Remember the victims…

MONDAY, FEB 22, 2010 22:23 EST

IRS bomber Joe Stack captured the news for days, but his African American, Vietnam vet victim has gone unheralded

BY JOAN WALSH

I traveled this weekend and missed the identification of the only person killed by Joe Stack in his unsettling attack on the Internal Revenue Service office in Austin last week (h/t Crooks and Liars, Will Bunch). He is Vietnam veteran and IRS worker Vernon Hunter.

His son, Ken Hunter, told local reporters he was tired of the media paying too much attention to the fractured and incoherent political beliefs espoused by the demented Stack, and not enough attention to his father’s life

Was Joseph Stack’s act of flying an airplane into a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas an act of terror?

The UN Ad Hoc Committee on Terrorism, in its informal text of article 2 of the draft Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, defined terrorism in the following way:

Any person commits an offence within the meaning of this Convention if that person, by any means, unlawfully and intentionally, causes:

(a) death or serious bodily injury to any person; or 

(b) serious damage to public or private property, including a place of public use, a state or government facility, a public transportation system, an infrastructure facility or the environment; or 

(c) damage to property, places, facilities, or systems referred to in paragraph 1 (b) of this article, resulting or likely to result in major economic loss, when the purpose of the conduct, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.
[emphasis added]

This definition, focusing on the ‘offence’ character of terrorism, clearly uses a crime perspective.

Further,

The Policy Working Group on the UN and Terrorism has, in its report to the secretary general, acknowledged various dimensions of terrorism when writing:

Terrorism is, in most cases, essentially a political act. It is meant to inflict dramatic and deadly injury on civilians and to create an atmosphere of fear, generally for a political or ideological (whether secular or religious) purpose. Terrorism is a criminal act, but it is more than mere criminality. To overcome the problem of terrorism, it is necessary to understand its political nature as well as its basic criminality and psychology.

Schmid, Alex P., “Frameworks for Conceptualising Terrorism,” Terrorism & Political Violence; Summer 2004, Vol. 16 (2): 199, 214

When this article was written, Schmid worked for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Vienna, Austria.

02/19/2010 by Jim Naureckas

The New York Post (2/19/10) has an interesting front page on the anti-government protester flying his plane into an office building.  After the bad pun (“KAMIKAZE ATTAX!”), the subhead reads:

Fed-Up Madman Crashes Plane Into IRS Building

“Madman”—because unlike, say, Nidal Malik Hasan, Joseph Stack is not a “terrorist” whose actions might discredit a wider political movement. And “Fed-Up” because…maybe he has a point?

On state TV for the Cheney administration in exile, (Faux Noiz), the junior Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown (R), relates the Austin IRS attack to his election. Not kidding (face palm). One number: 2012.

I just found out about this:

A Texas pilot flew a small plane into an Austin office complex today and authorities are investigating links to a hate-filled note found on the Internet, telling the IRS to “take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

A small plane crashes into a Texas building that houses IRS offices.
More Photos

Investigators are trying to determine whether Andrew Joseph Stack, the man identified by authorities as the pilot of the plane, is the same person as “Joe Stack,” the name signed to the online rant that warns, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

In your view, is this domestic terrorism, or mere mental illness?