Dear Friend and Reader:
When Robert McCulloch said the words, “no probable cause exists,” it was 8:25 pm. He is the St. Louis County district attorney who revealed that a police officer was not charged with a crime after killing unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August. That is, not charged after firing 11 or 12 shots at him, hitting him at least six times.
A demonstrator sat in front of a street fire during a protest in Oakland following the grand jury decision in Ferguson. Photo by Stephen Lam.
This is, as we all know, part of a pattern of white police officers killing unarmed black youth with impunity.
Grand juries seem ready to indict just about anyone except a police officer who has killed an unarmed person of color.
As I said in my earlier coverage of this issue, we are talking about the badge being a license to kill. It was never deigned that way, but in effect that’s what it’s become.
At no point did McCulloch state the actual reason that police officer Darren Wilson believed that his life, or someone else’s life, was threatened, therefore giving him legitimate reason to fire his weapon. And incredibly, no journalist who later questioned him asked about that issue. If there’s an elephant in the room, this is the one. We all agree that police officers and even civilians have the right to use deadly force — if life is threatened.
So in order to determine that Officer Wilson did not commit a crime, we would need to know what his reasoning was. And this was left out of the story, and from what I’ve read from his testimony, he failed to explain it to the grand jury.
McCulloch began his remarks 10 minutes earlier than my chart is cast for, but I figured there would be a long preface. I decided in advance that the chart would be for the actual moment when he revealed the grand jury’s findings. The ten-minute interval did not alter key factors in the chart; it’s just that with each passing minute, the intensity of the chart increased.
For one thing, the Capricorn Moon was working its way toward a conjunction with Pluto, and passed through the Uranus-Pluto square — saying clearly that what is happening around this case is a sign of the times.
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In New York City, protestors blocked traffic on 7th Avenue and also blocked bridge crossings. Photo by Michael Appleton.
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Meanwhile, Uranus, the planet of revolution, was rising higher in the sky and was about to reach the 10th house cusp (in this case, also known as the midheaven), the line that tells us about the government. My key phrase for the 10th cusp is “all the way to the top.”
The sign involved is Aries, which is assertive, forward thinking and at times can represent aggression. There are now two crucial planets in Aries at the moment, Uranus and Eris, both of them high in the sky, occupying the 10th house. Their presence so close to the midheaven describes at least two possibilities. They might seem to contradict, but really they could both exist at the same time.
One is a rogue government, totally out of control. Uranus is one of those planets that’s capable of anything, famous for its unpredictability.
If you’re wondering how something so predictable is associated with a factor that says unpredictable, note that the South Node is in the 10th as well. This is part of an old pattern, now fully come into manifestation. Anyone familiar with American history recognizes that pattern as institutional racism that, in the current style, extends back to the early Jim Crow period just after the Civil War ended.
The second way to read this is revolt against the government; it’s something that the government will experience and in truth is experiencing. There is anger, militancy and a self-centered quality of Uranus in Aries on the MC, and that could be difficult for authorities to keep a grip on.
Last night within hours of the announcement, there were protests on both coasts and many places in between. Ferguson erupted in riots, looting and arson. Protesters in New York City blocked bridges and streets.
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Chart for Robert McCulloch stating that “no probable cause exists.” You can see the 10th house at the very top of the chart. The dark line is the cusp, and the house extends out to the left. It includes two unpredictable and somewhat radical influences — Uranus and Eris — and also the South Node, indicating a very old historic and social pattern. Yet due to the personal nature of Aries, this pattern finds a home in the minds of many individuals, as well as being part of society passed down the generations.
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There’s one more factor in this chart that is in the background, which I described in Monday’s diary: that is Sun square Neptune. The Sun in the chart of a mundane event represents authority. In a way similar to the 10th, it has a regal feeling and can represent a governor, president or king. In a sense it’s the governing authority, as the center of our solar system.
Right now the Sun is approaching an exact 90-degree angle to Neptune. That is slippery. In a personal chart it might be dreamy, creative and prone to escapism; in a mundane chart it warns of deception.
But in the style of Neptune, that deception may be lurking in the background rather than the overt kind. The big lie of this case was using a grand jury process as a criminal trial — something that’s simply wrong.
Most people don’t know that the grand jury’s job is to determine whether a crime may have happened — not to make an ultimate finding of fact and law. The grand jury does not convict or acquit. That is up to the trial jury. What McCulloch did was reverse the process. He turned the grand jury presentment into the trial, and in the process “acquitted” police officer Darren Wilson — by making sure he was not even charged.
The problem with Sun-Neptune, for the government, is that it indicates a very low potential for the people involved to keep a grip on things. They are vulnerable and they know it. No matter how much bravado and audacity are displayed by police and government authorities, they are afraid of the people, who outnumber them, and who they well know may be armed.
There is too much to get into in a short letter — I will take up this topic as the first order of business on Planet Waves FM, which I plan to have posted tonight by 5 pm EST. I’ll also begin my coverage of the top five events of 2015. My musical guests are Suzanne Vega and Jane’s Addiction performing the work of the Grateful Dead.
Note, we have an edition of Planet Waves ready, and we will distribute it at the regular time Thursday evening, followed by a reminder Friday morning in case you missed that mailing due to the holiday in the United States.
See you over at Planet Waves FM.
Lovingly,
Planet Waves (ISSN 1933-9135) is published each Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon in Kingston, New York by Planet Waves, Inc. Annual basic subscription rate: $99/year. Core community membership: $199/year. Editor and Publisher: Eric Francis Coppolino. Business Manager: Chelsea Bottinelli. Web Developer: Anatoly Ryzhenko. Astrology Editor: Amanda Painter. Copy Editor: Jessica Keet. Research, Writing and Editing: Planet Waves is produced by a team consisting of Fe Bongolan, Brendan Merritt, Amy Elliott, Judith Gayle, Kelly Janes, Amanda Moreno, Casey Smith, Carol van Strum, Len Wallick, Lizanne Webb and Chad Woodward.
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Eric: It appears as though you have (through your world-class proficiency with astrology) found a carefully hidden key to events. It’s disturbing knowledge, but nonetheless liberating for your having revealed it. Thank you! Let the record show we started to find out about what’s really going on through your reporting here at Planet Waves.
this is intersesting:
http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=b493e6c4d31beda32fdaf8e2d&id=73514e334b
“The National Bar Association is questioning how the Grand Jury, considering the evidence before them, could reach the conclusion that Darren Wilson should not be indicted and tried for the shooting death of Michael Brown. National Bar Association President Pamela J. Meanes expresses her sincere disappointment with the outcome of the Grand Jury’s decision but has made it abundantly clear that the National Bar Association stands firm and will be calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to pursue federal charges against officer Darren Wilson.”
Thanks for posting this, Amanda. My son just graduated from Law School this past spring and had the very same question today — ” how this was possible”? Forwarding your post to him… thank you.
oh — and i couldn’t help but notice that mercury in scorpio is heading into a square to nessus in aquarius. there seems to be something here about america’s “dirty little secret” (the one people only think we’re hiding from view: racism) and our thoughts about it coming up against the ingrained, crystallized, institutionalized pattern of cultural abuse by the “elites” of this country.
the question is, since this is nessus, are we passing the buck? or is it finally going to stop here, with us?
Yes, Thanks, E and thanks Amanda for posting that link. And as Eric mentioned, I think many people don’t know that the Grand Jury is there to decide IF there should be a hearing at all — once that is known then it becomes clear that this should simply have been part of the formal process of getting him to trial. I couldn’t fathom what all that deliberation was about…demons maybe?
The more I think about this, the odder it seems. Why on earth was he not indicted. Didn’t they want to prevent the inevitable consequences of anger at this shoddy decision? They must have known it would happen. Even from the worst motives, is protecting police immunity really worth such a flagrant injustice? Something seems not quite right.
Amy, it does read like an agenda to promote violence, doesn’t it. And so much pent-up anger to fuel it.
Viewing the chart more closely, I am hopeful this crap is going to backfire on the establishment. The sense I’m getting is that the lies just got too blatant, as in the level of ‘the dog ate my homework’ or ‘I was just following orders’.
It does have that feeling, doesn’t it — that sense of backfire. Of course, “the establishment” is just that; it’s larger than the people who populate it, who allow and who in fact encourage this kind of behavior.
Thanks for explaining what a grand jury is!
There’s this sense that people believe reality is a certain way, and so it is for them. There are witnesses to the shooting that gave completely opposite testimony. Where his hands up or were they reaching for Wilson’s gun? How can people have seen that differently? And the defensiveness and hurt that is coming from Caucasians half way across the United States speaks to something. Why do White people detached from the situation by geography and who don’t know anyone personally involved feel so threatened?
This holds a similar feeling as Bill Cosby’s sexual assault charges. It shatters a view of reality and comfort that people hold dear. Several members of the media are coming out now saying they avoided investigating the topic, that they were aware of, when writing about him. This includes Mark Whitaker who wrote a 500 page biography of the man.
I wonder, as individuals, are we willing to see past what makes us feel safe and, as a collective, is there really any other way to heal?
Deception has two parts, the deceiver and the deceived. I have seen that very often, the deceived plays right along, and it becomes a game of “lie to me.” Or reaffirm my self-lies, so I feel better about myself, because I really need to. Then there is the “it’s all good” game or “I don’t want to work or take the risk to see the truth of this matter.” This is part of what I was demonstrating with my “cigarettes are good for you” article — that even intelligent people often fail to stop and question…anything. Most people utterly fail to know when they don’t know.
So the whole environment is ripe for the deception game. And if we think that on the one hand we’re people with “shamanic powers” (or healing powers) and on the other we are the generation that must step up and prevent further damage to the world, then we had better be able to sort out truth from lies pretty efficiently. Because ALL of the damage is transacted through deception first, and then some form of physical or economic damage second.
See also http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
aka victim blaming
How is this about victim blaming? It seems to be a crude attempt to apply karma, though karma as we use it in the west usually falls under the “just world fallacy” as described in your link.
Part of the lack of justice involves the conscious choice to be deceived — that is, to believe a lie when there is full awareness or information available that it IS a lie. This choice leads directly to the conclusion, “I don’t have to do anything about this.” And THAT is one of the most prolific sources of injustice.
I have seen this personally in many environmental situations wherein people have some motive to believe the lies of the polluter — they don’t want to move, they believed the lie initially and cannot stand the cognitive dissonance, their father will be angry if they tell him the dorm is contaminated, etc.
We can look at the Holocaust and see the many examples of “I didn’t know what was going on,” including a mile down the road at Auschwitz.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. It just occurred to me that the way the Ferguson community is being “otherised” is very similar to the just-world fallacy, in which people deceive themselves that injustices are somehow deserved. Of course, the underlying reason for this is fear – if the act is unjust, it could happen to anyone, even me – so I’d better pretend that it isn’t.
Oh spot on that one…yes “there must be a reason” etc., “Mike Brown must have done something.” we could go on and on. BTW brilliantly intuitive use of the “Just World Fallacy,” turning it on its ear.
Why thank you, kind sir