Ecologies of Imaginal Space

"If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them.

The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment.

To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the waters in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars." [source]

-- Arundhati Roy

“This is not about getting back to nature.
It is about understanding we’ve never left.”
-- Sierra Club poster

Goldman Sachs is a Financial Terrorist Organization

Goldman Sachs is an organization of financial terrorists who have co-opted the American government. They have extorted the U.S congress, emptied the treasury coffers and financed the exploitation of people and markets all over this planet. They contribute nothing but fraud and destruction to the project of civilization. Why are Americans still putting up with this company?

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients. Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 and is headquartered at 200 West Street in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City, with additional offices in international financial centres.

Former employees include Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson who served as United States Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively, as well as Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada since 2008, Mario Draghi, governor of the European Central Bank, Mario Monti, the Italian Prime Minister, and former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson is the current chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, despite President Barack Obama's campaign promise that he would limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration.[source]

In February 2011, the Washington Examiner reported that Goldman Sachs was "the company from which Obama raised the most money in 2008" and that its "CEO Lloyd Blankfein has visited the White House 10 times."[source]

During the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, Goldman was able to profit from the collapse in subprime mortgage bonds in the summer of 2007 by short-selling subprime mortgage-backed securities. Two Goldman traders, Michael Swenson and Josh Birnbaum, are credited with bearing responsibility for the firm's large profits during America's sub-prime mortgage crisis.[source] The pair, members of Goldman's structured products group in New York, made a profit of $4 billion by "betting" on a collapse in the sub-prime market, and shorting mortgage-related securities. [source]

Here is Former Attorney General of New York Elliot Spitzer breaking it down on CNN: 

And Max Keiser on French TV giving his take:

  

The trailer for the documentary INSIDE JOB: 

Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali: On History

In the video below filmmaker Oliver Stone and prominent intellectual and activist Tariq Ali engage in a fascinating discussion on U.S history, culture and foreign affairs in front of an audience at the New York Public Library on January 1, 2012.

 


From the New York Pubic Library: 

ON HISTORY - Pakistani writer and filmmaker TARIQ ALI and film director OLIVER STONE will continue their ongoing discourse about "forgotten--or deliberately buried--episodes" from American history from the US intervention against the Russian Revolution to the ongoing interference of the United States in Pakistani political affairs. In their recent public dialogue, On History, Oliver Stone asks, according to Jon Wiener, "smart questions about the rise and fall of the United States and its empire in the 20th century." In this conversation, the tables are turned as we ask Tariq Ali to kick off with some questions for Oliver Stone, leading into a conversation between them on politics, film, and the untold history of the nation.

Slavoj Žižek: Catastrophic But Not Serious

...

Slavoj Zizek: Catastrophic But Not Serious from The Graduate Center, CUNY on FORA.tv

Location: New York, NY / Event Date: 04.04.11 

Summary: The Committee on Globalization and Social Change will launch with a special lecture by philosopher and critic Slavoj Zizek who will speak on "The Situation Is Catastrophic, but Not Serious." This alleged message of the Austrian military headquarters during WWI renders perfectly our attitude towards the ongoing crisis: we are aware of the looming (ecological, social) catastrophes, but we somehow don't take them seriously. What ideology sustains such an attitude?

[ h/t DMF ]

War Is a Racket

In 1935 retired U.S Army General Smedley D. Butler published a book entitled ‘War Is A Racket’ in which he lays bare the economic profiteering and commercial nature of publicly funded state warfare. In the book Butler was shockingly frank about his experience as a career military officer in the midst of a frenzy of wealthy elites clamoring to make profit from all sides of some of the earths most devastating conflicts.

The work is divided into five chapters:

1. War is a racket
2. Who makes the profits?
3. Who pays the bills?
4. How to smash this racket!
5. To hell with war!

In an often cited quote from the book Butler says:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Butler then summarizes the main points of his book in the following key passage:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

read the entire book: Here

Gandhi and the Politics of Non-Violence

The video below is a teach-in presented by Professor Snehal Shingavi @ #OccupyAustin. His talk goes into the history of the India Liberation movement and critically examines the role Gandhi played in it. If we want to effectively call upon the mythos of the Mahatma to affect social change we need to seek honesty and build a space of understanding that compares and illuminates key tactics and strategies against ruling classes, instead of moralistically dismissing those tactics deemed “violent”. Dogmatic pacifists please take note!

'Gandhi and the Politics of Non-Violence'

by Professor Snehal Shingavi at #OccupyAustin:

Thank You #OWS!

“It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof: they feel the disproportion between their faculties and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them. They are striking work, and crying out for somewhat worthy to do! . . . 

Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declareth all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate.”

- R.W Emerson, from "The Transcendentalist, a Lecture Read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842."

Jeffrey Sachs Message to Wall Street

Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute and Professor of Sustainable Development, Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and the founder and co-President of the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the United Nations Millennium Project's work on the Millennium Development Goals, eight internationally sanctioned objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger, and disease by the year 2015.

Sachs has been strongly criticized for past sympathies for privatization and neoliberal economic ideology, as well as his role in helping American business elites plunder the Russian economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sachs was an adviser to Eastern European governments in the implementation of so-called “economic shock therapy” during the transition from communism to a capitalist market system.

Since that time, and as a result of the overwhelming evidence that neo-liberal policies only advantage established economic powers, Sachs has increasingly advocated for more prudent regulatory practices and the building of an international system of aid and economic mutualism between wealthy nations and institutions and periphery populations in vulnerable geopolitical regions. Sachs now argues for what he calls in his most recent book, The Price of Civilization, a "mixed economy".

Sachs’ recent article in the Huffington Post is a surprisingly frank characterization of the #OccupyWallStreet movement, considering the fairly mainstream financial circles he operates within. Below are a few excerpts from the article, but I urge everyone to read the entire piece:

The protestors are not envious of wealth, but sick of corporate lies, cheating, and unethical behavior. They are sick of corporate lobbying that led to the reckless deregulation of financial markets; they are sick of Wall Street and the Wall Street Journal asking for trillions of dollars of near-zero-interest loans and bailout money for the banks, but then fighting against unemployment insurance and health coverage for those drowning in the wake of the financial crisis; they are sick of absurdly low tax rates for hedge-fund managers; they are sick of Rupert Murdoch and his henchman David Koch trying to peddle the Canada-to-Gulf Keystone oil pipeline as an honest and environmentally sound business deal, when in fact it would unleash one of the world's dirtiest and most destructive energy sources, Canada's oil sands, so that Koch can profit while the world suffers…

Here, then, Wall Street and Big Oil, is what it comes down to. The protesters are no longer giving you a free ride, in which you can set the regulations, set your mega-pay, hide your money in tax havens, enjoy sweet tax rates at the hands of ever-willing politicians, and await your bailouts as needed. The days of lawlessness and greed are coming to an end. Just as the Gilded Age turned into the Progressive Era, just as the Roaring Twenties and its excesses turned into the New Deal, be sure that the era of mega-greed is going to turn into an era of renewed accountability, lawfulness, modest compensation, honest taxation, and government by the people rather than by the banks.

Go read the entire article: here.

[ h/t Edward Berge ]

UPDATE OCT 21.2011:

Jeffrey Sachs at #OccupyWallStreet

“Get Rid of Yourself”

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Get Rid of Yourself from zoo on Vimeo.

Bernadette Corporation - featuring Chloe Sevigny and Werner von Delmont. (2003, 61 min)

Description:

Get Rid of Yourself is a video-film-tract addressed to those who anonymously embody the return of political activism within Empire. While its initial sounds and images were filmed during the riots in Genoa, 2001, these materials are pulled apart and recomposed in order to locate the intensity of a shared experience, rather than producing one more documentary version of the programmed and hyper-mediatized confrontation of the G8 counter-summit. Elaborating a complex and rhythmic form of address via sound/image disjunctions, cheap video effects and performance, the film declares its own exile from a biopolitical space-time where nothing ever happens. The crisis it announces is the sudden return of history, but this time without characters or a story, and of a politics without subjects.

Provisionally aligning itself with the so-called ‘Black Bloc’ movement – with the arrogance of its discourse as well as the force and style of their resistance – Get Rid of Yourself is an encounter with emerging, non-instituted or identity-less forms of protest that refuse the representational politics of the official Left. Edited in the aftermath of 9/11 – a period of doubt, reflection and heightened security measures worldwide – the film also attempts to measure the strange distance these events have crossed, and the increasing repression under which the feeling of ‘civil war’ has been buried in the meantime. A filmed essay that works by betraying its own form, Get Rid of Yourself tries to approach what is most open in an event, rather than capturing and completing it as something recognizable.

The Shock Doctrine

Below is a powerful documentary adaptation of Naomi Klein's outstanding 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The book is an amazing example of journalism and social critique, and deserves to be widely read. If you haven't done so already please do.

Here is the official description of the film from the filmmakers:

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001.

The films traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.

New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, shock and awe warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theaters for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tienanmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

[ h/t Integral Options Cafe ]

Welcome To The Machine

This video requires no further commentary. Watch, learn and dig deep:

The Plundering Continues Unchecked

click to enlarge

Here is Columbia University Professor Robert Lieberman commenting in the highly regarded journal Foreign Affairs on the politico-economic war being waged by wealthy elites:

The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years; foreclosures have forced millions of Americans out of their homes; and real incomes have fallen faster and further than at any time since the Great Depression. Many of those laid off fear that the jobs they have lost -- the secure, often unionized, industrial jobs that provided wealth, security, and opportunity -- will never return. They are probably right.

And yet a curious thing has happened in the midst of all this misery. The wealthiest Americans, among them presumably the very titans of global finance whose misadventures brought about the financial meltdown, got richer. And not just a little bit richer; a lot richer. In 2009, the average income of the top five percent of earners went up, while on average everyone else's income went down. This was not an anomaly but rather a continuation of a 40-year trend of ballooning incomes at the very top and stagnant incomes in the middle and at the bottom. The share of total income going to the top one percent has increased from roughly eight percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today.

Read the entire article @ Foreign Affairs

[ h/t BLCKDGRD ]

Check Out Related Crazy-Making Stories:

• Big Business Getting Richer
• The Story of Citizens United v. FEC
• Class Wars Rage On
• Goldman Sachs Earns 250m as Punishment for Fraud
• Capitalism: A Denial Story
• Wall Street's Top 10 Lies of 2010
• Shock, Awe and the Psychology of Economic Warfare
• Harvey on the Crisis of Capitalism
• The Money Masters

Warren Buffet on Class Wars

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

- Warren E. Buffet [source]

We are currently suffering through one of the worst crashes/failures our economic systems have ever endured. It is widely acknowledged that this crisis was mainly the result of predatory capitalism, reckless financial decisions and ventures and the irresponsible/incompetent "management" of a number of extremely wealthy executives and decision-makers.

Millions have lost their jobs, and yet massive banking firms and elite alliances deemed “to big to fail” were bailed out with taxpayers money, and ended up making billions in profits for their shareholders. At the same time, politicians and special interest groups are attacking labor organizations, environmental regulations, public healthcare and the working-class with fury and determination.

Is there a class war going on? You bet your life there is. And the poor and working people of this world are seriously losing this war. But for how long? How long will we put up with the status quo? Not long.

Middle Eastern Revolutions Will Benefit All of Us

“We do not want a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women -- not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."

– John F. Kennedy (1963)

From Saman Mohammadi at The Excavator:

Andrew Bacevich and Lew Rockwell argue convincingly that the people of the Arab world and the Middle East are doing America a great favor by overthrowing their dictators, most of whom have been supported by the United States for decades.

Andrew Bacevich (from the LA Times):

If the Muslim masses demanding political freedom and economic opportunity prevail, they will do so not thanks to but despite the United States. Yet by liberating themselves, they will also liberate us. Our misbegotten crusade to determine their destiny will finally end. In that case, we will owe them a great debt.

Lew Rockwell:

It is a fact: these people hate the tyrants. It is also a fact that these are "our" tyrants. The very existence exposes the gross hypocrisy of US foreign policy.

God bless these protesters. They are losing their chains. They are changing the Arab world – and the whole globe – by destabilizing and overthrowing the dictators. They are not only doing it without US help. They are doing it despite US support for the dictators they oppose. As such, these revolutions can mean more than the overthrow of despots; they can end in overthrowing the despotic policy and empire headquartered in Washington, DC. Want to join me in the streets?

Ask your family, friends and neighbors what they think about a world without war, without pollution, without hate, without people who seek to control, trick and dominate us. Ask them about their thoughts on what is happening in the Middle East. Start conversations. Encourage debate. Ask yourself what your “tipping point” will be. Let us revolt together.

Vanguards of Democracy

"Today, the vanguard of democracy is not in Washington. It’s on the Arab street, and we need to give them credit for that. They’ve created a generation of heroes: these Arab kids. They’re a lot more brave than you or I have ever needed to be."

-Graham Harman

I continue to be facinated by the role social media and the internet has played in the rising wave of revolt in the Middle East. Twitter, blogs and Facebook have proved powerful tools in the communication and coordination of revolutionary activities. Never before has technological advance been a wepon of the people like it has now. We certainly live in interesting times.

One of my favorite sources of information on the happenings in the region continues to be the blog of Graham Harman. Harman has been posting updates about the goings on in the middle-east for weeks - and for someone like myself who doesn't have or want cable television; it's pretty fotunate to get live updates from someone who is following so closely the situation 'on the ground' as well as living in that area.

I suggest if you are interested in following along you check out his latest: here.

A Message of Solidarity from Anonymous to Libyan Freedom Fighters

From The Libyan Youth Movement:

Dear United Nations:

Anonymous wishes you to act.

We are watching the developments in Libya and are shocked.
Shocked by the images we’ve seen.
Shocked by the things Libya’s Anons have told us.

Shocked by the fact that one man ignores the voices of his citizens and opens fire on them.

Shocked by the fact that even with generals and diplomats deserting, this man is still ignoring the will of his people and unwilling to accept their human rights.

People ought not have to fear their leaders; leaders ought to fear their people. In too many places, though, this is currently not the case. A grasping dictator has taken an army to the skies and the streets to shed blood of people whom he should be protecting. Some of them have bravely refused, and thereby done their part; when will the UN do theirs?

We just want the people to be free. Please help us help them. Again, this is not an attack, but rather a bid for your full attention, which ought to be directed towards assisting Libyans in their quest for liberty.

The United Nations has the power to prevent this egregious loss of life, but it must act quickly and decisively to do so, contrary to its usual habits.

We ask not for meetings or referenda. Rather, we demand that you implement the following measures and do so in a manner that will minimize the loss of life among civilians and put an end to the rule of this degenerate tyrant.

1. Provide a blanket no-fly zone to prevent state controlled aircraft from bombing civilians.

2. Provide secured transport of medical supplies to major population centers.

3. Announce the implementation of these measures within 24 hours.

That world which you claim to protect is watching and will respond accordingly.

We are Anonymous

We are Legion.

We do not forget,

We do not forgive.

Expect us.

Fuck yeah.

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Noam Chomsky on Wisconsin Resistance, US Hegemony and the Role of Empire

From Democracy Now:

“Democracy Uprising” in the U.S.A.? - Noam Chomsky on Wisconsin’s Resistance to Assault on Public Sector, the Obama-Sanctioned Crackdown on Activists, and the Distorted Legacy of Ronald Reagan:

Part 1 /

Part 2 /

No Greater Responsibility for Intellectuals

"Relentless criticism can delegitimize the system and release people into struggle."

From Adbusters:

No Greater Responsibility for Intellectuals

by Joel Kovel | 28 Dec 2010

Beaten down by the great defeats of utopian and social ideals, few today even bother to think about the kinds of society that could replace the present one, and most of that speculation is within a green paradigm limited by an insufficient appreciation of the regime of capital and of the depths needed for real change. Instead, Greens tend to imagine an orderly extension of community accompanied by the use of instruments that have been specifically created to keep the present system going, such as parliamentary elections and various tax policies. Such measures make transformative sense, however, only if seen as prefigurations of something more radical – something by definition not immediately on the horizon.

The first two steps on that path are clearly laid out and are within the reach of every conscientious person. These are that people ruthlessly criticize the capitalist system “from top to bottom,” and that they include in this a consistent attack on the widespread belief that there can be no alternative to it. If one believes that capital is not only basically unjust but radically unsustainable as well, the prime obligation is to spread news.

The belief that there can be no alternative to capital is ubiquitous – and no wonder, given how wonderfully convenient the idea is to the ruling ideology. That, however, does not keep it from being nonsense and a failure of vision and political will. Nothing lasts forever and what is humanly made can theoretically be unmade. Of course it could be the case that the job of changing it is too hard and capital is as far as humanity can go, in which instance we must simply accept our fate stoically and try to palliate the results. But we don’t know this and cannot know this. There is no proving it one way or the other and only inertia, fear of change or opportunism can explain the belief in so shabby an idea as that there can be no alternative to capital for organizing society.

At some point the realization will dawn that all the sound ideas for, say, regulating the chemical industries or preserving forest ecosystems or doing something serious about species-extinctions or global warming or whatever point of ecosystem disintegration is of concern are not going to be realized by appealing to local changes in themselves or to the Democratic Party, to the Environmental Protection Agency, to the courts, to the foundations, to ecophilosophies or to changes in consciousness. For the overriding reason is that we are living under a regime that controls both the state and the economy and that regime will have to be overcome at its root if we are to save the future.

Relentless criticism can delegitimize the system and release people into struggle. And as struggle develops, victories that are no more than incremental on their own terms – stopping a meeting of the IMF, stirring hopes with a campaign such as Ralph Nader’s in 2000 – can have a symbolic effect far greater than their external result and can constitute points of rupture with capital. This rupture is not a set of facts added to our knowledge of the world but a change in our relation to the world. Its effects are dynamic, not incremental, and like all genuine insights it changes the balance of forces and can propagate very swiftly. Thus the release from inertia can trigger a rapid cascade of changes, so that it could be said that the forces pressing toward radical change need not be linear and incremental, but can be exponential. In this way, conscientious and radical criticism of the given, even in advance of blueprints for an alternative, can be a material force because it can seize the mind of the masses of the people. There is no greater responsibility for intellectuals.

Excerpt from Joel Kovel’s Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? Joel Kovel is the editor of Capitalism Nature Socialism, a journal of ecosocialism.

[ h/t Bill Harryman]

Ahmed Rashid: Descent into Chaos

I just finished Rashid's 2008 book Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. It was a detailed account of the tragedies and developments in Central Asia by someone who was there 'on the ground' when the misguided military interventions in that region began. It was a fascinating read.

The Amazon description:

Ahmed Rashid is the voice of reason amid the chaos of Central Asia today. His unique knowledge of this complex, war-torn region gives him a panoramic vision and grasp of nuance that no Western writer can emulate. In Descent Into Chaos, Rashid reviews the regional conditions since 9/11 and the catastrophic aftermath of America’s failed war on terror. The underlying theme is clear, devastating and deeply critical of current U.S. foreign policy. Iraq is essentially a sideshow. Pakistan and Afghanistan are where the war really began. Pakistan remains the crucial resource and key player, and Afghanistan is where the fight against Islamic insurgency is eventually going to be played out.

Ahmed Rashid احمد رشید (b. 1948) is a former Pakistani revolutionary, a journalist and best-selling author of several books about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.

Below are two interviews with Rashid (conducted in 2001 and 2008) and a link to an talk he gave at the World Affairs Council in Washington DC in 2009:

December 19, 2001:

June 10, 2008:

Ahmed Rashid: Descent into Chaos (2009)

Class Wars Rage On

From Forbes Magazine: 261 Millionaires in US Congress

Jam the Consumer Culture

Saying that money and politics go hand in hand would be stating the obvious, but a study released by the Center for Responsive Politics takes it further. In 2009, nearly half of Congress, 261 to be exact, are millionaires, 55 of them boast personal fortunes of more than $10 million, and 8 of them pass the $100 million mark. Only 1% of all Americans have the pleasure of a bank account with more than $1 million.[source]    

H/T to Adrian Ivakhiv for the article.

From The Center for Responsive Politics:

Members of Congress are enjoying their own financial stimulus. Despite a stubbornly sour national economy congressional members’ personal wealth collectively increased by more than 16 percent between 2008 and 2009, according to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics of federal financial disclosures released earlier this year. [source]

And in case you missed it:

Wall Street Firms Dole Out Record Pay to Executives

“…executives at a handful of finance firms will be paid a record $144 billion, according to a new survey by the Wall Street Journal.”

When will you rebel?