10 December 2013

Santa and Coca-Cola




For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast, 1999, Excerpts

Coca-Cola bottlers had always known that they had to snare the next generation of drinkers early, regardless of the taboo on direct advertising to those below twelve. One approach directed at children wound up reshaping American culture through the art of Haddon Sundblom. A hard-drinking Swede whose work was brilliant but usually late, “Sunny” made himself indispensable, regardless of his habits, by creating the classic Coca-Cola Santa Claus in 1931. Sundblom’s Santa was the perfect Coca-Cola man – bigger than life, bright red, eternally jolly, and caught in whimsical situations involving a well-known soft drink as his reward for a hard night’s work of toy delivery. Every Christmas, Sundblom delivered another eagerly awaited Coca-Cola Santa ad. When his first model, a retired Coca-Cola salesman, died, Sundblom used himself. While Coca-Cola has had a subtle, pervasive influence on our culture, it has directly shaped the way we think of Santa. Prior to the Sundblom illustrations, the Christmas saint had been variously illustrated wearing blue, yellow, green, and red. In European art, he was usually tall and gaunt, whereas Clement Moore had depicted him as an elf in “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” After the soft drink ads, Santa would forever more be a huge, fat, relentlessly happy man with broad belt and black hip boots – and he would wear Coca-Cola red.


 

18 November 2013

President John Kennedy - 22 Nov 1963

Whether the Federal Reserve creates debt money, or the Treasury creates fiat money, its about control of who gets to create money. However, who gets to control the creation of money is a definite source of contention with potentially deadly results.

Crossfire, The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs, 1989, Excerpts
Another overlooked aspect of Kennedy's attempt to reform American society involves money. Kennedy apparently reasoned that by returning to the Constitution, which states that only Congress shall coin and regulate money, the soaring national debt could be reduced by not paying interest to the bankers of the Federal Reserve system, who print paper money then loan it to the government at interest.

He moved in this area on June 4, 1963, by signing Executive Order 11,110 which called for the issuance of $4,292,893,815 in United States notes through the U.S. Treasury rather than the traditional Federal Reserve System. A number of "Kennedy bills" were indeed issued but were quickly withdrawn after Kennedy's death.

Considering that the battle over U.S. monetary control by a monolithic central bank is an issue that dates back to the founding of the Republic, some assassination researchers believe Kennedy's little-noted efforts to reform the money supply and curtail the Federal Reserve System may have cost him much more than just the enmity of the all-powerful international bankers.





JFK, The Movie

I won't name names or tell you who or what I represent.
Except to say you're close.
Closer than you think.
Everything I'll say is classified top secret.
I was a soldier, Mr. Garrison. Two wars.
A secret Pentagon guy, supplying the hardware:
Planes, bullets, rifles...

...for what we call "Black Operations."
Black Ops. Assassinations. Coups d'état...
...rigging elections, propaganda, psych warfare.
In World WarIl, I was in Rumania, Greece, Yugoslavia.
I helped evacuate part of Nazi intelligence at the end of the war.
And we used those guys against the Communists.
In ltaly, '48, we stole the elections.
France '49, we broke the strikes.
Overthrew Quirino in the Philippines, Arbenz in Guatemala...
...Mossadegh in Iran. We were in Vietnam in '54...
...Indonesia, '58, Tibet, '59.
Got the Dalai Lama out. We were good.
Very good.
Then we got into the Cuban thing. Not so good.
Set up an invasion to take place in October, '62.
Khrushchev sent missiles to resist. Kennedy didn't invade.
We just had our dicks in the wind.
A lot of pissed-off people, Mr. Garrison.
Understand?
I'll come to that later.
So, 1963....
I spent much of September of '63...
...working on the Kennedy plan to get all US personnel...
...out of Vietnam by the end of 1965.
One of the strongest plans issued by the Kennedy White House...
...National Security Memo 263...
...ordered home the first 1,000 troops.
But in November, a week after the murder of Vietnamese President Diem...
...and two weeks before Kennedy's assassination...
...a strange thing happened to me.
I was sent by my superior, we'll call him "Y"...
...I was sent by General Y to the South Pole...
...as military escort for a group of international VIPs.
I was on my way back, in New Zealand...
...when the President was killed.
Oswald was charged at 7:00 p.m., Dallas time...
...with Tippet's murder.
That's 2:00 p.m. the next day in New Zealand.
But already their papers had the entire history...
...of this unknown, 24-year-old Oswald.
Studio picture, detailed biography, Russian information...
...and were sure that he killed the President alone...
...although it took them four more hours to charge him with that crime in Dallas.
It felt to me as if...
...a cover story was being put out.
Like we would in a Black Op.
After I came back...
...I asked myself, why was l, the chief of Special Ops...
...sent to the South Pole to do a job...
...many others could have done?
I wondered if it could've been because...
...one of my routine duties, if I'd been in Washington...
...would've been to order additional security in Texas.
I checked it out and found that someone...
...told the 112th Military Intelligence Group at Fort Sam Houston...
...to stand down that day, over the protests of Colonel Reich.
I believe it's a mistake.
It's standard procedure, especially in a known hostile city like Dallas...
...to supplement the Secret Service.
Even if we hadn't let him ride with the bubble-top off...
...we would've put 100 to 200 agents on the sidewalk without question.
A month before, in Dallas, UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was spit on and hit.
There had been attempts on De Gaulle's life in France.
We'd have arrived days ahead, studied the route...
...checked all the buildings.
Never would've allowed open windows overlooking Dealey. Never!
Our own snipers would've covered the area.
If a window went up, they'd have been on the radio!
We'd be watching the crowd: packages, rolled-up newspapers, coats.
Never would've let a man open an umbrella.
Never would've let the car slow down to ten miles an hour.
Or take that unusual curve at Houston and Elm.
You'd have felt an Army presence in the streets that day.
But none of this happened. It violated our most basic protection codes.
And it is the best indication of a massive plot in Dallas.
Who could have best done this?
Black Ops. People in my business.
My superior could've called Col. Reich and said:
"We have another unit coming for security. You'll stand down."
That day, some Army Intelligence people were in Dallas.
I don't know who or why.
But they weren't protecting clients.
And Oswald. Army Intell had a Lee Harvey Oswald on file.
Those files have been destroyed.
Many strange things were happening.
Oswald had nothing to do with them.
The entire Cabinet was in the Far East.
A third of a combat division was returning from Germany...
...in the air above the United States, at the time of the shooting.
At 12:34 p.m., the Washington telephone system went out for an hour.
On the plane back to Washington...
...word was radioed from the Situations Room...
...to Johnson that there was only one assassin.
Sound like coincidences to you?
Not for one moment.
The Cabinet was out of the way.
Troops for riot control were in the air.
Telephones were out to stop the wrong stories from spreading.
Nothing was left to chance.
He could not be allowed to escape alive.
Things were never the same after that.
Vietnam started for real. There was an air of...
...make-believe in the Pentagon and CIA.
Those of us in Secret Ops knew the Warren Commission was fiction.
But there was something...
...deeper.
Uglier.
I knew Allen Dulles well. I often briefed him in his house.
But why was he appointed to investigate Kennedy's death? The man who fired him.
Dulles, by the way, was General Y's benefactor.
I got out in '64.
Resigned my commission.
I never realized Kennedy was so dangerous to the establishment.
Is that why?
That's the real question, isn't it? Why?
The how and the who is just scenery for the public.
Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia...
...keeps them guessing, like a game.
Prevents them from asking the most important question: why?
Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited?
Who has the power to cover it up? Who?
In 1961...
...right after the Bay of Pigs, very few people know this...
...I participated in drawing up National Security Action Memos 55, 56, 57.
These are documents classified top secret.
In them, Kennedy told Gen. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs...
...that from here on, the Joint Chiefs would be wholly responsible...
...for all covert paramilitary action in peacetime.
This ended the reign of the CIA.
Splintered it into 1,000 pieces, as JFK promised he would.
And now he was ordering the military...
...to help him do it. Unprecedented!
I can't tell you the shock waves this sent along the corridors of power.
This and the firing of Allen Dulles...
...Richard Bissell and Gen. Charles Cabell.
All were sacred cows in Intell since World War II.
They got some very upset people.
Kennedy's directives weren't implemented because of...
...bureaucratic resistance.
But one of the results was...
...the Cuban operation was turned over to my department...
...as Operation Mongoose.
Mongoose was pure Black Ops.
It was secretly based at Miami University...
...which has the largest domestic CIA station...
...budgeted annually for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Three hundred agents, 7,000 select Cubans.
Fifty fake business fronts to launder money.
They waged a non-stop war against Castro.
Industrial sabotage, crop burning, etc.
All under the control of General Y.
He took the rules of covert warfare he'd used abroad...
...and brought them to this country.
Now he had the people, the equipment, the bases...
...and the motivation.
Don't underestimate the budget cuts that Kennedy called for in March of 1963.
Nearly 52 military installations in 25 states.
Twenty-one overseas bases.
Big money.
You know how many helicopters have been lost in Vietnam?
Nearly 3,000 so far.
Who makes them? Bell Helicopter. Who owns Bell?
Bell was nearly bankrupt when First National Bank of Boston asked the CIA...
...to use the helicopter in Indochina. How about the F-111 fighter?
General Dynamics of Fort Worth, Texas. Who owns that?
Find out the defense budget since the war began. $75 going on $100 billion.
Nearly $200 billion will be spent before it's over.
In 1949, it was $10 billion.
No war...no money.
The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison...
...is for war.
The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers.
Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War in his second term.
He wanted to call off the moon race and cooperate with the Soviets.
He signed a treaty to ban nuclear testing.
He refused to invade Cuba in 1962.
He set out to withdraw from Vietnam.
But all that ended on the 22nd of November, 1963.
Since 1961, they knew Kennedy was not going to war in Southeast Asia.
Like Caesar, he is surrounded by enemies.
Something's underway, but it has no face. Yet, everybody in the loop knows.
Forget about combat troops.
He told McNamara he would pull out the goddamn advisors!
He fucked us in Laos and now he will fuck us in Vietnam!
He can't afford to implement it before the election.
I hear the NSC meeting was a real barn burner.
I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Heads will roll. Hear about Lemnitzer?
What?
Kennedy rubbed Lem's nose in shit.
Said if we didn't go into Cuba, which was so close...
...why go into Vietnam which is so far away?
There he goes again.
Got his hand on the chicken switch.
Lem said that the Chiefs still think we should go into Cuba.
Money's at stake.
Big money. $100 billion.
Kennedy bred voting districts for defense dollars.
He gave TFX fighter contracts only to those counties that will matter in '64.
The people in the loop fight back. Their way.
We have to control the intelligence from Saigon.
We just don't let McNamara stick his nose in this thing!
Every time he goes over to Saigon for a fact-finding mission...
...he comes back and scares the shit out of Kennedy!
Now I want Max Taylor on him night and day...
...like a fly on shit.
You control McNamara, you control Kennedy.
I think it started like that.
In the wind.
Defense contractors, oil bankers. Just conversation.
A call is made. Maybe to someone like my superior officer General Y.
We're going. We need your help.
When?
In the fall. Probably in the South.
-We want you to come up with a plan. -I can do that.
Everything is cellularized.
No one said, "He must die." No vote. Nothing's on paper.
There's no one to blame.
It's as old as the crucifixion.
Or the military firing squad.
Five bullets, one blank. No one's guilty.
Everybody in the power structure...
...has a plausible deniability.
No compromising connections except at the most secret point.
But it must succeed.
No matter how many die or how much it costs...
...the perpetrators must be on the winning side...
...and never subject to prosecution for anything by anyone.
That is a coup d'état.
Kennedy announces the Texas trip in September.
At that moment, second Oswalds pop up all over Dallas...
...where they have the mayor and the cops in their pocket.
General Y flies in the assassins.
Maybe from the special camp we keep near Athens, Greece.
Pros.
They'd be locals, Cubans, Mafia hire. Separate teams.
Does it matter who shot...
...from what rooftop?
Part of the scenery.
I keep thinking about that Tuesday...
...the 26th of November.
The day after they buried Kennedy.
Gentlemen, I am not going to let Vietnam go like China did.
I'm committed...
...not to take our soldiers out of there till they know we mean business in Asia.
Lyndon Johnson signs National Security Memo 273...
...which reverses Kennedy's withdrawal policy...
...and approves covert action against North Vietnam...
...provoking the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Just get me elected, I'll give you the damn war.
In that document...
...lay the Vietnam War.
I can't believe they killed him because he wanted to change things.
-ln our time, in our country! -They've done it throughout history.
Kings are killed. Politics is power, nothing more!
Don't take my word for it. Do your own thinking.
The size of this is...
...beyond me.



Could the US get a $1tn platinum coin?
09 Jan 2012
A petition urging the creation of platinum coin worth $1tn (£624bn) has attracted nearly 7,000 signatures and the support of some heavyweight economists such as Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and Philip Diehl, the former director of the United States Mint. Experts say the plan would be lawful and should allow the government to keep spending if President Barack Obama fails to convince lawmakers to raise the "debt ceiling" - a cap, set by Congress, on the US government's borrowing ability. This brinksmanship could threaten the US's credit rating if the country's debt reaches or breaks through this ceiling. Walden said he feared the practice would be "very inflationary".



12 June 2013

Burning Man Burning Monk


50 years ago....





Vietnam war reporter Malcolm Browne dies
28 Aug 2012
A journalist who captured an iconic image of a burning South Vietnamese monk in 1963 has died at the age of 81. Associated Press (AP) correspondent Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam in 1964. His photograph of Thich Quang Duc, an elderly monk who set himself on fire in Saigon, became one of the first defining images of the escalating conflict. The image reportedly made it directly to the desk of US President John F Kennedy, who told his newly appointed ambassador to South Vietnam: "We have to do something about that regime." Within months South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem was deposed in a coup as the country's struggle against Viet Cong insurgents intensified.

Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer, 2006, Excerpt
Description of Malcolm Browne and the Photograph

The final act in the drama of Diems’ rule was unfolding. On May 8, Buddhists gathered in Hue to mark the 2,527th birthday of the Buddha. The local strongman, Ngo Dinh Can – the president’s brother – decided to enforce a old decree prohibiting the celebrants from flying the traditional blue-red-saffron Buddhist flag. Buddhists began a series of protest. Police fired on them, killing a woman and eight children.

Malcolm Browne, the Associated Press correspondent in Saigon, was still working when his office telephone rang late on the evening of June 10, 1963. The caller was Thich Duc Nghiep, a Buddhist monk Browne had come to know while covering the escalating conflict between Buddhists and the catholic-dominated government of South Vietnam. He told Browne that anyone who appeared at the Xa Loi Pagoda the next morning would witness “an important event.”

Browne had written extensively about the spreading Buddhist rebellion and sensed that it would shape Vietnam’s future. Before dawn the next morning, he and his Vietnamese assistant set out for the pagoda. They found it packed with monks in saffron-colored robes and nuns in gray ones. The air inside was hot, thick, and heavily scented wit incense. Smoke spiraled upward from a hundred braziers. Holy men and women lost themselves in ancient chants.

Browne took a place. One of the nuns approached him, and as she poured him tea, he could see tears streaming down her face. A few minutes later, Thich Duc Nghiep caught sight of him and approached. He had a simple question: do not leave “until events have run their course.”

For half an hour Browne sat amid this scene. Suddenly, at a signal, the monks and nuns stopped their chanting, rose, solemnly filed out of the pagoda, and formed a column outside. They assembled behind an old Austin sedan carrying five monks and followed it through the streets. Where Phan Dinh Phung intersected with one of the city’s major avenues, Le Van Duyet, the procession stopped. Marchers formed a circle to block off all approaches.

Three monks emerged from the car, one elderly and the others supporting him. The younger ones placed a square cushion on the pavement in the center of the intersection and helped the older one settle into the archetypal lotus position. As he fingered his oak beads and murmured the sacred words nam mo amita Buddha, “return to Buddha,” they fetched a gasoline tank from the car and splashed a pink gas-and-diesel mixture over him. After they stepped away, he produced a box of matches, lit one, and dropped it into his lap. Instantly he was consumed by fire.

“As the breeze whipped the flames from his face, I could see that although his eyes were closed, his features were contorted with agony. But throughout his ordeal he never uttered a sound or changed his position, even as the smell of burning flesh filled the air. A horrified moan arose from the crowd, and the ragged chanting of some of the monks was interrupted by screams and cries of anguish. Two monks unfurled a large cloth banner reading [in English], “A Buddhist Priest Burns for Buddhist Demands.”

Stunned by what he was seeing, Browne reflexively shot picture after picture. After a few minutes, a fire truck and several police cars with shrieking sirens appeared, but the demonstrators lay in front of them and clung to their wheels so they could not reach the pyre. Soon the flames began to subside. When they died out, several monks appeared with a wooden coffin and tried to lift the dead man’s body into it. His limbs had become rigid. As the coffin was carried back to Xa Loi Pagoda, both arms spilled out. One was still smoking.

The monk who burned himself to death on the morning of June 11 was named Thich Quang Duc. He was sixty-seven years old, had been a monk for nearly half a century, and was revered as a bodhisattva, a being on the path to enlightenment. In a statement that his comrades attributed to his death, he made a “respectful” plea to Diem to show “charity and compassion” to all religions.

The ruling family’s most outspoken member, Madame Nhu, replied by ridiculing the spectacle of what she called a “barbeque.” “Let them burn,” she said. “We shall clap our hands.”

Browne’s photos of the burning monk stunned people around the world. The day after they were taken, a visitor to the Oval Office noticed that President John F. Kennedy had a set of them on his desk. They seemed to symbolize the unraveling of South Vietnam and the impotence of its president, Ngo Dinh Diem. These images helped push the Kennedy administration toward a momentous decision. Diem had lost the administration’s confidence and would be overthrown.



A Woman Among Warlords by Malalai Joya, 2009, Excerpts
The hundreds of Afghan women who set themselves ablaze are not only committing suicide to escape their misery – they are crying out for justice. These heartrending cases of self-immolation are acts of defiance as well as despair, and these women are not just victims but symbols of resistance; they are the first stage of larger protests against injustice.



In the News

Two Tibetan monks in China die after self-immolations
25 Apr 2013
Two Tibetan monks have died after setting themselves alight in southern China's Sichuan province, reports say. The monks, aged 20 and 23, set themselves on fire at the Kirti monastery in Aba county, said Radio Free Asia and Free Tibet. The monastery has been a focal point of protests in recent months. More than 100 Tibetans, mostly young monks, have set themselves on fire since 2011 - many fatally - in apparent protest against Chinese rule.

Saudi dies after setting himself on fire in protest
17 May 2013
The BBC understands Mr Alhouraysi killed himself on Wednesday after being unable to present his identification papers when he was searched by police. He is said to have been previously stripped of his Saudi citizenship. Reports of self-immolation in the ultra-conservative kingdom are rare. Two years ago a man in his 60s has died after setting himself on fire in Samitah in Saudi Arabia's south-western Jizan region. The incident echoes the death of a Tunisian who set fire to himself as a protest in 2011, triggering revolution.

Tunisia Khedri: Young man dies after self-immolation
13 Mar 2013
A young Tunisian cigarette vendor has died after setting himself on fire - an act reminiscent of the event which triggered the "Arab Spring" in 2010. Adel Khedhri, 27, set himself alight on Tuesday on a street in central Tunis, the focus of protests which toppled long-time leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali two years ago. Analysts say Tunisia is deeply divided between supporters of the Islamist-led government and secularists, while youth unemployment remains stubbornly high.


Ivory Coast man sets himself alight at Rome airport
14 Feb 2013
An Ivorian man about to be deported from Italy has set himself alight at Fiumicino airport in the capital, Rome, Italian media has reported. A customs official extinguished the flames, but the young man is believed to be badly burnt. The man from Ivory Coast reportedly hid the fuel in his suitcase.

France Nantes: Man burns himself to death at job center
13 Feb 2013
A man, 43, who was declared ineligible for unemployment benefit has died after setting himself on fire outside a job center in western France. The police had been alerted by messages he sent to the media announcing his plans to kill himself publicly. The jobless number in France recently rose to levels not seen in 12 years. Last month, a jobless man in the Spanish city of Malaga also died after setting himself alight. Local politicians reacted with horror to news of the self-immolation, adding that only a formal inquest could perhaps establish the man's true motives.

Tibetans guilty of murder for 'inciting immolations'
31 Jan 2013
A Tibetan monk has received a suspended death sentence and his nephew 10 years in jail for inciting eight people to self-immolate. Tibetan activists had said the men were forced to confess to the charges. Nearly 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009, many fatally, in protest at Chinese rule. Most of the self-immolations have taken place in ethnic Tibetan areas outside Tibet. Foreign media are banned from the region, making verifying the self-immolation cases difficult. The sentences are believed to be the first since a legal ruling stipulating that anyone aiding immolations would be charged with murder. Activist groups and the Tibetan government-in-exile say the self-immolations are protests against tight Chinese control of the region and religious repression. China's leaders blame the Dalai Lama for inciting the self-immolations and encouraging Tibetan separatism, a charge he strongly rejects.

China jails six Tibetans for inciting immolations
01 Feb 2013
Six ethnic Tibetans have been sentenced to between three and 12 years in prison in China's Gansu province in connection with a local man's self-immolation. Four were found guilty of "intentional homicide" at Thursday's trial and two of "picking quarrels and provoking troubles". The convictions are believed to be the first since a legal ruling in China stipulating that anyone aiding immolations would be charged with murder. Nearly 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009, many fatally, in apparent protest at Chinese rule. 

Spain Malaga: Jobless man 'burns himself to death'
04 Jan 2012
A jobless man in the southern Spanish city of Malaga has died in hospital a day after apparently setting himself ablaze in the street.Neighbors and witnesses told Spanish newspapers that the 57-year-old, of North African origin, was suffering from financial problems. Another man is being treated in the same hospital apparently after setting himself alight in Malaga on Thursday. The 63-year-old was found with serious injuries beside his burning car under a road bridge, police said. Spanish media have reported a number of cases in recent months of people facing poverty in the country's recession killing themselves.

Tibetan students protest, as four more self-immolations reported
27 Nov 2012
The four self-immolations occurred in Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces on Sunday and Monday. Of the four Tibetans who set themselves on fire in separate incidents, three are reported to have died. Teenage nun Sangay Dolmas died in Qinghai on Sunday. Kunchok Tsering, 18, and Gonpo Tearing, 24, died in Gansu on Monday. Wang Gyal, 20, a former monk, set himself on fire in Sichuan on Monday. His condition is currently unknown. More than 80 Tibetans have set themselves alight since 2011 in what activists say are protests against Beijing's rule. More than half are believed to have died. 

Tibetan immolations: China offers rewards for information
25 Oct 2012
Police in China's Gansu province are offering rewards for information about planned self-immolations by Tibetans. The authorities in Gansu's Gannan prefecture say recent immolations affected social stability. On Monday a man, believed to be in his 50s, died after he set himself on fire near the Labrang monastery. A day later another Tibetan set himself on fire in the same region. China's leaders blame the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans' exiled spiritual leader, for inciting the self-immolations and encouraging separatism. He rejects this, and both activist groups and the Tibetan government-in-exile say the self-immolations are protests against tight Chinese control of the region and religious repression.

Gaza teenager dies after self-immolation
03 Sep 2012
A man has died in Gaza after setting himself alight in apparent protest against his family's living conditions, Palestinian officials say. Mohamed Abu Nada, 18, had poured petrol over himself after walking into the morgue at Shifa hospital in Gaza City last Thursday, doctors said. His father said he had sent his son out to look for work because the family was struggling to make ends meet. In recent months, two Israelis have died of their injuries after setting themselves alight in protest at government welfare cuts and the rising cost of living.

Two Tibetan teenagers die in self-immolations
28 Aug 2012
Two Tibetan teenagers have died after setting themselves on fire in Sichuan province, outside the Kirti Monastery in Aba county, where many of the self-immolations have taken place. This brings the number of Tibetans who have set themselves on fire since 2009 to 51. The young men were shouting slogans against Chinese rule and policies in Tibet as their bodies burned. 

The event that sparked the Arab Spring
17 Dec 2011
Rallies have marked the first anniversary of the event that triggered the Arab Spring uprisings. Young Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after he was banned from selling fruit to earn a living. His extreme act sparked the first open protests against the Tunisian government, which in turn set off demonstrations around the Arab world.


Why do people set themselves on fire?
18 Jan 2011
The spectacle of a violent death in a public place can also have an enormous impact. Over the past few decades, hundreds of people have sacrificed their lives in this kind of protest, including Vietnamese Buddhists, Lithuanian nationalists, South Korean leftists, upper-caste Indian students and Kurdish nationalists in Western Europe. Photographer Malcolm Browne's picture of an elderly Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, engulfed in flames as he burned himself to death in Saigon in 1963, has become one of the iconic images of the war. In 1965, Alice Herz, an 82-year-old pacifist, immolated herself on a Detroit street corner in an act of protest against the Vietnam War. This was followed by the suicide of Norman Morrison, who set fire to himself on the steps of the Pentagon. And in 1969, a young university student named Jan Palach initiated the use of this form of protest against the Soviet Union, in an act of self-immolation in Wenceslas Square in Prague. Palach became a legend almost overnight and still has a significant place in Czech mythology.