line-level desperation and sometimes it has been refined by a superior mind into something perhaps more tactically effective. But even the revolutionary tactical geniuses…let us say people like Mao Zhe Dung, Fidel Castro and Ho Ch Minh…need literally hundreds of thousands of people who have been driven by rage and despair to put their mortal asses and those of their loved ones on the line. Intellectual ideas do not of themselves drive revolutions. Only severe hardship does that. Bet on it.
The secret behind the current passivity of the American people in the face of massive kleptocracy-driven theft? It is…as I have been writing here and elsewhere for several years…that the hypnomedia control system and the continuing success of a line-level “Give ’em bread and circuses” routine has been spectacularly successful.
So far.
But as Joe Stack so clearly states in his final posting:
I repeat:
He was just a slightly quicker-than-the-masses learner who lost his balance due to the stress of that learning.
Much of rest of the country is no longer that far behind him.
Let us pray that they are in better internal balance.
Let us pray.
AG
You might reasonably argue that all acts of terrorism are acts of rage or despair, but the overwhelming majority of violent acts of rage or despair are not by any means terrorism. That was my point. What distinguishes terrorism is first of all specific intent.
In addition, rage and despair are not necessarily elements a terrorist act any more than they are elements of military violence. Terrorism and guerilla actions are tactics generally used by the weak, and are often planned and executed just as dispassionately as any military operation is planned and executed.
How can one be “dispassionate” about the prospect of suicide?
i think not.
AG
Arthur, are you honestly not aware that the majority of terrorist actions are not acts of suicide? And are you also not capable of thinking outside your own frame of reference?
Hurria, are you honestly aware that most acts of war in which one is physically involved and present…of any kind…involve a risking of one’s mortal ass?
Please.
AG
Don’t try to wriggle out of this. You referred specifically to suicide, as if that is the only, or even the primary method by which terrorism is carried out. Now you are pretending you were only referring to risking one’s life? Come on!
Being a voluntary fighter in armed combat of any sort is a form of suicide, just as much as is playing Russian Roulette. Your literalness is touching, but rather puerile. Think more broadly, Hurria. I find word games useless and boring, myself. If you really did not hear what I was saying, then you are wearing some kind of intellectual blinders.
AG
You got out-argued, and now you are trying to wriggle out of your original claim. Pretty sad.
It matters not to me.
AG
That’s a bit childish, don’t you think, to claim you don’t care? If you didn’t care why did you keep on insisting that you didn’t really mean what you actually said?
I think you know just how silly it was to pretend that going into a battle is the same thing as committing suicide. Most people who go into dangerous situations such as battles do not do so with the intention that they will die, but quite the opposite. Their goal is generally to get out of it alive and in one piece, and in fact they know that statistically there is a very high probability that they will not die. The opposite is the case when someone decides to commit suicide. In that case they enter the situation with the intention of dying, and there is a high probability they will succeed. They are two very different acts on every level, and you are too smart not to know that.
You know, Hurria, speaking with you is like having a conversation with a particularly hostile, officious grammar school teacher who has become accustomed to treating everyone with the same attitude that she applies to her poor, 2nd grade-level victims.
I have noticed this in the past, which is why I rarely engage in any discussions with you. You snip and snap, treating any and all disagreements as if they were a low-level grammar school debate and you are the teacher.
Wise up.
You write:
No, it is not “childish” of me in the least.
I am not some gibbering little idiot, and when I say that I do not particularly care whether you get what I am saying or not that is precisely what I mean. I lay my thoughts out as well and as carefully as I can possibly do so and then I present them on the web for others to check out. Some like what I have to say and some do not. So it goes. My job is to present those thoughts, examine them in light of what others say about them, alter them if indeed I encounter criticisms that I deem valid and then move on. When I do not agree with what is being said to me I defend those thoughts for a little while, but if some people remain hostile to them then my job is through.
Country simple?
You either get what I am saying or you do not.
I have watched your various knee-jerk sensitivities here for quite a while and I have generally avoided commenting upon them because…once again…I do not particularly care what you think.
So now I am going to…also once again…cede the field of battle to you.
Enjoy your victory.
I have other things to do.
AG
Well, Arthur, when you make an argument, and then, when your argument proves to be a poor one, try to pretend that you were arguing something quite different, perhaps you should be grown up enough to accept when you are called on it.
You made a statement about suicide, and then tried to back out if it by pretending you really didn’t mean suicide per se, but anything that could potentially result in death. As I have pointed out, there is a huge difference between suicide and, for example, going into battle, and I explained some of the differences, which I am sure you are aware of.
For what it is worth, I don’t much care for your manner either, which is why I rarely read most of what you write. Even when we agree, I find your way of communicating grating. So, it sounds like we are just not very compatible, at least in this medium.
CNN is reporting that Joseph Stack set his house on fire and is the registered owner of the aircraft.
Interesting that the DHS says it isn’t terrorism related. Why? Because a white dude did it?
How long before some wingnut justifies this because the target was the IRS?
Don’t you know that only Muslims can be terrorists? I think Bush signed an executive order to that effect.
<snark>
It will be very interesting as this story moves along to see what this guy’s motivations were, what his background was and, most of all, whether there are particular “associations” he might have had that are in any way anti-government.
Seriously though, sio far everything points to a lone wolf mentally disturbed individual. I mean, he set his house on fire with his wife and child in it? That’s behavior that is extreme by anyone’s standards, the plane crash incident aside. I’d call this attempted murder, successful suicide, and (if anyone in the building dies) homicide.
Until we know more about what specifically motivated him, it wouldn’t be prudent to label him a terrorist just yet.
If we’re guessing, he was having big tax troubles.
That’s your guess or are the news media reporting that somewhere?
My guess. Assuming the IRS was the intended target. I’ve had similar fantasies myself. But no airplane.
Yes, Steven, but if that lone wolf, mentally disturbed individual just happened to be Muslim, Arab, or Middle Eastern you konw they’d be all over it as a min-9/11, a sign of things to come, proof that “those people” cannot be successfully integrated into “our” society even if they were born and raised here, and on and on. After all, Muslims never do anything bad or violent simply because a few Muslim individuals, as in every other human group, are lone wolf, mentally disturbed individuals who lose it, go off the deep end, and commit acts that are harmful to themselves and others.
I agree
based on his manifesto it was terrorism directed at the IRS and the tax code.
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Sounds like this was just an ordinary, non-Muslim, non-Arab, non-Middle-Eastern real American who went berserk. What a bummer!
I don’t think Al Qaeda is in any position to pull off a successful large scale attack in America at this time, and we know that is their modus operandi based on 9/11, the Indonesian hotel bombing, the Egyptian resort bombing, the African Embassy bombings, the Spanish train bombing and the London bombings. This is not the type of thing they do.
No doubt some will speculate otherwise.
Every time a Muslim loses it and does something violent they try to connect it to Al Qa`eda, just as they did with that unfortunate Army psychiatrist last year.
Joe was pissed off at the IRS. Here’s his “manifesto”
http://embeddedart.com/
here and here.
As America disintegrates (it IS disintegrating, you know) this is manifested as a rising wave of individual people being ejected from the “American way of life” and disappearing into the homeless/faceless underclass or (sometimes) dramatically cracking up. At this point it looks like Stack was one of the latter.
Whether this has political implications depends on how Americans react to his dramatic exit.
and the TV machine is cranking up 24/7 fearmongering again