In the spirit of the man shooting himself at ground zero, man sets fire to self in front of white house

"President Bush went about his regular schedule during and after the incident, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

He was reported to be cackling, 'only 54,999,998 left to go.'"

I'm going to cut off my own head and send it to Bill Frist.

I'm going to smoke Elvis Presley's toenails 'til I get high.

You already have.

This event shows how deeply discouraged some Americans are. Even if he was crazy, this was a very deliberate choice of act and venue, very similar to the well known protest action of the monk that set himself on fire during Viet Nam.

but i do feel that protest doesn't mean anything to those in power any more. when I hear of johnson being so deeply troubled over someone did something similar to protest the vietnam war (in the Fog of War; wait, now I'm not positive I'm not getting things confused, but I do thin McNamera said something about this), I just can't imagine this even causing Bush to raise an eyebrow.

He only has one eyebrow!

Unfortunately, kyle OTM.

Yes, McNamara in Fog of War talks about a Quaker man who set fire to himself outside of his office. I think he was quite moved by the protest, actually.

oh right, it was McNamera himself who talked about being so troubled by this.

Short of 50 to a 100 people going and shooting themselves outside the White House, I can't think that any of this is going to make a difference. Volunteers?

Of course we also don't know that this guy did this as a protest, either.

Not moved enough to actually ya know do something, but moved enough to talk about it 40 years later in passing. Yeah, Rob great stuff. Thanks.

of course it was a protest. the white house is hardly a random choice.

Umm, I think the question would be whether it was a protest or an act of attempted violence that went wrong. Setting-yourself-on-fire as protest is historically done by sitting down and making a bit of a rituatl of it -- according to this article, the guy was walking along and flames shot out of his bag at him.

"Rituatl," as we all know, is an Aztec word meaning "help I am on fire."

he gave a note to them first, and then set himself on fire. no other person was a target and it wasn't random, according to the article

I think it's hard to understand suicide protests within the traditional ideas of protest. The protestor wants nothing for himself, if he\she does any good he knows he\she will not live to see it. It needs to be seen withing the philosophy of pacifism, or in particular ahimsa. There comes a point where all you have to give is your own love and suffering, where living as part of a system that does these things is no longer seen as tolerable. Of course, there are many ways to use this suffering - hunger strike, passive resistance to state violence, etc. Some people choose suicide. It's not that these people think that their suicide will make a difference, at least not a crucial one, it's an expression of love and desperation. It's the morally necessary act of begging someone not to do an evil thing, even though you know they won't listen. It makes a lot more sense within a Buddhist or Hindu cosmology though, though as the Quaker example shows it is not alien to Christianity either. Taking sin upon yourself through suffering is common to all religions, I think (certainly the three just mentioned, but I think it's a wider phenomenon). Anyway, regardless of the religious or philosophical reasons for the act, I'm sure we all recognise the frustration and despair that these people feel about their inability to stop their brothers killing each other, and maybe killing yourself is as rational a response as getting on with your life, in the face of such irrational destruction.

xpost

When a uniformed Secret Service guard asked if he could help him, the man began walking along the fence toward the guard. Another witness near the scene heard the unidentified man yelling in Arabic, "God is great," several times. And several witnesses said a bag the man was carrying started burning, pouring out thick black smoke that enveloped him.

(a) He was walking (toward someone, even), not sitting dramatically in place like a Buddhist monk. (b) Nothing in those sentences indicates that he made any particular show of lighting or otherwise igniting the bag; it may have gone off at the wrong moment.

I'm not advocating either interpretation here, just pointing out that either is a possibility.