US Air Force member dies after self-immolation outside Israeli embassy
An active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force has died after he set himself ablaze outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while declaring that he "will no longer be complicit in genocide."
The 25-year-old airman, Aaron Bushnell, of San Antonio, Texas, died from his injuries, the Metropolitan Police Department said Monday.
Bushnell had walked up to the embassy shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday and began livestreaming on the video streaming platform Twitch, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. Law enforcement officials believe the man started a livestream, set his phone down and then doused himself in accelerant and ignited the flames. At one point, he said he "will no longer be complicit in genocide," the person said. The video was later removed from the platform, but law enforcement officials have obtained and reviewed a copy.
The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The incident happened as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking the cabinet approval for a military operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah while a temporary cease-fire deal is being negotiated. Israel's military offensive in Gaza, however, has drawn criticisms, including claims of genocide against the Palestinians.
Israel has adamantly denied the genocide allegations and says it is carrying out operations in accordance with international law in the Israel-Hamas war.
In December, a person self-immolated outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta and used gasoline as an accelerant, according to Atlanta's fire authorities. A Palestinian flag was found at the scene, and the act was believed to be one of "extreme political protest."
26 February 2024, 17:08
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RIP Aaron Bushnell, I watched the heartbreaking video on Twitter, it’s a terrible loss.
26 February 2024, 19:15
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Then you saw the police officer pointing a gun at the fallen man as a fireman/ambulance-attendant is screaming for another fire extinguisher.
26 February 2024, 20:53
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مزبوط. This visual narrative is a microcosm, effectively capturing the broader spectrum of societal maladies, offering a poignant commentary on the multifaceted problems faced by the American populace. Somehow, It becomes a powerful tool for both diagnosis and critique!
01 March 2024, 10:08
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مضبوط وإلا مزبوط
What's the difference? Wiktionary says مزبوط comes from مضبوط. Derived from the passive participle of the verb ضَبَطَ (ḍabaṭa, “to hold fast, grasp, keep”), from the root ض ب ط (ḍ-b-ṭ). So you can see how much Arabic I know: I can sort of look things up in a dictionary. Which reminds me of what I was wondering about last night: how does a Chinese dictionary work? If there are, say, fifty basic "letters", pictures, oops, I forgot: Google it first. It filled in "organized" when I put in "how, etc.". "The orders or sorting methods of Chinese dictionaries are traditionally divided into three categories: (1) form-based orders, including stroke-based orders and component-based orders, which further includes radical-based orders, etc., (2) sound-based orders, including Pinyin-based order and Bopomofo-based order, and (3 ...
01 March 2024, 10:14
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That in turn reminds me I use an English-Chinese textbook all the time that grapples with that point, and is no longer published, because it works so well. McGraw-Hill's Chinese Dictionary and Guide. The gist of it is in counting the strokes in a symbol. There are seven kinds of strokes, etc. The key breakthrough here was "broken stroke": when a stroke changes direction radically, you call that a new stroke. So you can count the strokes in a word, and organize the dictionary starting with one-stroke words, of which there is one. The first kind of stroke is horizontal. It means "one". Etc. There is an English-Chinese section first. One way and another, if I'm patient, I can look up a Chinese word. Probably in ten years, that'll be very easy. I can remember when Google translation didn't work at all. So don't give up on world peace.
