[THS] Paul Craig Roberts: America`s First Suicide Bomber

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24836.htm

America’s First Suicide Bomber

By Paul Craig Roberts

February 23, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Joseph Stack, frustrated
American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the
79 percent of Americans who have given up on “their” government.

The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced
that “their” government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their
needs. Rasmussen found that only 21 percent of the American population agree that
the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and that 21 percent is
comprised of the political class itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap
between the American population and the politicians who rule them “may be as big
today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”

Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like Palestinians faced with Israeli jet
fighters, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas, Stack realized that he
was powerless. A suicide attack was the only weapon left to him.

Stack targeted the IRS, the federal agency that had gratuitously ruined him. He flew
his airplane into an office building occupied by 200 members of the IRS. This
deliberate plan and the written explanation he left behind segregate him from
deranged people who randomly shoot up a Post Office or university campus.

The government and its propaganda ministry do not want to call Stack a terrorist.
“Terrorist” is a term the government reserves for Muslims who do not like what Israel
does to Palestinians and the U.S. government does to Muslim countries.

But Stack experienced the same frustrations and emotions as Muslims who can’t take
it any longer and strap on a suicide vest.

“Violence,” Stack wrote, “not only is the answer, it is the only answer.” Stack
concluded that nothing short of violence will get the attention of a government that
has turned its back on the American people.

Anger is building up. People are beginning to do unusual things. Terry Hoskins
bulldozed his house rather than allow a bank to foreclose on it. The local TV station
conducted an online survey and found that 79 percent of respondents agreed with
Hoskins’ action.

Perhaps the turning point was the federal government’s bailout of the investment
banks whose reckless misbehavior diminished Americans’ retirement savings for the
second time in eight years. Now a former head of the most culpable bank is
campaigning to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in order to pay
for the bailout. President Obama has obliged him by creating a “deficit commission.”

The “deficit commission” will be used to gut Social Security, just as the private
insurance health plan is paid for by cutting $500 billion out of Medicare.

It could not be more clear that government represents the interest groups that
finance the election campaigns.

Conservatives used to say that Washington’s power should be curtailed in behalf of
state and local governments that are “closer to the people.” But of course state and
local governments are also controlled by interest groups.

Consider Florida, for example. In 2004 the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan did
considerable damage to the Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle. At Inlet Beach in
Walton County, the surge claimed two beachfront homes and washed away enough
of the high ground as to leave other homes vulnerable to the next storm.

People wanted to armor their homes with some form of sea wall. When the county
gave the go ahead, two houses on the West end hired engineers who constructed a
barrier made of rows of tubes 60 feet long filled with sand, each weighing about 70
tons. The sand-colored tubes were buried under many tons of white sand trucked in,
and sea oats were planted. It was a perfect solution, and an expensive
one--$250,000.

Just East of the two homes, Ivan washed away a section of beach front road and left
three houses built on pilings sitting on the beach. Last year government with FEMA
money rebuilt the section of washed away beachfront road and armored it and two
adjacent houses. The government used interlocking iron or steel panels that it drove
down into the sand, leaving six to seven feet of the rusty metal above ground.
Hundreds of truck loads of sand were brought in to cover the unsightly sea wall.

It didn’t require a storm to wash away the loose sand and leave the ugly rusty metal
exposed on the beach. The first high tide did the trick. Residents and vacationers are
left with an eyesore on a beach ranked as the third most beautiful in the world.

The ugly rusty barrier built by government is still there. But the intelligent approach
taken by the private homeowners has been condemned to death. As I write heavy
equipment is on the beach slashing open the tubes and piling up the sand to be
carried away. The homes will be left standing on the edge and will be undermined by
the next hurricane.

Why did this happen? The official reason given by Florida’s Department of
Environmental Policy is that the county could only issue a temporary permit. Only DEP
can issue a permanent permit, and as the homeowners don’t have DEP’s permanent
permit, out goes the expensive, carefully engineered and unobtrusive sea wall.

This is the way government “works” for ordinary citizens. For the vast majority of
people, government exists as a persecution mechanism that takes great pleasure in
ruining their lives and pocketbooks. The DEP has inflicted heavy stress on the
homeowners, now elderly, and could bring on a heart attack or stroke.

The real explanation for DEP’s merciless treatment of citizens is that the agency is
powerless against developers. It cannot stop them from destroying the Everglades,
from destroying wetlands, from polluting rivers, or from building in front of the
coastal setback line. As the state politicians protect developers from the DEP, the only
people against whom the DEP can use its authority are unrepresented citizens.
Frustrated itself, the DEP lashes out at powerless citizens.

In the small settlement of Inlet Beach, there are numerous examples of developers
getting what they want. Over the years hurricanes have eaten away the beach and
the dunes. As this occurs the setback line for construction moves inland. Back when
the real estate bubble was being created by Alan Greenspan’s irresponsibly low
interest rate policy, small beach front lots were going for one million dollars. In the
midst of this frenzy, a well connected developer bought a beach front lot for $30,000.

The lot was not recognizable as such. It sits on flat land on the beach. Decades ago it
was a lot, but as the Gulf ate away the coast, the lot is now positioned in front of the
setback line. The developer got the lot for the low price, because no one had been
able to get a building permit for years.

But the developer got a permit. According to the head of the neighborhood
association at the time, the developer went to a DEP official, whose jurisdiction was
another part of the state and who was a former employee of the developer, and was
issued a permit. Because of its exposure, during the real estate boom the house sat
unsold for years. The community, which had opposed the project, concluded that the
developer just wanted to show that he was more powerful than the law.

Currently, on six acres next to a state park on the East end of Inlet Beach another
well connected developer has obtained DEP permission to compromise Walton
County’s highest and last remaining sand dunes held in place with native vegetation
in order to build 20 houses. To protect the houses, DEP has issued a permit for the
construction of a fifteen foot high man-made sand wall, a marketing device that will
offer little protection.

According to information sent to me, nine of the houses will be seaward of the
Coastal Construction Control line. Apparently this was a result of the developer being
represented by a former county attorney, who convinced the commissioners to allow
the developer to plan on the basis of the 1996 FEMA flood plain maps instead of
using the current 2007 maps. Since 1996 there have been a number of hurricanes,
such as Dennis and Ivan, and the set back line has moved inward.

When state and local governments allow developers to set aside the rules governing
flood-plain development, they create insurance losses that drive up the insurance
premiums for everyone in the community. The disturbance of the natural dunes
could result in a breach through which storm surge can damage nearby properties.
Instead of protecting people, government is allowing a developer to impose costs of
his project on others.

Joseph Stack, Terry Hoskins, and 79 percent of the American population came to the
realization that government does not represent them. Government represents monied
interests for whom it bends the rules designed to protect the public, thus creating a
legally privileged class.

In contrast, as at the West end of Inlet Beach, ordinary citizens are being driven into
the ground.

This is what we call “freedom and democracy.”