Posts by Spartacus

Although witnesses and Houston Fire Department officials originally said it appeared the man jumped, police said it wasn't clear whether the man jumped or merely became exhausted and pushed away from the building.

Police recovered a driver's license and a note reportedly containing a message of a political nature. Authorities declined to reveal the man's identity or details of the note, other than to say that the climber was a 20-year-old white male and that his note did not mention plans to jump.

Houston Police Department spokesman Joe Laud said this morning's incident may have started around 5:30 a.m. when a bomb threat was called in from the Galleria area. Police would not say if the threat was to Williams Tower, but police did make a check of the building. As officers were starting to leave around 6:30 a.m., a worker with the property management office told police a man was attempting to climb the tower.

A spokesman for the Houston Fire Department, which sent rescue crews to the tower at 2800 Post Oak Boulevard, reported that the man somehow found a way outside of the gleaming skscraper on the 10th floor and began climbing near the southwest corner.

Chronicle

He was not harnessed to the building in any way. Laud said officers reported the man would climb until he got tired and would then attach some type of suction cup to the tower's glass windows and hold on to the cup with his teeth while he rested.

Police tried to talk to the man from an open window a few floors below as he continued to ascend.

About 7:45 a.m., however, as news helicopters hovered and spectators watched from nearby buildings and the city's busiest freeway, Loop 610, he apparently let go, Houston Fire Department spokesman Jay Evans said.

Rosendo Lopez, a labor foreman working across the street from Williams Tower, saw the scene unfold from the magnifying lens of a piece of construction equipment. About halfway up the 901-foot building, the man paused, Lopez said.

"I saw him look back over his shoulder and push himself away from the building. He shoved his whole body with his hands and legs," Lopez said.

Witness Pat McGarey, a tower worker, said the man had been yelling or singing and periodically waved his hands.

Karl Stolleis / Chronicle Houston firefighters cover the body of a man who tumbled from the Williams Tower in the Galleria area this morning.

"It clearly looked like he jumped as opposed to falling," McGarey said.

Police said the man landed in the grass, and his hands were bloody.

Evans said most climbers in Houston have either reached the top of the buildings or are talked into coming inside.

"We've been very fortunate here in Houston, with many tall buildings," Evans said.

The Williams Tower, a Houston landmark formerly known as the Transco Tower, is 64 stories high. The glass and steel tower was designed by the famous architect Philip Johnson and built in 1983.

Houston police have taken over the investigation, and a doctor with the Harris County Medical Examiner's office arrived on the scene about 9:40 a.m.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/topstory/1704072

Edited by - Spartacus on 16 December 2002 12:42:29

46

Trashing The USA.

by Englishman in

jw
friends

it seems to me that many americans are convinced that europeans are for ever slagging off the usa for some reason or another.. just to set the record straight, america bashing is relatively rare in europe, most of us regard the usa with a not inconsiderable degree of affection.

obviously there are cultural differences between the continents that can lead to feelings being trampled on, but america-hating persons are quite rare over here.

the few real antagonists are very vociferous, but like most fundamentalists, regaded as being completely loony.. maybe the americans who have visited over here have an opinion?.

Spartacus

I took my 12 year old daughter to London England for spring break this year and we loved it. People were very nice, the weather was kinda damp but the pubs was cool and the ladies were very forward. Kinda nice to know I still got it. :D

100

Why are people racist?

by MrMoe in

jw
friends

something on the song thread that i posted, song by tu pac, got me to thinking about racisim.

why do people discriminate against people that have different color skin?

i understand it is a learned response, but my "elder" father is very racist... and this is how i was raised.. i don't get it.

Spartacus

In Tulia...From The NYTimes:

Kafka in Tulia
By BOB HERBERT

Tulia is a hot, dusty town of 5,000 on the Texas Panhandle, about 50 miles south of Amarillo.

For some, it's a frightening place, slow and bigoted and bizarre. Kafka could have had a field day with Tulia.

On the morning of July 23, 1999, law enforcement officers fanned out and arrested more than 10 percent of Tulia's tiny African-American population. Also arrested were a handful of whites who had relationships with blacks.

The humiliating roundup was intensely covered by the local media, which had been tipped off in advance. Men and women, bewildered and unkempt, were paraded before TV cameras and featured prominently on the evening news. They were drug traffickers, one and all, said the sheriff, a not particularly bright Tulia bulb named Larry Stewart.

Among the 46 so-called traffickers were a pig farmer, a forklift operator and a number of ordinary young women with children.

If these were major cocaine dealers, as alleged, they were among the oddest in the U.S. None of them had any money to speak of. And when they were arrested, they didn't have any cocaine. No drugs, money or weapons were recovered during the surprise roundup.

Most of Tulia's white residents applauded the arrests, and the local newspapers were all but giddy with their editorial approval. The first convictions came quickly, and the sentences left the town's black residents aghast. One of the few white defendants, a man who happened to have a mixed-race child, was sentenced to more than 300 years in prison. The hog farmer, a black man in his late 50's named Joe Moore, was sentenced to 90 years. Kareem White, a 24-year-old black man, was sentenced to 60 years. And so on.

When the defendants awaiting trial saw this extreme sentencing trend, they began scrambling to plead guilty in exchange for lighter sentences. These ranged from 18 years in prison to, in some case, just probation.

It is not an overstatement to describe the arrests in Tulia as an atrocity. The entire operation was the work of a single police officer who claimed to have conducted an 18-month undercover operation. The arrests were made solely on the word of this officer, Tom Coleman, a white man with a wretched work history, who routinely referred to black people as "******s" and who frequently found himself in trouble with the law.

Mr. Coleman's alleged undercover operation was ridiculous. There were no other police officers to corroborate his activities. He did not wear a wire or conduct any video surveillance. And he did not keep detailed records of his alleged drug buys. He said he sometimes wrote such important information as the names of suspects and the dates of transactions on his leg.

In trial after trial, prosecutors put Mr. Coleman on the witness stand and his uncorroborated, unsubstantiated testimony was enough to send people to prison for decades.

In some instances, lawyers have been able to show that there was no basis in fact none at all for Mr. Coleman's allegations, that they came from some realm other than reality.

He said, for example, that he had purchased drugs from a woman named Tonya White, and she was duly charged. But last April the charges had to be dropped when Ms. White's lawyers proved that she had cashed a check in Oklahoma City at the time that she was supposed to have been selling drugs to Mr. Coleman in Tulia.

Another defendant, Billy Don Wafer, was able to prove through employee time sheets and his boss's testimony that he was working at the time he was alleged by Mr. Coleman to have been selling cocaine. And the local district attorney, Terry McEachern, had to dismiss the case against a man named Yul Bryant after it was learned that Mr. Coleman had described him as a tall black man with bushy hair. Mr. Bryant was 5-foot-6 and bald.

In a just world, this case would be no more than a spoof on "Saturday Night Live." Instead it's a tragedy with no remedy in sight.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, the Tulia Legal Defense Project and a number of private law firms are trying to mount an effort to free the men and women imprisoned in this fiasco.

The idea that people could be rounded up and sent away for what are effectively lifetime terms solely on the word of a police officer like Tom Coleman is insane.

62

Do you ignore certain posters?

by LDH in

jw
friends

ok before we get off on the wrong foot this is not a flame war.

i read a comment by belbab on hillary's post this morning...he remarked that he had asked a question after the 09/11 attack, that no one answered.

well, i didn't even remember reading it, so i did a simple search.

Spartacus

Hi LDH, I know we got off on the wrong foot but that does not mean it has to stay that way. But you make a really good point about interesting posts getting hardly any response and I agree with Bigbio who said that some posts are hard to add to because the post is comprehensive and on point, they say it all. I think in a case like that it would be nice if those who enjoyed it would at least say so .

The post I ignore are posts that involves JW stuff, I have heard it time and again, JW topics gets very boring, it's like beating a dead horse over and over again. Please don't let my sentiments discourage anyone who needs to vent, discuss or otherwise, please do, this is what this website is for I certainly appreciate what websites do for people who are caught up in JW mire like I was some years ago.

I think the reason YK gets so much response is because he is has a lot of history with many of us, cloak and dagger stuff, plus all the in your face commentaries and outlandish BS he comes up with is sorta fun.

I never repspond to his posts and never read them, I had my fill of him years ago.

Anyway, take care, Sparky

76

Objectivity and This Site

by Eutapro in

jw
friends

i must say that as a neutral scientific observer of this site--it seems that things are kind of one-sided here.

i thought this was a board with both devout jws and ex-jws on it.

on further reflection it appears that this medium of communication should probably be called ex-jw.com.

Spartacus

"But objectivity and openness are important for us intellectual academics."

Yeah right, Eutapro had to pat himself on the back, who cares!

JW's are a bunch of damn fools, how bout that for objectivity?

Your Science project is concluded.