“I will no longer be complicit in genocide [in Gaza]. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” the man apparently said before setting himself alight and repeatedly shouting “Free Palestine!”
as he was engulfed in flames they started yelling at him to get down on the ground. They even drew their guns on the burning man before someone pushed them to get fire extinguishers to extinguish the fire.
Stop killing yourself or I’ll shoot you! lmao
They would shoot at the fire, not the person, duh.
Yeah, suicide is illegal here… But getting killed by cops while you break the law isn’t.
I’m not joking. Both of those things are true.
It highlights the absolute brutality of the regime, that their first instinct was to try and kill a dying man.
They didn’t know what was going on, could have been a suicide bomber
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I’m just saying there is no way for them to know what his intentions are, of course they drew weapons
The situation probably unfolded in a matter of seconds
why do we teach everyone to only pull your gun if you’re going to kill someone unless you’re a police – then just pull it any time you’re worried or confused!
I’m confused why my comments are negatively recieved but this isn’t https://lemm.ee/comment/9644382
Lemmy is worse than reddit
I dunno – I didn’t downvote you! :)
Maybe actually grab him with your hands, instead of going for a gun as a first option. The police in US is brutal.
Looks like he was an anarchist comrade.
Seems weird that an anarchist was a US soldier. Maybe he joined before he came to the political beliefs he held as he burned, or perhaps he came to these beliefs because of what he saw in the army.
That happens quite a lot when you recruit teenagers with the promise of tech job skills.
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Nah i’m with the mods on that one, it came off way too much like you were laughing at them.
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Anyone who still visits reddit, how [deleted] is this story over there?
Edit: I’ve created a torrent for the video if anyone wants to help seed. His sacrifice in bringing attention to the US-sponsored genocide in Palestine must not be forgotten.
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What story?
Self immolation as a form of protest. For anyone unaware of it there was a Buddhist monk who immolated themself to protest the oppression of Buddhists by the Catholic PM of Vietnam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thích_Quảng_Đức
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_Against_the_Machine_(album)
https://time.com/3791176/malcolm-browne-the-story-behind-the-burning-monk/
“Arab Spring” started with a immolation.
For anyone unaware - it happened at least 160 times since 2009 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation_protests_by_Tibetans_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolations
“law enforcement drew guns at the burning man” 💀
This is so sadly America it’s not funny.
That’ll be in the history books.
Mirror?
Do a Google search and you can probably find it. I saw more photos on mastadon and reddit.
I’ve created a torrent for the video if anyone wants to help seed. His sacrifice in bringing attention to the US-sponsored genocide in Palestine must not be forgotten.
Noticed that the MSM is barely touching the story or if they are, with little contextual detail. Am I the only one who has noticed this?
I’m not able to connect to it.
Just leave it open, it’ll find peers eventually.
Link doesn’t work.
It’s a magnet link. Copy the link address and put it in your torrent client.
He was too innocent for this world. I don’t know what to say other than I promise I will never forget him and that I’ll try to spread his message and do everything I can to help free Palestine.
He is the fiery monk of our time. I watched the video below and I will admit after the second “Free Palestine” and the screaming started, I had to turn the sound off until he fell and I suspected the screaming stopped.
He is braver and has more strength than anyone on the Israeli side. I won’t forget that this hero couldn’t stay silent in the face of genocide.
I wish there was another option for him.
We failed to be organized enough.
He’s like the third guy to do this in a year, big money doesn’t want you to know about it
having viewed the video now, i initially found myself surprised i was not more horrified. my best guess as to why is this - what seemed most notable to me was his apparent sanity and intentionality in making this choice. he chose the where and when of his death and intended it to matter.
I couldn’t believe how long he stayed on his feet after he could no longer scream. Rest in Power Aaron.
He stopped feeling pain because shock set in about 30 seconds into it, I could get more graphic but that’s about how long it took for his eyes to get to fucked up to close them.
God damn, this is brutal. I watched it and it gave me absolute chills. The world won’t forget this man’s bravery and sacrifice, even if the media doesn’t cover it.
Oh the country will forget. By Friday there will be something else.
There’s going to be some big presidential debate drama. Bidens going to forget to wear socks or Trumps going to go tanning again… The important stuff.
I’m waiting with baited breath
It’s nowhere in the news cycles here in Europe. Sadly, maybe we won’t forget but the world is already neglecting it. I wish he hadn’t done it, we’ve seen enough death already.
Wanna bet?
We won’t forget.
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kindly shut the fuck up now
More bravery in this one man than all of the IDF combined. Rest in power!
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This guy is very brave, but everyone taking about the embassy security drawing weapons when they arrive. Of course they would. They don’t know what was planned, if it was a suicide bombing gone wrong, our whatever else. I’m not pro cop but I don’t understand why people are surprised by this. They are security
Sure, maybe if they drew their weapons immediately, before his act. That’d make sense. They wouldn’t know what he was gonna do.
The trouble is, based on the reporting we have, they drew their guns after he lit himself on fire, not before:
as soon as he was engulfed in flames they started yelling at him to get down on the ground. They even drew their guns on the burning man before someone pushed them to get fire extinguishers to extinguish the fire.
I’m thinking by the time the guy was engulfed in flames he was a little too preoccupied to do much else.
Can you imagine facing a living bonfire, and your first thought is “I should draw my gun and tell them to get down on the ground”? There’s genuinely no excuse for that level of inhumanity.
If your job is to secure the embassy/ site/ scene you work down a list. They clearly followed the list.
We now know that he was no risk, but they couldn’t.
They aren’t equipped with fire extinguishers (aside from the guy who got one), so are you assuming they should jump on him? Smother a fuel fire with their bodies? Does that secure the site? No. It’s also not realistic.
Seems like securing the site then 1 person getting a fire extinguisher is a completely responsible response.
He’d already fallen down and stopped screaming when they drew on him. What threat would he pose that a gun was going to solve at that time? Before you say bomb, think carefully about what a gun was going to do in that circumstance.
No, this was an example (once again) that “try to kill anything you don’t immediately understand” is the default condition of our law enforcement. Last week’s example was an acorn, and a very, very lucky handcuffed man in the back of a police cruiser.
This is not the acorn thing at all. They are trained to secure the embassy and they did that.
Thank you for ignoring everything else I wrote.
I ignored it because it’s irrelevant. You’re applying a subjective value assessment to professionals following training. It’s ugly, but it’s not meant to be “nice” or compassionate. They are there to protect the embassy
I ignored it because it’s irrelevant.
You ignored the context and circumstances because they’re irrelevant?
Your answer to every comment has consistently been (paraphrasing): “trust the cops, they know what they’re doing”, irrespective of any surrounding facts that might suggest otherwise, or any past history that would suggest that law enforcement doesn’t deserve that level of blind trust.
Given that, there’s little point in further discussion.
I just want to know what they were going to prevent with guns, given he was immobilized and not even screaming anymore in addition to being engulfed in flames. You seem to have all the answers, so I’m sure there must be something dangerous he could have done at that point which could have been stopped by a gun - please just tell me what it was.
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What, exactly, would a gun do if he was a suicide bomber?
Stop him before he got any closer to the embassy. Obviously a gun won’t stop him from commiting suicide, but it could easily be the difference between one person dying and a much larger act of terrorism
There’s a metal fence. What would he even get close to?
Considering the security forces had no idea whether he was working alone or what was happening, they obviously didn’t think they could rely on the metal fence.
Look, I’m all for a free Palestine and I agree that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I also think that voluntary membership in any American or Israeli law enforcement makes them complicit in the heinous acts perpetrated by American cops and the IDF, respectively. I don’t know you, but I’d guess that you and I agree a lot more than we disagree on these issues. I’m just saying, from the PoV of the security forces at the Israeli embassy, this was a potential threat to the embassy and their job is literally to prevent threats from harming the embassy. Without any further information to go on, their decision to draw guns first and get the extinguisher second is reasonable.
If he wasn’t alone what would shooting him accomplish? You still haven’t actually presented a compelling reason he needed to be kept under a gun.
I think it’s understandable that people untrained for a situation like this would fall back on the default, I know I wouldn’t know what to do, but calling that “reasonable” as if it really makes sense in hindsight is a stretch.
If he wasn’t alone what would shooting him accomplish? You still haven’t actually presented a compelling reason he needed to be kept under a gun.
Once Bushnell was on fire and had stopped moving toward the gate/fence, you are correct, he didn’t need to be kept under a gun. However, if he had started to move in a threatening way or if he had been working with a larger group, having the guns drawn could have saved crucial seconds if someone else began to act in a threatening way. The security forces simply didn’t know what the fuck was happening, and in that situation, it is better to have the guns drawn and to be ready for the worst case scenario.
I think it’s understandable that people untrained for a situation like this would fall back on the default, I know I wouldn’t know what to do, but calling that “reasonable” as if it really makes sense in hindsight is a stretch.
That’s fair. I can get behind calling it “understandable” instead of “reasonable”
Shoot the suicide bomber before a bigger boom. What if there was another person? Another thing? We can’t know, they can’t know. We know now, due to hindsight.
They are security. They secure scenes. They aren’t paramedics.
I am not making pro cop statements here, but all the comments about “ohhh the cop arrived to a dangerous scene with a weapon drawn!” Is like saying “the garbage man picked up the garbage bin when he drove past my house!” Duh!
He’s on fire! Shooting him wouldn’t stop a bigger boom!
I’ll give the cops this: they probably were not trained on what to do if someone lights themselves on fire. They just fell back on basic training.
It’s murica, they weren’t trained at all.
They did the one thing they were trained to do – Pull first ask
questionsfor fire extinguishers later
shoot out the fire or scare the guy so much he stops being on fire – only options
Whoever keeps throwing in the shit about law enforcement in these stories, which I think was actually a security officer for the embassy, drawing a gun, is doing a pretty good job of distracting from the main issue of what this guy lit himself on fire and died for. Doing a much better job than all the whinging about how he was mentally ill, and how this won’t change anything, and how there’s no clear cause, that mainstream news outlets are doing when they cover this type of stuff, if they cover it at all.
I would also like to kind of point out here, that “this won’t change anything, this guy was mentally ill, he killed himself for nothing”, is really only true if you decide it to be true. We get to decide whether or not this motivates us to do something or not. We get to decide whether or not we let this affect us. Whether or not we do something, to make sure this doesn’t happen again, you know? And that’s mostly, in my mind, the purpose of this kind of protest.
Maybe it makes the institutions think about what they’re doing, probably not, since, if they were gonna think that, they should’ve probably thought that about the 20,000 or so palestinians that have been killed. This protest is mostly engineered to get you mad, and sad, and to make you, the viewer, think about why this is happening, and think about what you can do to stop it. Not just deflecting immediately to whether or not it was effective, because by doing so, you let it not be as effective.
Brings to mind the discourse against, really any form of protest that I’ve seen. You could take the george floyd protests, for example. So, sure, the government throws in agent provocateurs, in order to turn what would otherwise be peaceful protests, which would shut down any traffic into and out of the city, and would choke off any economic activity (puts pressure on businesses, utilities, puts pressure on local government, which needs to please these people who don’t really care about the protest but want things to go back to normal).
But by doing so, right, by causing those passive forms of damage, but also by causing active forms of damage, say, burning a big box store down, right, the public showcases that, if a certain legal decision to, say, let derek chauvin off, occurs, then there will be potentially more protests and more destruction, which provides great incentive against that decision occurring.
Now, in this case, there’s not as clear of a process, because there’s not as clear of repercussions if they decide to do nothing. About the only thing that might happen is that this might happen again, which, might, by some process of media coverage, put enough pressure on politicians to cause this to stop, if it becomes a political issue. The same thing is happening with mass shootings, which aren’t a greatly impacting issue, by the numbers, right, they’re much less than that of road deaths, heart disease, other forms of gun violence.
But they are so horrifying to the american public and to really anyone of moral conscience, that they should serve as a clear marker that something is wrong, and something needs to change. Serial killers create a similar effect. It’s almost like a kind of terrorism, using that word without judgement, here. That’s the power of these protests. We’ve already seen it spread across a bunch of news media, even though it’s being reported about as poorly as you’d expect.
I’m not particularly sure that repeat incidents would do any good, and I think I’d generally be opposed to that, as should anyone, but, an instance of self-immolation is what caused the arab spring. This sort of thing isn’t ineffective, I think it does a disservice to aaron bushnell to say otherwise.
If you want to stop this sort of thing from occurring in the first place, you should really try to understand why it was happening, instead of brushing it aside.
Rest in power
A rare hero. Not what I expected from the US.
