[ Man may have been drugged, others dossed him with gasoline, and recorded the event nearby. Victim seems to be genuinley grateful that passerby's "Saved Him" ]

In a bizarre act that capped a nervous few days in Congress, a man poured gasoline on himself and lit himself on fire on the National Mall late Friday afternoon.

Flames and smoke from the self-immolating man near 7th Street and Jefferson Drive, SW, were visible from the Capitol, where some staffers watched the scene from west facing windows, just a day after a car chase that ended with the shooting death of a woman just outside the Hart Senate Office Building.

The incident happened at about 4:30 p.m. on Friday in between the Air and Space Museum and the National Gallery. Passing joggers rushed to the man’s aid, several ripping off their shirts to help beat out the flames that burned 80% of his body, ABC reports.

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The man reportedly thanked the joggers before he was taken to MedStar Washington Hospital Center by a U.S. Park Police helicopter that landed on the Mall.

Fire department spokesman Tim Wilson said the man suffered life-threatening injuries, but was conscious and breathing at the scene.

Authorities are now investigating the man’s motives.

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“I’m not aware of any signage or any articulation of any causes,” said Lt. Pamela Smith of the U.S. Park Police, which has teamed up with the D.C. police department.

Tommy Hess, a tourist visiting his brother, said he was on the Mall, “milling around, because everything is closed due to the shutdown.”

“I never expected to see anything like that,” Hess said. “It’s crazy.”

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Katy Scheflen, a furloughed civil rights attorney in the Justice Department, said she stopped because she saw “a guy with a tripod set up.”

Scheflen said another man, who she thought the tripod with a camera was filming, then took a red can of gasoline, poured it over his head.

“At that point we didn’t know what was going, maybe it was some sort of stage protest,” Scheflen said. “And then he set himself on fire and went up in flames,” she said. “Whoosh.”

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Real Self-immolation is ‘Suicide’, this planned event is ‘Murder’ by State.

Self-immolation refers to setting oneself on fire, often as a form of protest or for the purposes of martyrdom. It has centuries-long traditions in some cultures, while in modern times it has become a type of radical political protest. Michael Biggs compiled a list of 533 “self-immolations” reported by Western media from the 1960s to 2002, though in this work his definition is generalized to any intentional suicide “on behalf of a collective cause.”^[1]

Etymology

The English word immolation originally meant (1534) “killing a sacrificial victim; sacrifice” and came to figuratively mean (1690) “destruction, especially by fire.” Its etymology was from Latin immolare “to sprinkle with sacrificial meal (mola salsa); to sacrifice” in ancient Roman religion. Self-immolation “setting oneself on fire, especially as a form of protest” was first recorded in Lady Morgan‘s (1817) France.^[2][3]

It was Western media coverage of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc immolating himself in protest of the Buddhist crisis by the Vietnamese Ngo Dinh Diem regime in 1963 that introduced the word “self-immolation” to a wide English-speaking audience and gave it a strong association with fire.^[4][5] The alternative name bonzo comes from the same era, because the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves were often referred to by the term bonze in English literature before the mid-20th century, particularly when describing monks from East Asia and French Indochina. This term is derived via French from the Japanese word bōzu (坊主) for a priest or monk, and has become less common in modern literature.^[6]

History

Self-immolation is tolerated by some elements of Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, and it has been practiced for many centuries, especially in India, for various reasons, including Sati, political protest, devotion, and renouncement. Certain warrior cultures, such as in the Charans and Rajputs, also practiced self-immolation.

Two well-known Jataka tales, Buddhist myths about previous incarnations of the Buddha, concern self-immolation. In the “Hungry Tigress” Jataka, Prince Sattva looked down from a cliff and saw a starving tigress that was going to eat her newborn cubs, and compassionately sacrificed his body in order to feed the tigers and spare their lives. In the “Sibi Jataka“, King Śibi or Shibi was renowned for unselfishness, and the Hindu gods Śakra and Vishvakarman tested him by transforming into a hawk and a dove. The dove fell on the king’s lap while trying to escape the hawk, and sought refuge. Rather than surrender the dove, Śibi offered his own flesh equivalent in weight to the dove, and the hawk agreed. They had rigged the balance scale, and King Śibi continued cutting off his flesh until half his body was gone, when the gods revealed themselves, restored his body, and blessed him.

The Buddhist god of healing, the “Medicine King” or “Medicine Buddha” (Bhaisajyaguru) was associated with auto-cremation. The Lotus Sutra describes the Medicine King drinking scented oils, wrapping his body in an oil-soaked cloth, and burning himself as an offering to the Buddha. His body flamed for 1,200 years, he was reincarnated, burned off his forearms for 72,000 years, which enabled many to achieve enlightenment, and his arms were miraculously restored.

Zarmanochegas was a monk of the Sramana tradition (possibly, but not necessarily a Buddhist) who, according to ancient historians such as Strabo and Dio Cassius, met Nicholas of Damascus in Antioch around 13 AD and burnt himself to death in Athens shortly thereafter.^[7][8]

Self-immolation has a long history in Chinese Buddhism. The relevant terms are: wangshen Chinese: 亡身 “lose the body” or Chinese: 忘身 “forget the body”, yishen Chinese: 遺身 “abandon the body”, and sheshen Chinese: 捨身 “give up the body”. James A. Benn explains the semantic range of Chinese Buddhist self-immolation.

But “abandoning the body” also covers a broad range of more extreme acts (not all of which necessarily result in death): feeding one’s body to insects; slicing off one’s flesh; burning one’s fingers or arms; burning incense on the skin; starving, slicing, or drowning oneself; leaping from cliffs or trees; feeding one’s body to wild animals; self-mummification (preparing for death so that the resulting corpse is impervious to decay); and of course, auto-cremation.^[9]

The monk Fayu 法羽 (d. 396) carried out the earliest recorded Chinese self-immolation.^[10] He first informed the “illegitimate” prince Yao Xu 姚緒 – brother of Yao Chang who founded the non-Chinese Qiang state Later Qin (384-417) – that he intended to burn himself alive. Yao tried to dissuade Fayu, but he publicly swallowed incense chips, wrapped his body in oiled cloth, and chanted while setting fire to himself. The religious and lay witnesses were described as being “full of grief and admiration.”

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What is the common factor?

The common factor was video camera in the hand of civilians.

1.) the dead girl proved all media is lying to us, we were told ‘man shooting and driving like nuts, and killing cops’, when in fact it was the cops shooting and the cops having sefl-inflicted injury, first 5 hrs media report was 100% lies from FOX->CNN

2.) the man on fire is a gubmint op, witnesses saw others pour gas on him and record the burning, also he was clearly drugged.

3.) the biker story happens every fucking day in the USA, … non-story. Most biker-gangs are cop’s on off duty. Off duty cops rape and rob people all the time and get away with their crimes, because cops always protect other cops.