Chapter One, the sorry, sad saga of Malachi Ritscher began on Nov 4th of this year as a one paragraph blurb in a Chicago newspaper.
His suicide note told a more complex story.
Words by others revealed a man obessed by President Bush and the Iraq war.
In his own obituary he clearly is indicating that he wants to make a profound statement to the world.
Can the spectacle of a public suicide possibly become a norm in America? Is his political beliefs to be taken more or less seriously because he was willing to douse himself in gasoline and go up in flames next to a statue called "The Flame of the Millennium"?
In December 2002, the city of Chicago dedicated a statue called "The Flame of the Millennium"-- a seven-ton, stainless-steel, abstract rendering of a flame in high wind, standing over the Kennedy Expressway, just west of the downtown Loop. Last Friday, November 3, the statue appeared to be on fire. When authorities got there, they found a video camera, a canister of gasoline, a sign reading "Thou Shalt Not Kill", and a human body so badly charred that it was impossible to determine its sex. Someone had self-immolated, near a highway off-ramp, amid rush-hour traffic.
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Source ( not a C & P ) http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/post-no-bills/2006/11/07/malachi-ritschers-apparent-suicide/