Yearly Archives: 2013

That Was Not Cute

Dear Friend and Reader:

Wednesday night, the Tea Baggers and Dominionist Christian factions of Congress surrendered the U.S. government back to the larger political system. When the Senate passed its bill reopening the government, and when Obama made his announcement that the struggle was over (for now), the Moon was in the last degree of Pisces, that is, the last degree of the zodiac.

Cartoon by Jen Sorensen.

Some would say that’s a void of course Moon (making no new aspects in the current sign, therefore representing a foul ball). Yet the Moon will always have some influence in Pisces, and I grant an exception to the void Moon for the truly beautiful and strange last degrees of that sign.

When the House took action a bit later, the Moon was more appropriately in Aries, headed for a conjunction to Uranus and a square to Pluto — the members of that legislative body have obviously not had their fill. As far as they’re concerned, the Anti-Sixties are just getting cooking. Activism is fun. Revolution is in the air.

At least from what I can see on the surface, Pres. Obama handled this crisis masterfully. He refused to negotiate with terrorists, and he knew to back off from making any public comments the past four or five days to let the political pressure on the perpetrators intensify. The rest of the Democrats held their ranks. It was gratifying to see them show some spine and even a little muscle. Admittedly they were playing a defensive game — this was not about getting something done. That is still missing, in a moment when there’s plenty that needs doing.

Astrology played a role, or at least illustrated how the conflict resolved. We saw the mental orientation of Mars, newly in Virgo, have its influence. In Leo, Mars is passionate and wants to be visible — and it can also be blustery, aggressive and full of bravado. (If you have natal Mars in Leo, the unique aspects in your chart will help describe why you might be soft-spoken and introspective and express it in more constructive ways.)

In Virgo, Mars wants precision, focus and attention to detail. The inclination is to fix things rather than to damage them.

We saw the deadlock-breaking quality of the Full Moon do its thing, augmented by an eclipse. Though the shutdown of the government and pushing the country to the brink of defaulting on its debts shook up everyone paying attention, and rattled global leaders from Japan to China to the IMF, things could have been a lot worse had this persisted just another 48 hours. It’s better to have this kind of mess resolved before an eclipse rather than after one.

I tend to take this kind of stuff personally. I’ve been feeling edgy the whole two weeks this has persisted. I know the potential consequences and I know the astrology. But more than that, I understand the psychology and the agendas moving beneath the surface.

Just when I thought the whole thing could not get any more appalling, I turned on the television Thursday morning to see some Republican senator gasbag on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program trying to justify the shutdown based on how they allegedly want to protect the American people from the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Others were getting TV airtime saying we have to get the debt and deficit under control — knowing full well that the sequestration cuts are doing precisely that, and in an extreme form. And knowing full well that has nothing to do with it.

If you translate this into a domestic violence situation, it’s like someone telling the cops they beat up their spouse to prevent them from going to community college.

There are Republicans from the fringy side of the tent who are claiming victory after this whole instigated crisis, and who are no doubt coming home to their district as heroes who shut down the works of the mean, nasty federal government that pays their airfare and for their posh taxpayer-supported cars and health insurance.

Other members of the Party of No have promised that the fight is not over; they will be back in January, when these same vulnerabilities can be exploited again. Based on Wednesday night’s actions, the continuing resolution funding the government lasts until Jan. 15 and the country’s borrowing power lasts until mid-February. That is not long, but the astrology will be a little less perilous — at least temporarily. (There is a serious crunch point for the U.S. government in April, which has often been a distressing month in American history.)

Many of these emotionally and intellectually vapid people are promising more of this insanity, despite approval of the Republicans dipping below 24% and approval of the so-called Tea Party down to 21% — in politics, that’s when you know you’re in the toilet. That is true martyrdom, and martyrs make me nervous.

While this whole thing has our attention, I want to add a few thoughts that I have not seen offered anywhere else in the media.

The people who did this to us are people we’ve been dealing with for a while. The unholy marriage of religion and politics that really got cooking in the early 1980s, when Reagan was first president and Karl Rove was Boy Wonder making his way to the top of the game, is a dangerous thing.

This is part of the same political movement, with many of the same people, who want to turn women’s bodies into a political battlefield, and who want to control who has sex with whom, and when, and under what circumstances. They are the same people who want to ban abortion, birth control and sex education — all three.

This is the same movement that believes government should be by the corporations, of the corporations and for the corporations. They are the same people who believe that taxes are for the little people. There’s a lot of corporate money behind this movement, and thanks to the Citizens’ United decision, there is no limit to what can be spent to brainwash the population.

Meanwhile, it’s as if global warming is not happening, fracking doesn’t harm the earth or groundwater and toxic sludge is good for you. Nobody needs proper medical access; just go to the emergency room and you’ll be fine. Our society has problems, and right when we need leadership we are getting nonstop antics. The behavior we are seeing from our elected leaders is decidedly alcoholic.

The agenda goes a lot deeper than denial and petty games, however. What we witnessed the past 16 days looked on the surface like a shutdown of the government over an issue, but I think it was something more sinister: a coup attempt. It was an attempt to destabilize the government and the economy, create chaos and take power.

Frightening cover of the current edition of The New Yorker. Here is a link to the related article.

We have seen a number of these in the past 50 years, starting with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Since the late 1990s they have become more frequent — the fraudulent impeachment of Bill Clinton; the stolen election of 2000; the absurdly false-flag Sept. 11 scenario and the rise of the national security state; the disgusting wars that have infected the Middle East like a festering case of impetigo; the crash of the economy in 2008; and, skipping over a few details, this somewhat successful attempt to seize the government and, more significantly, its finances.

The United States is made of tough stuff. From my perspective, most of us who live here are political centrists, who want to be left alone. There’s a good bit of live and let live to the American way of life. I think that even to many conservatives, the kind of behavior we’ve just seen has a disgusting reek to it.

Our Constitution is flawed but strong enough to have withstood many assaults. But there is only so hard and so long you can rip at something, or beat on it, or abuse it, before its integrity starts to give way. There is only so hard you can beat on people and abuse their trust and lie to them before they get fatigued and lose their desire to fight and to participate. If the economy fails and many people have little to eat, they may or may not respond politically — it’s usually easier to cave in to whatever political forces promise to rescue them.

The attack we have just experienced is part of a much larger, longer-term political agenda than it seems to be on the surface. It is more successful than it seems on the surface. It is funded not just by money but also by mania, psychosis and I believe a kind of magic: the mustering up of dark forces, including superstition, fear, conflict and deception.

The sexual agenda perpetuated by this crew is not just a side dish but rather is a well-documented form of divide and conquer, infiltrating the most private spaces of relationship, dividing people against one another, dividing them against their bodies, tapping into the painful sexual abuse so many have suffered, harvesting human emotion and delivering it right back to the population as something dangerous and toxic but in an unrecognizable form.

It’s time we get wise to the agenda. Then it will be a lot more obvious what to do — in terms of personal work and collective action.

Lovingly,

Note to Readers: News items below are written and edited by a team consisting of Anne Craig, Eric Francis, Amanda Painter, Susan Scheck and Carol van Strum, with research assistance by the Planet Waves staff. Special thanks to the Fact Checkers List, which goes over each edition on Thursday night — and to our main astrology fact-checker Alex Miller, and Amanda, who goes over all their suggestions. Our editions are also proofread and fact-checked by Jessica Keet.

Eve of an Eclipse – the Benefit of the Doubt
The Aries Full Moon and lunar eclipse takes place Friday at 7:38 pm EDT. And then on Monday, Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio, the sign of secrets, shared resources and the occasional emotional drama.

Eclipses arrive with an ominous feeling, and there is certainly that kind of atmosphere surrounding this event. They describe imminent change; they describe the shift of some context. But there’s also a question: do you take [whatever] drama seriously?

Artemis, goddess of the Moon, manifested on the back of the BSP Theater in Kingston two weeks ago. Note, Len Wallick says this is also an image of Haumea, and I heard a rumor that one of the neighborhood teenagers has said it also depicts another entity besides Artemis. Still tracking that one down. Photo by Eric.

That could be said of any situation that’s under the influence of this eclipse, which amounts to everything happening right now, in whatever realm, whether public or private. I suggest you ask yourself where it’s logical to place the benefit of the doubt: do you assume that everything is going to be fine, or factor in that there is some risk that needs to be addressed?

One thing I’ve noticed is that as time goes on, many people seem more willing to ignore risks, and we are seeing many results of that. Worst-case scenarios deserve mention.

When the Sun is near an eclipse, that’s a little like a karmic toll plaza. You have to settle the karma to move on, or else multiply it. It’s time, therefore, to focus on getting things in order, resolving conflicts and making sure you have a balanced view of your life.

This eclipse event may be placing some stress on relationships. The question is, to what extent does expressing your instability destabilize your emotional and sexual partnerships? How far can you go being yourself before you start to feel unstable with another person? How far can they go being themselves before you start to feel insecure?

There is some information coming from the Mercury retrograde department. I mean that literally — the issue beneath the surface, that is, the deeper material, may involve secrets being kept. If you find yourself in a relationship scenario where the independence issue seems to be a factor, go deeper and account for what has not been said.

You can start with a list of everything that you have not revealed to the person or people you’re intimate with; you can make a second list of everything you think you have not been told. Those lists will tell you where you stand with whoever is involved. Ideally, in any truly intimate situation, you would have no withholds and no suspicions — a condition that most people would probably say is unthinkable.

Chart for Friday’s eclipse of the Moon. To see the corresponding solar eclipse and minor planet lists for both events, please visit this link.

One other point of astrology to cover: this week, Mars ingressed Virgo. This placement is calling for precision, for focus on the details and for a measure of impeccability. It’ll affect everyone’s chart differently — notice where your physical energy is directed, how you relate to anger and which way your obsessions tend to lean.

Notice how you relate to factors in your environment that call for attention and repair. Notice where you direct your best efforts.

While in Virgo, Mars will oppose two planets — first Neptune (exact Sunday) and then Chiron (exact Halloween). For now, let’s consider the Mars-Neptune opposition and what I will call the doubt factor.

You may doubt that it’s really worth reaching for integrity; you may doubt what you know; you may feel like your efforts are not worth much and it’s better to have a good time and not worry so much.

You may be right. But how would you know?
You may get good information, and wonder if it’s true. You may get useless information that you trust.

Under the current astrology all of this needs to be handled carefully. In the face of missing information, one must either make an assumption or wait for additional data. All of this needs to be handled consciously over the next five or six days. Who gets the benefit of your assumptions? Who gets the benefit of the doubt?

What information are you waiting for? Pay attention — it’s on its way. With additional research by Amanda Painter and Alison Beth Levy.

This Week’s GMO Lawsuit Roundup

Monsanto hired on Wednesday the lobbying firm of former senator Blanch Lincoln, who used to head up the Senate Commission on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. She’ll have plenty to do. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit this week against the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) for allegedly unscrupulous actions it took to defeat Initiative 522, which would require labeling of genetically modified foods.

A similar suit filed by grassroots group Moms for Labeling was dismissed on a technicality earlier this month, but the attorney general has picked up the ball, alleging that the GMA has illegally concealed the identity of big-money donors after soliciting funds that went straight into a Defense of Brands Strategic Account, which has been used to fund “No on I-522.”

Under Washington law, the 300-member trade association should have formed a separate political committee, registered with the state’s Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), and filed reports indicating who contributed, how much they contributed and how the money was spent to oppose I-522.

None of that was done, and after a citizen action letter was received by the AG’s office in August, an investigation indicated that more than $7 million collected from anonymous donors went to opposition groups.

In his complaint, Ferguson is seeking a restraining order that would immediately compel GMA to register with the state’s PDC and disclose donors’ identities, as well as attorneys’ fees and other injunctive relief as necessary. “Truly fair elections demand all sides follow the rules by disclosing who their donors are and how much they are spending to advocate their views,” Ferguson said in a press release, noting that public disclosure laws had been in place since 1972.

Washington’s battle over I-522 has been heated for months. Monsanto donated $262,156 to the “No” campaign last May, prompting a reporter at The Spokesman-Review to note that most of the anti-522 donations were flooding in from out of state. The campaign against the initiative was launched by the Washington Farm Bureau.

A similar ballot initiative was defeated in California last year after Monsanto donated $8 million to its opponents. Investor group As You Sow has filed a shareowner resolution against Monsanto and several other food giants, asking that they refrain from such activities.

Sixteen lawsuits originating in Oregon over the unwelcome presence of genetically modified wheat on a farmer’s land have been consolidated by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation into the Kansas City, Kansas court of U.S. District Judge Kathryn Vratil. In making the determination, the panel cited the geographic convenience of locating the cases near Monsanto’s St. Louis headquarters, where “the majority of the common evidence is likely to be.”

Meanwhile, Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana), a farmer, managed to get the Monsanto Protection Act defunded in the funding resolution that reopened the government last Wednesday night.

Don’t Miss the GMO Mini-Summit!

A global GMO Mini-Summit being held Oct. 25-27 will bring together leading scientists and food activists for an in-depth examination of the planet’s Monsanto problem.

Hosted by John and Ocean Robbins, co-founders of the Food Revolution Network, and Jeffery Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology, the event offers three days of panel discussion on the ecological, socio-economic and health-related consequences of GMOs, as well as a look at the current politics surrounding Monsanto from the front lines.

Ten experts, including Canadian biotechnologist Thierry Vrain, environmental activist Vandana Shiva, and AllergyKids founder Robyn O’Brien, will give half-hour interviews on topics ranging from how to eat safely to global food security and in-depth GMO science.

Registrants for the weekend conference will also have access, by Internet or phone, to ten more expert presentations over the next five weeks. Basic registration is free; an optional $97 upgrade includes transcripts and digital downloads. For more information and registration, visit the summit’s webpage,

Worldwide Coal Use to Surpass Oil by End of Decade
Cheaper now, immensely costly later: coal consumption is predicted to surpass oil by 2020, driven by rising demand in China and India, despite efforts around the world to curb carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Chinese coal power plant. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Coal is less expensive than oil, and according to a presentation by energy consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie at Monday’s World Energy Conference in Washington, D.C., that’s the power source those countries will choose to fuel their economies. Coal demand in the U.S., Europe and the rest of Asia will remain steady, it said.

China is the world’s top consumer of coal, and it will drive two-thirds of the growth in global coal use, predicted to reach 4,500 million tons of oil equivalent, overtaking oil at 4,400 million tons, according to the firm. China has no alternative to coal, with its domestic gas output limited and liquefied natural gas imports more costly than coal, said William Durbin, president of global markets at Wood Mackenzie.

Coal is abundant — encouraging lower prices — and will become even more so as lower-grade coal from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa begins to be traded during the remainder of this decade, according to Alstrom, a power infrastructure provider.

Steubenville Redux: Maryville, Missouri’s, Football-Player Rapists

Nodaway County, Missouri, prosecutor Robert Rice added his voice Wednesday to the chorus of officials suddenly calling for a special prosecutor to reexamine a case in which two high-school athletes had charges dismissed for raping two young teenage girls after getting them drunk — all videotaped by a third boy. It’s a sadly familiar mix of teen athletes, alcohol, corrupt officials and victim-blaming.

In January of 2012, Matthew Barnett — then 17 and a popular football player and grandson of a retired state representative — and three other student athletes invited 14-year-old Daisy Coleman and 13-year-old Paige Parkhurst to a party.

Daisy Coleman, left, and Matthew Barnett.

Barnett and the boys plied Coleman with hard liquor; Barnett had drunken, nonconsensual sex with Coleman; a 15-year-old admittedly raped Parkhurst; and Coleman was dumped outside her house half-clothed and semi-conscious in freezing temperatures.

Two months after arresting the boys in what looked like a solid case, all charges were dropped.
Rice said at the time that it was a regrettable incident among “incorrigible teens” and could not be prosecuted due to lack of evidence, despite a rape kit showing tears to Coleman’s vagina and self-incriminating statements from both boys.

Facing considerable harassment in Maryville, the Coleman family relocated to their former home in Albany. In April of 2013, the house they still owned in Maryville was burned to the ground.

After the Kansas City Star reported on the case this week, international shaming and hacktivist collective Anonymous seems to have convinced officials to reopen the matter. Officials now calling for the case to be reopened include Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder and House Speaker Tim Jones.

Plainly, there’s an effort underway to avoid Maryville’s becoming the next Steubenville, Ohio, where the focused efforts of Anonymous — although criticized by some as harsh and scattershot — are still resulting in fresh charges being brought. Anonymous plans a “Twitter storm” and an Oct. 22 rally in Maryville.

Friends Without Benefits: Teens and Social Media

Nancy Jo Sales, writing for Vanity Fair, spoke to teenaged girls and boys across the country about their use of social media and how it shapes what they expect from their peers (and from themselves) when handling relationships, communication, peer pressure, sexual desires, boundaries — even just meeting face to face.

Connected or alienated? The new social life or relationally stunting? Image: video still, KTRK-Houston.

The kids Sales talks to speak of peers being “obsessed with the feeling they have fame,” and of 13-year-olds posting “inappropriate” selfies, then thanking the boys who call them sexy. Asked how they transition from online interaction to real-world contact, a group of girls blinks and says, “Facebook chat.”

Kids from 8 to 18 spend more than 11 hours per day plugged into a smart phone, computer or TV.

Ninety-three percent of boys and 62 percent of girls have seen Internet porn before they turn 18, according to a 2008 study in CyberPsychology & Behavior. And although the CDC reports that teen sex is not on the rise, the landscape around it is changing.

Porn’s influence and that of the impersonal world of digital contact is evident in the kinds of sexual requests and demands being made, how kids react and how deep the social and psychological repercussions can be. What counts for entire ‘relationships’ are begun, ended and used as weapons via social media and texting.

High-profile news stories are becoming increasingly common about teens attempting or committing suicide after enduring merciless bullying, slut-shaming and slander by their peers. Steubenville and Maryville are extremes, yet in a way, just the tip of the iceberg. Kids used to get a respite from abusive peers when they left school; with social media, there is nowhere to hide.

“Social media is destroying our lives,” said one girl to Sales. “So why don’t you go off it?” Sales asked. “Because then we would have no life,” replied her friend.

Google Switches Teams, Joins ALEC

Google is now a member of ALEC, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, according to NationofChange.org. Google joins fellow Internet companies Facebook and Yelp in supporting ALEC.

ALEC is a corporate-funded organization that teams with like-minded state lawmakers to roll back labor rights, environmental protections, civil rights, and public health measures.

Google built its image as a pioneering anti-capitalist company, yet its membership in ALEC belies that image, and ‘Netizens are not pleased. A recent email alert from RootsInAction.org garnered some telling responses:

“Better check your definition of EVIL — look it up on Google,” and “Please don’t fund tyranny. You were supposed to be one of the good guys.”

Trans-Pacific Treaty Proposes Restrictions on Internet Usage

If the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is ratified — possibly as early as the end of this month — a free and open Internet may be one of its first casualties.

“We know from leaked drafts [of proposed changes] that these draconian measures could criminalize your everyday use of the Internet, force service providers to collect and hand over your private data, and give old industry conglomerates more power to fine you for Internet use,” according to an Alternet.org article.

President Obama is trying to fast-track the TPP through Congress, meaning that members would be forced to vote on the agreement without the possibility of sharing, discussing or amending its contents. Some representatives have objected, such as Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who has described the Obama administration’s secrecy about the TPP as “an assault on democratic government.”

Detail of the container painting “Muses” by Riuske Fukahori, in the ICN Gallery in London last year.

Goldfish Salvation

Never underestimate Mother Nature when you need some help in the creative inspiration department. While artist Riusuke Fukahori was struggling with his creative vision, he let his pet goldfish be his muse. Since then, he has developed this passion into incredibly lifelike three-dimensional paintings by layering acrylic paints onto clear resin, until the fish appear suspended in time and space. You can view a brief, wordless video here showing Fukahori making magic.

U.S.A. on the Brink — and Mercury, and the Eclipse, and Mars

Every edition of Planet Waves FM I forget to mention one thing — and unlike text, I cannot do a quick edit before sending it out. This week that thing is the role of religion in the current government crisis. I mention that a bunch of Fundy Xtians — Dominionists, as they are properly known — are behind this. What I don’t make is the connection to their “let’s take a federal default out for a spin” mentality.

Scene from Kris Perry’s “Machines,” installed in the main theater at Backstage Studio Productions as part of the O+Festival this past weekend. Photo by Eric.

They know it would be catastrophic; and that is what they live for. Things going well is not enough. Getting their way is not enough — their way is The End. This is why the founders of the United States divided church and state, not just in the Bill of Rights but in the Constitution itself.

In this week’s edition I cover the federal mess and the associated astrology: Mars ingressing Virgo; Friday’s eclipse of the Moon in Aries; Mercury stationing retrograde in Scorpio; and an eclipse of the Sun in Scorpio. Amanda has been tracking all of this copiously and competently in Daily Astrology; I provide some extra commentary and context here.

Our musical guest is Kris Perry and his MACHINES project. I describe my experience of the music-sculpture installation, meeting Kris and why I think the whole thing is so impressive. Kris is a genuinely interesting guy, an artist down to his cells, and sufficiently “not a musician” to have invented many instruments and what amounts to a new genre of music. If you go to the project’s homepage, you will see Kris explain what he does.

If you’re curious about the O+ Festival and want to hear some cool interviews, Rob Galgano spent the weekend cruising around the event with his digital recorder getting spontaneous impressions. Here’s a playlist, which he says is growing as he processes the audio and posts it to Soundcloud.

We are happy to offer once again one of our most popular products: the Planet Waves All-Access Pass for 2014. The All-Access Pass is for members who want access to everything we offer in a calendar year. In recent years our product line has grown considerably, and the response from our All-Access subscribers has been overwhelmingly positive. You can read about everything that’s included with an All-Access pass here. For those who can’t get enough Planet Waves astrology, it’s an unbeatable value. Plus, if you order now, we’ll include the rest of the readings that come out in 2013, and you’ll save $100.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

We published the extended monthly horoscopes for October on Friday, Sept. 27. Inner Space for October was published Friday, Sept. 20. Moonshine for the Libra New Moon published on Tuesday, Oct. 1. We published Moonshine horoscopes for the Aries Full Moon Tuesday, Oct. 15. Please note, we normally publish the extended monthly horoscopes on the first Friday after the Sun has entered a new sign; Inner Space usually publishes the following Tuesday but for now it’s substituting for one Friday horoscope a month.

Weekly horoscope for Friday, Oct. 18, 2013 #971 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Friday’s eclipse in your birth sign reveals that you’re trying to shake off an old emotional influence of some kind, knowing that it’s not serving you. You can let it go, and you seem determined to do just that with every cell in your body. The challenge, though, is the sensation of instability that comes with not being boxed in by this feeling or expectation. This is one of the ways that negative attachments and emotional habits can keep you or anyone trapped — by that little thing they seem to offer. I suggest that you address that directly, and do what you can to stabilize on a new level of understanding. You have that available, as your ruling planet Mars has changed signs to Virgo. This will allow you to ground in your work, in a firm sense of purpose and in a framework of ideas far more stable and useful than the dramas that were keeping you busy.

Wondering about how astrology is influencing your life now? Eric has prepared a written and recorded reading for you that tells the story. You can get all 12 signs of LISTEN, your 2013 reading, for the special reduced price of only $29.95. LISTEN gives you a detailed reading, available immediately, covering work, relationships, personal growth and creativity.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You are being called to address certain details of your erotic or romantic life in a new way, with greater focus and determination. But do you have all the information you need to be working with? Various factors suggest that many details will be emerging over the next few days. You don’t need to go digging, though you do need to pay attention for subtle changes in the story, shifts in where the people involved are coming from, and secrets that have yet to be revealed, including what you may be withholding from others. You are in a situation where honesty is the best policy for all concerned, though you only have control over yourself. You have influence over others, though, and one way you can exert that influence is not to settle for partial information. This is a moment of reckoning, when it’s time to get to the roots of the situation. Remember, there is no such thing as a half-truth.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Have you noticed the direct connection between your emotional well-being and your physical stamina? There are emotional factors that may be putting a drain on your overall health; they look like stuck patterns that are hangovers from unresolved transactions with others. Said another way, be on the lookout for situations where promises may have been made but not kept, or where information that should have been forthcoming was withheld. You can address all of that in fairly short order, if you focus on it now. With Mars crossing the sensitive home and security angle of your solar chart, changes in your living situation are in motion, and if that is true, you want to be working with full information from anyone concerned. If you find yourself getting irritable or angry, or feeling worn down, stop and ask a few questions. Knowledge is power, and there’s no substitute for it.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Be conscious how you use your power, which includes your visibility. With an eclipse of the Moon in your 10th house, you may be feeling invisible or like you lack influence — though if so, you’ve got the equation backwards. You have extra influence now, though I suggest you use it in subtle ways. While you may have to do some overt taking charge, your solar chart suggests that in many situations, the best course of action will be to work from behind the scenes. The factor to work with is trust rather than authority; that’s because in truth there is no more authentic authority than trust. Focus your efforts on those whose intelligence you respect and can depend on. They are most likely to be the people with whom you will feel like you’re on level turf. You’re in a position of authority and responsibility, though I suggest you work from the ground up rather than from the top down.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — The way is open for a dialog in some of the most sensitive situations in your life. Yet the operative word is sensitive. The other operative word is open. The situation calls for little else; if you can maintain that, others are likely to take the initiative and say what they need to say to you. Even if others don’t say anything, if you listen and are receptive you will learn enough, and your awareness will have a positive influence on the situation. Meanwhile you seem to be involved in a delicate balancing act of your own — your emotional body is telling you one thing and your political or strategic sense is telling you another thing. There is a point of contact, and you’re approaching it gradually. I can give you a clue how it looks or feels. You seem to be facing an inner dilemma, which involves two conflicting points of view. As you do your best to work it out, a third viewpoint will emerge that helps you transcend the conflict that turns out not to have been one.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — The arrival of Mars in your sign has helped take some pressure off of you, and has demonstrated that your worst fears were both unrealistic and untrue. What matters is what’s both true and connected to reality, and by that I mean what you can verify in documented fact. This will be critical over the next few days as Mars makes an opposition to Neptune, which may lead you to question things for which you have solid evidence and observations that are based on careful analysis. Remember — just because you may have a momentary doubt does not mean that you’re wrong, no matter how potent your insecurity may be. The best course of action is to keep an open mind for additional information and insight, while keeping your eye on the known data and what it points to. The Grand Canyon was not formed 6,000 years ago, no matter what some people think they believe.

Attention Libras (and those with Libra rising or Moon): We’ve got big news for you: Your 2013-2014 birthday reading by Eric Francis is ready!

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Friday’s lunar eclipse in your opposite sign Aries is a reminder that you can only be yourself; you cannot be anyone but yourself. If that is true, it’s also true of the people in your life, including those with whom you are the most intimate. One of the most common modes of ‘preserving’ relationships and ‘making them work’ is that our culture trains us to be someone other than who we are. At the same time there’s relatively little information about how to be oneself, and few situations where it’s appropriate. That all said, it’s ultimately inevitable — and people put in the same room, the same home, the same company or any other form of the same time and place, will eventually figure that out. Being who you are and acknowledging others for who they are is the foundation of a relationship, even if it seems to threaten it at first.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — The more self-accepting you are, the more others will be accepting of you. The only reason this might be seen as a trite or clichéd bit of advice is if someone has not tried it, or if they struggle to get there. Self-acceptance provides a form of inoculation against anyone’s judgment of you. It also provides a pass for all kinds of inappropriate or hurtful behavior. The way your chart is set up, the theme comes along with an imperative for integrity, which is under focus now. The message is: embrace yourself and patrol your own borders. Monitor your own conduct. Love yourself, share yourself when you feel it’s appropriate and make amends when you’ve acted in a way that is out of integrity. That’s not a pre-condition of self-love — but forgiveness is. In the end, you will get there; you may as well go there sooner; and eventually you figure out that it’s the place to start.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — You have an extended opportunity to accomplish some great things, though to get there you must focus on the details. If you’re in a leadership role or even in a parental role, you may have to focus on the details of others. In either case you will need to go out of your way to do so gently. The sensation is persistence and setting an example rather than any form of aggressive leadership. You have available to you a depth of emotional access that gives you what I can describe as a heart connection. The same factor also puts you in contact with your sense of injury. It’s a fine line to walk, but for you it’s necessary; you are gradually approaching a crossroads where you will make a firm commitment to the mutual healing of yourself and the people in your life, or perpetuating something from the past that you know really needs to end.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Many efforts have been made to reconcile religion with science. It’s a noble effort, though I think that the only possible point of contact is the honest pursuit of truth, which is not guaranteed by either mode of inquiry. Frequently we see where both have become the same form of dictatorship. What will help you most now is to ask honest questions. Ask them of yourself, ask them of others and ask them of existence. Consider the responses you get to be like food, which must be chewed in order to be digestible. When you get a response, from whatever source, the best thing you can offer back, and offer to yourself, is thoughtful consideration. Make the choice not to be intimidated by the search for truth, or for understanding. Learn not to be intimidated by thinking you were wrong; bypass that entirely in place of what is real.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Even the principle of accountability can be taken too far — such as when you’re expected to take responsibility for the actions of others. This is an important boundary though one demarcated by a fine line, perhaps a bit too fine. In my reading of Friday’s lunar eclipse chart, your accountability centers around knowing what you are and are not responsible for. Perhaps the most challenging thing is being responsible for your own feelings, especially when you’re in the context of a relationship to someone else. One thing I would remind you of is that you’ve covered this territory before, and quite possibly mastered it more than once. You don’t need to go back to a prior level of knowledge or experience, though to do that you must use what you know. So I suggest you spend some time considering what you’ve learned about yourself, in recent years and over the course of your lifetime. Your situation will feel a lot simpler.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You need fear no one. Whatever rattles or chills your bones — be it aggression, deception, delusion or chaos inflicted by others — you are larger than it, and it’s no match for you. For this to work, though, you need to remain open, and you need to remain connected to yourself. It’s your true essence that will protect you, not your defenses. Your values are what protect you from being swallowed by the madness of the world, and guide you away from conforming to what others say you should believe or how you should act. It’s your openness to others and your willingness to relate on mutually acceptable terms that gives you your standing among them, rather than any illusion of ‘going it alone’. You can therefore afford to look at everyone and everything with a twinkle in your eye, remembering that your presence in the world is based on strength, openness and love.

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Moonshine Horoscopes — Aries Full Moon Edition

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Friday is the Aries Full Moon and penumbral eclipse, exact shortly before 7:38 pm EDT. (View full chart here; that link also includes the Scorpio New Moon and solar eclipse chart.) Genevieve Hathaway has interpreted this lunation for each of the 12 Moon signs in her horoscopes below.

Eclipses are pattern-setting events; they are also portals into a kind of accelerated time-space, when your life can seem to move forward by quantum leaps. Therefore standard modern operating procedure for eclipses is to be sure you do things on and around the day of an eclipse that you love and want to focus on for the next 6-12 months. Get your ship pointed in the right direction.

Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

The Aries Full Moon/eclipse is the Libra Sun (relationships, balance) opposite the Moon in Aries (‘I am’, impulsiveness), with the Earth in the middle. In the mix is the minor planet Eris, conjunct the Moon.

Eris is a marker of our times, representing the identity chaos/crisis society has been struggling with for a long time. (Eris has been in Aries since the 1920s, so nearly everyone alive now has this placement.) Eris in this chart is likely bringing to a head any tension between individual needs and relationship needs, or the ‘individual you’ and the ‘relationship you’.

Have you ever noticed a difference between how you exercise your independence, or how ‘true’ you are to your deepest desires and values, whether you are single or coupled? If so, this Full Moon may turn your focus inward to examine them, and could dissolve a relational deadlock that has been brewing.

The Libra Sun is urging balance in relationships; the Aries Moon could trigger emotions. Mercury nearing its Scorpio retrograde says: stop and think; understand that you’re feeling your thoughts right now; communicate carefully and be flexible with any travel. Eris will draw attention to any ways you’ve divvied yourself up for others — and asks what you want to do about it.

To read Genevieve’s horoscopes, it helps to know your Moon sign (where the Moon was at the moment of your birth), which you can find out by entering your birth data into Serennu.com. If you know your birth time, that will ensure accuracy — but often you can still be sure of its sign even if the exact degree is fuzzy. You can also read these horoscopes for your Sun and rising signs for additional insight.

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter

Aries Full Moon Moonshine Horoscopes | By Genevieve Hathaway

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Conversations and situations with close partners that began during the Libra New Moon in early October are coming to a head. These discussions and situations are pushing you to make contact with how you FEEL about them. Your first instinct is to act, but what you are being called to do now is to be in tune with your emotions and let how you feel guide your decision-making and communication processes. I suggest taking a brutally honest approach with yourself — get clear on what you want, then work from there. Think of this as a process of checking in on your internal state through negotiations and agreements with others. What you are building are patterns that utilize your emotions as a tool for creating the kind of relationships that fit both you and your partners. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Your subconscious world has been a busy place for some time. It may have felt as if there was a room inside of you that you couldn’t always access, and unexpected ideas and emotions seem to come out of this hidden space at unexpected times. The threshold between your conscious self and your unconscious space is becoming more like a flexible boundary rather than a solid wall. In fact, applying a little more energy, you can push right through it. I suggest taking time now to explore what you find in your psychic body. What you are gaining is a better understanding of how to access this hidden space whenever you want to, giving you a greater understanding of your deepest desires, needs and wants. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — At the moment, how you feel about your network may be rapidly changing — as quickly as daily or even hourly. This could come with the sensation of being a small boat tossed around on a turbulent sea, or like there is no solid ground to stand on. It may feel as though the groups you are investing in are quickly shifting and evolving faster than you can connect with them emotionally. Instead of seeing this process as separate, I suggest taking the longer view of your being one of the contributing forces for change. Take note of the ripple effect your actions and emotions have on your large network. You are being called to have a vision for your network and to build that vision through your thoughts, feelings and actions. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — The current astrology is highlighting your career angle. What does your highest calling look like? And are you living it? You are being called to do an emotional assessment of your work and to investigate whether it is resonating with your strongest sense of meaning and purpose. As you move through this exploration, I suggest turning to your inward state as one of your most useful pieces of information. Pay attention to which things truly excite you and fill you with energy. Also notice what makes you feel good about being you. These are clues to bring more of it into your work life. Do more of these things that connect you with your highest calling. You are setting patterns for the kind of work you do, patterns that will last many years. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — This week’s Aries Full Moon is bringing plenty of heat and emotion to some of your long-held ideas. Over the past few weeks, you’ve been pulling apart a few deeply held personal beliefs that you’ve carried around for a long time. What you are working through are feelings about your role in the world — feelings that have sometimes kept you from meeting your full potential. On offer is an opportunity to heal and move beyond these emotional blocks. You’ve made a lot more progress lately, more than you may realize. As the pressures build over the Full Moon, an idea stemming from a feeling will help you break through your internal blocks. This may come with the sensation of exploding into your world. You can also think of this as a moment of arrival into more of who you are. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — The past few weeks have brought up questions surrounding your shared resources, specifically what others are giving or providing to you. I suggest viewing resources as more than money, rather as anything that helps you accomplish something. Your Moon sign is very resourceful and you are used to being the one giving the resource instead of receiving it from others. As those around you offer things that will help you reach your goals in your daily life and current projects, remember there is nothing lacking in you when you accept what’s offered. I propose instead viewing those around you as another one of the resources in your life that you can draw on. Notice how much further you get when you work together and allow others to bring their resources to situations. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Attention Libras (and those with Libra rising or Moon): We’ve got big news for you: Your 2013-2014 birthday reading by Eric Francis is ready!

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — A relationship dynamic you are working through is helping you connect with a certain emotional need. What you are making contact with is how the boundaries in the relationship have served or not served to support you as an individual. I propose you consider the perspective that for there to be harmony in a relationship, both individuals’ needs as individuals must be supported and respected. This means yours as well as your partner’s. For a while you may need to be the one to state your needs first. As you bring that level of respect to yourself as an individual, partners will follow suit. Hold space for an open, honest dialogue to occur. What is on offer is stronger support for you and your partner’s unique individual natures and desires. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Your psychic body has been a busy place for quite some time with a lot of energy concentrated there. Like a smith forging a sword, your subconscious space has been forged, worked and reworked in the heat, fire and pressure of the astrology we’ve been experiencing. You have the opportunity now to examine what you’ve been crafting one layer under the surface of your consciousness. This may feel like an “aha” or breakthrough moment, though what you are accessing is something you’ve had for quite some time, just not in a form you recognized or could touch. What you are connecting with is how to use your internal space like a finely crafted tool. What you are gaining is an even more diverse tool belt, to craft and shape what you envision for your life. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — As the week unfolds, plenty of unexpected people and situations may show up, particularly regarding sex. I suggest maintaining an attitude of openness, allowing yourself to meet what comes into your life without any expectations. Think of this as holding space for all possibilities to manifest. Operate from a position of letting go of preconceived ideas or requirements. Instead, do what you do best — let your curiosity lead, and hold space for partners to do the same. You are in a moment of making contact with some deeply creative and playful energy that will lend itself to some soul-enriching sexual moments for both you and partners. As you go on this sexual exploration, maintain an open dialogue with partners. Doing so offers greater intimacy both with others and with yourself. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Your emotional space is heating up quite a bit. This may come with the sensation of your inner landscape being erratic, or as though the emotional tether that keeps you grounded has been cut. If unexpected emotions arise, I suggest not assuming that they are linked to current situations in your life. Certain work situations may appear to be the catalyst, but I suggest taking the longer view. Like magma slowly making its way up through a volcano via lava tubes in the Earth’s crust, emotions that were buried a long time ago are rising to the surface of your mind and then bursting forth. As you work through these feelings, sit with what you experience, peeling back the layers to reach the actual root of the feeling. What you are gaining is the opportunity to heal and clear out old, lingering emotions. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Recently, you’ve been working through questions surrounding the role you play in your local community and the larger world. If any frustration arises regarding rectifying obligations in your home town with a larger purpose that is calling you beyond your local area, I suggest viewing it as a motivating factor that is pushing you to apply your creativity. As an Aquarius Moon, you are good at creating solutions that can incorporate seemingly competing ideas or situations. You are able to get around mutually exclusive viewpoints to think so far outside the box that others may feel you are operating in a different reality. In some ways you are — you don’t get limited by the constraints that others believe exist. As you move forward, finding a way to accomplish both what you want locally and internationally, maintain your focus on the idea that your reality is shaped by you. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You are being called to reassess how your internal world interacts with your outer experience. I propose an idea — that your inner emotional state is one of your greatest resources. Feeling good about yourself and your life is a powerful tool you can harness to create the kind of outer world you envision. I don’t mean if you feel good you’ll solve world hunger, rather that feeling good puts out energy on the right wavelength to help you create more of what you want in your life. I suggest starting with the small things around you that bring sensations of emotional joy and grounding. Make sure to do some of what you love every day and channel the feeling that brings into your projects, tasks, relationships and endeavors. — by Genevieve Hathaway

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Aries Full Moon Eclipse — and your Moonshine Horoscopes

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Dear Friend and Reader:

If you’re feeling a little like this week is packed to the gills full of some kind of edgy anticipation (whether creative and positive or stressful and negative), yet it’s been tricky to get traction on all the things you must do, you are in tune with a busy sky. It’s a sky that continues to find at least partial expression in the deadlock in the U.S. government. Chances are you can see and feel it in your personal life, too — and everything is about to shift.

Old apple tree at Gilsland Farm, Falmouth, Maine. Photo by Amanda Painter.

We’re covering the astrology for you on several fronts. First up, Genevieve Hathaway has written this week’s Moonshine horoscopes specifically for the Aries Full Moon eclipse.

Eric sifts through these events and more in tonight’s broadcast of Planet Waves FM. He will cover the astrology and the religious issues associated with the budget showdown, looking closely at Friday’s Full Moon eclipse and Mercury retrograde.

For an overview of this week’s primary themes, check out Monday’s Daily Astrology column. Covering Mars entering Virgo and opposing Neptune, this Mercury shadow phase and more, the column outlines some of the reasons you may feel ready to take action — and the reasons why doing so with extra mindfulness, attention to detail and careful communication matters.

Today’s Daily Astrology column considers the Libra Sun opposite Eris in Aries. This is a ‘proving moment’ for Eris — and a great reason to consider the “individual self” versus “relationship self” dilemma so many people find themselves in.

If you check back on the blog around noon today, you can read the latest from Len Wallick. In today’s column, he’ll be outlining how to prepare for the “whirlwind trip” of our upcoming eclipse season.

Finally, we wanted to let you know that Genevieve is teaching an hour-long workshop on Mercury retrograde tonight, Oct. 15, from 7-8 pm PDT at Shift Massage in Seattle, Washington. She will be covering the basics of Mercury retrograde, how to avoid the setbacks and delays generally associated with Mercury retrograde, and how to use the astrology to your advantage — plus specifics about the upcoming Mercury retrograde, which begins Oct. 21. If time permits, she can answer participants’ questions about how Mercury retrograde affects their natal charts.

You can register here and contact Genevieve directly at genevieve@venusinblue.com.

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter

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A Spiritual Crisis, and a Political One

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Just a few brief comments on the government shutdown. Like most people, you may be having difficulty tracking this issue; to me it looks like a government shutdown for its own sake. But it’s one that makes most building takeovers that I’ve covered seem mature, since most students know enough to focus on a few demands that can actually be met by the administration.

Donna Rice with her husband Barry after they traveled from Chicago to Zion National Park in Utah, closed due to the government shutdown. Photo by Trent Nelson.

One of the ways you know that this situation is drama for its own sake is that the first demand (defund the Affordable Care Act) was not going to happen. By the time the government was shut down and the creeps behind this protest figured that out, the demands started changing — the current one being the promise of discussion of slashing social programs.

All the Republican talk of “jobs, jobs, jobs” has led to their blocking hundreds of thousands of people from being able to go to work. All the talk about supporting small business has been belied by the thousands of businesses hurt or destroyed by the shutdown.

A few things are bugging me. One is that the original pretense, how bad the ACA allegedly is, is not an issue that warrants this kind of radical intervention. Not, particularly, since it’s the affirmed law of the land. Our extremely conservative Supreme Court already approved it, after Congress voted it into law and the president signed it into law. If a small minority wants to take matters into their own hands, that is one definition of tyranny — and thankfully it’s become obvious.

If a minority of politicians are declaring the ACA unconstitutional, and saying that it’s illegitimate despite being approved by every branch of government, they must be citizens of some other country. The reward they have got, if you believe a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll published in the past 24 hours, is that the Republicans and the Tea Party have never been less favorably thought of, while popularity for Obamacare has never been higher.

That some politicians would take advantage of the disgraceful health-care situation, using it against people, even going so far as to try to convince women not to go for routine gyn exams, is authentically disgusting. Health insurance, at minimum, provides some thin safety net between a routine disease and going bankrupt. In no other advanced country besides the U.S. do people flirt with this fate — and it’s especially propbematic given the unemployment situation, when people have lost their jobs and their health coverage.

Another problem is the involvement of Dominionist religion in this crisis, and that seems to be significant. Personally I don’t have a good feeling about people who preach the end of the world, and they seem to be the ones calling the shots.

The Dominionist position is old hat: you accept our point of view or we will burn you at the stake. I don’t think these people have any proper role in government.

We also have what I will call a spiritual problem involving John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives. He is not who he pretends to be, a dude from Ohio; to see what kind of entity he is one’s third eye needs to be open, and I don’t consider it safe to conduct this kind of inquiry because of the energies involved. In human form, he controls the flow of bills to the floor of the House of Representatives. This one entity has the power to choke off whether progress is possible; he can personally keep this going or let it resolve, and we have no reason whatsoever to trust him.

That this is essentially a spiritual problem means that we might find a spiritual solution. I think that Boehner must be a focal point. The meek integrity that is binding him to the physical plane appears to be weakening, but he still has some thrash and resistance left in him. Holding him in white light will help neutralize him, though he won’t like it as much as the synthetic UV rays his leathery, orange skin seems to devour in his tanning bed.

It’s true that our debt crisis is what has made us subject to this kind of blackmail and other forms of external control. It’s essential to see this for what it is — the debt itself is an intentional construction. At the end of the Clinton administration the U.S. was well on the way to paying down its debt and had eliminated the yearly federal budget deficit. Economically and in many other ways, things were going pretty well at the time.

Then came a stolen election; a false flag terrorist event; a series of tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans; eliminating taxes on many of the largest corporations; a huge, unbudgeted, federally funded drug giveaway; a bloated national security state taking over nearly everything and occupying a billion square feet of office space; several very long, ongoing wars; and then a second 9/11, in financial form, allegedly requiring trillions in bank bailouts.

All these things have at least one common factor — they start under Cheney-Bush, and they got us into this position. And that is where we find ourselves — compromised, and in a sense, possessed.

Colbert takes on the shutdown, proposing games like Not Sorry! and Operation Denied Due to Pre-Existing Condition.

The astrology lurking around is not all that encouraging. The federal shutdown has now been conflated with the debt ceiling issue. The debt ceiling is about the government’s ability to borrow money to make interest payments on funds that it’s already borrowed, and to meet some current obligations as well. Both could be resolved by simple, one-sentence acts of Congress.

Non-political federal budget officials say we hit the debt ceiling on Oct. 17, which is on the eve of a lunar eclipse, and just four days before Mercury stations retrograde. Depending on how you look at it, that combination of factors could represent a breakthrough or it could be a further descent into mire and chaos. We don’t know what would happen if the U.S. defaults on its obligations, since it has never done so.

As I’ve mentioned, the main U.S. chart, the Sibly chart, is under a lot of stress. That comes to a peak next April, when the grand cross including Mars retrograde in Libra, Jupiter in Cancer, Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn, is focused to the degree around the U.S. Sun.

Many have wondered how we are going to wrest our country back from these bizarre interests that have nothing to do with the general welfare of the American people, or even the business community. It is a pressing question; we will be asking it for a while.

There is a simple political analysis here: many Republicans who would vote to get us out of this mess are going along with the mob because they don’t want to be “primaried” — that is, knocked out of their Republican slot by a candidate further to the right. So they put their own self-interest above the collective interest. Their federal job is more important than everyone else’s federal job — or the stability of the world economy.

Here we see the problem with self-interest and why, once again, this is really a spiritual crisis rather than a political one.

Lovingly,

Accelerate, with Precision

Our current astrology is about acceleration. The Moon is now waxing toward a Full Moon eclipse in the sign Aries, which happens Oct. 18. Eclipses often come with the sensation of concentrated experience, events speeding up and a sense of destiny or fate in operation.

Next stop — a lunar eclipse in Aries, followed by a solar eclipse in Scorpio. Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

The mid-Libra Sun is applying in a square aspect to Jupiter in Cancer. This looks like some emotional/relational drama, with the principle of balance (via Libra) pushing up against the tendency to over-feel and run in cycles (Cancer). It’s necessary to honor both and to remember that you cannot smooth out the surface of water with a canoe paddle.

Venus, which is often cautious and tends to speak second, is now in Sagittarius, a more freewheeling sign than many others – and Venus is headed for a square to Chiron, which is emotive, given to taking risks, and is anything but cautious. This is a reminder to stick to your values; they are your guiding principles. But if your principles back you into a corner, this is a time to reevaluate rather than overreact.

Venus square Chiron likes to push limits and can have a tendency to be so emotionally driven as to suspend judgment. The quest may be for an emotional high, sexual power or just the need to have fun. Yet where Chiron is involved, it’s necessary to engage the sentient part of one’s mind — the part that actually makes conscious decisions about what you do and do not want to do. If not, the Venus-Chiron square can have a sense of emotional injury. In this case, the opposite of injury would be integrity.

Perhaps most significantly, we are about to experience the fourth of seven Uranus-Pluto squares, the generation-defining aspect involving two of the most potent outer planets. This spans from 2012-2015 with a margin of at least three years on either side of that date range. The fourth event, the epicenter of the whole series, is within range now, and will be exact on Nov. 1. The series of Uranus-Pluto aspects is about acceleration of the historical process, the chaos factor and the drive to change that we are all experiencing so poignantly now.

To sum up, we’re experiencing many energetic, compelling aspects at the moment and, like using a chain saw or a welding torch, this kind of power demands precision, control and focus. If not, there can be mishaps, opportunities lost and time and energy wasted.

Chart for Mars ingress of Virgo on Tuesday, Oct. 15. From there, Mars will oppose both Neptune and Chiron, an interesting combination.

Mars is currently in the last degrees of Leo, which is slippery and a little dangerous. It’s fiery Mars in a fire sign working the edge of the territory. That alone calls for precision and thoughtfulness when it’s more likely to signify bravado, risk-taking and a bit of machismo.

It’s also a comment on subject matter relating to male gender material. For example, there is the question: what is the relationship between sexism and male homophobia? One possible contact point is that male homophobia involves a man’s relationship to his inner feminine, as does his relationship to women. By one analysis, homophobia and sexism are the same thing — with inner and outer manifestations.

Mars will slide through the last degrees of Leo and arrive in Virgo on Tuesday, Oct. 15. Here is where some precision enters the picture, though you don’t want it to be too late. I suggest you get ahead of this transit, and focus on the details early, as annoying as they may be.

This theme is repeated by Mercury, which is slowing down to a retrograde that begins on Oct. 21. Some have noticed that the effect is starting to take hold, now that Mercury is in its first echo phase ahead of the retrograde; that’s happening now, as Mercury crosses the degrees where it will be retrograde (from Oct. 21 through Nov. 11).

Mercury stations retrograde within a couple of days of the Full Moon eclipse in Aries on Oct. 18 (which also happens to be the deadline for the debt ceiling limit). The world may be going crazy, but you don’t have to — or at least you can use a little planning, and just a bit of caution, to prevent mishaps and keep focused on your plan. If you don’t have one of those, I do suggest you make one up, and keep it flexible.

Angry About their Own Idea

It’s clear the far right dreads the possibility that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) may actually improve the health care situation for uninsured Americans. What’s amusing is that in 1989, the guts of what’s now called Obamacare — requiring individuals to obtain coverage or face a tax penalty — was proposed by the Heritage Foundation as a way around single-payer health care.

President Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010.

The idea was adopted with a vengeance by Republicans in 1993 as a counter to the Clinton health care reform proposals under the name Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act. (You can view a chart comparing the two here.) Now, it’s what they seem to revile the most. What is in reality corporate medicine is deceptively being called socialized medicine.

As of Thursday, Republicans in Washington had dropped their demand to defund the ACA and were pushing for an agreement to postpone the debt ceiling crisis for six weeks while their proposed negotiations continue over government expenditures. (Those discussions have been happening for a long time.)

Defaulting on the debt, although some on the far right have said it’s no big deal, is widely viewed as a prescription for a worldwide recession that would make 2008 look like a hiccup.

Meanwhile, congressional approval ratings have fallen to 5% in an AP-GFK poll; the evidence is clear that conservative groups have been pushing for this idea since Obama’s re-election.

A “memo to the movement” signed by a long list of right-wing leaders was endorsed last Valentine’s Day by FreedomWorks, a direct offshoot of the Koch-funded Citizens for a Sound Economy. The memo lays out a blueprint for the defunding of Obamacare, “easily done through a series of appropriation riders” attached to a continuing resolution to fund the government. Perhaps it’s not so easy, since Republicans have dropped that as a demand.

Heritage Foundation branch Heritage Action for America is a signatory to the memo, which describes the Affordable Care Act as “an unprecedented attack on life and religious liberty.”

Trans-Pacific Partnership Marches On

Uncle Sam’s shutdown may have placed obstacles in the path of various citizens attempting to access everything from monuments and parks to FHA loan information, but never fear: collusion with multinational corporations continues unobstructed.

Secretary of State John Kerry appeared in place of Pres. Obama at a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) summit in Indonesia this past week, where plans are being finalized for the agreement involving Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.

Don’t let the cute monkey mask fool you: the TPP is neither friendly, fair, nor more fun than a barrel of you-know-what. Photo of protester in Japan this spring by Issei Kato/Reuters.

The Citizens’ Trade Campaign has raised serious questions about the trade agreement, which has been in negotiation since 2008 with massive input from corporations and hardly any from legislators of the nations involved.

Writing in 2012, Laurel Sutherlin of Rainforest Action Network foresaw dire consequences for “everything from affordable medicines, Internet freedoms and intellectual property rights to democratically enacted labor laws and environmental protections … a wish list of the 1%.”

Unlike past trade agreements, this one has not been rolled out for public review; what is known about it has come mostly via Wikileaks and includes a provision whereby corporations’ lawsuits against governments will be heard by a tribunal of international trade lawyers.

Past leaks of draft sections include provisions that allow Big Pharma to undermine access to affordable medicine in developing countries, privilege corporate banks over credit unions, favor fossil fuels over alternative energy and establish some provisions of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), already rejected by the U.S. Congress.

In fact, “This is not mainly about trade,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, on Democracy Now! “It is a corporate Trojan horse.”

Right-wingers at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Heritage Foundation, to name but two, get all melty and tingly at the idea of greater globalization; the Heritage folks believe it will help neuter state-owned enterprises. Obama is currently seeking a “fast-track” authorization process that would allow him to sign off on the agreement without Congressional approval.

Political Wrangling Holds Up Hawaii Pesticide Bill

One of the Kauai County (Hawaii) councilmen who earlier this year introduced a bill that would increase the county’s oversight of the heaviest agricultural users of restricted-use pesticides on the island — Dow, Syngenta, BASF, Pioneer — is accusing the county administration of dragging its feet on a vote.

Monsanto is not subject to the bill because Roundup is classified by the EPA as a general-use pesticide, not a restricted-use pesticide, according to activist group Stoppoisoningparadise.org.

Supporters urging the Kauai County Council to stand up for the island’s children by supporting the public’s right to know what chemicals are being applied, plus when and where. Photo: www.StopPoisoningParadise.org — Pass Kauai Bill 2491.

Kauai Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. asked Tuesday during a full council hearing for a two-month extension so his administration can work with the state and county government on the issue.

But Councilman Gary Hooser believes severe budget cuts to the state Department of Agriculture’s pesticide oversight function make it crucial that local authorities take it over immediately, to prevent more harm to people and the environment.

For instance, 150 residents on the west side of Kauai, where most of the biotech operations are situated, filed a lawsuit in 2011 against DuPont-Pioneer, alleging their products were making them ill and driving down property values.

Included in the measure would be restrictions around schoolyards. Studies cited by Stoppoisoningparadise.org have proven neurotoxic pesticides contribute to the “rising rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, widespread declines in IQ and other measures of cognitive function” and that “evidence of links to certain childhood cancers is particularly strong.”

“We need to do something. We can’t count on the state. In our particular situation, I believe there is urgency. The doctors we talked to in those committee hearings believe there is urgency and we can’t sit around and wait for the state to get its act together,” he said.

Yet county officials know that pesticide oversight is not cheap — Kauai County Council Chair Jay Furfaro initially put the price at $4.4 million for the first two years and $911,000 every year after that. Supporters of the bill would like to see the biotech companies responsible for the pesticides absorb the cost.

Last month, days before the Kauai council committee voted on Bill 2491, Gov. Neil Abercrombie promised that he would work with the Hawaii legislature to restore funding and positions for pesticide regulation within the health and agriculture departments.

He also suggested that agricultural companies would voluntarily comply with new safety and health guidelines that would be put in place while the legislature and department heads deliberated on stricter controls. Supporters are skeptical of the governor’s promises, saying he is trying to derail the county’s efforts for stricter controls.

Planet Waves reported in August on this bill, the original version of which included extensive regulations of both pesticides and genetically modified organisms.

Last month, however, the Kauai County Council’s Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations Committee amended the measure to focus more closely on pesticide use. The committee passed it 4-1 on Sept. 27, and the council will reconvene next Tuesday to address it again.

Judge Set to Determine Fines Against BP in Deepwater Horizon Case

Phase two of the civil trial against BP for its role in the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster began last week. The focus this time will be on determining how much oil actually spilled — and if government attorneys succeed in proving their number, 4.2 million barrels, it could mean the demise of BP.

Marine reef ecologist Scott Porter works to remove oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill off his hands in June 2010, south of Venice, Louisiana. Photo: Eric Gay/AP.

The first phase of the trial about two months ago centered on whether BP was grossly negligent or not, and in this Judge Carl J. Barbier has not made a ruling.
But if he agrees with the government’s position that there was gross negligence and that 4.2 million barrels were spilled, the fines could amount to more than $18 billion, according to a New York Times article.

“They would have to sell assets to keep the company afloat,” said Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company. “It would wipe out all of their cash.”

BP is arguing that it was simple negligence and that only 2.45 million barrels were spilled. If the judge finds in its favor, it will pay fines of no more than $2.7 billion. Legal experts believe the actual fine will fall between the two extremes, according to the article.

This phase of the trial will also determine if BP prepared adequately for a blowout and if it responded properly once the oil started flowing.

Update: The director of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, has offered to exchange his own freedom for the release of 28 environmentalists and two journalists facing piracy charges in Russia after they allegedly climbed aboard a Russian Arctic oil platform from their ship last month. In addition, Russia is charging them with possession of illegal drugs reportedly found on the seized Greenpeace vessel.

A Women’s Health Win in California

Amidst the near-constant onslaught of states passing ever-tighter restrictions on abortions (68 passed by states so far this year), California is bucking the trend. Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill into law Wednesday that allows nurse practitioners and other non-physicians to perform abortions via “vacuum aspiration” during the first trimester.

California isn’t just L.A., San Fran and San Diego; 52% of California counties lack an accessible abortion provider. Image: thisispersonal.org.

Critics accuse the governor of putting abortion-industry profits above the well-being of women and children and argue the bill will lower the standard of medical care for women.

Asked for commentary, Planet Waves member and medical consultant Hal J. Cohen D.O., remarked that as long as non-physicians are “well trained and credentialed,” the system should work fine.

He added, “The key to having this function smoothly is appropriate backup.

“For instance, NP anesthesiologists have backup in the hospital. Relatively quick, nearby access to a hospital is needed here as well. If these above safeguards are in place, I think it’s a reasonable and relatively safe way to expand much needed services.”

California joins Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Hampshire in allowing nurse practitioners to perform this type of abortion, which uses a tube and suction. California and several other states already allow non-physicians to prescribe drugs for pregnancy termination.

According to The New York Times, at least 8,000 such abortions have been provided safely by nurse practitioners, certified midwife nurses and physician assistants since 2007, as part of a University of California, San Francisco, pilot program. Complication rates for non-physicians were comparable to those for surgeons (below 2%).

What Are We Modeling? One in Ten Youth Commit Sexual Violence

If the title alone does not disturb you, perhaps this will: according to The Los Angeles Times, “One in seven believed that he or she was ‘not at all responsible for what happened,’ and almost 4 in 10 said they considered the victim somewhat or completely responsible for the reported incident.”

The numbers come from the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, a non-profit organization based in San Clemente, Calif., that surveyed 1,058 teens and young adults. Nearly one in ten reported having been a perpetrator of sexual violence. The numbers are supported by bi-annual stats compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Image by Katherine Streeter for NPR.

Survey respondents ranged from 14-21 years old, with slightly less than half aged 14-17. One in four respondents answered that their last victim was not a dating partner; previous research in this area has focused mainly on violence among dating partners and in college-aged individuals acting outside the need for parental consent.

The research, published by JAMA Pediatrics earlier this week, focused on participants in the center’s ongoing Growing up with Media study, which began in 2006. Among its findings is that 17% of the perpetrators had looked at violent or X-rated material in the past year; only 3% of the non-perpetrators had done so.

Michele Ybarra, the center’s president and director of research, cautions that the “findings should be interpreted cautiously” and that the study should be replicated — but warns even more urgently of the need to emphasize “bystander” training and intervention in the nation’s secondary schools and colleges. “Such training emphasizes the responsibility of peers not only to discourage and prevent negative behavior within their group or community, but also to recognize, stop or report such behavior when they witness it,” according to the Times article.

It also underscores the need for adults to be aware of the attitudes, behavior and speech they are modeling for youth when it comes to sex and relationships — both in terms of what we do, what forms of media we bring into our homes or support with our consumer dollars, and what we say to teens directly.

“We absolutely need to have conversations with our kids about what healthy sex is and what unhealthy sex is,” says Ybarra. Parents could say, “‘If you have to convince your partner, maybe that’s not the right way to have sex.’ Even simple messages like that are important.”

Please note: Planet Waves does not endorse inebriation for inebriation’s sake (Pholus, we’re watching you!), nor does the publisher or his staff wish to upset or trigger anyone recovering from substance abuse. That said, Neptune, Dionysus and Bacchus have all endorsed this messaging campaign — and heck, at this point, taking almost any kind of action must be better than taking none. Thanks, Uranus and Pluto!

Drunk-Dialing Congress

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade — or, in this case, lemonade spiked with vodka while you call up members of Congress with your free hand.

A group called Revolution Messaging has designed a website for the purpose — drunkdialcongress.org — complete with talking points, drink recipes and an embedded calling platform so that all you have to do is type in your own phone number to be connected to a random member of Congress. The idea is based on the time-honored (or dishonored) ‘tradition’ for people under the influence to dial (or misdial) a friend, lover, ex or random stranger and weep, babble or rant embarrassingly into the receiver.

Why do this? The site notes, “As Members of Congress quickly returned from their final symbolic, non-effective and otherwise useless votes to avert a government shutdown, the heavy drinking began. Reports of our representatives getting plastered on the government’s dime — the one we have left — have come streaming in from witnesses all over Capitol Hill. Now’s your chance to tell your Representative what you really think of their actions.”

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

We published the extended monthly horoscopes for October on Friday, Sept. 27. Inner Space for October was published Friday, Sept. 20. We published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Pisces Full Moon Tuesday, Sept. 16. Moonshine for the Libra New Moon published on Tuesday, Oct. 1. Please note, we normally publish the extended monthly horoscopes on the first Friday after the Sun has entered a new sign; Inner Space usually publishes the following Tuesday but for now it’s substituting for one Friday horoscope a month.

As mentioned, I’ve taken a week off from the horoscope. However, I’ve tried something I’ve considered for a long time — allowing the Oracle to choose interpretations from the vast database of prior horoscopes. The Oracle is a bit spooky responding to individual queries to individual questions; it works beautifully as a daily feature. So I thought I would try sign-by-sign. I made the queries myself on Thursday, asking for a weekly horoscope for each of the signs, one at a time. The returns are absolutely random, with about a 1 in 10,000 chance of any one entry being chosen. Some themes recur — the idea of ‘ethics’ shows up twice. There seems to be an emphasis on professional activities. I am curious how they work for you. Please let me know. — Eric Francis

The Oracle Horoscope, standing in for Weekly Horoscope 970, Oct. 11, 2013

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Reassurance has not come in quite the form you expected, but it has arrived and it’s here to stay. There is more news to come, in both personal and professional relationships, and the sometimes strange territory where they meet. It’s true that mixing personal involvement with work, or daring to allow a relationship to take on a purpose, are considered risky by many people, and often threaten to have sloppy results if things go wrong. The actual problem is people having no real sense of what others are thinking and feeling, and not bothering to ask. I suggest you take this opportunity to reveal yourself, and to make any long-overdue inquiries that could give you an excellent change of perspective.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Not everyone has to agree with you. Not even you have to agree with yourself all the time, but, sooner or later, you eventually work it out. What you may soon discover is just how prophetic you’ve been at predicting your own life, despite the mental and emotional challenges you’ve been through lately. On one level it may seem like you’ve been getting accurate images of your future. Looked at another way, you’ve been taking your visions and, by some mysterious process you may not understand, you’ve been making those images real. There’s a word for it: imagination.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — About six weeks ago, around the Virgo New Moon, you learned something about yourself. I reckon you had a revelation that gave you permission to take a certain risk, and your thoughts quite likely pointed to why that risk was the logical step to take. I want to remind you of that thought process, and let you know that you stand in the spot where the choice or action is possible. This may involve a relationship, one which you are ready to approach directly and with a level head. And it, too, is ready to approach you. Remember, though, that the true meeting is within yourself.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — I can see you writing in your notebook, or on a napkin, “Okay, this time I’m actually going nuts.” Well, okay, I hear you, but it’s not quite for sure. What’s happening is that a lot of internal energy is getting liberated (associated with Mars) at the same time a marvelously complicated situation is unfolding in your mental world. Conditions are such that the increased energy is amplifying your perception of what is happening, though the situation does warrant a close look. It is dangerous to be too invested in your own personal value system; that’s one message of this crisis. There are a lot of ways to accomplish the same goal, or meet the same need. One message of your current chart is to strive for diversity in your thinking, including what you learn from other cultures and people from other countries.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — If the astonishing run of luck, activity and inspiration the past few weeks has eased off, all that’s happened has indeed left you a different person. I would propose you figured out the importance of being grounded and building your dreams on solid foundations. Yet in truth, nothing has left the neighborhood or passed you by. Its form has changed, and in many respects, it’s become more accessible to thought (as inspiration sometimes is not). Also, you are starting to ask the important financial questions about the idea, and they do indeed have answers. Remember, if something doesn’t have a solution, it may not be a problem.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Close partners seem to be of two minds — or perhaps two bodies, in that people who usually vehemently disagree seem to be singing from the same book of hymns. It may be that the passing of yesterday’s lunar eclipse has released the tension in the air like a good thunderstorm, or that people went so far into polarized directions on their opinions that they have finally started to meet on the other side of the house. Everything that seemed so incredibly important yesterday can now fade happily into memory. So don’t focus so much on the details that you miss the surreal nature of the moment, when the cat lays down with the mouse. Resist fits of jealousy as well — these people all love you.

Attention Libras (and those with Libra rising or Moon): We’ve got big news for you if you’re a Libra, or were born with Libra as your rising or Moon sign: Your 2013-2014 birthday reading by Eric Francis is ready!

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Not all problems can be solved by money. Money can be very useful, but it is utterly useless without ideas to back it up. Isn’t it amazing that virtually any crisis, difficulty, struggle or puzzle can be solved with a single thought? In case you are trying to work something like this out (and people may be depending upon you to do so) here is the formula that will work for any difficulty this month. Consider your problem, any problem, and imagine that a mom and a small child (about five years old) are working on solving it together. There are some suggestions the mom has, and others that the child has, but between them they see the whole situation, and poof, the solution appears.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — People treat you fairly but that’s partly because you stand up for yourself. It’s also because you’ve long ago figured out that this elusive little thing in the world called ‘ethics’ is alive and well in your mind. You live in a world where there is actual right and wrong. This week may present you with an ethical dilemma that comes in various shades of gray. At the time it may not seem like there is a correct answer or solution. You may in the end have to make a decision that’s based on your intuition or do what feels right. You can trust yourself. With you the chances are that if it feels right it is.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — When seeking money, remember your ethics. When working for advancement in your career, remember your ethics. I say these things knowing we live in a world where the concept of ethics seems outmoded and even useless. I assure you, it’s not. Whatever the current trend in thought, no matter how popular, useful and effective it may be to forego questions of authenticity, or matters of right and wrong, there is such a thing as karma. We are all subject to it. I don’t think you’re an unethical person; rather, I see a spell of astrology where the ends might seem to justify the means. They do not. How you go about something, from the specific methods you use, to the motivation that drives you, is every bit as meaningful as what you accomplish. Indeed, the two are so closely related as to be the same thing: if you notice you’re being driven by some form of ambition, you might want to check your goal and make sure that it’s really something you want. For an extended phase of your life, you are being granted a mantle of power. You have an aura of authority, and that connotes responsibility. I suggest you live like your telephone is tapped and like you’re being followed around by a television crew. Live as if you are actually accountable for your actions. You are. You are also accountable for the constructive, creative and sincere deeds to your credit, but on that particular theme, I suggest you let others do the talking.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — A variety of unusual factors are conspiring to push your professional life ahead by light years. These are recent developments and they’re impossible to miss. You may at times feel like you’re losing control of the process, but that’s part of what happens at times of big change, and part of how you know you’re actually there. Within the experience, you have a lot of room to make several very specific decisions about what you want to be doing and how. You may need to negotiate with certain people a little bit — but you’re in the perfect position to do so.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Things seem to be going well. But how well is well enough? Usually we have no idea how good life is until we express our wealth, personal gifts or success in some tangible way. Misers are miserable simply because they withhold themselves. The prevailing logic of the world says that to give something is to give it up. I would propose that in this case, to give what you have is to keep it. And it gets better yet. The accompanying discovery is that you have far more than you ever imagined. Take this on the most private level (rather than business or social) and you’re more likely to see what I mean. Your instincts are telling you that you need to express an emotional reality of some kind, and express it from the deepest and most generous place within you. It may feel like a tremendous personal risk. More good will come of it than you think.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Apply creativity to everything you touch, thought you think and person you know. That’s how to access the miracle no matter what situation you find yourself in. Living is an art; loving is a science; emotion is a craft in which we sail the waters of feeling and passion. You can afford to take absolutely any chance you want as long as you keep your mind in the most alert state available. This may seem like a great responsibility but the alternative is far too dull to seriously consider.

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Your All-Access Pass and This Week’s Astrology Coverage

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Dear Friend and Reader:

In case you missed Eric’s special letter to members on Sunday, he is removing Planet Waves FM from his schedule this week — but he’s posted a new commentary on the government budget standoff and the associated astrology.

Eric also will not be writing a horoscope and lead article for Friday, but we will still be running the SKY section — which features a look at the astrology for the coming weekend (and beyond) — as well as a full slate of the regular Friday news briefs in the Oct. 11 issue.

As you may know, the astrology is heating up as we head into this last quarter of the calendar year — and so are some special projects at Planet Waves.

First up is this year’s All-Access Pass. The very popular All-Access Pass is the easiest, most comprehensive way to receive everything Eric and the Planet Waves team offers with a single purchase: birthday readings, the annual edition, an extension of your regular membership services, special projects like the Spring Report and more.

You can read the details of the All-Access Pass here — the 2014 version includes some brand-new perks — and get it for the lowest price by pre-ordering.

The 2014 annual edition, called THE MARS EFFECT, will be available for pre-order (separate from the All-Access Pass) later this week — so keep your eyes open for that notification. Pre-production of this in-depth set of written and audio readings covering the year to come is always accompanied by original artwork and original articles by other authors, and we’re accepting proposals now. If you think you might have an idea for a contribution, please read this letter here.

More immediately, with an eye to this week’s Venus-Neptune square and some other astrology focused on desire, relationships and sexual energy, Monday’s Daily Astrology column asks: “What happens when sexual desire runs up against sexual baggage, or when sexual communication runs up against limits or stuffiness?” And how can one avoid falsely ‘spiritualizing’ and ‘worshiping’ desire, relationships and sex?

Tuesday’s Daily Astrology column considers three astrological events that could serve as breakthroughs amidst the “weird” astrology surrounding the shutdown and showdown in the U.S. government. Keep your eyes on the Sun squaring Jupiter, the next Full Moon (which is a lunar eclipse) and Mercury stationing retrograde; we’ll be covering these events in depth as they approach over the next couple weeks.

As always, be sure to visit the blog again around noon for Len Wallick’s latest column. He’s featuring Friday’s first quarter Moon, which involves those cardinal signs keeping us on our toes these days.

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter

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Wake Up! Uranus, Pluto and the Libra New Moon

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Dear Friend and Reader:

The ongoing government shutdown drama was punctuated by the shooting of a woman who led police on a high-speed chase from the White House to Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon. She was shot and killed by police near the Capitol Building. Though she was unarmed, she injured two police officers, and had a one-year-old child in the car with her.

Back off. We are on furlough and coming to work anyway. Photo by Alex Leary/Tampa Bay Times.

Authorities are saying nothing about her motives, if they know anything. We are being told that she had no criminal record or history of violence, that she was suffering from postpartum depression and that she recently fell down a flight of stairs.

She’s identified as Miriam Carey, 34 years old, and from Stamford, CT. She was the same age as Aaron Alexis, the named perpetrator in the Navy Yard shooting just over two weeks ago.

Witnesses and the police say she tried to ram a barricade at the White House, and was ordered to stop and get out of the car. She then struck an officer with her car before leading the police and the Secret Service on an 80 mph chase down Pennsylvania Ave. to the White House, where she was shot. A second officer was also struck by her vehicle.

Meanwhile, the conspiracy websites are running with this seemingly true fact: Thursday, Oct. 3, was the final day of an interagency training exercise “hosted by the Joint Force Headquarters — National Capital Region. It brings federal, state, local and municipal agencies together to realistically test interagency operability during a crisis impacting the District of Columbia.” There does seem to be a pattern of training exercises coinciding with nearby events of a similar nature. That kind of detail only serves to instill doubt that the event in question actually happened the way we are told it happened.

The second shooting in Washington, DC in as many weeks did a good job of shaking up Congress. The Capitol was put on lockdown and a shelter in place order was issued. At that time, it was not known whether the gunfire was a shooter or from the police.

Yet the shakeup apparently did little to get the contingent of congressional members who are holding the country hostage to change their game, at least so far.

We know that story by now: since Tuesday morning, per mainstream liberal news word of mouth, a group of fringe Republicans, aided by John Boehner, have been throwing a tantrum over the possibility that a lot of uninsured people will suddenly be able to get medical insurance coverage. They’ve issued a series of demands including defunding or delaying the Affordable Care Act (because it’s so terrible, the very week that its public access services opened up), claiming that if this does not happen, they will not allow Congress to pass what’s called a continuing resolution (CR) to allow the government to do business.

Speaker of the House John Boehner is holding up the whole government by using a procedural maneuver. A law allowing the government to re-open would likely pass if it went to the House floor. Image via CBS News.

The current crises may soon be followed by another: the federal government reaches its borrowing limit, called the debt ceiling, in two weeks. Congress must raise this, a routine action, so that the country can pay its past bills. While some Republican pols are getting on TV and saying this is about a balanced budget, actually it’s about the U.S. having the borrowing power to pay its old bills.

Many are concerned that the same contingent currently enforcing a government shutdown will also push the country into default on its obligations, something that has never happened before in American history.

The twisted part is that the shutdown is being enforced not by a majority of the House of Representatives, but rather by the use of a procedural rule being invoked by Speaker of the House John Boehner, preventing the issue from getting to the floor for an up or down vote.

There is apparently a majority of congressional reps willing to end the showdown, when you add the Democrats to the few remaining moderate Republicans — but Boehner is blocking the issue from getting to the floor.
Then if you watch cable news, you will see a parade of Republicans turning this around and claiming that Pres. Obama is the one who is not negotiating.

This complicated high-tension legislative drama — to which was added a police chase, and the suspect killed at the foot of Capitol Hill, the very spot where the government shutdown is happening — unfolded with absurd precision as the Sun squared Pluto when the government could not do normal business, and as the Sun opposed Uranus on Thursday as the shooting took place.

It is tempting to see these incidents as separate, but they are joined by the astrology — the aspect between Uranus and Pluto, with which the Earth and Sun are now aligned. The New Moon will happen within this alignment later Friday (today). We don’t know the woman’s motives and we may never, yet on the most basic symbolic level, her attempt to bash through the barriers can be interpreted as an expression of the rage and frustration that many people are feeling toward government.

Pluto in Capricorn Rising, The Sun opposite Uranus

The chart for the shooting is rich, and seems to provide a map to the whole scenario unfolding in DC at the moment. Ultra slow-moving Pluto in Capricorn was rising to the degree at the moment shots rang out. That kind of ominous placement makes me think we got a mitigated version of the karma involved — something a lot worse could have happened.

Pluto in its current sign placement is about the inevitability of change to society’s most established institutions; we have seen plenty of this since 2008 when the transit began. Where there is inevitable change, there are people who resist change, and that creates tension, and can cause fear to spread. And Pluto was the planet rising to the degree (which lasts about four minutes out of every 24 hours) — that is emphasis.

The grand cross in the cardinal signs was exactly aligned with the horizon at the moment of the gunshots. On the left side of the chart, Pluto is rising to the degree. The Sun is opposite Uranus, square the horizon. Jupiter is in the 7th house.

Meanwhile, the Sun was exactly — within 11 arc minutes, a small fraction of a degree — opposite Uranus. It’s challenging to think of a way to place greater emphasis on the Uranus-Pluto square in one chart. Sun opposite Uranus is high-voltage, it can be erratic and there is the surprise element.

This happened just one day ahead of the Libra New Moon opposite Uranus and square Pluto (exact Friday evening in PDT/EDT and early Saturday morning in Europe). Also in the mix is Typhon, another ultra slow-mover (in Libra, close to the Moon and the Sun) and Jupiter (in Cancer), which is providing protection, emotionalism or both, depending on how you look at it.

Making things more interesting in the shooting chart is Mercury in Scorpio snugly on the 10th house cusp — the government angle, in the sign of death and taxes — exactly what was happening at the time.

Mercury is about to make a conjunction to Saturn in Scorpio. That Mercury-Saturn conjunction can be frustrating, but amidst plenty of chaos and confusion, it is demanding inner attention.

In particular, it’s calling for emotional maturity of a kind that we don’t see very often. Being spiritual will not substitute (if we are looking for an answer on the level of human relations, honesty about sex, vis a vis Scorpio, would be a lot more valuable).

Being intractable will not substitute. The government angle in the chart for an attempted attack on the government reveals what I can only describe as a parent-child dynamic — Mercury in Scorpio, the inquisitive, astute child, coming up against Saturn, the emotionally frozen parent.

What is necessary in this situation is some form of actual communication and adult behavior. But the Scorpio alignment is so cloaked in secrecy or veiled in taboo that it’s going to be challenging to find that patience and maturity or go through the layers to get to the underlying issue.

All Republicans are Not Necessarily Crazy, but They are Scared

The Uranus-Pluto square is, if nothing else, a harbinger of change. When people are scared of change, the sensation of all that is moving, developing and crumbling around them is exaggerated.

One documented expression of Uranus-Pluto aspects is the desire for radical change. We might be wondering where the activist spirit is; at the moment, most of it is coming from those who cling to the past — we are witnessing a passionate desire for the liberation from progress.

In the Sixties, young people staged protests against the government, the draft and an illegal war. Now the government is staging a protest against the people. Photo by Robert Lamb.

When Bob Dylan wrote the line, “There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air,” he was describing the sensation of what it was like to go out during the peak of the 1960s, when there was a Uranus-Pluto conjunction happening (this happens less than once per century).

Yet the revolution is not always waged by those who would set humanity free. Under Uranus-Pluto aspects there’s always a mix of influences. In many ways the Sixties were full of breakthroughs and liberation; and in the same era, the Kennedy brothers were shot, as were Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King.

This really is not about the pendulum swinging one way or the other; Uranus-Pluto is always a blend of elemental forces operating in society. This is described to some extent by the sign or signs involved. Uranus is in Aries and Pluto is in Capricorn. These are high-energy signs, both on the cardinal cross of the zodiac, which is like a vast crossroads of the private and the public (associated with the Aries Point).

On the Uranus in Aries side of the square, we have the illusion of a ‘we’ (Uranus can represent groups, but that’s unlikely in Aries, the sign of ‘I am’). But it’s easy to pretend that you’re with others, or speaking on their behalf. Uranus is, more often, presenting itself as the erratic individual, willing to stage an ambush and/or use a group for its own private purposes.

One pitfall of Uranus in Aries is the obsession with glamour and attention. Another is militancy. Both Uranus and Aries can be willing to get things done by any means — and there will be fewer exceptions when the two are in the same place.

Many are feeling the pressure or the need to reinvent themselves. A makeover is a lot easier. Photo: Oprah.com.

Another potential issue with Uranus in Aries is the willingness to cheat or connive. At its best, Uranus in Aries could bring a spirit of inventiveness or self-recreation.

Many people are feeling that and don’t know quite where to go with it. Pressure from society has forced so many people to become so stiff, the concept of “personal reinvention” can feel like their head exploding. Better to opt for a makeover.

The shadow element of that is a kind of bipolar narcissism, similar to the shadow element of Pluto in Leo. So we have a personal dilemma here: how to express one’s existence, one’s sense of ‘I am’. Is this going to be in a purely self-serving way, or a way that is inclusive and co-creative?

On the Pluto in Capricorn side of the square, we have an image of the inevitability of change, in particular, enforced changes influencing the kinds of institutions and organizations represented by Capricorn — corporations, banks, governments, religious institutions (a form of corporation). Pluto does not determine the direction or quality of change — only that it will happen.

Depending on how it’s directed, Pluto can be reactionary and destructive, or it can be evolutionary and creative. You might say that Pluto presents people with the evolutionary dilemma, including the opportunity for people to use what they know, and to act as if they know it — or the opportunity to seize power in what looks like an unconscious way but which is in fact fully sentient.

Politics is a glamour profession because it involves extolling the individual ego as triumphant hero. If you don’t want to do that, and/or have your face on buttons and billboards, or worship the greatest guy in the world, stay out of the game.

Today there is an event that brings the whole story together — a conjunction of the Moon and the Sun in Libra. This is potentially an image of harmony and, at least, an image of human contact. There is a quest for fairness — in relationships.

But those relationships are set in a context: the New Moon is opposite Uranus in Aries (illustrating the glamorous egotism that makes actual relating impossible).

The New Moon is square Pluto (demanding authentic inner vision and the willingness to shift and evolve emotional patterns). Pluto in Capricorn is making it nearly impossible to be beholden to the past, no matter how much someone tries to cling to it, obsess over it or inflict it on others. The more one clings to the shore, the more one feels the rushing of the river. The more you cling to the past, the more violently you will feel the passage of time and the progress that it can bring.

The Moon and Sun are also square Jupiter in Cancer (a reminder that you have to do more than wish to get what you want; and that emotional presence is about giving and receiving). There is a reminder to keep your sense of scale.

And finally the New Moon is conjunct the Pluto-like minor planet Typhon, which in this expression is the inner storm blowing inside everyone, or perhaps the inner monster we harbor who is always on the prowl — think of this as the impulse to fear.

Put this all together and we get a real wake-up call. And that, cousins, is where we stand at this particular here-and-now.

Lovingly,

Libra New Moon and Government Sociopaths

As the Sun moved into a square with Pluto earlier in the week, the lunatic fringe that’s trying to take over the government sort of succeeded in doing so. In describing the Uranus-Pluto square, many times I’ve called our era the anti-Sixties.

It’s not the kids who have protests; it’s a bunch of rich old white men with government cars, government health insurance, nice government salaries, up to four government-sponsored offices each, complete with staffs, and very easy jobs, who stage a building takeover. Well, a little more than a building — a lot of federal departments.

My chart of the Libra New Moon, used for this week’s horoscope and for the Libra birthday reading, showing the positions of Typhon in Libra, asteroids Industria in Capricorn and Hera in Aries, plus Kronos and Cyllarus in Cancer. Many of these points add to the grand cross.

If a bunch of anti-fracking activists tried anything of the sort, they would be carted off in handcuffs before you could say, “Don’t tase me, bro.”

It takes a combination of personality traits to do this kind of thing — immaturity, extreme insensitivity, an agenda and a God complex. Being stupid helps.

As I’ve been writing lately, this is one of those Really Interesting Weeks — which comes to a crescendo with the Libra New Moon today at about 8:35 pm EDT. Accompanying this, there will be a number of surprises. The New Moon is opposite Uranus, who is the king of the unexpected. In Aries he’s also the queen of glam — and a lot of what you see going on in politics is a twisted kind of image-driven mania: the drive of the politician to survive.

We will see how that works with so much self-destructive activity. It’s possible you’re seeing events that look more like an explosion than a power struggle.

Meanwhile, among other current events is the approach of Mercury to Saturn in Scorpio. Mercury ingressed Scorpio recently, where it will be for the next two months, due to the retrograde between Oct. 21 and Nov. 10.

The conjunction to Saturn looks like the revelation of secrets, curiosity about taboo subject matter and hot talk. Try it and see. Find someone you trust, who likes to whisper wholly inappropriate things to you, and start talking. Say what you would never say. You may find yourself inspired to do what you never thought you would do.

Venus is still in Scorpio, and the fact that she’s drifting out to the edge of that sign is suggesting that edgy activities will be all the more fun. With so many planets currently in water signs — in order of speed, Mercury, Venus, the lunar apogee (also known as Black Moon Lilith), Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron and Neptune, we are living through a moment that’s all about feeling.

Of course you don’t want to let this run away with you, or suck you down the whirlpool. Grounding is essential right now, with all this water in the sky and not so much earth; in fact most of our earth-grounding is coming from Pluto in Capricorn, which is saying: focus on change and you will keep your feet on the ground.

The Idiot’s Guide to Creating An Economic Tailspin

At midnight on Sept. 30, the federal government shut down for the first time in almost 18 years, closing national parks, putting some 800,000 employees on unpaid leave, impairing the functioning of the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and numerous other agencies, and making the websites of most government agencies non-functional.

Consequences will continue to unfold over the next couple of weeks as programs like Head Start and WIC (supplemental food assistance for women and young children) run out of state-level funds. The estimated cost to the taxpayers is $300 million a day.

Rand Paul’s coffee klatch on the Capitol steps. The boys had fun talking NASCAR and baseball until Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) made them get serious about the shutdown.

Congressional Republicans, who got us here out of terror over the possibility that grateful health-care recipients might join in rejecting the Republican agenda, spent Wednesday offering up piecemeal proposals that would re-open war memorials and fund cancer treatment for sick kids.

A growing number of them began to break ranks and criticize their ‘kamikaze’ colleagues from the Tea Party detachment. Kentucky Republican Rand Paul suggested everybody drink coffee together.

Irish coffee, maybe. Reports surfacing on Twitter over the weekend, suggesting that more than a few representatives were fortifying themselves with booze as the clock ticked toward shutdown, received hardly any follow-up coverage aside from a mention by Rachel Maddow and articles in London’s Daily Mail.

Democrats want Congress to pass a ‘clean’ continuing resolution that will reopen the government across the board without restrictions on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which was passed more than three years ago. Republicans have failed more than 40 times to overturn the law through normal channels. ACA websites, which went live October 1, have been swarmed by people seeking health-care options.

Analysts are pointing to gerrymandered districts, in which Republicans are unlikely to face any challenges (except from primary opponents even further to the right), as one reason the Tea Party crew remains confident. Wall Street interests, meanwhile, are exasperated with the shutdown, leading to speculation that deep-pocket interests have lost control over the Tea Party they instigated and nurtured.

Certainly the far-right scream machine that has been ramping up the fear of Creeping Socialism ever since Obama took office bears considerable blame for the grandstanding now taking place, from the Ted Cruz marathon speech to the (possibly drunken) battle cry of “Let’s roll!” heard on the House floor over the weekend.

Meanwhile, business interests — and President Obama as well — are saying that the real crisis will come in about two weeks if Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling, which could cause an economic tailspin that would crush the modest progress made toward recovery from the 2008 recession.

Way to crash the plane, dudes.

New Hope for Iran-U.S. Relations?

New developments in the past week between Iran and the United States offer hope for new beginnings in a relationship that’s been awful since Iran shed its U.S.-backed Shah, and worsened when the second President Bush declared Iran part of the “Axis of Evil.”

Iran’s Pres. Hassan Rouhani addressing the 68th U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2013. Photo: Reuters.

In his first appearance before the UN, President Hassan Rouhani emphasized that his government had no intention of developing weapons-grade plutonium and would allow inspections to verify compliance, in exchange for lifting some of the economic sanctions that Iran has labored under since 1979.

Back in 2009, when official Iranian election results gave the win to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his reformist opponent, the streets of Tehran filled with students and intellectuals claiming that the election had been stolen; before the government shut down their social media options, many of the protesters sent messages to the American people expressing their desire to be better friends.

Rouhani’s olive branch is supported by 230 out of 290 members of the Iranian parliament and by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as the majority of his people. Although a few Iranian Tea Partiers did hurl eggs and a shoe in his direction, many more were said to be celebrating. The fact that an Iranian attack on Israel would be suicidal is well understood on the street.

Rouhani and Obama spoke on the phone early this week, the first dialogue between heads of state from these two countries in more than thirty years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promptly declared the whole thing a scam, calling Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and a “cult leader.”

Iranian vice president Massoumeh Ebtekhar published a piece in The Guardian on Wednesday underlining Iran’s sincerity and commitment to a peaceful way out of the stalemate. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday that to completely reject the possibility of better relations with Iran would be “diplomatic malpractice of the worst order,” adding that actions, not words, would be the measure of Iran’s good intent.

Plans are underway for a mid-October meeting in Geneva between high-ranking officials from Iran and the five member nations of the UN Security Council.

Banking on the Consumer’s Right to Know for GMO Labeling Win

GMO-labeling foes Monsanto and DuPont are facing off against Dr. Bronner’s and other “right to know” advocates at the polls — again — this time in Washington state. The three companies are the major donors in record-setting fundraising campaigns on either side of Initiative 522, a GMO labeling bill very similar to one that failed last November in California.

Due to multimillion-dollar contributions by Monsanto and DuPont, the No on I-522 Committee has taken second place all-time for fundraising by a campaign opposing a statewide ballot measure. When combined, totals from both sides in late September pushed the campaigns into the top five of collective fundraising totals.

The No on I-522 committee has so far raised $11.6 million from eight donors. Monsanto and DuPont gave single contributions of $4.6 million and $3.2 million, respectively.

Meanwhile the Yes on I-522 committee has raised about $4.4 million to date, according to Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission. Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps has contributed about $1.5 million. Other contributors to the Yes on I-522 campaign include Mercola.com and Nature’s Path Foods USA, according to the organization’s website.

Both sides have started airing television spots that echo some of the same rhetoric as California’s campaign.

While it’s unlikely the Yes side will be able to match the No side’s money, it’s counting on the strength of one argument to win the measure: consumers’ right to know.

“They [opponents] can’t take on the right to know, because it’s a loser for them,” said David Bronner, CEO of the organic soap company.

The fearless Elizabeth Warren now seems to be cooperating in the effort to block the rights of states to identity GMO foods for consumers.

Last week we reported that Elizabeth Warren was supporting a measure that would, in effect, ban states from being ble to require labeling when she revived a 2001 “draft guidance” by the FDA. A guidance is like the FDA giving non-mandatory advice, but it has the effect of blocking states from over-riding it with their own policies.

According to an FDA website, a “guidance document represents FDA’s current thinking on a topic. They do not create or confer any rights for or on any person and do not operate to bind FDA or the public.”

It’s a federal voluntary labeling plan — one that plays right into the hands of the biotech and big food industries because it has the effect of blocking local state policies on the same issue.

Currently, states have the right to enact GMO labeling laws precisely because the FDA has not formally ruled on GMO labeling. Without the finalized guidance, companies would have to use stricter state mandates if they become law, like the ones proposed in Washington and California.

We’re wondering why Warren — who was elected senator in Massachusetts this year on the strength of her reputation for consumer advocacy — is suddenly doing a 180, siding with those who would keep consumers from knowing what’s really in their food. Has she been persuaded by Monsanto et al — now that she’s on Capitol Hill — that too much knowledge is a bad thing?

Fracking Wastewater Found Highly Radioactive In Study

The fracking nightmare continues, reflecting Saturn in Scorpio dredging up toxic (even deadly) watery secrets — while oil and gas companies sidestep the Clean Water Act and other environmental directives. A study published on Wednesday found river sediments from wastewater downstream of a Pennsylvania fracking plant contained 200 times more radium than in mud that’s naturally present upstream of the plant. In high doses radium can cause cancer and other long-term health effects.

Water contaminated by fracking operations in Pennsylvania. Photo: Melanie Blanding.

Radioactive waste levels found in the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility are higher than those found in some radioactive waste dumps, according to Avner Vengosh, a co-author of the study and a professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke University.

They exceed the minimum threshold the federal government uses to qualify a disposal site as a radioactive dumpsite, he said.

Levels of salinity in the plant’s discharge were up to 200 times higher than what is allowed under the Clean Water Act — and 10 times saltier than ocean water, Vengosh said. But fracking wastewater is exempt from that law, he said.

Researchers say they are sure the contaminants are coming from fracking because the Josephine facility treats this oil and gas wastewater, and the water contains the same chemical signature as rocks in the Marcellus Shale Formation, Vengosh said.

“The occurrence of radium is alarming — this is a radioactive constituent that is likely to increase rates of genetic mutation” and poses “a significant radioactive health hazard for humans,” said William Schlesinger, a researcher and president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in Millbrook, New York.

In Rare Move, Top Generals Told to Retire

Citing negligence and a “pattern of failure,” the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps told two two-star generals on Monday, Sept. 30, that they were relieved of command, the first time such high-ranking personnel have been let go since the Vietnam War era.

Charles Gurganus and Gregg Sturdevant had been in charge of Marine operations at Camp Bastion, a NATO base in Afghanistan. In September of 2012, fifteen Taliban operatives dressed in U.S. Army uniforms entered the base via an unguarded entrance.

Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus, left, and Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant, who have been ‘asked to retire’.

Two Marines were killed, eight wounded, and $200 million worth of NATO Harrier jets destroyed.

Patrols by Marines and British soldiers around the perimeter of the base had been cut back as troop withdrawals proceeded; the guardhouse had been turned over to Tongan soldiers. General Gurganus investigated the security failure and expressed his opinion that the insurgents “just got lucky.”

Not so much, decided the high command, saying that security should have remained a higher priority than it evidently was, especially at the same base where an Afghani translator had rammed a van into a plane carrying Leon Panetta, then Secretary of Defense, and attempted to run over Gurganus himself. During the investigation of the September 2012 attack, officers testified that Marines who could have been walking perimeter control were taking online classes or extra workouts instead.

A Washington Post article about the lack of security on the night of the attack triggered the renewed investigation.

Despite the widespread use of the word “fired” in reporting the story, “asked to resign” is the more accurate phrase. The Secretary of the Navy is now responsible for determining the rank at which the two will be retiring. If allowed to retire as major generals, each will still receive an annual pension of $145,000.

War: Pentagon Goes on Eve-of-Shutdown Shopping Spree

What to do to keep busy in the Pentagon the night before a governmental shutdown that will furlough 400,000 Defense Department employees? Why, spend more than $5 billion on military-related contracts, of course.

But honey, the old one was getting shabby — and this was such a great deal! The adorable MH-6 Little Bird helicopter; photo: militaryfactory.com

The end-of-the-fiscal-year action is an annual occurrence, but sometimes context is everything — and Monday night the number of contracts awarded jumped from 14 on Sept. 3, the start of the work month, to 94.

Among the items purchased in the weapons shopping spree were: $2.5 billion worth of “various weapons system spare parts” used by the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, from aircraft-engine maker Pratt & Whitney; $40 million worth of Finnish hand grenades that allow “users to choose the level of blast needed for the situation”; and spy gear for the Air Force, including satellites, drones and drug-dealer hunting planes.

Defense-related research was funded, too: the Air Force Research Lab gave Johns Hopkins University $7 million to develop software that can scan raw communications signals and images “to detect significant ‘events’ in real time,” and Boeing received a $49 million contract to upgrade the Army’s MH-6 Little Bird helicopter.

But don’t think for a second the Pentagon ignored ‘the little people’: janitors at Navy medical centers in San Diego got $9 million added to their existing nine-figure contract; and militaries in other countries will receive $200 million worth of Interceptor-brand body armor made by Federal Prisons Industries (perpetuating the exploitation of the incarcerated, one foreign war at a time!).

It’s ok, though, since nine companies are sharing $900 million to figure out alternative energy projects to keep the Army Corps of Engineers busy. Apparently it’s easy to be green in D.C. — as long as it means giving money to the military.

Peace: Yousafzai, Snowden Nominated for Human Rights Award

Edward Snowden, the American NSA contract worker who blew the lid off his employer’s widespread spying activities, and Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl who was attacked by the Taliban for promoting education and women’s rights, are both finalists for the Sakharov Prize.

Malala Yousafzai, left, and Edward Snowden.

Awarded by the European Parliament, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought honors “exceptional individuals who combat intolerance, fanaticism and oppression,” according to the parliament’s website.

The front-runner is widely seen as Yousafzai, who was nominated by six different parties.

Yousafzai spoke for the first time last July at the UN Youth Assembly, saying, “One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world,” and “There was a time when women asked men to stand up for women’s rights. This time we will do it for ourselves.”

Snowden was nominated by Europe’s Green party and a leftist group, GUE/NGL.

“The surveillance of whole populations, rather than individuals, threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time,” he said in a statement that was read aloud in the Parliament on Monday, according to The New York Times.

The Koch Brothers Don’t Want You to Have Health Care

The Koch brothers — oil oligarchs trying to dismantle government to escape regulation — have been funding the anti-Obamacare camp for months, if not years. Now their tactics are hitting people (and especially young adults) where they’re most vulnerable: their rape fears.

Logo for Koch Brothers Exposed.

You may have already seen the two creepiest anti-Affordable Care Act ads out there. In one, a disturbing Uncle Sam pops up between a woman’s feet, clutching a speculum, as she lies on an exam table in stirrups; in another, he arrives behind a man who’s curled up awaiting a prostate exam, donning a latex glove.

The ads do exactly what they are intended to: prey on anyone who finds these basic medical procedures even a little uncomfortable, upsetting or invasive. “Don’t let government play doctor,” the ad ends. “Opt out of Obamacare.”

The ads conflate government involvement with rape, distracting viewers from the fact that any form of universal health care coverage requires intergenerational participation to be sure the system works for all. It’s like how everyone who works pays into Medicare to support those who need it, on the understanding that the next generation will do the same, and that those now dependent on these services have already paid for things like public education for younger generations.

Generation Opportunity, the supposed youth political group responsible for creating the ads, has made it their mission to derail the Affordable Care Act by killing off enrollment by healthy Millennials. According to an Alternet article by Marty Kaplan, along with the TV ads “the Kochs are funding a propaganda blitz at town fairs, tailgate parties and on 20 campuses, where pizza and lies will be handed out to young Americans.”

More like ‘Generation Opportunist’. And they’re just one of many groups that either receive significant donations from the Kochs to kill off Obamacare, or which are outright front groups for their economic policy bullying, raping and pillaging.

Who defines what counts as artistic collaboration — those involved or those watching? Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but music lives in all parts of the body. Video still: Bottom Percussion 2.

Getting to the Bottom of Things, Drummer-Style

When the band Patax released its first Bottom Percussion video on YouTube, some people loved the playful ingenuity of Spanish jazz fusion percussionist Jorge Perez as he drummed on four toned (and tuned) derrieres. Others leveled accusations of misogyny and objectification at him for apparently treating women as objects. But was he? Or were viewers making gross assumptions based on partial information?

In response, Patax released a short secondary video showing that all was not as it seemed — then quickly realized the conversation swirling around issues of creativity, sexism, racism, degradation and more deserved a more comprehensive, beautiful and articulate response. Be sure to watch all the way to the end.

Government Shutdown, Libra New Moon and The Mars Effect

In this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM, I cover the shutdown of the U.S. government [link to chart on Facebook here]. Is this really a shutdown? How is it happening and how long is it going to last?

Erica Quitzow played Backstage Studio Productions on Sept. 20, 2013. Photo by Eric Francis.

I also cover the Libra New Moon [view chart here] that happens today, with the Sun fully involved in the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto-Typhon grand cross in the cardinal signs.

And I also introduce the 2014 annual edition of Planet Waves — called The Mars Effect. It will focus on Mars retrograde in Libra — the defining (extended) event of 2014. This will include written and audio readings for all 12 signs. It also includes articles and resources. I describe my method of casting and reading the astrology and explain why my readings work so well.

The annual is a Planet Waves tradition — this year is my 14th time doing the project (the first was in 1999, so it’s something that started in the 20th century). Before we offer it separately, we’re offering it as part of the All-Access Pass — our “you can have it all” option.

My musical guest is the magnificent Erica Quitzow, who performed recently at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston, NY. I play three of Erica’s songs. Here is her Facebook page.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

Weekly horoscope for Friday, Oct. 4, 2013 #969 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Look closer at what seem to be contradictory demands within a relationship, whether they’re being made on you, or you figure out you’re making them on someone else. Your chart suggests that you want perfect freedom for yourself and perfect fidelity from someone else. This would work in a perfect world where we understand that fidelity and honoring freedom are the same thing. It works less well when those you care about have to compensate for your position, make allowances and ultimately put up with some hypocrisy because they love you. However, sooner or later their goodwill may run out, and you may be seeing signs of it wearing thin already. To solve this, listen to what partners and loved ones say about what they need — and take the initiative to provide that. If a request or desire leads you to feel threatened or hemmed in, consider the specifics carefully, and by that, I mean in a way that is fair — as they see it, not just as you see it.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — On the outside you appear to be in a “get serious” moment, yet what you’re doing internally is trying to resolve a paradox. Taking things earnestly will help resolve the part about exterior boundaries and mutually agreed-upon rules of conduct. To work out the inner level will call for some subtlety of self-observation. You’re likely to see various unconscious patterns show up in your relationships — even things you thought you addressed years ago. The fact that they are showing up now does not mean that you’re back where you started. It means you get a new opportunity to look at them and make a decision about what they mean and whether you want to let them go. The theme once again is who has adult power in your life — and whether you’ve taken this authority in a meaningful way. As you do all of this, Friday’s New Moon in Libra is a reminder to keep things on the practical level. Look for real things you can do that are designed to get a noticeable, useful result.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Don’t overthink a work- or health-related problem — use your intuition (there is such a thing, and you have access to it) and your creativity (it’s good for more than making collages). I know there are many jobs, and tasks within those jobs, that seem routine — seemingly subject to no form of inspiration. There are plenty of bosses who want things done in the most straightforward way. The end product, therefore, must match what the task requires, but how you get there is your own process. One thing your charts are suggesting is your having access to information you might not be in line for, especially with the help of someone in a position of authority. If you’re taken into someone’s confidence, treat that as a sacred honor and protect your source. For you who already have considerable responsibility on your hands, the solution may come from someone younger and less experienced who just happens to know something or who can see the problem in a way that it can be solved.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Someone wrote to me recently and said there’s been too much mention of sex in the Cancer horoscope. Sex relates to just about everything, especially the things that people come to astrologers for the most often: money, creativity and relationships. Your chart is becoming increasingly focused on the topic rather than less so. Mercury is now in Scorpio (sex, emotional depth and transformation), which is your 5th solar house (erotic play and creativity). Soon it’s going to be retrograde in that sign, meaning it’s going to spend close to two months in one of the most sensitive regions of your chart. There are many messages here, especially this: what you think has nothing to do with sex is all about sex. And this: get ready to learn some things about your past that might surprise you. The most pressing question is: what do you need to feel safe, as a lover, as a member of a family or household, and as a person making your contribution on the planet? In two words, the answer is: no secrets.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — The astrology of the moment suggests you could get involved in nearly anything with anyone — so use some discernment. The same astrology is also granting you leverage to open doors and the insight to look through situations, figure out what information is relevant and make decisions that have actual impact on your world and the world around you. It would help if you tuned in to the scale of your situation — to see what you’re working with, who and what is influencing you, and who you’re influencing. You seem to be walking a fine line, though you’re on much more solid ground than you may imagine, with many more options than you may think. The main asset I suggest you cultivate is flexibility. Start in small ways. Change your routines a little. Travel home a different way than you went someplace. Look from side to side instead of straight ahead. There is interesting and even useful information coming from all directions. Where any one task, project or commitment is concerned, you have many more options than you think.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Think of self-worth as human currency that you can trade for other experiences and opportunities. Well, you don’t really trade it, because you’ll end up with more of the stuff when you’ve accomplished something meaningful to you. Yet it is similar to credit in that the ability to ‘pay’ for an experience (which means to come through for yourself, to stand up to a challenge or to learn something that enriches your life) is what keeps you in the game. Start with the strength to dare. Allow yourself to experiment with something you think is over your level of talent or ability, or that you might not have the confidence to try. Then go for it. I don’t mean to say that all self-esteem is based on what you achieve, but I will say that a significant dimension of it is. This is especially true if you achieve something you thought you couldn’t do or didn’t have the guts to dare. Then you allow that to become a life lesson — or said another way, something you learn about yourself.

Attention Libras (and those with Libra rising or Moon): To get the best price on your 2013 birthday reading by Eric Francis, pre-order now here. Pre-ordering gets you $10 off the published price, and we’ll email the access info to you as soon as it is ready.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You stand at a crossroads, on a scale that you may not even dare imagine. It’s an inner intersection that joins together where you’ve come from with where you are now, and several potential realities that you have the option to manifest. Yet lately you may feel like it’s more of a crosshairs than a meeting of avenues. That sense of impending risk, danger or challenge is a slightly veiled sensation of your potential coming into maturity. This doesn’t necessarily arrive with the promise of how wonderful life will be when you step into a dream. It might arrive with a hint of how daunting it is to confront the truth of your own talent, or the potential to realize a desire. Whether you’re confronting a question, embarking on a mission or freeing yourself from a commitment that no longer works for you, your astrology is describing a sense of awe at what is possible. Now the key is to see this as something inside yourself rather than external to you.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Mercury in your sign is a wakeup call, which means an invitation to use your intelligence. You might be thinking that the mental and emotional challenges you face are beyond your ability to handle them, though this seems to be more about the influence of something from the past rather than a proven truth about who you are right now. How you handle this is a matter of psychological perspective. If you feel overwhelmed, you may be feeling like a child who is being asked to stand up to an adult, or who’s being expected to grow up too young. In a sense that is (or at least was) true, though the ‘adult’ is something that you’ve internalized. One of its messages is that change is impossible. Yet while that voice is whispering to you, you seem to be secretly dreaming of revolution. It is indeed when change seems impossible that revolution is the most necessary.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — I am sure you’ve had the insight that the world would be a happier place if more of us were as interested in what we could contribute to a situation as what we could get out of it. With Jupiter, your ruling planet, coming under focus in Cancer (the sign of nurturing) and in your solar 8th house (that of exchange), the question of what you offer and receive in your relationships is a top priority. Jupiter is suggesting that you have a lot to offer, and that at the same time, if you’re open, plenty is coming your way. You can therefore afford to be generous. Yet if you’re feeling resistant to sharing yourself in some way, I would propose that it’s the result of a deeper anxiety: something hinting at your relationship to existence. It’s difficult to get access to the source of this kind of issue, though you have it now, and will have increasing access over the next few weeks. You can understand this, and you can work it out.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Come on like a storm. Refuse to hesitate, to second guess, to equivocate. Present yourself at full strength and with your full intent. But let beauty and refinement be your camouflage. Set your goals, focus on what you want and actively take the steps to get there. Yet make sure everything is presented elegantly, diplomatically and in a way that honors the aesthetics that one might expect under the specific circumstances involved. Yes, there is a way to be radical and tasteful; revolutionarily beautiful. You can say just about anything you want, as long as you say it well, and proofread your copy. You can present any idea you want, as long as you make it easy for people to understand. You can do nearly anything you want, as long as you do it with some finesse. Beauty, finesse and clarity offer credibility, by demonstrating that you really do care about others. Perhaps it’s a trick of the mind, or a trick of astrology involving a magnificent Libra event in your chart. What matters is that you will get results, even if you think that’s unlikely.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — There is a spiritual solution to what you’re facing, which is to say that nothing is impossible and nothing is beyond the reach of healing. Yet two things are necessary. One is focusing on your relationship with your inner Source, wisdom and intelligence as a higher priority than focusing on a human relationship. This is not an either/or situation but rather an order of priorities in a moment when you are trying to work out something that may seem beyond human power. Allow the light to work through you, and then stand back and allow it to work through the situation. Ask for a change of perception, that is, to see the situation a different way. I suggest you not focus on the results, but rather on how you see things and how you feel. Your willingness is the essential ingredient. So be willing, state it to yourself out loud, take a breath and know that your next steps are guided.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You may find that unresolved circumstances and hanging questions progress rapidly over the next couple of days. I suggest therefore that you make no investment in what you don’t want, or in solving problems that have resisted your best efforts, and focus on affirming what you want. If you’re unsure of that in the ultimate sense, focus on what is working in your life by doing more of it. Emphasize the positive, and people who keep you in a life-affirming state of mind, if only to increase your chances of feeling good. If you find yourself resisting something, focus on something that is easier, more fun or more personally relevant. I would remind you of one other thing: you may be the missing presence in any situation that requires a catalyst, spiritual boost or infusion of energy. This is less about what you do and more about the fact that you show up with an open mind and consciously choose to allow the situation to unfold.

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Moonshine Horoscopes — Libra New Moon Edition

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Friday is the Libra New Moon, exact shortly before 8:35 pm EDT. (View full chart here.) Genevieve Hathaway has interpreted this lunation for each of the 12 Moon signs in her horoscopes below.

Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

There’s a lot going on in this chart, but the major thing you’ll likely be feeling is having the Sun and Moon together in Libra, square Pluto in Capricorn and opposite Uranus in Aries. The Uranus-Pluto square is the aspect currently defining our era; it’s the thing that most of the major news stories have been reflecting for well over two years, and that will continue for several more.

When something like a New Moon (or another ‘personal’ planet) gets involved, it becomes easier to feel how these powerful, slowly moving planets work. You might have a persistent sense that something bigger than you is at work in your life, and that you have a choice: either feel overwhelmed by it or find a way to take part in it.

In particular, notice this week if you’re finding yourself involved in a power struggle of some sort — whether with another person or within yourself (or both). Notice how you respond to power. Again, you have a choice: to struggle and create drama, or to feel your own power and act from a place of actual strength. Many people are so used to not having power, that they think exercising it must mean getting dramatic, or standing in another’s way, or refusing to change course.

But imagine for a moment that you’re steering a canoe down some rapids. You can either try to block the river by positioning the boat sideways, or point it forward and work with the water — with your eyes focused on where you want to be. Strength comes in many forms.

To read Genevieve’s horoscopes, it helps to know your Moon sign (where the Moon was at the moment of your birth), which you can find out by entering your birth data into Serennu.com. It helps to have your birth time but often that’s not necessary. You can also read these horoscopes for your Sun and rising signs for additional insight.

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter

These Moonshine Horoscopes are written by Genevieve Hathaway. Genevieve is an astrologer and Planet Waves contributor. She is available for astrology readings. You can contact her at genevieve@venusinblue.com.

Libra New Moon Moonshine Horoscopes | By Genevieve Hathaway

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You may feel like you are living in a hall of mirrors, as though the people and relationships around you are reflecting back aspects of yourself. At times this may feel a bit disconcerting, or like you are living with too much ‘you’. I suggest not getting distracted by any feelings of being pulled in too many directions. Instead, focus on the new objectivity being provided through these reflections of who you are — you can also think of this as gaining enough distance to see how your attitudes, perceptions and actions created your current situations. I suggest finding grounding in acceptance and grace for your past actions. From a point of view of acceptance of responsibility, you have the personal power to choose the kind of life you live and craft your reality into what you envision. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You are in the unique position to make quite a bit of headway regarding a certain aspect of your emotional health that you have been working on for a while. As you’ve worked and reworked the fine edge of how you feel physically, a solution may have seemed elusive or like you almost had it figured out and something unexpected shifted you in a different direction. The Libra New Moon this week is bringing you into contact with a new way to approach your health. An opportunity is opening for you to re-envision what a healthy life looks like for you. As you step out of the typical definitions and concepts surrounding health, I suggest you think in terms of what daily, weekly and monthly rhythms are best for you, and then restructure your life from there. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You are working with a lot of creativity at your disposal. You have a plethora of ideas and plenty of energy to put those ideas to work to move projects along. This may come with an internal push to devote all of yourself to your projects, yet a larger group may be trying to demand more of your energy than you want to give. I suggest you take a different approach and notice the point where their needs and your needs with a particular project meet. That is where a solution will present itself to advance your projects and continue to nurture and grow your relationship with this group. I suggest not being deterred if this feels like you are out in front, forging a new path — this is a sign that you are actually where you are supposed to be. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You are working with a new feeling regarding what home means for you. I suggest taking the larger view — seeing your neighborhood, place of work and common places you visit also as part of your home environment. As a Cancer Moon, you need an environment that is emotionally nourishing, a space that provides internal balance and grounding. Over the next week, I suggest you consider whether these spaces where you live, work and play are giving you what you need. Look for that inner sensation of being balanced. You can also think of this as an internal stillness and sense of quiet. When you notice that feeling take stock of the situation and how the environment is structured. You will be able to apply what you are learning to all the spaces in which you live and work. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You are connecting the dots between a few new ideas you’ve had around how you communicate your needs. What you are making contact with is the value of adopting all responsibility for how your ideas are communicated. You can’t control how other people respond, but you can stay in your personal power, owning the words you say and how your ideas are put forward. As you work from this position, I suggest tackling one complicated set of communications in particular that has been on your plate for quite some time. You are in a unique position both to see all points of view and to communicate to others how to find a solution that seems fair to all involved. As you move forward, trust your ability to translate the ideas you need to convey to the other individuals involved. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — At the moment, you are working through a process of re-thinking where you invest your emotional resources. Your deepest needs are calling you to acknowledge how you spend your emotional capital and energy. To feel good emotionally about who you are on a daily basis, you need to be investing your time and love into people and projects you care about. I suggest you consider work that benefits maternal figures in your life. These projects are bringing you into contact with some old material surrounding your relationship with your mother. Presenting itself is an opportunity for both healing and a deeper sense of connection to a meaningful life. I suggest taking note of what activities are self-renewing and which just drain your energy, then structure your day-to-day life to incorporate more of the former. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — This week’s New Moon takes place in your Moon sign, highlighting your relationship with yourself. How honest are you with yourself regarding the life you are living? Often we have mental and emotional scripts that we sell to ourselves as real, yet they are not actually markers of what is true. You can think of these scripts as themes that come up time and time again for healing. They are also the negative voices that play in our heads, filled with pain, guilt, shame or fear. When you hear one of these voices or scripts write it down and then objectively look to see where or whom it came from. As you trace these thoughts and feelings to past situations or relationships, you will also gain greater perspective on how far you have grown and healed. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Your dreams are particularly potent, containing much in the way of useful information surrounding deep emotional material that you are working through. If the meaning of your dreams seems particularly elusive, I suggest using a mix of objectivity and your intuition to translate them. As your subconscious moves through the layers of your psychic body you will make contact with deep material that may include wounds of misplaced blame. What you access does not just apply to your current lifetime, but goes back generations. Take time to record the details of your dreams, and most importantly, how you feel about them. This will help you connect the dots and bring the larger message into focus. Once this picture starts to take shape, you will be able to apply your intuition to find the most effective method for healing. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Make an effort to notice how the choices you make move you into ownership of your authority over your needs and emotions. Also, notice when you give that power away to others. Each time you have a choice in front of you, think of it as an opportunity to make a decision based on integrity — which can also be thought of as operating in line with your core values. This is about honoring who you are and your needs. Part of what it means to be your own authority is claiming your space to be you, not altering how you are to please others or protect a part of yourself (or them). If making decisions from this position of personal authority feels too bold or dangerous, it’s a sign that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You are gaining a new perspective on how your public self meets the world. Consider that there are two aspects of your public persona — who you are and who you show up as. How are you showing up? Are you bringing the best of you? I’m not referring to putting on a false face when you meet people, but rather showing up as your best authentic self, leaving out any fears or insecurities. As you interact with people, check with yourself and see which version of yourself you are sharing with them. Start from a place of stripping away any of your usual facades. If this feels vulnerable, that’s a clue you are on the right track. Take note of how people respond — you will be attracting more people who resonate with who you are at the deepest level. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — What do you value? I suggest taking a few moments to write down the top five things you value. By value, I mean what resonates within you on the deepest, most instinctual level. They are the things you feel happiest giving your time, energy and love to. You are entering a time when you will be called on to pick between multiple directions you can move in your life. I suggest using this list of values as a starting point for the choices you are making, a guide by which you check to see if a decision or path is taking you closer to or further from the things you value the most. Trust that by saying ‘no’ to things that matter less you will free up more time and energy for those values that are most important to you. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You are working through some issues around blame, particularly blame or criticism you direct at yourself. I suggest considering your actions and people’s reactions as two separate entities. I don’t mean that you disconnect from being kind and thoughtful; you do that instinctively. Rather, I’m talking about those moments when you get hard on yourself for being true to you in how you reach out to others. How others respond has more to do with them than you. Trust that operating from a place and position of love for all involved will be noticed and accepted, even if the other party does not respond as you would desire or expect. Keep the focus on communicating and acting in ways that are true to you — ultimately you don’t need a lot of people to respond; you just need enough. — by Genevieve Hathaway

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Astrological Hurricane Season (and monthly forecasts)

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Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300. Photo by NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team.

Dear Friend and Reader:

It’s now hurricane season, a time of year when the conditions are correct for the formation of big, cyclonic storms. Hurricanes get their energy from the ocean’s warmth, and as the oceans have increased in temperature, more energy is available. You might describe the positions of the planets this way as well: the hotter they get, the more energy is available here on Earth.

The short version of the story is that the Sun is now moving through the Uranus-Pluto square — what I call the 2012-era aspect. We are also about to experience two powerful eclipses concurrent with Mercury retrograde in Scorpio. The combined result will be a sustained phase of planetary energy that will make itself known many ways.

In one sense the whole year has led to this moment — the extended moment of autumn 2013. In reality the setup goes back a lot further; let’s see if I can bring you up to date. (If you want further background, search for an article called The Road to Xibalba in the Planet Waves archives.)

Hurricane Earl, from 2010, was a long-lived and powerful tropical cyclone which became the first major hurricane to threaten New England since Hurricane Bob in 1991. Photo: NOAA.

Around 2008, an aspect pattern started forming, which involved Pluto ingressing Capricorn. If you were following the astrology blogs at the time, it was just about the only topic going. Pluto is a slow-mover (the slowest-moving planet used by most astrologers, who will be catching up to the Kuiper Belt and Eris in their next lifetimes). Slow means influential; slow means that Pluto events last a while. Pluto means that nothing is the same after he’s come through town.

Speculation about Pluto in Capricorn goes back many years; it was perceived in advance as one of those really ominous transits, and now we are in the midst of it. Pluto in a sign helps define a whole era of time, concentrating and focusing change in the topic areas associated with the sign in question. Depending on where Pluto is in its orbit, it can take between 12 and 30 years to make it through one sign. It will be in Capricorn until 2023-2024.

The subject area of Capricorn is the structure of society. Corporations, governments, families and traditions all are covered by Capricorn.

Pluto is both creative and destructive. It brings change, and in the path of those changes there can be considerable progress. Yet the door can also open up for some serious negativity. One example was the Saturn-Pluto opposition of 2001-2002. A few astrologers predicted terrorism for this era; none that I am aware of predicted a world war lasting 12 years and counting.

The first year that Pluto touched the foothills of Capricorn, we experienced the financial collapse of 2008. I can still see the smirk on Henry Paulson’s face as he announced that the bailouts would begin, trying so hard to suppress his glee. I remember well John McCain suspending his presidential campaign, allegedly to solve the problem with his own bare hands. Financial institutions were collapsing in house-of-cards style, and the money was flowing freely.

Astrologers around the world muttered, “Pluto in Capricorn has begun.” (Banking policy spotters around the world muttered, “yep, I told you so.” They had.)

One of the momentous institutional failures at the beginning of Pluto in Capricorn was American International Group, a vast insurance company. Many banks were bailed out; many that you have not heard of went under. Photo by Neil Irwin.

In 2011, another (somewhat quicker) slow-mover — Uranus — ingressed Aries. On that very day (March 11, 2011), within hours of the ingress, a tsunami and earthquake took out a chunk of Japan, causing a huge mess at several nuclear power plants, the most famous of which was Fukushima.

Astrologers around the world muttered: “Oh shit. Uranus in Aries. And oh. Uranus square Pluto. Here we go.” Those who follow global astrology no doubt noticed the connections of both transits to the Aries Point — the first degree of Aries, where all things political intersect with all things personal.

Everyone remembers 2011, the year the Uranus-Pluto square really began: the protests that spread through the Middle East and across North Africa; the protests in Wisconsin; and then that autumn, the worldwide Occupy movement began in a private park in New York City. Real people were taking their bodies to the scene of the crime and demanding action.

And you may remember, if you haven’t suppressed it, the agony of that first month after the meltdowns in Japan, as the truth slowly came out. People who understand nuclear power know that it’s perhaps the most personal-as-political thing there is if, for instance, a little strontium-90 lodges in one’s bones.

The Uranus-Pluto square has been working its way across the signs Aries and Capricorn, and will make a total of seven contacts. The next one is on Nov. 1. It is the midpoint of the cycle — the fourth of seven events. There will be another during the next eclipse season, on April 21, 2014; and then another on Dec. 15, 2014. The last will be on March 16, 2015. Then the energy of the aspect will slowly wane, though it can do so with considerable influence, even for another five years.

Every now and then (quite a bit, lately), other planets get into the aspect pattern, and bring its properties out into the open. For example, Jupiter is now in Cancer, making what’s called a T-square with Uranus and Pluto.

Recently Venus and then Mercury passed through Libra, completing a grand cross. Challenging events associated with Mercury’s passage through the aspect were the Colorado floods and the mass shooting at the Navy Yard. When that Libra leg of the cross is filled, it can be intense. Part of that is because the grand cross is the most powerful aspect pattern. Adding to the energy is the fact that there’s a little-known slow-moving planet, similar to Pluto, already in Libra opposite Uranus and square Pluto — Typhon, the namesake of typhoons.

The Occupy Wall St. movement was a herald of the Uranus-Pluto square. Photo by Eric Francis.

The first thing that happens this autumn is that the Sun in Libra passes through the aspect structure. On Oct. 1, the Sun will square Pluto (that is deep, introspective and compelling changes that can take root on the soul level). On Oct. 3 it will make an opposition to Uranus (surprises, shocking developments, revelations, inventions), and over the next few days, a conjunction to Typhon (exact Oct. 6) (perhaps passing through the eye of the storm). On Oct. 12, the Sun will make a square to Jupiter, which tends to magnify things and also provoke decisions.

Even if these aspects were happening inisolation from each other, we would feel them. That they are happening concentrated within a few days means there is likely to be a global effect. You don’t need a crystal ball to guess what that effect might be — some lunatics in Congress are threatening to hold the United States, and by extension the world financial networks, hostage.

Their issue is that they don’t want the Affordable Care Act (also called Obamacare, invented by the rightwing Heritage Foundation, enacted by Congress, signed by the president and approved by the Supreme Court) to be any further entrenched. This autumn is the time that the health insurance exchanges open in all 50 states.

If you live in England or Canada or Sweden or someplace civilized like that, this must sound awfully weird — to threaten to push the country into default, and/or to defund and therefore shut down the government, because a small minority of legislators don’t like a law that provides health services for people. I wish I was making this up, then I could edit it and things would be different.

If that happens, we will certainly experience the Uranus-Pluto square full-on, in solar style. Note that the Sun, which is doing all the passing-through, in mundane astrology (the astrology of worldly affairs) represents the head of state. The fact that the head of state is going to have a wild ride for at least the first two weeks of October means that the whole government may be in turmoil.

Speaking of Oct. 1, that’s the day that Mercury enters what’s sometimes called shadow phase — the earliest measure of the Mercury retrograde effect beginning. The retrograde itself — the peak of the event, when Mercury appears to move in reverse longitude through the zodiac — begins on Oct. 21 and ends Nov. 10. The second shadow phase ends Nov. 27. This is definitely something to plan around. Follow the Planet Waves blog and Planet Waves FM and your member editions for ongoing details, which will be useful to keep up with.

Typhon, the most fearsome monster of Greek mythology, was so terrible that it took Zeus himself to fight him. Now a planet by this name is part of the cardinal grand cross — Typhon, Jupiter, Uranus, Pluto — and in a moment, the Sun.

This is actually pretty good timing for most purposes in the Western world, since we leave Mercury retrograde behind around Thanksgiving, and well before the end-of-the-year madness reaches its peak. However, as this happens, Venus is warming up to one of its relatively rare retrogrades (Venus is retrograde least of all the planets). That takes place Dec. 21 through Jan. 31 (not including shadow phases). I will come back to that one next month.

Right in the mix of Mercury retrograde, making things especially interesting, is a pair of eclipses. Both are impressive in their own right. All eclipses come with a sense of acceleration, concentrated experiences and the feeling that fate is in operation. Eclipses are points of no return — and these two occur in the mix of much other astrology.

As for the eclipses — the first is the Aries Full Moon, which is a penumbral lunar eclipse. The Moon will pass through the outermost edge of the Earth’s shadow on Friday, Oct. 18. One of the most interesting features of the eclipse is that the Moon will be conjunct a major new discovery, Eris (the planet that got Pluto ‘demoted’).

Then as the Moon is waning, the Sun ingresses Scorpio on Oct. 23. About 10 days later on Nov. 3, we experience the corresponding New Moon event — a part-annular, part-total eclipse that is one heck of an impressive chart.

Eclipse of the Sun in Scorpio on Nov. 3 is a combined total and annular eclipse, notably, conjunct Saturn. It also happens during Mercury retrograde in Scorpio. You can see the eclipse group of planets to the left side of the chart. They include Mercury, the North Node, the Sun, the Moon and Saturn. Juno, square the eclipse group, makes more than a cameo (potentially stealing the show), bringing in eternal themes of relationship and social justice.

The eclipse (a conjunction of the Moon and Sun) will be conjunct Mercury, the North Node and Saturn. That’s a lot of planets concentrated together, during what’s already one of the most profound times of year even when nothing special is going on.

It will be essential, in the midst of all of this, to keep your focus, to maintain emotional grounding, and to stay in balance — all of which will be easier said than done. When the astrology is acting up, a good astrologer can be helpful. Through this whole season, I plan to be working on my 2014 annual readings for all 12 signs and rising signs.

For the past few weeks I’ve been studying and casting charts for the next 12 months, and they are pretty special, even by contemporary standards. What’s interesting about the autumn of 2013 is that it closely resembles what will be happening all through 2014 — the peak year of the Uranus-Pluto square.

My annual will be called The Mars Effect. Having read this article, when I say that Mars will be passing through the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto-Typhon configuration not once but three times, that will be meaningful — we are about to go on one heck of a ride. We are, as of this moment, embarking on what may be the most profound phase of the extended 2012 era; I would estimate this stretches from October of 2013 through August of 2014.

Confronted with this information, some astrologers will say hold on and some will say let go. I will say: stoke your vision, pay attention and look where you want to be.

Lovingly,

This week’s news briefs were written and researched by Amanda Painter, Susan Scheck, Carol van Strum, Anne Craig and your friendly neighborhood news editor, Eric Francis.

After the Fake Filibuster, a Game of Chicken

The rightwing fringes of the Republican party have been moaning for the past couple of years that candidates like McCain and Romney, despite unstinting support of big business and blustering on about American exceptionalism, simply weren’t conservative enough. The 2012 election cycle brought in a fresh crop of Tea Party-fancying congressional representatives, including the junior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.

Illustration from the Encyclopedia of Psychiatry under the term “narcissistic personality disorder.” Photo by Jonathan Bernstein.

If you recognize his name, that’s because he increased his visibility considerably this past week with a “filibuster” on the Senate floor lasting more than 21 hours, claiming that his intention was to bravely fight to defund the Affordable Care Act, known to most as Obamacare.

That was the first step in endlessly awaited health care reform designed to make medical coverage more accessible to more people. It’s the one thing that Obama has accomplished, and it seems that no matter how popular it is, Obama’s political enemies want to deny him a positive legacy.

As you may know, the federal government runs out of money in mid-October. To stay in business, it must pass what is called a “continuing resolution” (CR, in Beltway-talk), which extends the nonexistent budget. The federal government no longer uses a budget; it sputters along from CR to CR. The next one expires Tuesday, Oct. 1.

Last week the House of Representatives passed a 45-day CR that includes a condition: at the insistence of the Republican majority, funding the government only if the Affordable Care Act is cut off from resources. In other words, the majority of our representatives are willing to shut down the government if Obamacare is not starved of resources. Forget the fact that it’s been approved by all three branches of government, including a conservative-leaning Supreme Court.

So the Republicans, who now resemble anarchists, are planning a kind of holdup: they say they won’t approve a CR without also killing Obamacare. That in turn could force a government shutdown just as the Sun squares Pluto, setting off the rest of the grand cross — just as Mercury gets ready to station retrograde.

Friday, the Senate is scheduled to take up the House version of the bill, which will fail in the Democrat-controlled Senate. That means the country will still be without a CR, and the money runs out around Oct. 17. Most people are expecting pressure from the business community, meaning banks and financial markets, not the local tailor shop, to dissuade the Tea Partiers to allow the government to function. But that might not work.

Meanwhile, Republicans — eager for any influence they might have, and to do anything to make Obama look bad — have trained their guns on the rapidly approaching debt ceiling deadline. That is the limit on money the government must borrow to pay for things already purchased (wars, etc.).

How Ted Cruz missed the irony of his choice of ‘fake filibuster’ reading material is a mystery: once the narrator actually tries the green meal, he likes it. Image: MSNBC.

That issue must be resolved by Oct. 17, when the debt ceiling must either be raised — as has been done more than 50 times in recent decades — or the U.S. government will be in default on its current financial obligations. Republicans are offering to avert this crisis provided that Democrats will agree to (among other things) approving the Keystone XL pipeline and delaying the implementation of Obamacare for a year.

In other words, the Republican position is: do it our way or we blow the place up. Default would have many repercussions, including messing with financial markets, banking, thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of employees who depend on federal paychecks; not to mention the millions of people who depend on the government being there.

Will the federal government shut down? At this point, it seems unlikely that Congress will manage to get its collective self together and prevent that eventuality by midnight on Monday. Even if it does shut down, various Obamacare provisions will continue to go into effect.

One thing we can all count on is a bitter fight on the debt ceiling issue as we approach mid-October.

The glaringly obvious fact that emerges from the Cruz performance is that, rather than a good-faith effort to govern, the end game was all about either one guy getting attention, or one guy taking the fall for what a lot of people want to do but don’t want to stand up for.

Warren Revives Softer Draft Guidance for GMO Labeling

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a staunch consumer-protection advocate, is calling for the Food and Drug Administration to finalize a 12-year-old draft guidance in relation to the labeling of foods containing GMOs.

Is a little GMO labeling better than none? Elizabeth Warren seems to think so.

GMO labeling supporters are not entirely pleased with this, since the guidance is voluntary and not as tough as the mandatory national labeling requirements they seek.

The guidance calls for food manufacturers, should they choose to identify foods as containing GMOs, to use statements that explain how the food was modified through genetic engineering and avoid the phrase “GMO free” for foods that have not been modified.

“The term ‘GMO free’ may be misleading for most foods, because most foods do not contain organisms (seeds and foods like yogurt that contain microorganisms are exceptions),” the guidance explains. “It would likely be misleading to suggest that a food that ordinarily would not contain entire ‘organisms’ is ‘organism free.'”

However, 85% of corn and 93% of soy grown in the U.S. in 2013 has been genetically modified. These ingredients are added to many processed foods sold here — a leading reason for mandatory labeling.

Cross-contamination — GMO seeds finding their way into non-GMO corn and soy fields — is common, and therefore a wild card in any food product containing corn or soy. Mandatory labeling would eliminate at least some of the mystery in what we are eating.

Update: The Monsanto Protection Act will not be part of a bill to avoid the government shutdown, due to opposition by Senate Democrats Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, as well as strong action against it by the public. Mikulski announced Tuesday evening that it will be stripped from the Senate version of the bill.

Russia to Prosecute Greenpeace Activists for Piracy

Russia’s top investigative agency, the Investigative Committee, said Tuesday it will prosecute Greenpeace activists on piracy charges for trying to climb onto an Arctic offshore drilling platform owned by the state-controlled gas company Gazprom. Their ship, the Arctic Sunrise, was seized last week by the Russian Coast Guard in Murmansk, a Russian Arctic port.

Greenpeace ship ‘Arctic Sunrise’ is escorted by a Russian coast guard boat, off the Kola peninsula in Russia, on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP.

Piracy carries a potential prison sentence of up to 15 years and a fine of 500,000 rubles (about $15,500).

Two activists tried to climb onto the Prirazlomnaya platform last Thursday and others assisted from small inflatable boats. The Greenpeace protest was aimed at calling attention to the environmental risks of drilling for oil in Arctic waters.

Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said the activists posed a danger to operations on the oil platform. “Such activities not only infringe on the sovereignty of a state, but might pose a threat to the environmental security of the whole region.”

Greenpeace insisted that under international law Russia had no right to board its ship and has no grounds to charge its activists with piracy.

Russian president Vladimir Putin weighed in Wednesday at a forum on the Arctic, saying, “It is absolutely evident that they are, of course, not pirates. But formally they were trying to seize this platform … It is evident that those people violated international law.”

A spokesman for the Investigative Committee said the charges might be changed if new evidence emerges.

Hunger Strikes: Pussy Riot, Guantanamo

Nadia Tolokonnikova, one of two incarcerated members of Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot, has begun a hunger strike in protest of “slavery-like conditions” in a Mordovian penal colony. She is serving a two-year sentence for protesting Russian president Vladimir Putin with her band, who staged a “punk prayer” inside a Moscow cathedral on February 21, 2012.

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, prior to being sent to Mordovia’s Gulag-like prison colony No 14. Photo: AP

Tolokonnikova wrote an open letter, published in The Guardian UK, describing how inmates are in charge of giving others beatings and depriving them of rights, under the approval of prison officials; work sewing shifts as long as 17 hours; and endure inconceivable filth in an atmosphere of antagonism, terror and despair.

“A threatening, anxious atmosphere pervades the work zone. Eternally sleep-deprived, overwhelmed by the endless race to fulfill inhumanly large quotas, prisoners are always on the verge of breaking down, screaming at each other, fighting over the smallest things. Just recently, a young woman got stabbed in the head with a pair of scissors because she didn’t turn in a pair of pants on time,” she writes.

According to her husband, Peter Verzilov, Tolokonnikova has also faced death threats in retaliation for a complaint she sent through her lawyer.

In May the other jailed member of Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina, went on hunger strike for 11 days to protest prison conditions; allegedly many of her demands were met. A Mordovia prison system spokesman has denied Tolokonnikova’s allegations.

Meanwhile in Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military says it will stop reporting the number of prisoners on hunger strike when the official tally of striking prisoners has dropped below 19. The strike against indefinite detention began in February, with 106 out of the 166 prisoners participating at its peak, prompting Pres. Obama to address his failure to close the prison as promised. At this time, 18 prisoners are listed for force-feeding through inhumane nasal tubes.

Ego, Sexual Expectations and Viagra: More is Not Merrier

For centuries, human beings have done foolish things to boost their sex appeal, sex drive and sexual ability — often carrying (or thinking they must meet) unrealistically high expectations. Once in a while, the pursuit of sexual prowess has tragic consequences, as two men recently demonstrated with their misuse of Viagra. [Read earlier Planet Waves coverage of Viagra here.]

According to The Daily Mail, which cites the Columbia Reports website, a 65-year-old Colombian man recently underwent the amputation of his penis after intentionally overdosing on Viagra in an attempt to impress his new girlfriend.

Halloween is coming — but don’t eat a handful of these.

The man, from Gigante, Colombia (no joke), suffered an erection for several days before being forced to seek medical help (Viagra’s label advises seeking medical help for any erection lasting more than four hours). At that point, his penis was showing signs of gangrene; doctors chose to amputate to prevent its spread to other parts of his body.

He is now recovering physically (no word on his ego). A 25-year-old in Yemen was not so lucky last week.

The young man sought to impress his new bride by taking five Viagra pills at once on his wedding day. Upon his arrival home after the ceremony, he collapsed and died despite doctors’ attempts to revive him at a hospital.

By no means is this the first case of a man suffering heart attack or arrhythmia while using Viagra; the same effect the drug has on the nerve activity of the penis can also increase sympathetic nerve activity, which makes blood vessels constrict. And there are numerous other potential side effects.

That the death occurred in a man so young highlights a disturbing trend: young men taking erectile dysfunction drugs when they are not suffering from ED. In fact, one 2012 study found that young men using ED drugs ‘recreationally’ may actually be more likely to develop the condition, by creating a psychological dependence on them.

Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, warns quite specifically that combining Viagra with certain other medications, or using it in the presence of certain health conditions, can be dangerous. Pfizer’s website and labeling also advise that a man’s doctor may prescribe a lower dose if he is over 65.

But do the warnings need to be stronger? Even if they were, is it enough to sway a man who’s so desperate to be ‘enough’ for a woman in today’s world of non-stop sex in the media and Internet porn? People tend to think that ‘if a little is good, more must be better’ about everything from Tylenol to chocolate cake. Will we ever learn?

We Can Save the USPS — If We Want To

The Carper-Coburn bill (S. 1486), which threatens the viability of the U.S. Postal Service by ending Saturday delivery and door-to-door delivery, plus laying off more than 100,000 workers over several years, has been the subject of congressional hearings this week. It has also inspired legislation meant to counter the brick-by-brick dismantling of the USPS by reimagining how the struggling organization could recapitalize itself through diversifying its services.

With the sensible Postal Service Modernization Bills, Mr. ZIP could help you with your banking — and fund infrastructure — while keeping the USPS viable.

Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) have brought The Postal Service Modernization Bills, a pair of companion bills, to their respective wings of Congress.

“Needs that the post office might diversify into include (1) funding the rebuilding of our crumbling national infrastructure; (2) servicing the massive market of the “unbanked” and “underbanked” who lack access to basic banking services; and (3) providing a safe place to save our money, in the face of Wall Street’s new ‘bail in’ policies for confiscating depositor funds,” writes Ellen Brown, president of the Public Banking Institute, in a Truthout article.

“All these needs could be met at a stroke by some simple legislation authorizing the post office to revive the banking services it efficiently performed in the past.”

Bipartisan support for founding a national infrastructure bank (NIB) over the last six years keeps meeting opposition to using tax money for such a thing (while never-ending wars get continual funding). But Frederic V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, asks:

“[W]hat if we set up the NIB without using taxpayer funds? What if we allowed Americans to open savings accounts in the nation’s post offices and directed those funds into national infrastructure bonds that would earn interest for depositors and fund job-creating projects to replace and modernize our crumbling infrastructure?

“A post office bank … would not offer commercial loans or mortgages. But it could serve the unbanked and fund infrastructure projects selected by a non-partisan NIB.”

The idea has precedent: currently 1 billion people use the postal sector for savings and deposit accounts worldwide. With about one in four U.S. households counting as “unbanked” or “underbanked,” an NIB could serve as a true alternative to such extortionist options as prepaid debit cards, check cashing services and payday loans that keep people locked into poverty.

It’s a Dangerous Job but Somebody Has to Do it Well

New York Times staff photographer Tyler Hicks hadn’t planned on working last Saturday morning, Sept. 21. He was picking up some framed wedding photos in a shopping center when the neighboring Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, exploded into screams and shouts and gunfire.

People who had been watching a movie in the Westgate Mall being evacuated. Photo: Tyler Hicks / The New York Times.

You may know his name because he and three colleagues were held captive for six days by pro-Qaddafi fighters during the Libyan revolution.

Hicks ran toward the scene as everyone else was running away, and entered the mall through a service entrance with Kenyan security forces, photographing chaos with the little camera he had handy until his bride, fellow photojournalist Nichole Sobecki, got there with his Kevlar and pro gear.

By coincidence, then, the world ended up with a view of the attack’s early hours through the lens of a Pulitzer Prize winner. Long before the nearly five-day siege was over, Somali-based hard-liners Al Shabaab (“the youth” in Arabic) claimed credit. In a message released Wednesday, Al Shabaab blamed Kenya’s incursion into Somali and “Western states that supported the Kenyan invasion and are spilling the blood of innocent Muslims in order to pave the way for their mineral companies” for its attack.

The attack was carefully planned — Al Shabaab apparently rented a storefront within Westgate from which to plan and stage its bloodbath. This upended the conventional wisdom that AMISOM, made up of several African nations including Kenya and with substantial Western backing, was close to a decisive victory in the bloody Somalian conflict taking place against a backdrop of devastating famine.

Meanwhile, Kenyan military security forces were woefully unprepared for such an event, which is why it took days to bring under control. Counterterrorism planners said that this particular mall was such an obvious target, it was recently used for terrorism response training exercises.

Photo by Tyler Hicks / The New York Times.

Al-Shabaab, which grew from a relatively small offshoot of a formerly governing coalition to claim the al Qaeda brand, is reportedly unpopular within Somalia. The hardline political Islamists have plenty of innocent Muslim blood on their own hands. Reports of the mall attack demonstrate an effort to spin the PR fallout in their favor by checking to see if victims were Muslim before shooting them.

Kenya has the largest Somali refugee population in the world. Over half the Kenyan population survives on less than a dollar a day, and youth unemployment is over 75%, creating fertile ground for Al-Shabaab recruiters who work through Saudi-backed Islamic youth centers and offer $500 a month.

Expatriate Somalis living in the United States reject the idea that Al-Shabaab would have any great success recruiting among American youth, despite reports they’ve made it all the way to Minneapolis. Still being sorted out are reports that there were several nationalities among the mostly young attackers; Interpol has issued an arrest warrant for Samantha Lethwaite, the widow of a man who was killed participating in a London terror attack several years ago.

As of Thursday, 67 civilians from a dozen different countries and five militants are confirmed dead, including children as young as five; 61 people are still unaccounted for as forensic teams from several nations sift the rubble. Eleven militants are in custody. Also on Thursday, fighting ramped up along the Somalian/Kenyan border.

BlackBerry Sells Out, Goes Private, Stays In Business

It’s been a rough couple of years for RIM, makers of the iconic BlackBerry. At least it was rough before this week’s announcement that the company — called BlackBerry, after it’s smartphone product for the past year or so — would accept a $4.7 billion buyout. That offer came from Fairfax Financial Holdings, a Canadian consortium headed by Prem Watsa. The $9 a share proposition came Monday afternoon, following an announcement last Friday of layoffs and poor earnings.

A tool, not a toy — try selling it to teenagers.

Watsa was a BlackBerry board member until August, when the company announced it was for sale and the “Canadian Warren Buffett” stepped aside to avoid conflict of interest. Fairfax already holds about a tenth of BlackBerry stock, and the deal would make the formerly public company private.

Rumors of a buyout had been swirling around the company since at least 2011, when RIM stock dropped by 80%. In the past year, government agencies including the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the ICE all announced that they were opening up their portable IT bidding — formerly an exclusively BlackBerry niche — to rival companies like Apple and Samsung.

When the Defense Department announcement came last October, BlackBerry’s vice president for government solutions whistled a happy tune to CNET, claiming confidence that BlackBerry would continue dominating the business and government sectors. The device that revolutionized the communications world back around the turn of the century still has diehard fans, who gather on a dedicated forum to talk “Crackberries.” Pres. Obama famously carries one. But even Obama for America, his campaign organization, spent a pile of money on Apple devices for its workforce.

Watsa has said that he believes in the BlackBerry and that taking the company private will allow for retrenchment and healing. On the Crackberry board, they’re not a happy group. Many claim that when it comes to sheer solid functionality, nothing beats a BlackBerry. But the company that’s long marketed its devices as tools, not toys, seems unlikely to survive without some re-visioning going down. Even the Navy wants apps these days.

Kaleidolapse moment frozen in time: if you’ve been to Barcelona, do you recognize that tower?

Turning the World Inside Out: Barcelona Kaleidolapse

A walk around Barcelona would be enough eye candy for most of us, but now there’s this: a Kaleidolapse of the city, turning church spires, trees, people and streets into a wild moving mandala.

Kaleidolapse is a visual technique that applies a kaleidoscopic effect to different shots taken with time lapse photography. The multiple moving images are symmetrically multiplied, giving them an abstract look.

The technique was developed by MyLapse, a Barcelona-based production company specializing in time-lapse photography. The creative team set a single mandatory criterion: “At some point in every shot anyone should be able to identify the site of Barcelona that was filmed.” If you need some help with that, click here for a list.

Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl — Ghost of a Sabre Tooth Tiger.

Equinox, New Moon and Sean Lennon

In this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM I cover the Libra Equinox, the Libra New Moon and a Libra rock star — Sean Lennon — and his Leo collaborator, Charlotte Kemp Muhl. I cover the approach of the Sun to the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto-Typhon alignment on the cardinal cross — something that heats up for real over the weekend. My in-studio guest is Mike Amari, one of the truly bright minds behind attracting talent to BSP. (Read my coverage of BSP on Planet Waves here.) Meanwhile, Sean is playing this week at Backstage Studio Productions here in Kingston, NY. His performance group is called Ghost of a Sabre Tooth Tiger. Planet Waves FM is welcoming him to the neighborhood with an astrological tribute.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The extended monthly horoscopes for October are published below in this issue. Inner Space for October was published Friday, Sept. 20. We published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Pisces Full Moon Tuesday, Sept. 16. Moonshine for the Libra New Moon will publish Tuesday, Oct. 1. Please note, we normally publish the extended monthly horoscopes on the first Friday after the Sun has entered a new sign; Inner Space usually publishes the following Tuesday but for now it’s substituting for one Friday horoscope a month.

Planet Waves Monthly for October 2013 #968 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Others will have little choice but to deal with the fact that you cannot be anyone but yourself. Now, from one point of view, is it really possible ever to be anyone but yourself? Yet we all know how much faking so many people do. You’ve even done a little yourself every rare once in a while. You can count on opening your mouth and saying exactly what comes to mind, and trusting that the results will sort themselves out. I suggest you notice what you say to whom. Rather than being far flung and out of control, you’re being more precise than you may think. It just may take you some time to have respect for your own point of view, especially if you manage to send out some ripples or have a few objections sent your way. Pay attention to who says what; notice who is turned on by your outbursts of authenticity. The one thing that nobody can complain about is that you’re getting a lot done. I suggest you engage that fully, and focus an agenda of everything you want to get done for the rest of the year (assuming you’re on such a schedule) and set about doing it sooner rather than later. Get a solid start on every project; get your research and your facts together; make progress while there’s progress to be made.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You could set free an enormous amount of passion, of creativity, of karma — perhaps all three. This is less likely to happen following a conscious plan on your part, but is more likely to follow the path of one thing leads to another. Taurus is often described as a reserved sign, and on the surface it may seem to be that way. Yet right below your exterior is an ocean of energy; you know it and so does everyone around you. In some ways it’s amazing that you manage to keep yourself contained — though for the next few weeks, I don’t suggest you try too hard. Rather, do what you can to sense where you’re experiencing a buildup of energy. Vital force is vital force, though it takes a number of forms, and can be directed many different ways. You might think you’re experiencing anger when you’re really feeling the drive to connect. You might think you’re experiencing fear when you’re experiencing desire. If you can pay attention to the content of your feelings below the form they seem to be taking, it’ll be easier for you to use your energy productively and avoid a mishap — such as directing your emotions in a direction that might not be appropriate. You still have the power of choice, and with it the ability to access wisdom — which will become stronger the more you use it.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Maintain your boundaries, especially at work. You may not be able to mind your own business but it will be helpful if you give the impression that you’re doing so. Rather than asking questions, listen to what people say. You’re likely to find that people voluntarily tell you everything you need to know. All you’ll have to do is assemble the pieces, though be aware that on any matter of real significance, this could take until the second week of November. That’s when the forthcoming Mercury retrograde ends. Mercury, as the planet associated with Gemini, has personal relevance to you. Apart from the usual de rigueur stuff about making commitments or major purchases, the movements of Mercury are closely related to information coming to the surface of consciousness. Because this Mercury retrograde is in Scorpio, that relates to what is concealed below the surface. The retrograde is about going deeper, though there will be bursts of revelation both around the 21st of this month and the 11th of next month. I suggest, therefore, that you not finalize decisions, plans or even opinions about pending matters until you’re fully informed. What is brewing looks important enough to take seriously. This astrology could represent an opportunity, the solution to a problem, or an insight about a health matter. Most notably, it represents the emergence of a currently concealed option you will be happy to have available.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Take advantage of unusual developments in your professional life to stake out new territory. Your chart has been pointing you in the direction of new horizons for a long time. By that I don’t mean a change of career but rather the exploration of your talent. I also mean establishing yourself on a new level as a respected member of your profession, and one known and valued for what you do. This is a sensitive phase, and rather than being about guaranteed achievement, it’s a time to preserve what you’ve gained, build on your achievements, and notice the specific opportunities that are available to establish yourself. You may notice some contrast between what you’re capable of and what others are capable of — which is not an invitation to be competitive. Rather, you’re at a phase of your work where teaching and learning are emphasized strongly. Stabilize yourself and build your confidence by both working with a mentor and taking one or two people under your wing. The process of developing your own talent will be greatly enhanced by engaging with the skills, ideals and approach to life that others use. Your professional success depends less on your standing out than it does on making yourself an integral part of what you do — what you might think of as your inner reputation as opposed to your outer one. As you’ll see, the two are related.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You may think it would be wonderful if you could resolve that tension between dreaming big and wanting a perfect sense of security about the future. At the moment there is plenty of it — the bigger your vision, the less ‘safe’ and stable you may feel. Yet much as an electrical battery depends on those two polarities holding a charge, you are depending on this tension. In physics it’s called potential difference — with voltage. I suggest you work with the seeming contradiction between the way things are and the way things could be; between having your life be good enough and taking a risk to create something better. Much of this is in the realm of developing ideas that may ‘threaten’ your old ideas, or the mental patterns of the people around you. This, too, will present you with a form of tension that you can work with as a source of energy. At the same time, you seem to have no shortage of creativity and drive to move your ideas and plans forward. Here is the thing I would caution about: When you shake things up, that can come back to you as self-doubt, and in a weird way, as guilt. I suggest you proceed with the feeling that you’re entitled to express yourself as you are called to do, and to work with the formula “improvement is a form of necessary change.”

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Treat joint finances and ‘permanent’ commitments with more care than usual. I don’t mean hesitancy — I mean scrutiny. Inaccuracies that slip into the mix, whether intentional (deception) or seemingly unintentional (overlooking details) or careless (skipping over due diligence) will cause problems in the future, so there is an added necessity to proceed with impeccability. With Mars soon to be in your sign that would not normally be an issue, though an opposition to Neptune is saying that your mantra needs to be ‘reality check’. Check the facts, investigate your doubts; if everything seems perfect, get another opinion; if you find a problem, solve the problem and then find two others to fix. The heart of the matter, however, is how you handle negotiations with close partners. This is especially true if you don’t know they’re negotiations. However any time there is an agreement on the table, especially if it involves money, pause, remember that you’re actually in a negotiation-commitment process, and then invoke your ‘reality check’ mantra. You need to take your time discerning the motives of the people around you. Even if your intuition gives you good information, make sure that you back it up with evidence collected from observation over time. When you’re dealing with Neptune, which you are at this time in your life, taking careful, dated notes is one of the most useful ways to stay awake.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — An eclipse in your opposite sign Aries will give you a new perspective on a relationship. It’s like a veil will be pulled back allowing you to gaze into the unknown. The underlying reality is different than the one you can see under normal circumstances. You have experienced plenty the past couple of years that you don’t fully understand, spread throughout a diversity of situations. They all have something in common, and this is what I suggest you look for when you have those momentary opportunities to peer beyond the facade of existence. What you learn will help you sort out the issue of what you seem to want versus what you seem to get. You will feel better taking even small steps in this direction; I can offer you a clue — what you (really) want is unlikely to be the standard scenario of a comedy ending in suburban marriage. You have something edgier in mind; something more creative; something with more potential. Along the way, I suggest you evaluate your experiences not on whether they add up to your fantasy but rather how you feel about yourself. Each experience you have with another person has a way of influencing your inner relationship. This has nothing to do with the storyboard of expectations — it’s all about the real chemistry that you share with others, which in turn shapes your life and your experience of living.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Consider any and every change you’ve avoided making the past few years. Consider everything that’s stuck in your life, the places you experience boredom, and the ways you want to break free. Make some notes on all the promises you made with yourself about what you would be doing by the time you reached your current age. Astrological influences are gathering that may incline you to catch up on everything, all at once. I don’t recommend that as a method. Saturn is still in your sign; as much as that is reputed by astrologers to represent something that will not move, in fact Saturn never stops moving, and is your most dependable longterm influence when it comes to making real changes. Saturn’s presence is about focusing your energy and directing your passion in a way that’s directly integrated with that elusive thing known as logic. If you set out to accomplish a longterm goal, you need to be willing to take the necessary actions on the days that you don’t feel like doing it; on the days when that particular goal is not high on your priorities. This is a form of discipline that’s not inherent in your emotionally dominated sign — though I suspect it’s a personal goal for you to be able to focus on this. You now have an incentive. I’ll remind you in a month, but please don’t forget.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — You seem to be pursuing some recognition or success, which you’re associating with money. Is this a valid connection? What if you considered the participation-visibility aspect of your work as one idea, and the business success as another? I know that the two are often conflated — for example, fame (a form of participation, based on acclaim) is associated with fortune (financial success). They’re not the same thing, on any level. Acknowledgement for what you do, and the opportunities that open up, is its own critter. Along with this you may include the integrity you put into your work, the message, and the ways in which you grow as a result of expressing yourself. Success in business is not assured from any of this, nor is it a matter of luck. It’s a matter of careful planning, conscious decision-making, a learning process and the careful choice of partners. Looked at this way, it’s clear why scrambling up these two kinds of success ladders doesn’t work so well. No matter how well-known a person is, no matter how well respected, that does not ensure or even hint at cleverness when it comes to handling money and business arrangements. And, sadly, skill with money is often associated with lack of integrity — that is not inherently true. Take these two sides of the equation separately and you will make a lot more progress — of the kind known as maturity.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — It will be a good idea to step back from the festivities, the fuss and the fireworks that develop later in the month and into early November. You’re focused on certain specific tasks right now, and you know you’re operating within the constraints of time and resources. Your astrology suggests you have enough of both, but not if you squander them on a drama that, in the end, you will discover had nothing to do with you. There are many ways to use the substantial astrology that’s rapidly approaching — astrology that will grant you visibility, the potential to meet new friends, and most of all, that will focus your sense of purpose. Therefore, start with purpose, which is similar to intent, and then rather brutally, evaluate every situation on whether you think it will advance your cause or work against it. As the next few weeks develop, this will be especially true of social situations, in which I would include parties, partying, going out and mindless diversion on the Internet. Alternately, the environment you’re in is very well suited for establishing your reputation based on real accomplishments, developing working relationships with people and carving out your special niche in the culture. Some of this is subject to serendipity and synchronicity; none of it is casual or haphazard. The temptation to be popular is more likely to work against you than it is to help. Therefore, keep your focus.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You may be thinking: is this all some kind of test of character, or of my integrity? I don’t know if it’s a test, but you may be experiencing the consequences aspect of life more than you’re experiencing its promise or potential. They are all related. All consequences are results, and what they are results of is, precisely, some form of potential. This works for ‘good’ things and for ‘bad’ things. The law of cause and effect is in action all the time. The difference between a sleeping person and an awake one is consciously using causes (motives, intent, decision) to get an effect (a result of some kind). This implies becoming conscious of all the superstition that is used as a substitute for good, old-fashioned karma. You are moving into a time of increased power of manifestation — what some astrologers might call success, but I think it’s edgier than that. Your choices will get results, though those results are the product of something. You are also living with the effects of what you have created — and the astrology I’m describing will grant you extra power to make adjustments to what currently exists. This will be especially true if you develop your understanding of how things got to be the way they are. And once you arrive at that understanding, consider it a rough draft and go deeper. Cause and effect are never separate, which is an idea that could save the world.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You would be amazed, if you could see the truth, the extent to which your choices today are based on beliefs that are many years or many generations old — and which are no longer applicable to the world in which we live. Some of these may masquerade as traditions, respect for the way things are done, morals, ethics and ‘fundamental values’. I suggest you put the lot of it up for evaluation. It’s impossible to question a belief unless you know you have it, so the first step is knowing what it is you think is true. Then take the next step and evaluate why you think it’s true. Question every assumption until it’s a habit, which may lead you to reject assuming anything at all. The very most important thing you can question is anything — anything and everything — taught to you by your parents. Questioning it does not make it, or them, or you, wrong — rather, it’s that once you start clearing the clutter, you will discover windows and doors, and the light and fresh air they allow into your awareness is known as a vision. I don’t mean this as a metaphor, but rather as a direct idea: what has the strongest potential is what you can actually see, and visualize, down to the details. Visualizations might ‘come to you’ or you might construct them like a draftsman makes a drawing. Either way or both — have at it.

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