The Atlantic has an article titled, "As a Tactic, Self-Immolation Is Often Counterproductive." I think it is part of their new determination to evolve into self-parody.
Of course, this was mostly before my time. I first heard of Thich Quan Duc in a Robin Williams joke.
Agnieszka Holland made a pretty good historical drama about Palach, Burning Bush, made for and I think available on HBO. She's also made a film about the current Polish-Ukrainian border.
She's fantastic, film school in Prague because her father was drummed out of the party and official life after publicly expressing reasonable opinions post-1956, so university in Poland was closed to her. Also I think her mom was Jewish.
I'm surprised Palach is less famous than Thich.
Most recent self-immolations have been by students in India protesting against affirmative action (in favour of lower castes) by university admissions offices.
6. Depends on where you're from, I think. Americans more interested in Vietnam because of that war than in a previous Russian invasion. I guess Wikipedia pageviews would be a way to quantify, I'll look later.
Morrison's page mentions ways he was/is remembered in Vietnam.
FWIW, I'm American now because of that invasion-- my parents fled the day before the borders closed, 12/31/68. All three of us are horrified by Ukraine and the current response, and tend to sympathize with people fleeing war or on the wrong side of a fence.
1. So Moby didn't make that up. Here it is.
I didn't think much of the article, but it wasn't anywhere near as stupid as the headline.
Yeah, but some of their articles are stupider than their headlines, so it averages out.
worth having a look at this: https://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/immolation.pdf
Especially the Diem government's no good very bad PR strategy. ("So how are we going to spin the blazing monk?" "Well he was mostly angry at us being Catholics, not the war as such." "Excellent! Let's tell the American journalists he was opposed to the war, that's much less embarrassing and certainly won't have an impact on US opinion that will literally get us all killed")
Diem wasn't a very good dictator in any sense.
In one meeting, Diệm labeled the Buddhists "damn fools" for demanding something that according to him, they already enjoyed. The government press release detailing the meeting also used the expression "damn fools".
Master of manipulation!
IIRC, the people who couped Diem weren't very good at dictatorship either.
There was a self immolation here at our courthouse back in 2011. The guy was protesting against the Violence Against Women Act and also having to pay child support.
They must have decided the headline of the article I mention in 1 is too stupid and changed it. But, with pf as my witness, it was as I have written when I wrote it.
14: It looks like he slapped his 7-year-old daughter three times, the divorce process started immediately, he lost any custody due to refusing to acknowledge any degree of blame and thereafter kept trying to reverse the result for years pro se, getting into MRA etc. along the way.
Yeah, he was an already not-great dude who went down the rabbit hole of men's rights paranoia.
At least he died like he lived, screaming and discomfiting others.
15. He who controls the present, controls the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation_protests_by_Tibetans_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi
Probably the most significant yet mentioned?
Palach has a square named after him in Prague, in Staromesto near the river.
Interesting, from 21:
Bouazizi's family claims he was publicly humiliated, that a 45-year-old female municipal official, Faida Hamdi,[2][10][15] slapped him in the face, spat at him, confiscated his electronic weighing scales, and tossed aside his produce cart.[20] It was also stated that she made a slur against his deceased father.[18][20] Bouazizi's family says her sex made his humiliation worse
This along with Thich and the Indian students... not every self-immolator is a conservative man angry that his privileges are being undermined, but quite a lot of them are.
re: 23
Also the site of the mass shooting last year.*
I was familiar with Palach, but what I didn't know was that there were two other Czech self-immolations at the same time.
* and where they filmed a big set piece action sequence for the Netflix "Gray Man" movie (not very good, btw).
Another irony of 10: it was precisely the Americans who thought Americans knew nothing about Vietnam and shouldn't get involved in its affairs who completely misunderstood the point Thich wanted to make, fell for Diem's spin, and consequently proved beyond doubt that Americans had no idea what was happening in Vietnam or why.
Wow, reading about these lesser-known acts of self-immolation really puts things into perspective. It's fascinating (and disturbing) to see how misinformation and political narratives can shape the perception of such profound acts of protest. The response of communist officials and media at the time adds another layer to the complexity of these events.
Norman Morrison's story, in particular, strikes a chord. His wife's statement encapsulates a universal truth that resonates across time and borders. McNamara's reflection on the moral dilemma of balancing ideals with the harsh realities of conflict is thought-provoking, to say the least.
These discussions delve into the depths of human conviction, the struggle for justice, and the weight of individual actions on the grand stage of history. It's sobering, yet essential, to reflect on these moments that challenge our understanding of morality and the human condition.
From a Spanish-language escort service, yet?
The other one that referred to Mossy by name almost had me asking for the fruit basket
I wonder how many high school and college essays it took to produce that kind of prose.
Why not train AI on Twilight fan fiction? Higher quality and more nipples.
This post delves into lesser-known instances of self-immolation as forms of protest, drawing attention to individuals like Jan Palach and Norman Morrison. It highlights the complexities surrounding these acts and the responses they elicited from authorities and society at large. The inclusion of historical context, such as the misinformation surrounding Palach's motivations, adds depth to the discussion. The quote from McNamara underscores the moral dilemmas inherent in political decision-making and the conflicting notions of good and evil. Overall, it's a thought-provoking exploration of the human capacity for protest and the consequences of challenging authority.
I feel that illustrates my point. Why isn't Jan Palach a centenarian who is enthralled by a high school student?
Just blue-sky thinking here, but I think I see a path to thousand-comment posts.
Not in the biz anymore, but in my work I was in a good position to observe the evolving tactics and counter tactics of the spam world from the early 90s* through to my retirement. Almost absolutely unfiltered email gateways for the first few years though escalations such as image spam (words spelled out in an image), spoofing, use of open relays and on and on. A *lot* of computer processing goes towards just filtering that shit out of email etc, on backends, gateways and clients (much less the amount spent on more general security). I do sometimes wonder what % of compute power*** is spent on it. Not to mention that amount of human compute power to recognize and guard against that which gets through. AI spam is stupid and generally obvious (for now) for humans to spot, but I suspect is still pretty difficult to recognize algorithmically. Brandolini's law (bullshit asymmetry principle) for computing.
*I miss the relatively innocent days of Canter/Siegel and Serdar Argic**.
**Very belatedly lamenting that my many years ago experiment of countering TOS with targeted Serdar Argic spam on here late one night got zapped by a diligent FPP before I could ask for it to be kept. TOS (who I/Serdar referred to as TOSSARIAN and accused of genocide against Turks took the bait and countered that he was of Scandinavian descent. ..well, I had fun with it anyway.
***Of course it is an instance of a very general complex systems problem and one that has driven a lot of mutual evolutionary escalations in the "natural" world.