“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!”
And NPR claimed to not know what his motivation was.
CBC in Canada says “in apparent act of protest”
Reminds me of
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
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 out the fire or scare the guy so much he stops being on fire – only options
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
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 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.
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.
Well yeah I’m not surprised that cops are not there to protect average people and provide them safety, they’re there to protect private property.
The embassy security secures the embassy. Whodathunk
Secures the embassy from a man caught on fire (very capable!) and is outside its fence. Could you imagine what would’ve happened if they weren’t there? Yeah, still no threat to the embassy :)
You know that now due to hindsight
Real footage of security cops hard at work:
I see one seeming to be getting medical equipment while one secures the scene. seems very professional.
Did you want to find another screenshot?
I’m not being pro cop here, I’m being anti assuming cops will be helpful buddies when you do things near an embassy. in an era of mass shooters and all sorts of public violence it’s no surprise that agents of the state be state agents
Someone had to yell “fire extinguisher not guns!” for them to even consider doing anything other than raise guns at a burning man.
I’m being anti assuming cops will be helpful buddies when you do things near an embassy.
That is the point I make. Never trust cops. They will rarely ever be helpful.
And as I’ve argued/miscommunicated with folks a few times here: they aren’t expected to be so. They aren’t there to help. They are there to secure the embassy
The new Burning Man.
Hey Google, remember the very first “doodle” you had on your homepage that had the Burning Man? Please bring it back.
While this man is brave and all (I wouldn’t have burnt myself), what does this achieve? I doubt authorities care a lot. And it’s not like visibility over this situation isn’t there.
I think think it is so that the rest of us have more bravery in our protest against these terrible war crimes and stop them at any cost.
The video: https://twitter.com/taliaotg/status/1761944158636331247
Couldn’t find uncensored version.
I’ve created a torrent for the video if anyone wants to help seed.
Fucking Christ my hearts beating so fast. Goddamn i didn’t want to see that but i watched it cus i thought i owed it to him… Goddamnit.
And also shout out to the “hero” pointing his gun at his smouldering corpse as if it will lunge at him any moment.
Goddamnit
I read about this and saw the censored version last night. I nearly threw up seeing the uncensored version now. I feel similar to you.
And to all the shitheads on twitter downplaying this as “glorifying mental illness,” fuck the lot of them.
That was fucking something. I’m like you I watch it because we owe it to him.
He kept screaming free Palestine over and over, past the point where his lungs had to be toast, and stayed standing so long.
When people perform stunts (stuntmen running around engulfed in flames for movies) the most critical part, aside from extinguishing the flames as soon as is necessary, is making sure those people have oxygen. The fire will consume the oxygen that you would otherwise breathe in.
Yeah, but when you inhale super heated air, it scorches all of your alveoli?, the little fucking airbags in your lungs, and I would just figure that you would pass out very quickly from that lack of oxygen and the fact that you’re working all of your insides.
I know that speech works from the diaphragm and all that but fuck men vocal cords.
When I did my cryo training, they made very clear that you had about two steps into an oxygen free room, and you were done.
At least one of them went “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers!”
Uncensored version here https://files.catbox.moe/rez1vs.mp4
He specifically livestreamed the video and sent links to the livestream and archive to various journalists and anarchist press so that the video would be shared and viewed. Its a disservice for it to be censored and weird that person also watermarked it with their @
Uncensored version: (GRAPHIC VIDEO WARNING) https://x.com/v4p4l/status/1761995206465888567?s=46&t=xtlq_1V7eXJ31HI_SLdE9g It will likely be removed soon so download while you can if you think it deserves to be archived.
Because it is censored, more people will see it and more people will get the message so I disagree with you but I see your point.
literally the entire point behind this act is it being explicitly graphic, sharing the uncensored version quite literally goes against that. It’s almost as bad as censoring the message from the get go, except now we’re actively disrespecting his intention.
I think the graphic nature can be shared while also censoring the gore. It’s not like it changes the events in any way.
A rare hero. Not what I expected from the US.
The systems of control didn’t work on him.
Aaron Bushnell, the greatest American since John Brown
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.
I’ve created a torrent for the video if anyone wants to help seed.
I’m not able to connect to it.
Just leave it open, it’ll find peers eventually.
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?
No you are not, NPR mysteriously has no idea what motivated this man who was shouting his motivation
I’m all for shitting on lib media, but please verify claims before repeating them. NPR updated their article over 10 hours ago to report on his motivations.
I’m currently sitting behind closed ports and cannot find any peers when I try to torrent it. I try again at home tomorrow
Don’t bother seeding it, it’s a censored version. I don’t know if the person who made the torrent added the blur or not, but it seems pointless to preserve it like this.
Link doesn’t work.
It’s a magnet link. Copy the link address and put it in your torrent client.
For those wondering, he is alive but in critical condition.
It’s now being reported he died
So sad. Nobody in any position to do anything will even blink an eye at his sacrifice.
Correct. This is pointless.
Law enforcement also drew a gun on the burning man during the incident, according to a report by Task and Purpose.
When you’re a hammer…
You can not make this shit up. Jesus fucking Christ what a world.
This would be hilarious if it was satire, but this ain’t the onion.
No, but I’m sure you can get shot by police if you have an onion - that’s basically a biological weapon to assault delicate cop eyes.
Acab
I read that and was like “of fucking course they did.” Honestly the next paragraph makes it even worse, IMO.
Authorities were heard asking the man – “May I help you, sir?” – at first but 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.
Threats of physical violence are the only tool they have in their toolbox. THE ONLY tool.
Threats of physical violence are the only tool they have in their toolbox. THE ONLY tool.
And actual gun violence. They’re the sniwflakiest and wimpiest of the all, bringing an AK-47 to a civilised discussion and feeling “threatened”.
Get on the ground! GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND, NOW!!!
Okay, now roll! ROLL OVER!!! Good, now the other way!! KEEP ROLLING WHERE I CAN SEE YOU!!!
“Officer Johnson’s quick actions saved the man’s life today,” said the Commissioner. “We have extensive firearm training for our officers and Johnson was able to apply what he learned to a firebody incident.”
firebody, one word apparently
Let’s escalate everything to death
I dunno spreading the war to Yemin, Lebanon, heck even Iran sounds pretty smart. Think of all the jobs or something for Average Americans et cetera
casually j-walks across a non busy street
casually j-walks across a non busy street
Sheriff’s deputies from Orange County fatally shot the man, 42-year-old Kurt Reinhold, amid an altercation in September in San Clemente, California.
The video, released on Thursday last week, shows two sheriff’s deputies considering whether or not to charge Reinhold with jaywalking, before tackling him to the floor.
Reports say the sheriff’s deputies were on patrol and were assigned to the homeless outreach team, when the shooting took place.
One of the deputies says in the video, “Watch this, he’s going to jaywalk,” before asking Reinhold: "Are you going to stop or are we going to have to make you stop?
"Jaywalking here? That’s ridiculous,” Reinhold adds.
Maybe they thought he had a pocket full of acorns.
good point, it’s possible we just didn’t see who he was actually aiming at
“law enforcement drew guns at the burning man” 💀
This is so sadly America it’s not funny.
Mirror?
Do a Google search and you can probably find it. I saw more photos on mastadon and reddit.
That’ll be in the history books.
I guess this part of the reactions to this video illustrates the confusion that people have about how it feels to be in that situation. I’m confused that people are unable to imagine it how chaotic the situation might be. We have the benefit of knowing how it unfolded, but what the police officers knew is what they were briefed on that morning (most probably threats against the embassy) and the exact situation they are in.
idk about you but I wouldn’t point a gun at someone who’s on fire in any situation
Seems like a case of reverting to training in a stressful situation.
then this just tells me their training is “point gun at what you don’t understand”
It sure does.
The pigs shouting “ON THE GROUND” to a person who is actively burning to death have got to be the finest example of cop brain. Everything’s a threat.
I kind of wish this troop would have done something like sabotage or leaked Intel like Chelsea Manning, but I’m also not gonna deny the bravery involved. Free Palestine. Death to America.
Aiming his gun at disintegrated body.
Americans don’t deserve death any more than Palestinians; people are people all over. Liberation for everyone.
It’s sloppy rhetoric if this is what he means but he said America not Americans. A lot of people feel ‘America’ - as it currently exists - could do to fie a ‘death’.
Death to America.
Winning hearts and minds!
You need to work on your rhetorical skills.
Rest in power
