45 years apart

[solarbird]

Burning Draft Cards, February 24, 1966


Burning Credit Cards, October 15, 2011

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

De Ja Vu all over again. Hmmmm. Notice this time there's a flag that isn't getting toasted?

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

Eww, plastic fumes.

[solarbird]

Yeah, also, really difficult to burn. I doubt we'll see much of this. But the imagery parallel was cool.

[theprimarydave.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought.

Maybe they should try burning credit card OFFER letters. Probably keep them warm & toasty through the whole winter if just one of the protesters brings theirs.

[windbourne.livejournal.com]

No. Joke. *__*

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that the first guy to try this had to give it about five tries before he could get the credit card to melt, or burn, or whatever it did. I'm not at all sure burning them is a good idea, but if someone could work up a solar- or bicycle-powered crosscut shredder with sufficient oomph...

[solarbird]

Sure. But the imagery parallel could be useful in getting their parents interested. I was just struck by that parallelism.

[403.livejournal.com]

Clearly, they need a very small amount of thermite.

[solarbird]

Wow yeah no.

My nightmare scenario is that OWS gets declared a terrorist organisation by the Executive Branch. Follow that chain of powers if you want to get really ill.

[403.livejournal.com]

It was a joke - thermite is the default solution to anything that you *really* want to burn, which won't go up on its own. I'm not advocating toasty rust-aluminum fires for OWS, any more than I think it'd be a good idea for Occupy Boston to have an MIT-style sodium drop night in the harbor.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Disposing of credit cards is a good idea--preferably by shredding or cutting--but comparing that to a genuinely risky act of civil disobedience against a policy of slavery and murder is a bit, um.

[solarbird]

The point they're making, to my mind, is that the financial system is more in charge than the government is. That's what I keep talking about w.r.t. things like regulatory capture.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with regulatory capture. I know that the financial system is doing Bad Things. They are not, however, literally kidnapping people at gunpoint by the millions, putting them through a regime of mental and physical torture, and sending them out to murder or be murdered. Cutting up your credit cards doesn't risk going to prison. I don't think the comparison is appropriate.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Without Wall Street there wouldn't have been a US-Vietnam war either. Cold War ideology plus corporate interest was the driving motivation. The US didn't want to lose control of SE Asian resources or trade across the Pacific in general.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Unless you want to argue that Wall Street is responsible for every major conflict going back to the Civil War, I don't see your point. And if you do want to argue that, I don't want to talk to you.

I agree that the level of harm is far, far, far less in this case...

[turil.livejournal.com]

The current banking system is much more subtle with their manipulation and anti-social behavior than Hitler. Sick leaders have learned to be much more sophisticated with their tactics, because there are enough people who are paying attention and will point out the more gross inhumane actions (torture, for example, is still something the US does, they just have to do it more quietly and less often and do it to specific people who they can convince most of the public are "evil", as opposed to entire cultures). Obviously, also, more people in the US seem to be free to at least to try to escape, and do have more physical freedom to move around the country legally, so the repression happens in more emotional, intellectual, and spiritual ways, than physical.

Also, and I don't know how true it was, I have heard that banking (or more precisely, the idea of creating debt) was one of the core elements that made both the US revolutionary war and the US civil war happen. External powers loaning each side money to fund the war was done as a way to gain favors later on.

Re: I agree that the level of harm is far, far, far less in this case...

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Banking, as a natural nexus of power concentration, is involved in most historic encounters of the post-Enlightenment. Assigning banking definitive agency in all those events is a pretty reliable sign of a very unpleasant and unstable individual.

Nothing ever happens for one reason, and nobody has reliable control of anything. ETA: I see that you're some flavor of Buddhist; I'm basically talking about interpenetration here.

Re: I agree that the level of harm is far, far, far less in this case...

[turil.livejournal.com]

So speculating about money-making intentions of people who are publicly known as hoarders is "a sign of a very unpleasant and unstable individual"? Interesting. I suppose that's reasonable if you consider people looking for psychological explanations of historical events as being unpleasant to you. And if you think contemplating things is being unstable then that's ok too. Being unstable is better than being stuck in only one way of thinking. :-)

And I totally agree that nothing ever happens for just one reason. The funders of war certainly don't ever cause the war. But their intentions and actions are still certainly important to pay attention to, especially when it comes to deciding whether or not to encourage (enable) them. (I'm not technically a Buddhist, but I do study some Buddhist practitioners and scholars. I don't know what interpenetration means, though. But I do know that one of the main messages of Buddhism is to NOT help others increase their negative Karma. And in this case, giving more money to those who hoard money and then spend at least some of it supporting wars would be enabling the hoarders to hoard more and to, indirectly, support more war.)

Wait, try this...

[turil.livejournal.com]

I think I would have been better off saying:

So speculating about the not-so-healthy intentions of bankers is "a sign of a very unpleasant and unstable individual"?

Re: Wait, try this...

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

It's when you decide that the bankers are the real puppetmasters and nations rise and fall at their whim. From there it's usually a very short trip to blaming the Jews.

Bankers are one powerful faction among many.

Re: Wait, try this...

[turil.livejournal.com]

It's only a "short trip to blaming the Jews" if you're an idiot. :-)

The bankers might indeed be some of the puppet masters, and might even be the most influential ones when it comes to global politics. I don't know (and I don't really care, either, since my goal is to solve everyone's problems at once in one fell educational swoop, rather than attacking individual problems with band aids). But it's certainly reasonable to be aware enough to look for the personal intentions and actions that are negative in the world.

People who hoard anything, including money, are sick, and so bankers, pretty much by definition need help. And yes, so do many, many, many other people. In fact most of us need help, because most of us are suffering from some kind of illness that gets in the way of contributing the most awesome stuff to the world.

Re: Wait, try this...

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's fair to call bankers hoarders, since their entire business relies on handing money out to other people. At any given time, the amount of money and other liquid assets a bank is sitting on is dwarfed by the amount of money lent out to others.

The most problematic aspects of the finance industry seem to me to be grounded in how they employ the power they gain in the transactions.

Re: Wait, try this...

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Interpenetration is one translation of pratītyasamutpāda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratītyasamutpāda), also translated as "dependent arising", related to the metaphor of Indra's Net. Roughly: all 'things' in reality are mutually entangled in a web of cause and effect; no one thing stands in a privileged position relative to everything else. In this context, it means there's no God, no governor, and no secret masters.

OK. Thanks.

[turil.livejournal.com]

I agree, everything does effect everything else. But there is a point to Buddhism, which is that positive change can happen (alleviation of suffering), and it can be done with a combination of Right awareness and Right actions. Yes?

Also, this doesn't seem to mean that there is "no God" only that the idea of "God" would have to include everything codependently. :-)

Re: OK. Thanks.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

It means there's no God in the technical sense that there is no first cause or unmoved mover.

[oh6.livejournal.com]

Incongruous?

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

I would say 'bordering on obscene'. Military conscription is a very important issue to me.

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

Mind if I reblog this post with attribution on Crazy Eddie's Motie News? It fits right in with what I've been doing.

[solarbird]

Sure, go ahead. Note that I linked to the individual photo sources, neither of which are mine. I just noticed the similarity.

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

♥

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

Now if they'd only close their accounts too. But they probably need the new iPad, so I doubt that'll happen.

*sigh*

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

+1