A friendly message in time for both Halloween and the November 4th mid term election day! Have a happy and safe Samhain and may you only be treated, never tricked!! – FB
Post by The Young Turks.
Don’t Vote!
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Monthly Archives: October 2014
Idiot Box: Gamergate!
By Matt Bors
Planet Waves Daily Oracle for Friday, Oct. 31, 2014
Today’s Oracle takes us to the Aries monthly for May 25, 2010
Do we ever really reinvent ourselves? Sometimes we do. Often we do not. As much as we strive to turn over new leaves, write new chapters, get a spiritual makeover, make a new effort at self-improvement, change our image, color our hair, strike off in a new direction, stop letting the family define our reality, we do very nearly everything in our power to resist real change. We have many tools for this, and most of them are relationships. Then one day it happens. Despite everything, we suddenly find ourselves rapidly becoming someone else, doing something different, living another life. It may be wildly different than anything we thought possible, or thought of at all. These are the changes that emerge from the inside and then somehow take us to other places on the planet, or make us thirst for new knowledge, or crave freedom from everything we knew in the past. And that is the moment you are in. You’ve had plenty of time to consider your potential, and by now you know what you want: to be at peace, all you need to do is admit your truth to yourself, and then let go into the flow. There will be time later to reflect on what you’ve done, to revise your ideas and to try a new approach: but this first go is the most meaningful one. It’s the moment when you say yes to yourself: a moment of faith and adventure.
This is an ancient horoscope and by some miracle it is still relevant today. Experience the astrology as it happens, written by me weekly and twice monthly, plus your Moonshine horoscope by Len Wallick. Here is how to sign up — and what you get.
The Saturn Files: Reckoning
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Dear Friend and Reader:
The Sun, Venus and Pallas Athene have all entered Scorpio, joining up with slow-moving Saturn. Mercury is currently in Libra and will be joining the Scorpio grouping on Nov. 8.
No Earth-based telescope could get this view of Saturn — we just don’t have this angle from the ground. This photo, from 2013, is a composite of images taken by the Cassini Space Probe that’s now orbiting Saturn, providing a view of both the night and day sides.
That is an unusual influence coming from Scorpio, which represents a new phase of 2014 astrology — what I would call a time of reckoning.
Scorpio is about shared resources, beginning with the most important of them all, the DNA that does its spiral dance down the millennia and creates new generations of creatures.
By extension, this includes sexual reproduction, and by further extension, any other resources that are shared within partnerships, marriages and families.
All these planets gathered in Scorpio are saying there is plenty to go around. That each of them will soon make conjunctions to Saturn is saying there needs to be some structure to this process, and a concept of balance. Usually balance is maintained by structure, and by a process of accountability. These are the dominant themes of the Saturn Files.
Saturn has been in Scorpio since this time in 2012. Beginning in December, it will be transitioning into Sagittarius, a process that will take approximately nine months in all. Sagittarius is where we get to go after we’ve addressed all the subject matter of Scorpio. If you listen you may hear yourself or others wanting to skip over all the emotional, hormonal, sexual Scorpio stuff and jump right into the light, spiritual, aspirational subject matters of Sagittarius.
Personal History — Mercury, Venus and Mars
Mercury, Venus and Mars are moving so as to potentially help you employ personal history to make some delayed progress. The three planets most often called ‘personal’ are each separately moving into the same aspect (a sextile) with an outer planet often associated with history.
All three of those separate sextiles will be exact for most of you on Saturday.
Early Saturday, at 8:44 am EDT (12:44 UT) Mercury in Libra will open a sextile to Jupiter in Leo for the third time in two months.
Then (at 7:09 pm EDT/23:09 UT), Venus in Scorpio will achieve a closing sextile to Pluto in Capricorn. Following about half an hour later will be a likewise approaching sextile from Mars in Capricorn to Neptune in Pisces.
Sextile aspects are separations of 60 degrees in the sky and on the zodiac, typically occurring twice in a given cycle between conjunctions.
Conjunctions are two objects merging in the same degree of the same sign to start a new cycle between them.
Sextiles represent both the first (or ‘opening’) major aspect after a conjunction to begin a cycle, and the last (or ‘closing’) major aspect before the next conjunction, to end a cycle.
In addition to being the first and last major points of evaluation in a given cycle between any two objects, sextiles serve (in the words of Robert Hand) “… to sharpen consciousness and heighten awareness, which requires a certain degree of initiative.”
That’s how you come to have a role to play along with Mercury, Venus and Mars on Saturday. Your role begins with taking the initiative to be aware.
You can start with being conscious of how Mercury, Venus and Mars are often referred to as ‘personal planets’. It’s because they go through many cycles of aspect with other objects in a typical human lifetime.
Thus, along with the Sun and Moon, personal planets correlate with the relative frequency of personal cycles in your life most often measured in weeks, months or years.
In contrast, events that are few and far between relative to a human lifetime (or series of lifetimes) are by definition historic. Cycles of historic events implicitly correlate with planetary cycles measured in decades or centuries.
The next step in exercising some degree of initiative is for you to be aware that Mercury takes about a year to go around the zodiac, as (on average) does Venus. Mars takes about two years. Nevertheless, days when Mercury, Venus and Mars are more-or-less simultaneously in sextile aspect to sign-ruling planets of long cycle are few and far between.
Hence, no matter how ordinary or familiar the events of your life on Saturday may seem to be, there will implicitly be some extraordinary overlap or intersection with history, most likely your personal history. If such a possibility is not a reason to take the initiative and sharpen your consciousness, what is?
Mercury’s correlation with mental acuity makes it a good planet with which to sharpen consciousness. Fortunately, the first of the personal planet sextiles on Saturday is from Mercury in Libra to Jupiter in Leo, setting the tone.
Mercury last conjoined with Jupiter in Leo earlier this year on Aug. 2. Since then, because of its retrograde retracing of late Libra, Mercury has had two separating sextiles with Jupiter (on Sept. 10, and Oct. 20) with the third coming Saturday.
Typically there is only one opening sextile event in the more-or-less annual cycle beginning and ending with Mercury-Jupiter conjunctions.
For there to be three such events in two months is more than just another example of the few and far between encroaching to integrate with the frequent. It’s repetition.
Repetition serves (among other things) to get attention. So consider paying attention. Ask yourself what big (Jupiter) thing you started at the beginning of August only to be locked in mental (Mercury) evaluations ever since. Then, contemplate how turning the key to the third separating sextile from Mercury to Jupiter might be in what Venus and Mars are doing on the same day.
Venus and Mars might be the key to unlocking whatever you have been going back and forth with for several months. That’s because Venus is moving into the closing sextile of its annual cycle with Pluto. Likewise, Mars is approaching its final sextile in a two-year cycle with Neptune.
Both aspects will be exact on Saturday, shortly after Mercury repeats its opening sextile to Jupiter for a third time, implying a connection with your personal history of making progress — or not.
Consider what unfolded after Venus last conjoined with Pluto on Nov. 15, 2013. Even though that conjunction was not repeated, it was followed by a retrograde that kept Venus in Capricorn until March of 2014.
Hence, evaluating now what you did to overcome delay and resume progress early this year could bring some heightened awareness to whatever repetition has been trying to show you more recently.
That’s the implication of Venus in a closing sextile to Pluto on the same day Mercury opens a sextile to Jupiter for the third time in two months without any headway. An implication worth looking into, given how such concurrences between Mercury and Venus sextile aspects to outer planets are few and far between.
Similarly, to have Mars compound the issue of a rare occurrence indicates something of what you might do to avoid delayed progress in the future. That’s because Mars is entering its final evaluation of a cycle that started with a Pisces conjunction to Neptune on Feb. 4, 2013.
Unlike what followed Mercury’s conjunction with Jupiter last August, and unlike what followed Venus’s conjunction with Pluto last November, Mars made rapid progress into an opening sextile and beyond after beginning its cycle with Neptune.
Mars may then very well be providing you with an evaluation of what you did right in early 2013 as part of its closing sextile to Neptune on Saturday.
Given how such an interpretation is consistent with what Mercury and Venus will be doing on the same day, you should think back on that part of your personal history and place some value on what you remember, especially when the alternative is missing the point Mercury has repeatedly been trying to make.
After all, a failure to learn from history frequently results in a destiny to repeat it. So take a cue from Mercury, Venus and Mars to take a hand in shaping your own personal destiny this weekend.
Look back on your personal history. Renew your grasp of what you started in early August, but somehow lost a grip on. Then, recall what Venus taught you about recovering lost momentum early this year.
Finally, remember how you got off on the right foot in early 2013 to sharpen your consciousness of what you want to get going again now. If you can put the astrology to use like that, this may be one of the most productive weekends you have had in a long time.
Offered In Service
Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.
Planet Waves Daily Oracle for Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014
Today’s Oracle takes us to the Pisces weekly for May 9, 2003
These weeks have taught you a great deal about the nature of your own fear, and how it feeds on itself. That is the process you want to observe. Fear’s ways are not so mysterious, and all fear ultimately comes down to one fear, and by all accounts that fear is baseless. Remember that at this juncture, your relationship to yourself is the strongest one in your life. Every other relationship you have is, at long last, obviously a clear and direct outgrowth of the state of your coexistence with yourself. Fear is nothing more or less than abandoning, or threatening to abandon, yourself. If you can see that in action now, you will learn the lesson of a lifetime and free yourself from untold senseless grief — and open the way for so much more. All the energy you waste on expecting the worst is yours to create what you want.
This is an ancient horoscope and by some miracle it is still relevant today. Experience the astrology as it happens, written by me weekly and twice monthly, plus your Moonshine horoscope by Len Wallick. Here is how to sign up — and what you get.
A Scorpio Sky and Mars-Pluto Brewing: Go Deep
Mercury has been in direct motion for nearly a week (hallelujah!), although it’s still shaking things out at a slow speed; the last of the October eclipses occurred a week ago. Likely you are beginning to get your bearings again after what might have felt like a giant release-valve being let off.
Photo by Amanda Painter
As you do so, are you noticing a pull to feel things more deeply? We have a cluster of planets in Scorpio now: the Sun, Venus, asteroid Pallas and, later in the sign, Saturn. That’s a lot of Scorpio for a culture that tends to orient on mental activity, with so much information and trending so-called news stories and “social networks” at our fingertips.
With so much Scorpio, the draw is to go deeper: deeper into your emotions; deeper into potentially transformative experiences; deeper into your erotic urges and desires; deeper into your understanding of cycles of life and death.
Is it really any wonder that we get Halloween this time of year, with its emphasis on scary stories and images of death, ghouls, witches and so on? The nights are getting longer, and being afraid of the dark is ubiquitous. Yet many people are even more afraid of “going deep” than they are of the darkness night brings.
Then again, perhaps they are versions of the same thing. Both the dark and the depths ask us to surrender our surface-level perceptions, our daylight-based ego consciousness of our place in the world and who we are in it. To go deep or to be in darkness, we must allow ourselves to become vulnerable in some way.
Food for Thought
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Dear Friend and Reader:
You’re probably aware that the discrepancy between the number of people on this planet who do not have enough to eat and the amount of food wasted annually is obscene; according to the United Nations, 1.3 billion tons of food is thrown away each year. In response, tech innovators are developing ways to facilitate getting ‘unwanted’ food to those in need.
NPR’s Marketplace Morning Report profiled long-haul trucker Richard Gordon and his brother Roger Gordon on Monday. For 30 years Richard has trucked food up and down the East Coast; sometimes a shipment — say, of eggplant — would be rejected for superficial reasons.
“They say it should be dark or it should be purple. I’m not really sure what color eggplant is supposed to be, but a lot of times, eggplant is refused because it’s not the color they want,” Richard explained to NPR’s Sasa Woodruff.
“Or you might get a load of potatoes with too many eyes in it or too many curves and they reject it for that reason.”
When that would happen, he’d call his brother Roger to see if he could find a place that would accept the produce as a donation.
Eventually Roger decided to try taking the middleman out of the equation, and two years ago he launched a web and app service called Food Cowboy. It connects truckers with food charities and other entities along the commercial food chain. Those accepting the food pay 10 cents per pound; suppliers write off the donation on their taxes.
Rejected or excess perishable food needs to get to someone who can use it quickly, so it’s no surprise that food-rescue apps are being developed all over the U.S. to serve local communities (and elsewhere, including on the scale of individual households in the U.K.). Among those mentioned in the NPR story are PareUp in New York and CropMobster in California, and one called Spoiler Alert being launched in Massachusetts later this month by two MIT students.
“We have a lot of problems in this country, a lot of really complicated problems, but hunger and food waste shouldn’t be one of them,” says Roger Gordon. “We have enough food to feed every hungry person in America, wholesome food, every day.”
Fishing For an Answer? Clean Up the River
Unfortunately, not everything grown or caught in the U.S. counts as ‘healthy food’. For example, eating fish caught in the Lower Columbia River in Oregon may be hazardous to your health, according to a Sept. 29 article in The Oregonian — and sadly that’s the case in many places.
Environmental organization Columbia Riverkeeper recently tested both migratory and resident (non-migratory) fish species, including steelhead, shad, walleye and carp. Although none of the migratory species contained contaminants above current consumption guidelines, resident fish did — including a walleye with PCB levels 175 times the limit set by the Environmetal Protection Agency (EPA) for “unrestricted consumption.”
Not the prettiest face — and a walleye like this caught in the lower Columbia River could be downright toxic if you ate it.
PCBs, highly carcinogenic industrial chemicals, were banned in 1979 — demonstrating how persistent bio-accumulative toxins are, as they concentrate up the food chain rather than dispersing. (As Planet Waves reported Aug. 19, the U.S. Army Crops of Engineers finally confessed to its role in polluting the Columbia River through its dam construction.)
The sampled fish were obtained from local fishermen who planned to eat the fish in question.
“Fish advisories are not enough. We have to clean up the river,” said Lorri Epstein, Riverkeeper’s water quality director. “You can keep issuing advisories, but people are going to keep eating fish,” often for economic or cultural reasons.
GMO Soy Found in Infant Formula
Laboratory testing of infant formula purchased in Portland, Oregon, earlier this month revealed two products containing genetically modified soy engineered to withstand heavy pesticide spraying, reported The Statesman Journal Oct. 24.
The tests, coordinated between The Center for Food Safety and retired EPA scientist and former professor at Oregon State University Dr. Ray Seidler, discovered the GMO soy in two infant formula brands: Similac Soy Isomil and Engamil Prosobee Powder Soy Infant Formula.
“Everything we know from the recent medical literature suggests we should be doing everything possible to reduce infant exposure to chemicals,” said Seidler.
Both products contained soy engineered for resistance to Monsanto’s glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide) and Bayer Crop Science’s glufosinate. Glufosinate has been found toxic to reproduction and was banned by the European Parliament in 2009.
Lawsuits Filed Against EPA’s Enlist Duo Herbicide
Several U.S. farmer and ecological groups are fighting back, via two lawsuits, against the EPA’s approval last week of Dow AgroScience’s latest herbicide concoction, Enlist Duo, Reuters reported Oct. 23. (See coverage last week by Planet Waves.)
Monarch butterfly caterpillar feeding on milkweed. Like Roundup, Dow’s Enlist Duo promises to further starve migrating monarchs — to say nothing of what its toxic cocktail may do to human beings. Photo by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
One lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California, seeking to overturn the EPA’s regulatory consent. The groups argue that the EPA did not adequately assess the human health impacts of 2,4-D, a component of Enlist Duo, before green-lighting the herbicide on Oct. 15.
“This was a rubber stamp. They acted illegally in approving this,” said Andrew Kimbrell, an attorney with the Center for Food Safety and a plaintiff in the case.
A second lawsuit, filed Oct. 15 by the Natural Resources Defense Council in the Washington, D.C. Circuit court, alleges depletion of monarch butterfly populations primarily due to glyphosate, and claims the EPA underestimated the toxicity of 2,4-D for people.
“Because of its documented impacts on the thyroid, a critical organ for brain development, infants and children are at especially high risk from adverse impacts of 2,4-D exposure,” said Kristi Pullen, an NRDC staff scientist.
The two chemicals have been combined in Enlist Duo to battle the rise of so-called superweeds that have developed resistance to glyphosate. Milkweed, the only food that monarch butterfly larvae eat, has not developed resistance.
Note: you can listen to an Oct. 16 interview Posted by WWGF News to YouTube about
the EPA’s approval of Enlist Duo featuring Planet Waves’ own Carol Van Strum and Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides. The full interview includes other guests — or you can listen to a 12-minute excerpt in which Carol focuses on what individuals angry about the EPA’s decision can do.
…And a Breath of Fresh Air
For one 2-hour period last week, wind turbines out-produced nuclear plants in the U.K., the BBC reported Oct. 21. A combination of high winds and several offline nuclear reactors meant that wind made up 14.2% of all power generation and nuclear provided 13.2%.
Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm, England; the U.K. has the largest shallow-water offshore wind resource in the world. Photo by Harald Pettersen/Statoil via Wikimedia Commons license.
Although the milestone was temporary and wind power is controversial amongst environmentalists, those who see nuclear’s long-term waste problem and potential for runaway disaster as bigger evils may take heart. However, until inexpensive storage technology is developed to make up for significant periods of negligible wind, the country will continue to rely heavily on nuclear and fossil fuels.
Not helping matters, notorious former U.K. environment secretary Owen Paterson is calling for a new generation of mini nuclear plants across the country — as though their meltdowns would be less radioactive.
Counters Jennifer Webber, spokeswoman for trade body RenewableUK, “Wind power is often used as a convenient whipping boy by political opponents and vested interests.” She adds, “All the while, it’s been quietly powering millions of homes across the U.K. and providing a robust response to its vocal detractors.”
Yours & truly,
Amanda Painter and the ECO editorial team
You may forward Planet Waves Monsanto Eco to your friends. They can sign up for this free environmental newsletter from Planet Waves. View this edition as a webpage.
Planet Waves Monsanto Eco (ISSN 1933-9135) is published each Tuesday evening in Kingston, New York by Planet Waves, Inc. Publisher: Eric Francis Coppolino. Editor: Amanda Painter. Business Manager: Chelsea Bottinelli. Web Developer: Anatoly Ryzhenko. Research, Writing and Editing: Planet Waves Monsanto Eco is produced by a team consisting of Amy Elliott, Carol van Strum, Len Wallick and Chad Woodward.