Active US Airman Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington today. He said he did it in protest of the genocide in Gaza. A police officer showed up pointing a gun at his burning body and tried to save him.
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00:01:11.000Now we have a martyred man on our hands Aaron Bushnell who may have mental health issues.
00:01:16.000He may be suffering from a variety of conditions.
00:01:20.000What we can say for certain is a person who felt strongly enough in his nation, America, to live his life dedicated to it through active military service has set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in protest against the ongoing Middle Eastern war, which some people would call, of course, and let me know in the chat how you feel about this, a genocide in Gaza.
00:01:39.000Now, what does it tell us about the military industrial complex and the state Of the unipolar ambitions of the military-industrial complex, the idea that you cannot have an ascendant Russia or a thriving China, what you must have is globalist state backed by institutions like NATO.
00:01:55.000Have we reached the point where you can't even use the time-honoured argument that it is unpatriotic to not support war?
00:03:24.000The perfect symbol to define our time.
00:03:27.000In this instance, a serviceman who set himself on fire in protest of a war supported by the United States of America and therefore taxpayer dollars, ultimately ends up with a police officer pointing a gun at him while he burns himself to death.
00:03:41.000Tells you something not only about the conflict in the Middle East, in particular the Gaza conflict, but it also tells you something about the relationship between the state and the military.
00:03:50.000The state and all of us the nihilism the ridiculousness the sadness and the hopelessness of the plight of the world when wars funded and perpetuated in this manner lead even to those that are asked to enact what is required of the military to self-immolation self
00:04:10.000I think all of us get a sense that the military are exploited, their image, their loyalty, their service used to leverage censorship and compliance from the rest of us who may have many questions about the nature of these wars.
00:04:22.000But this provides us with an event and a symbol that brings into stark and stunning reality exactly This just might be the most American thing I've ever heard of.
00:04:31.000It's more American than the fake bald eagle cries that they put in Hollywood movies.
00:04:35.000need for intervention, the need for diplomacy, the need for an end to these wars.
00:04:40.000This just might be the most American thing I've ever heard of. It's more American than
00:04:43.000the fake bald eagle cries that they put in Hollywood movies.
00:04:46.000It's more American than monster trucks and mass shootings. You simply cannot fit
00:04:50.000more America into a single incident than a man dying a horrifying death in protest of war
00:04:55.000crimes while a first responder screams at cops to stop pointing their guns at him and go get fire
00:05:01.000If you were to pick a single moment in history to sum up the essence and expression of the US Empire, that would be it.
00:05:07.000That's why I'll be very surprised if this gets much mainstream coverage.
00:05:10.000Of course there is the horror, gore, sadness and tragedy of a human being doing that in desperation and in protest.
00:05:16.000But there's also what is implied by the event.
00:05:19.000All of us remember the image of that child running away from napalm attacks in Vietnam.
00:05:23.000All of us remember the man in Tiananmen Square holding those bags in front of a tank.
00:05:27.000Those images were popularised presumably because in some way or another we either had a more
00:05:32.000responsible news media at that time that genuinely opposed the establishment agenda or we were
00:05:38.000just more naive and the establishment agenda at those points required withdrawal from Vietnam
00:05:43.000so they started to popularise that image.
00:05:45.000Or in the case of Tiananmen Square, you can see why opposition to China would always have been an attitude or an aspect.
00:05:50.000Nevertheless, at this point where many of us are questioning the legitimacy of events in Gaza, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, the escalation of tensions between America and China, A service person doing this outside an embassy is an indication that the appetite for these wars is waning.
00:06:08.000Even as more and more we're subjected to various advocates for militarism saying you have to keep this war going.
00:06:15.000We're just on the brink of beating Russia.
00:06:17.000We're just about to achieve Middle Eastern peace through war.
00:06:20.000You have to control Iran if we don't do this.
00:06:23.000It's clear that that idea is running out of steam and the image of Aaron Bushnell ablaze.
00:06:29.000Perhaps might be a pivotal moment in all of our understanding of these wars.
00:06:33.000As you know our channel is continually accused of conveying misinformation.
00:06:38.000We are accused of being conspiracy theorists.
00:06:40.000You know that our defense is that we try to convey the truth to you and we try to oppose establishment power.
00:06:46.000On that basis here are some facts about actual Here are some facts about the way that wars are funded and who benefits from those wars, and here are some facts about how service personnel are treated and how they feel more broadly, what their economic and domestic conditions are, so that you can decide for yourselves what might be behind these forever wars when perhaps they are not beneficial to the troops that are being enlisted and compelled to conduct the business of war.
00:07:11.000A Forbes 2022 poll showed that only 17% support the United States doing whatever it can to help Ukraine, even if it provokes a war.
00:07:19.000This war is becoming less and less popular, even as its funding increases, often tied to other wars and other regional disputes, shall we call them.
00:07:27.000There is still an appetite to continue to fund this dispute, not to reach a diplomatic resolution.
00:07:32.000A majority of American adults would not be willing to serve in the military were the US to enter into a major war, recent polling has found.
00:07:40.000Ought then we not be considering that fact when entering into further agitation with Russia and potentially China and escalating tensions in the Middle East.
00:07:48.000That people in America don't want to fight in a war.
00:07:58.000Democracy now doesn't mean elections and therefore the will of the people.
00:08:01.000Democracy means a set of institutions, be they national or global, that serve the carriage of power, that serve the fulfilment of the agenda of the powerful.
00:08:57.000Congress has passed four spending packages in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, $113 billion in total.
00:09:04.000As of September 2021, the Pentagon's spending has totaled over $14 trillion since the start of the war in Afghanistan, with one half of the total going to military contractors.
00:09:14.000One half of the total going to military contractors.
00:09:17.000Are you beginning to suspect there could be an agenda beyond helping different sets of children around the world?
00:09:23.000Remember, you may have recently seen Victoria Nuland saying, the good thing about this war in Ukraine is a lot of the money finds its way back to the American military-industrial complex.
00:09:30.000And by the way, most of the support we are providing actually goes right back into the US economy and defence-industrial base.
00:09:38.000Yeah, almost as if that's the whole point of this.
00:09:41.000A large portion of these contracts, one quarter to one third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years, have gone to just five major corporations.
00:09:48.000Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.
00:09:52.000I wonder if they have any influence on these policies.
00:09:55.000Again, using Mike Benz's analysis, democracy now doesn't mean elections, it means institutions.
00:10:00.000Presumably some of these institutions are the relationships between the state and major corporations, donors and funders.
00:10:06.000Let me know in the chat how you would assess that information.
00:10:08.000Meanwhile, how are the actual military personnel themselves feeling about these wars?
00:10:13.000Remember, just 10-20 years ago, it was considered unpatriotic to criticize wars because it was as if you didn't respect the sacrifice made by service personnel.
00:10:21.000And I know that many of you are vets that watch our channel, and I see your comments in there, and I hear how you talk about your time in service.
00:10:31.000Military families are reporting housing, health and financial challenges, according to a survey released by the Military Family Advisory Network, which found that nearly a quarter of enlisted families are experiencing food insecurity and that more than 60% of respondents pay more than they can comfortably afford on housing.
00:10:47.000Active service personnel cannot afford food and shelter.
00:10:50.000That's really near the top of the Maslow Pyramid of Needs.
00:10:56.000So if you're in the services and you can't afford food and shelter, you know, go America or not.
00:11:02.000One-fifth of active service families and nearly 40% of veteran families surveyed reported less than $500 of emergency savings or no emergency savings funds.
00:11:11.000And over three quarters of military families indicated they carry debt.
00:11:14.000Almost 40,000 veterans are without shelter in the US on any given night.
00:11:19.000Those statistics I find very difficult to listen to and they are brought into stark clarity by the image of Aaron Bushnell ablaze outside an embassy in protest of a war.
00:11:30.000It seems that Aaron Bushnell has identified another conflict for which he is willing to give his life.
00:11:34.000And I would say in that conflict there is an indication that there is a deeper patriotism available to all of us.
00:11:39.000What does it really mean to support our tribe, to support our nation, to support our people?
00:11:43.000Does it mean the continued funneling of our tax dollars and resources to those five companies?
00:11:49.000Or does it mean disobedience and the ability to oppose their agenda?
00:11:52.000Let me know in the chat in the comments what side of that equation you find yourself.
00:11:55.000Once again, Katelyn Johnson has written about how both parties, the Republican and the Democrats, when it comes to this issue of war, and perhaps war is the ultimate issue, you tell me, ultimately agree with one another and tend to simply use different aesthetics when it comes to what legitimizes their war or their pursuit of their agenda.
00:12:15.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that if a Republican president were to back a genocide, it will be an evil and unforgivable atrocity.
00:12:22.000Whereas when a Democrat president backs a genocide, it's a minor foible that you better shut up about unless you want Trump to win.
00:12:28.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats Is that the Republicans argue in support of wars, militarism, capitalism and oppression using right-wing language, whereas Democrats argue in support of wars, militarism and capitalism and oppression using left-wing language.
00:12:40.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans do evil things for evil reasons, whereas Democrats do evil things for noble, humanitarian reasons.
00:12:47.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans facilitate all the interests of the U.S.
00:12:52.000Empire because America is strong and godly and should rule the world, whereas Democrats facilitate all the interests of the U.S.
00:12:57.000Empire because America is liberal and egalitarian and defends the rules-based international order.
00:13:02.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans want to start a world war with China, whereas Democrats strongly favor starting a world war with Russia.
00:13:10.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that people massacring civilians in the global South under Republican administrations are racist, homophobic, misogynistic bigots, whereas the people massacring civilians in the global South under Democratic administrations are inclusive, intersectional, feminist, LGBTQ allies.
00:13:26.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans criticize Democrats for made-up nonsense reasons like wokeness, whereas Democrats criticize Republicans for made-up nonsense reasons like Russiagate.
00:13:36.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans are led by demented octogenarian swamp monsters who can't string a sentence together and have spent decades in office promoting ecocide, imperialism, exploitation, and oligarchy, whereas Democrats, oh well I guess that one's both of them actually.
00:13:50.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that liberals feel bad when Republicans are overseeing the imperial bloodbath and feel good when Democrats are.
00:13:57.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that when Republicans do the monstrous things necessary to maintain a globe-spanning empire, they're the greater evil.
00:14:05.000Whereas when Democrats do the monstrous things necessary to maintain a global-spanning empire, they're the lesser evil.
00:14:10.000The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that when the imperial murder machine has an R on it, we're meant to frown.
00:14:16.000And when the imperial murder machine has a D on it, we're meant to smile.
00:14:19.000I don't know where Caitlin Johnston, the author of that piece, stands on American imperialism.
00:14:23.000It certainly doesn't seem that she's particularly enchanted by either party in the American political system.
00:14:29.000And it seems to me that with Aaron Bushnell's death, we should be looking with this further scrutiny, not Only at America's military endeavors around the world, the way it's funding who profits, who suffers, who dies as a result of it on all sides, whether that's the people dying in Gaza, the people dying in Ukraine, the people dying in Russia, the people that will die in Iran, presumably, the people dying in Yemen, the people dying in Syria, the people that might die in Taiwan, the people that will die in China, the Americans that will die
00:14:54.000All of the people that will be invited to die as this project continues, as well as perhaps assessing what benefits were gleaned from the Iraq war and who experienced those benefits.
00:15:12.000I can't imagine there's many of you saying Joe Biden because I read your comments, I know where you stand.
00:15:24.000Where we stand on this issue is that perhaps this is an opportunity, a time for us to assess the nature of war, what our priorities truly are.
00:15:31.000If American service personnel, while in active duty, are setting themselves on fire, and even the ones that aren't driven to martyrdom, are living in peculiar circumstances of poverty and suffering, does the idea that criticizing the war machine is anti-patriotic even make sense anymore?
00:15:45.000And if you, as those statistics show, do not want to spend your tax dollars and your family's lives on these wars, who is benefiting from these wars?
00:15:52.000When you see long-term political apparatchiks like Victoria Nuland saying it's necessary to continue the war against Russia, Well, when you see various advocacy groups saying it's necessary to further disrupt the Middle East in spite of the ongoing intervention of the West being part of the obvious problem in that region, when you see people on one side of the political aisle saying we must have war with Russia and on the other side we must have war with China, and for those of us that are in other English-speaking nations caught in the tailwind of your great nation debating whether or not our tax money and our children's lives have to be spent on your wars, surely it's time for us to together
00:16:27.000As people, wherever we stand on the cultural scale, wherever we sit in the political spectrum to say, whose interests are being served by this?
00:16:34.000When you see legacy media instruments, even ones of entertainment, refusing to robustly question the integrity of this ongoing global military campaign, you have to ask, how is it that the media are owned?
00:16:46.000That the political establishment is owned?
00:16:48.000That social media is increasingly becoming owned, censored and controlled in order to facilitate whom?
00:16:56.000And if you're wondering about what the benefits of these wars might be, have a look at what the benefits of the last wars were, and how they benefited you, your family, and your community.
00:17:05.000And if to ask those questions is unpatriotic, then I'd have to say that I am becoming increasingly less patriotic.
00:17:14.000Remember you can support our content by clicking that link in the description and becoming an awakened wonder with us.
00:17:19.000Please God, we will be able to create a movement to oppose this hypocrisy and corruption somehow, because if we don't do anything, who's gonna?