50th Anniversary of Palach's Death Marked With New Immolation

A man set himself on fire in a central Prague square on Friday, January 18, 2019, as Czechs marked the 50th anniversary of a student’s self-immolation in protest at the Soviet invasion that crushed the Prague Spring.

The unidentified man was taken to hospital after bystanders doused the flames that enveloped him in the same spot at the elevated top of historic Wenceslas Square where Jan Palach set himself ablaze in January 1969.

“According to initial information, a man born in 1964 poured an inflammable liquid on his body and set himself on fire,” Prague police said on their Twitter feed.

The immolation victim was placed in an induced coma and taken to the hospital.

Jan Palach, a student at Charles University in Prague, startled passersby by pouring a liquid over his body at about 3 P.M. on Thursday, January 16, 1969, and then setting himself ablaze. The twenty‑one‑year‑old student chose the statue of Wenceslas, the Czech hero saint, as the site of his protest in Prague. I extensively discussed this incident in the immolations chapter of The Copycat Effect, and share these details here.

The book details immolations since the Vietnam war era protests, such as by Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire. He received widespread media attention. 

2018: Georgia, Oregon and New York Self-Immolations

Self-immolations have been a form of political protest in modern times since a number of Buddhist monks (including the most famous case of Thích Quảng Đức) immolated themselves by fire in protest of the persecution of Buddhists under the administration of Roman Catholic President Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam. The immolations spread through Asia and to America from 1963 to 1971.

In the third known high-profile fire suicide attempt of 2018, a man is fighting for his life at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital with burns to 85 to 90 percent of his body.

Georgia Veteran

A veteran who was fed up with treatment by the Department of Veterans Affairs set himself on fire in protest outside of the Georgia State Capitol building (seen above) in downtown Atlanta on June 26, 2018.

The 58-year-old from Mableton, Georgia, who has not yet been identified, parked his car alongside the Capitol before walking toward the building, where he commenced self-immolation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

“He was strapped with some homemade incendiary devices (and) firecrackers, and doused himself with some kind of flammable liquid,” Georgia State Patrol Captain Mark Perry told the Atlanta newspaper.

The Georgia immolation appears to follow the same pattern of the immolation of Charles Ingram, a 51-year-old Gulf War veteran, who grew increasing frustrated by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In March 2016, shortly before his VA appointment, Ingram went to the clinic in Northfield, N.J., doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire. The clinic was closed at the time. He died.

Chloe Sagal

Exactly a week before, on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, a person lit themselves on fire in Lownsdale Square (see above), the park located across from the Multnomah County Courthouse in downtown Portland, Oregon.

The person entered the park, on crutches, and barely able to walk, wearing a red scarf around the neck. Then the individual sat down and began reading a statement about homelessness and mental health issues. The person died at the hospital.

The local media reported some confusion about the gender of the person. It turns out it was video developer Chloe Sagal, 31, who identified herself as trans.

Variety wrote:

Sagal was best known for her horror game “Homesick,” which follows the story of a woman searching for her friends inside the house where her family was murdered. She also made headlines in 2013 when she ran an Indiegogo campaign that was ostensibly for metal poisoning treatment. But, according to Eurogamer, the money was instead used for gender alteration surgery.

David Buckel

Another self-immolation of 2018 occurred on Saturday, April 14, 2018, when David Buckel, 60, a prominent green activist and lawyer for LGBT rights, died after setting himself on fire in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park protesting ecological destruction and global warming. The famed 60 year old attorney left behind a suicide note in which Buckel told of his intention of burning himself to death with "fossil fuel" in a bid to show how mankind was likewise killing itself. Buckel also worked as an urban gardener and ecologist with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, helping run what he called the largest composting program in the country to use only renewable sources of energy.

The New York Daily News headlined the story.

Other related immolation articles:

Burning Man 2017

Immolations 2017

Palace Self-Immolation 2015

Aurora Self-Immolation 2014

Colorado Self-Immolation 2014

D. C. Self-Immolation 2013: 1, 2, 3

h/t to Media Monarchy for GA news.

Burning Man 2017: Fire Suicide

Aaron Joel Mitchell, 41, died on at 6:30 am, Sunday, September 3, 2017, after running through two levels of a safety perimeter and into a set fire on Saturday night at Burning Man, Nevada. 

Mitchell ran into “the Burning Man festival’s signature burning of a towering effigy,” reported SFGate. He was pulled back out of the fire, and was airlifted to a hospital, where he later died.

His mother told the Reno Gazette-Journal that Mitchell, who was usually called by his middle name “Joel,” “grew up in McAlester, Oklahoma but was living in Switzerland.”

As Red Dirt Report has been reporting, McAlester, Oklahoma, is infamously known for overpopulation problems, a botched execution, and a veil of secrecy at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary there.

McAlester, Oklahoma, is home to many of the employees of the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. Wikipedia rather casually notes, "This facility makes essentially all of the bombs used by the United States military."

McAlester was the site of the 2004 trial of Terry Nichols on Oklahoma state charges related to the Oklahoma City bombing (1995).

He was married, had no children, and was employed in construction. This was the first time he attended Burning Man.

The moment of his self-immolation was captured in graphic photographs by several attendees at the event.

According to SFGate, “The nine-day festival in northern Nevada was briefly hampered when a lightning-sparked wildfire temporarily shut down Burning Man’s main travel route last week.”

This is not the first suicide at Burning Man.

See also:

The Wicker Man Burns

Big Tex Burns

Wicker Man-Like Human Sacrifice: Element 11's Fire Suicide

Utah's Burning Man Suicide

Burning Man 2014: Death in the Desert

Death, Immolation, and the Inauguration

Death may be knocking on the doorsteps of Donald Trump's Inauguration as the 45th President on Friday, January 20, 2017.

It appears to be a time when the unexpected may surprise those who wish to have things so well-ordered and planned.

This was a special week in January 1989 called "Palach Week." It marked the beginning of the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and the Velvet Revolution. There is a powerful documentary made in 2014, Agnieszka Holland’s Burning Bush (image above is from that film) that chronicles those times. The title has many meanings, of course.

Self-immolations have a way of changing the course of history, as the form of protest is so powerful, radical and shocking.

The Burning Bush

Concidentially, another kind of Bush may be important in the midst of this upcoming very political American weekend.

On Wednesday, January 18, 2017, the 41st President George H. W. Bush was admitted to the intensive care unit at Houston Methodist Hospital to address an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia. Bush underwent a procedure to clear his air passages. His wife Barbara, furthermore, was hospitalized as a precaution.

The 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson died on January 22, 1973, two days after Richard Nixon was sworn in for this 2nd term. Johnson's death disrupted Nixon's "celebration" of the start of what would be his shortened term, and LBJ's state funeral was held on January 25, 1973.

In an era of wall-to-wall media, the death of George H. W. Bush would be an auspicious beginning for Trump's first term.

Immolations 2017

Two reports of self-immolations (suicides by fire) in which both people lived surfaced yesterday. One is directly related to Trump's assuming power.

On Tuesday night, January 17, 2017, a man set himself on fire outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
DC Fire and EMS received a call at 9:23 p.m. about an individual trying to place himself on fire.
"We did arrive and did find a male adult with burns and we transported that patient to an area hospital with potential but not life-threatening burns," DC Fire and EMS Department spokesman Vito Maggiolo told CNN Wednesday. The man attempted to start the small blaze outside the Trump hotel but was burned badly in the process and taken to a hospital for treatment.

The 45-year-old man, who has not yet been identified, said the act was in protest of the President-elect's looming inauguration, Daily Mail reports said.

Witnesses described how he yelled 'Trump' several times as 'flames ran up his back' before lying down in the street.

Also on Tuesday night, January 17, 2017, another self-immolation occurred, this one in Nashua, New Hampshire. The Union Leader reported:

Officials said a pair of passers-by came to the aid of a man who tried to immolate himself in a city parking lot Tuesday night, using jackets and snow from the ground to put out the fire.

Police and fire said they received the report of the unidentified man on fire just before 10:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Headlines store at 37 East Hollis St.

According to a press release from the Nashua Fire Department, the man had just purchased gasoline from a nearby gas station, poured it over his head and ignited himself.

The Fire Department said the man suffered burns over at least 20 percent of his upper torso, but was conscious and breathing. He was taken to Southern New Hampshire Medical Center.

January 1969

In my book Suicide Clusters (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1987), I revisited how Prague and immolations were keys in overturning Communism. Here is my summary from a later work.

Jan Palach, a student at Charles University in Prague, startled passersby by pouring a liquid over his body at about 3 P.M. on January 16, 1969, and then setting himself ablaze. The twenty‑one‑year‑old student chose the statue of Wenceslas, the Czech hero saint, as the site of his protest in Prague. Palach had left a note declaring that he belonged to a group whose members planned to self‑incinerate themselves, one every ten days, until the Soviet troops departed. Palach's protest and death three days later got worldwide media coverage with others following his lead.

On January 20, 1969, crowds of people waving the Czechoslovak state flags, black flags and enlarged photographs of Jan Palach, gathered at the spot of Palach’s suicide. In the Philosophical Faculty building, the clocks were stopped so they showed the exact time of Palach's death (3:15 P.M.). Josef Hlavaty then self-immolated himself just as Palach had. Two days later, on January 22, Miroslav Malinka killed himself through suicide by fire, and Blanka Nachazelova suffocated herself with coal gas. On the day of the Palach funeral, Hlavaty died. 

In the next well-publicized suicide, Jan Zajic, an 18-year-old student at a vocational school in Sumperk, set himself on fire on February 25, 1969. Before his death, he gave his friends a poem about Palach and four letters, in which he described himself as “Torch no. 2.” He did it in Prague in the passageway of a building on Wenceslas Square, as he was trying to run to the statute, but he fell in flames and died there. He said he decided to immolate himself after seeing that life was returning to its old routine despite Palach's action.

On April 4, 1969, in another square, this time in the southeastern Bohemian city of Jihlava, Evzen Plocek, 40, set himself on fire. At least 26 people attempted suicide between January 20 and the end of April 1969, with at least seven of these dying by fire in Czechoslovakia, Scotland, and Hungary after Palach's death. Reports of seven other fatal self-immolations came from India, Pakistan, England, and the United States. ~ The Copycat Effect, (NY: New York, 2004).

Self-immolations, exactly 20 years later, in 1989, set off the overthrow of the Iron Curtain throughout the Eastern Block.

The self-immolations in the Arab Spring changed the political landscape, once again.

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“Hold on—that’s a trash fire. Over there is Trump’s Inauguration speech.”

The above (by coincidence) is The New Yorker's Daily Cartoon (by Tom Toro) for January 18, 2017.

Update:

During a live report on [January 19, 2017's] Thursday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on the Fox News Channel, a young man protesting in Washington, DC claimed to have started a fire in the street, “Because I felt like it. And because I’m just saying, ‘Screw our president.'”

4th of July Danger? After Church Burnings, Self-Immolations, Doctors' Deaths, Shark Attacks, and Other Mayhem?

We don't know what will happen on July 4th. The mainstream media has been beating the drums all week that a possible terrorist event - ISIS maybe, a homegrown individual or group maybe - will occur on Saturday, July 4th, in the United States of America, on our Independence Day.

Americans across the country have big plans for the 4th of July, but the FBI and Homeland Security are warning Americans of potential “lone wolf” attacks this holiday weekend.
The FBI’s most recent bulletin warns specifically of “lone wolf” attacks, which are attacks carried out by homegrown extremists. However, they also said no credible threats have been made so far. Source.

Maybe, maybe not. It almost seems as if CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and other news outlets will be disappointed if nothing happens. It's a weird feeling out there.

Update: "FBI Cancels ALL VACATIONS For Agents Over 4th of July Weekend."

Look, many of us in the sync, twilight language, conspiracy, law enforcement, psychology, and Fortean worlds are picking up on these times being especially bizarre. There is literally a list of randomly separate incidents that are very disquieting. I've been gathering these tallies, and I have even made predictions based on future trends reinforced in past patterns.

I am certainly guilty of this. I felt the end of June was giving out all kinds of signals. The anniversary syndrome told me that June 24th might have a little bump of incidents. I wrote:

"Not sure if it is a fire, a ufologist's death, an assassination, another church shooting, a form of mass violence or what, but something is in the air." ~ June 24: A "Hot" Date in 2015?, Twilight Language, June 19, 2015.

What happened?

It appears there was a significant UFO-related death on June 24, 2015. Former Congressman Mario Biaggi died. He had assisted ufologists with their UFO disclosure movement. (See here.)

Additionally, beginning after I penned the "prediction," African-American churches, in the South, began burning. This was said to be directly related to the killing of 9 members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States, on June 17, 2015.

Here is one map of seven of these fires:

Here's a list (of seven in the South, one in Ohio):

College Hill Seventh-day Adventist — Knoxville, Tennessee, June 22, 2015.
The Knoxville Fire Department is investigating the fire, stating it was arson.

God's Power Church of Christ —Macon, Georgia, June 23, 2015.

Macon-Bibb County public information stated that the blaze was being investigated as arson.

Fruitland Presbyterian Church — Gibson County, Tennessee, June 23, 2015.
State bomb and arson investigators determined a lightning strike hit the church steeple at about 8:30 pm.

Briar Creek Road Church — Charlotte, North Carolina, June 24, 2015.
The Charlotte Fire Department ruled the flame was arson. It is worthy of noting that it was the June 24th fire that raised everyone's awareness that there seemed to be a "wave" of church burnings. The photograph of that fire was widely disseminated.

Glover Grove Baptist — Gloverville-Warrenville, South Carolina, June 26, 2015.
Officials have not yet determined a cause for the fire.

Greater Miracle Apostolic Holiness Church — Tallahassee, Florida, June 26, 2015.
Tallahassee Fire Department and State Fire Marshal investigators believe the fire was caused by an electrical wire. Investigations are still under way.

College Heights Baptist Church - Elyria, Ohio - June 27, 2015.
Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church — Greeleyville, South Carolina, June 30, 2015. Williamsburg County Fire department said the cause of the blaze was unclear, although lightning is being blamed in recent news stories.

The point is not so much that all of these fires are arsons, but in a Fortean point of view, it is a cluster of curious church fires, whether they be human arsons or God's arson, so-to-speak. The wave is noticeable.

[We need a good list of all the locations that Confederate generals and soldier statues have been defaced, as well. No one has compiled one of those. I have mentioned this has been happening to memorials and statues of John Hunt Morgan (see here), as well as John Calhoun, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee, and Albert Sidney Johnston (see here). But I'm sure it has been more widespread. The lexilink of Morgan-Fayette grows more understood, more powerful, more synchromystic.]

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Staying with fires here, June 2015 was a month of self-immolations and attempts at fire suicides.

June 1, 2015 - Shahjahanpur, India-based freelance journalist Jagendra Singh was allegedly set on fire on June 1 during a police raid at his house at Awas Vikas colony in Sadar Bazar area of Shahjananupr. He died during treatment at a hospital in Lucknow on June 8. He was doing a series of articles exposing illegal mining operations and land-grabbing. Source.

June 4, 2015 - In Austin, Texas, Andrew Guerrero, 57, using his lighter, set himself on fire in his car, at a gasoline station. Austin Police officers pulled him free, and he is at a burn center. It is uncertain if he will survive. Source.

June 10, 2015 - In central London, UK, a man attempted to self-immolate outside BBC Broadcasting House. He doused himself in petrol, but was prevented from igniting himself. Source.

June 27, 2015 - The media circulated a year-old story of the self-immolation on June 23, 2014, of 79-year-old retired Methodist minister, Charles Moore, who drove his car to a local strip mall, exited the vehicle, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself on fire. His suicide note explained that the self-immolation was an attempt to die a martyr for the black and LGBT communities. Source.

June 30, 2015 - In Japan, on a bullet train, a self-immolation of a suicide victim resulted in two deaths, as another person at the back of the car died from smoke inhalation. The man, identified as Haruo Hayashizaki, a 71-year-old resident of Suginami Ward, Tokyo, was near the entrance doors at the front of the Nozomi 225′s lead car when he poured a flammable liquid from a white plastic tank over his head and set it alight. The woman, identified as Yoshiko Kuwahara, 52, of Yokohama, was found at the opposite end of the first car. She reportedly died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The Nozomi express, operated by Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai), was heading from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka Station. It was between Shin-Yokohama and Odawara stations when a passenger in car No. 1 activated the emergency alarm at around 11:30 a.m., and the driver brought the train to a halt. Source.

Will there be more fire suicides? Certainly. Will those be in the USA? Probably not as many as in Japan and India, this summer and fall.

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Okay, the conspiracy literature is sharing one list we should not ignore. Alternative medicine doctors are dying.

There is a hint showing up in sites such as the Steamshovel Press and The Natural Blaze Newsletter that "alternative medicine" doctors are turning up mysteriously dead.

On June 19, 2015, controversial autism researcher Jeff Bradstreet, M.D. was found dead. He died of a gunshot wound to his chest, and then allegedly threw himself in a river. Some questioned the claim of suicide. Bradstreet was known as an anti-vaccine advocate. Bradstreet's son is autistic, which Bradstreet attributed to a vaccination his son was given at age 15 months.

James Jeffrey "Jeff" Bradstreet (born July 6, 1954), was an American doctor, an alternative medicine practitioner, and a former Christian preacher who ran the International Child Development Resource Center in Melbourne, Florida, a medical practice in Buford, Georgia and in Arizona, where he practiced homeopathy. Bradstreet's body (allegedly deceased from a self-inflicted gun shot to the chest) was found in the Broad River in Chimney Rock, Rutherford County, North Carolina, in June 2015, after his Buford, Georgia, medical office was raided by the Food and Drug Administration. At the time of his death, he lived in Braselton, Georgia and ran his medical practice in Buford.

On June 21, 2015, Father's Day, Bruce Hedendal, Ph. D. was found dead in his car. No accident. No running motor. He was merely, in his car. A father of six, Dr. Hedendal was at the forefront of chiropractic and functional medicine, high performance nutrition, fitness training and natural hormone therapies. Since 1985, he he has hosted syndicated radio and internet health programs, and had been currently hosting the longest running radio and internet show “Health is Wealth Live.” Like Bradstreet, Hedendal had been in conflict with federal authorities over his "alternative" view of medicine. A "pillar of health," his death is unexplained.

On June 29, 2015, a popular Estero, Florida "alternative medicine" Dr. Teresa Ann Sievers, 46, was killed. The death has left locals, family, and law enforcement authorities puzzled. Lee County Sheriff's Office authorities went on Monday, June 29, at 9:45 a.m. to Sievers' address at 27034 Jarvis Road in Bonita Springs, Florida, after she didn’t arrive at work.

“We don’t know anything but that she was murdered,” said Sievers’ sister, Annie Lisa, 52. She said Sievers, her husband and children had come to Connecticut for a gathering and her sister flew home alone Sunday. Source.

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We cannot ignore the shark attack mania, either.

There have been a high number of shark attacks during the summer of 2015. The number is large enough for sharks to become a media story. Last time this happened? In which sharks became a media focus? Right before 9/11.

Could 2015 being a "Summer of the Shark" be a cosmic precursor to another 9/11 on 7/4 (which, after all, = 11)?
 

The synchromystic world started talking about the "shark imagery" back in February 2015.

Credit: Keys to Cosmic Doorways.

In 2015, on the Sunday after July 4th, it becomes "Shark Week" on cable television. Few remember that during 2001, the "Summer of the Shark" began on the 4th of July.

Shark attacks generally get more attention by the media than most news. Except for mass shootings, school shootings, workplace violence, and terrorist attacks.

Time Magazine in 2001 acknowledged it was “The Summer of the Shark,” even though statistically, there were less attacks than in some other years.

But there was something more sinister waiting in the wings - 9/11, of course. First, however, another animal got the headlines; the "Summer of the Gator" happened.

In my twilight language book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), I noted the unfolding of the "if it bleeds, it leads" focus on shark and alligator attacks. The media, almost completely, forgot about animal encounters after the Twin Towers came down. Terrorism and war were the new wall-to-wall coverage for months.

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Breaking news: After I posted the above about alligator attacks in 2001, J. M. sent me this ~ 

There was an alligator fatality early Friday morning, July 3, 2015. Tommie Woodward, 28, suffered severe trauma to a limb when he was attacked early Friday morning at the private marina, which is along a bayou extending from the Sabine River near the Louisiana line, Orange, Texas, police Captain Robert Enmon reported. The alligator was estimated to be 11 feet long.

The owners of the marina recently had spotted a large alligator on a few occasions, and put up a sign warning people to stay out of the water, police said. Woodward reportedly when told this, yelled out "F*ck the 'gators," and jumped in.
According to the Beaumont Enterprise, the incident was the first fatal attack by an alligator in Texas in about 200 years.

Now word comes from the director of Southern Fried Bigfoot that a violent encounter with an alligator occurred before the fatal incident at Orange, Texas. West of there, 75 miles away, at Charlotte Lake, Cedar Hill Park, Wallisville, Texas, a 13-year-old boy, Kaleb, was swimming near the shore when bitten in the arm and leg by an alligator. The gator also began to pull him under the water. Kaleb's father, James Hurley, jumped in the water, kicked the alligator off his son, and pulled Kaleb to safety. Both Kaleb and James Hurley are recovering at the hospital. Source.

More news: July 4, 2015. An 8-foot alligator grabbed Mike Karris' 11-year-old dachshund, Cody, at the boat ramp in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, on Saturday. Karris and his girlfriend were unable to rescue their dog. The last attack on a dog was more than 15 years ago. Source.

+++

Now we are back to the sharks. And alligators! What does it mean? Another 9/11. Does Homeland Security, the FBI, and ISIS read the same literature?

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So let me step back. I'm a Fortean. I have a worldview that looks at events as holistically as possible. The past informs the future.

Charles Fort once wrote of a world sense I share, "My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidence?"

Decades ago, one of the first science fiction novels to be inspired by Charles Fort was Eric Frank Russell's Sinister Barrier, published in 1939; revised in 1948.

I reminded myself, as I compiled the lists of lists above, that the events of Sinister Barrier took place in 2015.

As one modern reviewer of Sinister Barrier noted, "Many pages of the novel record lists of suggestive 'Fortean phenomena' culled from 1938 newspapers (the year of composition)."

And critiqued that Russell's "world of 2015 is still one in which vacuum tubes and switchboards co-exist with gyrocars and pneumatic levitators; aggression by the Asian Combine simply echoes World War II."

But there are remarkable intrigues, as well. Russell talked about vision-screens above telephones, understood modern forensics, and looked beyond the news of his day - into ours.

Considering the time frame in Sinister Barrier moves from 2014, through 2015, there is even a name game that startled me. It only appears once, but it stands out.

Russell writes of an investigation of a mystery incident, and adds,

A siren wailed along the road outside, died away dismally at the open door. Four police officers entered accompanied by one man in plain clothes. Quietly, without comment, they took out the uniformed corpse, came back for the fallen scientist. He was mouthing noiselessly as they bore him away.
Three of the officers got into the car, drove off. The fourth took his seat at the teletype. The man in plain clothes went up to Laurie.
“I'm Ferguson, the replacement.” ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939

On August 9, 2014, an 18-year-old African-American man, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a policeman with the Ferguson (Missouri) Police Department. That one event in 2014 definitely was the foundation of events between law enforcement officers and African-American victims in 2015.

Russell even gives dates of events in 2015:

Halfway to the door he emitted a brief gasp, stumbled, fell. His stricken hand clutched the calendar from his desk, dragged it down to the carpet. He sobbed, hugged hands to his heart, lay still. The spark which had motivated him became extinguished. The calendar's top leaf fluttered in a queer, inexplicable breeze from nowhere. The date was May the seventeenth, 2015. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939

So, what happened this year on May 17th? Did you forget already?

On May 17, 2015, nine people were killed and 18 injured, some by law enforcement and others in gunfire exchanges, in a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas.

(Exactly a month later, on June 17, 2015, another nine people were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.)

On May 17, 2015, NYPD officers responded to a 911 call in Briarwood, Queens around 4:00 a.m. There, they found Chinx and another victim in a car at Queens Boulevard and 84th Drive. The other victim was identified as Antar Alziadi. Chinx was transported to Jamaica Medical Center in Jamaica, Queens with gunshot wounds to his torso, where he was pronounced dead, at age 31. Using the stage name Chinx (formerly Chinx Drugz), the American rapper Lionel Pickens (born December 4, 1983) was from Queens, New York.

Another date that the Fortean writer Eric Frank Russell mentions is June 9th:

It was three o'clock in the morning of June the ninth, 2015, and the seldom mentioned but superbly efficient United States Department of Propaganda was working overtime. Its two huge floors in Home Affairs Building were dark, deserted, but half a mile away, hidden in a two-acre basement comprising a dozen great cellars, slaved the department's complete staff augmented by eighty willing helpers. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939

So...

On June 9, 2015, the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army claimed it captured a major Syrian Army base known as Brigade 52 in Daraa Governorate.

On June 9, 2015, Robert Alan Diaz, born September 17, 1975, died of unknown causes. He was known by his stage name Pumpkinhead or P.H., was an American rapper and hip hop artist. He grew up in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, New York with his mother and younger sister.

Who knows if it means anything, but the main investigator of Sinister Barrier was obsessed with gathering all matter of material oozing with mystery. He was surrounded with a growing body of strange deaths, even before he understood them.

Bill Graham knew nothing about these earlier tragedies, but he knew about Mayo. He was right on the spot when it happened.
He was strolling along West Fourteenth, New York, when for no particular reason he cast a casual glance up the sheer side of the Martin Building, saw a human figure falling past the twelfth floor. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

What Russell's hero Graham began to note were "rumors of war, preparations for war, accusations of preparations for war, actual wars, ferocious and bloody; religious revivals, religious riots; financial crises; labor troubles; color rivalries; ideological demonstrations; specious propaganda; murders, massacres, so-called natural disasters, or slaughter in any emotion-arousing form; revolutions and more wars."

Many suicide victims turn up. Mystery deaths of scientists occur.

Russell understood the copycat effect in 1939:

“The first suicide began them,” Wohl declared. “The rest were imitative.” He handed back the list. “Take a look over police files sometime. You'll find time after time when murder and suicide were temporarily contagious. One spectacular and well-publicised crime often induces several others of similar type.” ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

A significant city is destroyed.

Silver City was gone; the area it once had occupied was now an enormous scar on the face of Idaho, a five-miles-wide wound dotted with wreckage through which crept, crawled and limped a pathetically small number of survivors. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

The precursors of suicides and mystery deaths painted the canvas that would highlight the future - one of war. Piccadilly, London, was "messed with the blood of forty suicides."

The red dawn is there. Then come the attacks on Seattle, Vancouver, and San Francisco. Madrid is destroyed by an atomic bomb.

An azure sky splashed with pink by the rising sun spewed two thousand thin streamers of flame from the invisibility of its upper reaches. The streamers curved downward, whitening with condensation. Thickening as they lost altitude, they resolved themselves into mighty back-blasts of strange, yellow stratosphere planes.

Below lay Seattle, a few early citizens on its broad streets, a few wispy columns of smoke rising from stoked furnaces. Many amazed eyes turned to the sky, many still-sleeping heads tossed on their pillows as the aerial armada howled across Puget Sound, swooped over Seattle's roofs.

The bulleting rush brought the howl up in pitch to a shrill scream as the yellow horde rocketed over the rooftops, the badge of a flaming sun showing on the underside of each stubby wing. Black, ominous objects excreted in pairs and waggled downward from sleek, streamlined fuselages, fell for a hushed age, buried themselves in the buildings beneath. The buildings promptly disrupted in a mad, swirling melee of flame, fumes, bricks and splintered timbers.

For six hellish minutes Seattle shuddered and shook to an uninterrupted series of tremendous explosions. Then, like wraiths from the void, the yellow two thousand vanished into the stratosphere whence they had come.

Four hours later, while Seattle's streets still sparkled with shards of glass and her living still moaned amid the ruins, the invaders reappeared. Vancouver suffered this time. A dive, six minutes of inferno, then away. Slowly, lackadaisically, their condensing blast-streaks dissipated in the upper regions, while beneath lay pitted avenues, strewn business blocks, crushed homes around which wandered silent, thin-lipped men, sobbing women, screaming children, some whole, some not. Here and there a voice shrieked and shrieked and shrieked like one of the damned doing his damnedest in a world of the damned. Here and there a sharp report brought quietness and peace to someone urgently in need of both. A little lead pill was welcome medicine to the partly disemboweled.

It was coincidentally with that evening's similar and equally effective attack on San Francisco that the United States government officially identified the aggressors. The markings on the attackers' machines should have been sufficient indication, but this evidence had seemed too unreasonable to credit. Besides, officialdom had not forgotten the days when it had been considered expedient to strike blows under any flag but one's own.

Nevertheless, it was true. The enemy was the Asian Combine, with whom the United States was supposed to be on friendliest terms. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

Will there be a terrorist attack on the 4th of July in 2015? No one knows. Someone seems to think so. And CNN and Fox News will cover it live.

Utah's Burning Man Suicide

Photographs of John Christopher "Chris" Wallace, the fire suicide victim of Element 11, have been shared by his family.

Chris Wallace and his wife.

A public fundraiser on Friday, July 18th is being held as a Gallery Show, from 6-8 pm at Mod-A-Go-Go, 242 E South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah. This is being put on by Chris’ wife’s sister, to assist with post-death expenses. Also a donation fund has been established (here).
I earlier detailed the July 12, 2014 fire suicide of Wallace, which took place at the Burning Man-sanctioned event, Element 11 in Utah. Please refer to that posting for details and other images.

Details are still slowly emerging about other suicides that may have occurred at other Burning Man-aligned events.

The Burners' site mentions that,

This brings to mind two other very public Burner suicides, the body of Jermaine Barley that was found hanging (possibly for hours) at queer camp Comfort and Joy in 2007, and arsonist convicted felon/protestor Paul Addis jumping in front of a train in San Francisco in 2012....

In 2001, someone did deliberately run into a fire in Deep Playa, and died later of his burns in the Reno hospital. In 2005, Anthony Beninati from Los Angeles accidentally fell in the fire, and then sued BMOrg. He lost his appeal. 

Elsewhere at reddit, it was noted that a few years ago someone died by suicide by running into the burning temple at Transformus, the North Carolina burn. But details are lacking.

Sparky, the Element 11 effigy, based on 

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. 

Photo: Fox13 News, Salt Lake City

Was DC Self-Immolation A Vietnam-Styled Political Copycat?

October 4, 2013, was the day that the 64-year-old African-American ex-Marine Vietnam vet John Constantino picked to immolation himself on the National Mall. Historically, October 4, 1965, is acknowledged during the Vietnam War as when LBJ began actually bombing Cambodia. Did Constantino know the significance of the date? Certainly, it cannot be ignored that Constantino would have been extremely aware of the role played by self-immolations as a form of protest by Buddhist monks in Vietnam in the 1960s.

The Mount Laurel, New Jersey, veteran who died by setting himself on fire in Washington, D.C., on October 4th, it was finally revealed, had served his country during the Vietnam War, officials said yesterday. John Constantino, 64, was an active-duty Marine from December 1968 until May 1973, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. forces to withdraw in 1973, and the war ended in 1975. Constantino was also receiving veteran benefits, a Veteran Affairs spokesman said.

The Courier-Post reported earlier that property tax records indicated Constantino was a disabled veteran. It’s not clear at this time what that disability was.

In the book, Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History (2010) by Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young, they note the bombing of Cambodia began not with Nixon in 1970 but by LBJ on October 4, 1965. Lyndon Baines Johnson (born August 27, 1908 in Stonewall, Texas; died January 22, 1973 in Stonewall, Texas) succeeded John F. Kennedy as the thirty-sixth President of the United States, serving between November 22, 1963 and January 20, 1969, including the whole of 1965.

The name Constantino is Latin, and its meaning is "constant, steadfast."

John Constantine

Several individuals (Greg Taylor, Red Pill Junkie & Enki) have contacted me pointing out a deeper synchromystic link to John Costantino's name.

John Constantine is the character created by Alan Moore in the Hellblazer comic, noticed Greg Taylor. 

Recently there was some news that plans were being made for a TV series based on John Constantine.

Enki puts all these links in this context:

A character with a very similar name is also associated with flames and suicide. John Constantine is a character co-created by comics legend and magickian Alan Moore, and portrayed in the film Constantine by Keanu Reeves.
John Constantine first appeared in the DC comic Swamp Thing. This resonates with the nation's capital, where Constantino met his end, in two ways: There is the obvious DC / DC parallel; and there is a popular belief, although it is an exaggeration, that Washington DC was built on swampland. John Constantine later appeared in the fire-resonating comic Hellblazer.
In the film adaptation Constantine, the titular character completes suicide and spends two minutes in Hell before being brought back to life by paramedics.

Of course, as RPJ mentions, "there's the whole thing with Alan Moore & the Northampton clown."

Watching The Watchers

The Washington Post published a photograph of a DC police photographer taking a photograph of the newspaper's(?) photographer at the scene of Friday's self-immolation.