Firefighters in Tiananmen Square at the ready to douse self-immolators

Writing at the Washington Post, Max Fisher explains a creepy photo making the foreign correspondent rounds: "This week's very public display of firefighters in Tiananmen – noticed by McClatchy's Tom Lasseter, who posted the photo to his McClatchy China blog and kindly granted permission for me to reproduce it – is meant to deter potential self-immolators, or at least to put them out as quickly as possible."