Banff Landing

I arrived two nights ago after my seven-hour drive from my home in the West Kootenays. I was worried about feeling distracted being in Banff; after all I spent two decades living and climbing here in the Canadian Rockies. But luckily my friends are busy and the ice is slow in coming in. I have been running up Tunnel Mountain and going to the rock gym at the Sally Borden Centre to get my daily training fix. Sarah Hueniken told me about the new “Playground” for mixed climbing that is just outside of Canmore, and we’ll get out there as soon as we can both clear our schedules.

The writing is going well. I came here with a lot of existing material, in need of a lot of editing. Tony Whittome is my main editor, and he has given me quite a lot of feedback on how to structure my story. As you can imagine, it is a chaotic affair sorting though the contents of one’s psyche, so there’s nothing better than an objective mind throwing in their professional perspective.

The Banff Centre is taking on a whole new slant for me. I have been coming to the mountain film festival here every year without fail since 1992, and I can say that being here on campus as an 'artist' has a completely different feel. I have a wonderful room; complete with king-sized bed and balcony, and a little writing studio in the basement of a different building. There is no view in this room, and it is dead quiet. The only distraction is the piano against the wall, where I can practice my scales and arpeggios whenever I need a break from putting thoughts down in writing.

I started having trouble sleeping about one week prior to coming here, and my insomnia is still in full swing. This gives me lots of extra time to write, especially late at night. I feel like I am running on some sort of adrenaline high, but I hope it wears off soon so I can go back to my normal sleep patterns.

Sovereignty

There’s a lot of talk about sovereignty these days, and with good reason. The fundamental question we all should be asking ourselves is: “Can a country maintain political sovereignty without economic sovereignty?”

When a country enters into free trade agreements, especially more global ones like GATT (as opposed to more regional ones like NAFTA) they are then operating under a supranational organization that supersedes their sovereign right to decide who to trade with and how that trade will be organized. Most citizens have no idea what it will mean when they enter into trade agreements with other countries and regions, including such things as manufacturing jobs and capital investment moving off shore, higher unemployment, a decrease in real wages, etc… It could not be otherwise, and the politicians and corporations who campaigned for and signed these agreements into reality were well aware of this.

For more information I recommend going to YouTube and listening to Sir James Goldsmith’s U.S. Senate speech on November 15th, 1994.

New Blog

Thank you for following my “Beyond Glitter” blog. I have started a new blog, “The Glitter Girls: Adventures for Every Woman”. This new blog will focus on wilderness adventure and its attendant topics: backcountry fashion, training tips, gear selection, etc… I will continue to post my rants about politics and the economy at this blog, so if you like the current information simply stay tuned in to this blog even as you begin to follow my new one. Better yet, subscribe to one or both in a reader or sign up for email notification of new posts.

Opiate Optimism

As you can imagine from reading my blogs I get accused a lot of being a “Doom and Gloomer”. I put this phrase in the same category as “Conspiracy Theorist”, for both of them originated from think tanks whose goal it is to turn potentially powerful movements back onto themselves by using the ignorance of the masses through brainwashing via the mass media. Whenever I see a word being used over and over in the mainstream press I know that it is only a matter of time before the anesthetized public gets a hold of it and hurls it as an accusation against one of their more conscious brethren.
What if everything I write is based on research instead of regurgitated media bits? Have I not then earned the title of ‘Realist’? I can assure you that what you cannot see right now will become common knowledge when the time is right, which usually means “too late for anybody to do anything about it”.
I don’t leave anything to faith. I have no reason to believe that there is any leader or expert out there who is working on solving those problems in the world that either directly affect me, or will soon be affecting me. You can sit around watching the football games, drinking your cans of beer, and I salute the validity of your choices. I grant you your freedom to believe that there are people out there with your best interests in mind, people who will fix all of humanity’s current problems in good time. But I’m laying bets on myself, which is why I have chosen to step out of the way and to live on land that provides me with clean air, pure water, and an abundance of organic food.

Central Banking Warfare Model

Some call it Consumer Capitalism, others the Military Industrial Complex, but no matter how you slice it up it is a very powerful and sophisticated machine that fulfills its agenda through the use of marauding pools of capital that it sends throughout the world to make sure events happen along the lines of its own long-term agenda. It has been going on for decades, centuries even, although the level of sophistication we are seeing in the world today is at an all-time high. It is the very reason that humanity becomes more and more enslaved to a cabal of pirates with each passing moment.

If you control the issuance of currency, along with the ability to make the rules about how it is governed once it is in circulation, it would not take long before you owned everything in the world. That is why a famous bankster uttered the truism: "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws"

The game is hardly subtle, yet very few people can connect the dots to make a picture complete enough for them to see what is really going on. I find that it is instructive to ask oneself some very obvious questions:

If most every country in the world is in debt, as well as each country’s citizenry, then who are we all indebted to?
If we renege on these debts, either personally or nationally or globally, what is it that we must forfeit as collateral?
How can it be that one generation ago a single bread winner with a grade 8 education could easily support a wife and four children in a nice suburban neighborhood, while today you need both parents to be working professionals just to stay afloat with skyrocketing expenses?
When the stock market goes down, where did all of the wealth that was previously there go?

It’s game on, and time to ask yourself what the end game is. If you are not aware of how the world’s wealth is managed and manipulated, chances are you are financing the very system that is determined to make you an indentured servant and, I would argue, already has.

The Passivity of Hope

Hope breeds passivity beyond comprehension as the multitudes sit idly by awaiting some higher power to take care of things for them. We have been asleep at the wheel for far too long, and now that it is time for action the world is placing all of its eggs in a basket called hope. Even Obama counseled his countrymen that there would have to be sacrifices made, and hard work to be done, by all. But a country so lulled by its own magnificence still believes in the old paradigm that the world taxation system is still in full swing and will continue to bring in the riches of the globe. We refuse to see the current tide of change at our own peril, for instead of taking the bull by the horns and creating the world that we desire, we are standing down while the very people who created this mess tell us that they can get us out of it. I say it is time to place your hope for change in yourself, not some outside icon. If there was ever a time when the powers that be are not going to come to your rescue, it is now. The greatest opportunity to create something new, something that works for more than the military-industrial elite and its entourage of a few complicit first-world countries, is upon us. This is our chance to align our consciousness along the lines of higher principles, to live up to our potential as human beings, not brainwashed remote-controlled automatons. It is time to wake up to the reality that there is going to be no more free ride, not for America, and not for the world. We are all going to have to work hard if we want to avoid allowing ourselves to descend into the depths of our own worst nightmare for humanity at large. Those who do not know are responsible for their ignorance; those who do are responsible for idly standing by.

Death of America

What you are now witnessing is something most people of this epoch thought impossible: America is dying a slow and protracted death. It could have happened faster, but the genies of market management have all but mastered the art of manipulating economic pumps and dumps from behind the scenes to an ever unsuspecting public. The media has successfully boondoggled people into thinking that economics is far too complex a topic for their understanding, so they are given sports scores and cheap beer to assuage their inferior intellects instead of the facts that could enlighten them to the reality of economic warfare. In retrospect, people will not be able to believe how they missed all of this careful orchestration, how they sat idly by waiting for their experts and leaders to swoop in and save them from the fruits of their own over –indulgence. Lucky for the universe the laws of cause and effect are still in full swing and no amount of mass denial will change this fact. You are witnessing an historic event, the death of an empire, but you will miss it if you remain asleep at the wheel.

Financial Coup d'Etat

We are currently witnessing a highly-engineered restructuring of the world’s capital system right before our very eyes. The world will never be the same once the process has been completed. But because we don’t understand what is happening we have trouble connecting the dots of this ingenious form of economic warfare. In the United States there is a merger going on between the highest levels of the banking industry and the government. What we will end up with could arguably be a more communist system than China currently has. There is nothing free market about government intervention, in fact it is the opposite and could also be called socialism. Anywhere in the world that we are seeing the banks being bailed out by government, we are witnessing this phenomenon.
This scenario has been building for decades under the banner of globalization. And because the citizenry has no understanding of even the most basic economic principles it has gone on largely uncontested and I would dare say has even been embraced.

Free Market Rhetoric

You hear a lot of talk about the free market these days, but I can’t find a vestige of it left when I look at the big players on the scene today, and the recent bailout of the U.S. banks is the best example there is. What they call “free market” is synonymous with privatizing the profits while socializing the losses of the major banks and corporations. In a truly free market these players would sink or swim according to their bottom lines, not some taxpayer bailout. If these companies cannot make it in the real world they should fail, and we should be glad of it. We want the world to be populated with healthy companies and banks, not virally infected ones. I do not consider this deal to be a bailout at all, it is a parting gift from George Bush to the people who helped him to get and maintain power. The looting of the treasury and the attacks on the trade centers will go down in history as the greatest acts of piracy in the history of the world.

Crime of the Century - Reprise

Despite the fact that the so-called experts and high-ranking politicians are acting surprised by the recent events regarding the economy, there really is no mystery as to how we arrived at this station. There are investigative journalists who have been telling us what is going on for decades. The real question is: why did they go unheeded? We all knew the football scores, we all knew the latest celebrity faux pas’, but we did not know one thing about the economy. In fact, before the patsy called the sub-prime mortgage meltdown arrived on the scene, you couldn’t find anybody who was even remotely interested in the topic. Now you can’t escape the opinions of every pundit and armchair economist in the world.
Below is a list of brilliantly researched books that I highly recommend if you are at all interested in following the marriage of politics and economics in the past century.

Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
Rogue Economics by Loretta Napoletani
The Rise of the Fourth Reich by Jim Marrs
And the Truth Shall Set You Free by David Icke

Watch the movie Zeitgeist



...and Zeitgeist Addendum

Black Elk

Centuries ago a Native Indian leader told his people of his vision: that a threat so huge was going to come from the outside and that the only way they were going to keep from being overtaken was to unite against it. His people laughed, for they had enjoyed dominion over the land for a very long time. What could possibly come now, and where would it come from?
The Europeans did come not long after this vision, but the Natives had paid no heed to the warning and had not united. Everywhere there were warring tribes. They were a divided group, and as such were the more easily conquered. For sure there were people who saw this threat and worked together to keep it at bay, but there were also people who saw opportunity in aligning themselves with these newcomers, and this alliance did not bode well for the Native American population. The rest, as they say, is history.
I believe that we are now perched on the promontory of a similar situation, one in which we are only going to succeed in overcoming if we become one united force in every sense of the term. I alone am not going to single-handedly change the path humanity is currently on, nor are you, but that shouldn’t stop us from acting in alignment with our integrity for one moment. The human race stands at a precipice where it must put forth a Herculean effort to get itself out of a mess that it has become deeply entrenched in. It is also at a time of incredible opportunity, for how better to learn a lesson than out of the sheer necessity to survive. The outcome of our future is not guaranteed, and there is much work to be done on each individual’s part. But it is far from impossible for us to learn the lesson from the Native American elder whose vision need not go unheeded.

Questions to ponder:

Are you open to hearing what you need to hear, as opposed to what you want to hear?
What are you doing to strengthen your community, as opposed to separating yourself from it?
If the global, or even national economies, totally collapse, which they very well could, what contribution can you make to your community for remuneration? If you don’t have any skills to contribute, when will you begin work on learning or acquiring these?

Crime of the Century

There is a lot of finger pointing going on right now over the state of the economy. Governments blame the financial industry, banks blame the defaulted citizenry, and the citizens blame both. But the actual truth is that we all participated in this mess that we are now finding ourselves in. While it is true that investment banks never could have gone this far astray without government deregulation, it is also true that Wall Street could never have propagated these highly leveraged instruments without the money coming in from Main Street. That’s you, and that’s me.

When you deposit your money with one of the big banks, you are financing everything that they then do with that money. When you buy a stock on Wall Street, you are personally financing that company. If you have a pension or a mutual fund, even if you do not know what it is invested in, you are financing all of those companies with your energy.

The bottom line is that we, the folks on Main Street have been financing Wall Street, its brokers and investment banks, all along. And we need to take responsibility for that. We also need to help our leaders make the changes that they need to make if we expect them to withdraw power from Wall Street. If we are to make a difference in these times and do our part, we must begin to align our actions with our beliefs, and we must reengineer how the money works so that the criminal enterprises don’t get the vote of the people with their hard-earned dollars.

Things you can do:

-Take your money out of the big banks and put it into a credit union or a small local bank.
-Invest in your own community.
-Do not buy stock in a company whose agenda is not in alignment with your beliefs.

Voting Rights

Now that it has become obvious that our corporations are running our world, including our elected politicians, the only sane way to vote is with your dollar. Every choice you make matters to those companies, who spend millions upon millions to manipulate you into buying their products. If you do your research you will find out which companies are operating in accordance with your ethics, and there probably aren’t many. Chief among your most important purchases is your food. Processed food is at best alien and at worst poison to the human body. If there’s something in the ingredients list that you cannot pronounce or understand, then you probably don’t want to ingest it into your body. If you are tired of box stores crowding out the view, don’t shop there no matter how much you think you are saving. If you are opposed to the war in Iraq, lower your fuel consumption so that we don’t have to invade oil-producing countries under the guise of democracy and freedom. You do not live in a democracy, you live in a corporatocracy (a corporate run state) where any elected politician you put into power is merely a front man of these same corporations. It is time we woke up and called a spade a spade.
Know where every one of your investment dollars is, because you are financing whatever companies you find in your portfolio. Support your local economy, build local community, and take back your power from these institutions that care nothing about you or your family. Women make the bulk of domestic purchases for our homes. We shop for most of the clothing, food, and household items. We hold the power in our wallets to let these companies know that we are not interested in supporting them, or in supporting what they are doing to the quality of our earth, air, water, government, and economy. Say NO to what you have been giving lip service to for decades. Spend wisely; put thought into every outgoing cent from your purse. Take back your power as a human being. Make your stand: live your beliefs. It is time for you to become the role model you rarely see in the world. Become that empowered woman you have always suspected yourself to be. Throw off that cloak of decency and buck the status quo. You have seen what the status quo brings to your earth and to your loved ones. It is nothing short of insanity to keep on financing it with your money, and more importantly, your energy.
Below is a list of suggestions on where to begin. How far you then take it is up to you.

Buy organically grown food that is produced in harmony with the earth
Buy unbleached post-consumer recycled toilet paper
Shop at locally owned and operated stores whenever feasible
Use earth- friendly cleaning products for your home and body
Conserve resources
Minimize garbage
Educate yourself and others

But most of all, have fun knowing that every choice you make, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, is moving your world back into alignment with who you truly are.

The Federal Reserve

While Canada might not be going down in the sub-prime fiasco that plagues our southerly neighbour, we do share one thing in common that is as detrimental to us as it is to them: A Central Bank. Our forebears sought to warn us of the dangers of these institutions, but in modern times we have forgotten to learn from history.
It is important to have a look the Federal Reserve as a model that can instruct us in the concept of central banks in general. There is nothing Federal about this institution, it is 100% privately owned and the owners’ names are kept secret. And it has no real reserves, unless you call a printing press or the click of a mouse, with the capability to make money out of nothing, reserves.

Most people think that these matters have nothing to do with their everyday lives, when in reality there is no other institution that affects them more directly in their everyday lives. The Federal Reserve, in conjunction with Wall Street (or what I like to call the speculative market), act as a siphon in the pockets of the productive. Your wealth is vacuumed up by these institutions, and it is nothing less than the fleecing of the productive by the unproductive.

"The American people are crazy to think that a privately owned institution like the Federal Reserve will ever function in the public interest. The Fed operates behind an iron-curtain of secrecy to protect the interests of its primary constituents; the parasite class... This explains what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said, Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." Mike Whitney

Forget the war in Iraq, study the only thing that matters to corporate heads and politicians: money. If you know how it works, you will understand every political intrigue in the history of the world.

Read The Creature from Jekyll Island by G.Edward Griffin

Read Obama's Speech on Wall Street on Monday

Watch The Dow Jones Illusion

Get a copy of In Debt We Trust by director Danny Schechter

Spellcasters

Beware of spellcasters infiltrating your consciousness and causing you to long for things
that just may not be in your best interest. Currently the largest spell on the planet is
called "The Capitalist Consumer Economy", and you have been programmed into it from birth. It is a valid reality, but so are all others, and you will never know who you are and what you
truly desire until you take a look at your deepest social programming and decide for
yourself.

"If you are trying to find a needle in a haystack, you will fail. If you become the needle,
the haystack disappears."

Happy Trails,

Margo

How Money Works

Many women think that they don't understand money and finances, when in fact they have never been encouraged to do so. Understanding the ecomony is easier than most people think, but it is not easy if you intend to learn about it from mainstream media. Here, there is a
disconnect between the dots, unspoken truths that only someone educated in economic-speak
could read from between the lines.
The good news is that there are some very good books out there that get to the bottom of how
the money works, while reading like mystery thrillers that you cannot put down. I know that
after decades of believing that economists are almost as boring as accountants you are
having your doubts. But as someone educated in economics as well as an avid Agatha Christie
reader, I can assure you that there is no greater topic that deserves your attention in a
world that has elevated fiat currency to the status of God.

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G.Edward Griffin
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
Visit www.solari.com

Happy Reading!

Margo