Tag Archives: September 11

And Now We Are Arming al-Qaeda

Dear Friend and Reader:

Let the Akashic Record reflect that on the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 incident, the United States began providing weapons to al-Qaeda. It’s not being advertised that way — it’s being advertised as the U.S. providing weapons to the Syrian anti-government rebels (who you might happen to know include al-Qaeda fighters).

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George Bush, atop the WTC rubble with retired FDNY firefighter Bob Beckwith, promises to get the terrorists that his government accused of the Sept. 11 attack. Today we promise to get them some guns.

Thursday’s Washington Post story doesn’t include the term “al-Qaeda” — that would be nauseating so close to the anniversary, though everyone involved in government and media knows the truth. Even Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad mentioned this fact in his recent interview with Charlie Rose.

This development fulfills yet again the astrological chart for the Sept. 11 incident, which has as its main feature an aspect pattern recognized back to the days of Ptolemy — a mutual reception. Among other things, the chart pattern describes terrorists and the government trading places. Though it doesn’t prove anything, the chart nicely illustrates the variable — Mercury (representing the terrorists) is rising in Libra; Saturn (representing the government) is in Gemini. Saturn is exalted in Libra and Mercury rules Gemini.

The two planets can therefore reverse placements in the chart. They are also in a perfect trine, indicating cooperation and easy flow of energy (in whatever form). Spotters of the classical rules may note that the exact trine makes the mutual reception all the more prominent, as does the fact that Mercury is rising to the degree.

At least from the standpoint of traditional astrology, it’s not stretching things at all to say that the chart illustrates a false flag event — something where the wrong party was blamed, for a political or military purpose. It also suggests that the government was the terrorist. Twelve years later, this is not so shocking. Based on a seemingly endless flood of evidence, many people have figured out that something smells about the Sept. 11 story. Though the initial shock has taken a while to wear off, it’s a little easier to see the many pieces of the story that don’t fit together, that blatantly contradict one another or that are outright lies.

Though I fancy myself someone who has looked into the matter, I was not aware until this week of the numerous reports of what were called “secondary explosions” in World Trade Center towers 1 and 2 that on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a top Fire Department official believed brought the buildings down, killing hundreds of firefighters. Now, those “secondary explosions” are esoteric knowledge or relegated to the realm of conspiracy theory.

Planet Waves
Tried and convicted by 11:47 am, MSNBC shows a photo of Osama bin Laden, said by intelligence officials to be in Afghanistan. Even on the 11th, the government was promising military action against Afghanistan. The Army cornered him in late 2001, then let him go.

With the dust and smoke and pain still fresh in our hearts and minds, the United States proceeded to embark on an open-ended war for 12 years and counting, sacrificing more than 5,000 American lives and countless severe injuries to our troops, and millions of people displaced, and hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, all ostensibly to get al-Qaeda.

You might say it was costly, but that also translates to profitable. The trillions expended on these battles and on the national security state went somewhere, to people and corporations.

And now we are providing the supposed terrorists with weapons, which arrived in Syria none other than on Sept. 11, 2013. There was apparently some kind of bureaucratic delay that was resolved none other than on the anniversary.

You might think that someone could have delayed either the shipment or the announcement by a few days so as not to be crass about it. But it makes one wonder whether someone either has a sick sense of humor or they were sending a message to the American public that the whole business had finally come full circle.

Speaking of full circle, the one thing that has indeed come back around to where it started was Jupiter, which has returned to its natal position and just today just crossed the midheaven (the government angle) of the main chart for Sept. 11, 2001. We must once again ask the question: who benefits? Who in the corporate and government spheres is making a lot of money on this whole seemingly endless business? It’s a very, very long list and it probably does not include you.

The gift of guns to al-Qaeda fighters arrives at the end of what was by any measure an astonishing week, which began Monday morning in London with a CBS News reporter named Margaret Brennan asking John Kerry what it might take to stop the attack on Syria.

Planet Waves
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Pat Dawson of NBC News reported that FDNY’s chief of safety, Albert Turrey — one of the first to respond to the scene — said there were “secondary explosions” in the World Trade Center that he believes brought down the towers and killed hundreds of his men. Today, this is a conspiracy theory. View full video here — skip to 1:25.

Kerry answered off the cuff that they could turn over all their chemical weapons stockpiles, which of course (in his opinion) would be impossible. The State Department issued a statement an hour later trying to walk back the offer, claiming that Kerry was merely speaking “rhetorically” (a good description of how Kerry talks).

But Russia picked up on it, signaling that it was a good idea. Then Obama picked up on that — for him, it was a great idea for many reasons: he didn’t have the votes in Congress to approve the bombing campaign.

Peaceniks were aligning with hard-right Republicans in opposition to the attack. That’s pretty amazing — and it presents a template of how we can actually accomplish something difficult in times of strife and controversy.
No matter how much centrist, conservative and liberal views may diverge, there is always common ground. There are always common values, even if they have seemingly different motives.

It helped that a wide swath of the American public was not signing on to the project, contacting their congressional representatives in droves. Many Democrats felt betrayed by Obama, who was not supposed to be following in George Bush’s footsteps. So this provided Obama an important means of saving face before the public. Accounts of the alleged gas attack the night of Aug. 21 were not adding up — they still are not, and the Internet was exploding with this sentiment.

Given that Kerry is touting an exact number of people presumably killed and an exact number of children presumably killed, to me the most significant missing fact is a list of the dead. We don’t even have an accounting of how many are militants and how many are civilians, and also the time of the incident. If something really happened and if we have a body count, we should at least have those basic facts. It might be easier to accept this on faith, except we all know the story of Iraq: a war started on a litany of lies. Some people remember Vietnam, a war started on a total pretense; a fabrication called the Tonkin Gulf Incident.

Planet Waves
Margaret Brennan of CBS News put the question to John Kerry: what would Syria have to do to avoid being bombed?

It was this rare combination of factors that prevented a bombing and missile campaign, one that could have inflamed a regional war, indeed, a kind of world war — the planet is so rigged with nuclear bombs and other weapons systems that anything of this nature has the potential to run out of control.

So, we have a rare example of how the perfect storm of factors can actually stop a war, or at least the expansion of a civil war into a full-on bombing campaign by the United States, with an uncertain outcome. That’s a pretty special moment.

And back in Damascus, while that vicious civil war rages on, at least there is not, for now, the prospect of it raining artillery on civilians and the soldiers sitting in bunkers. But American arms, delivered by the CIA, are now going to the people who are fighting the Assad government. Among the organizations with an agenda taking advantage of this situation is al-Qaeda, which will now have access to fine American-made artillery.

This is enough to make anyone’s head spin, except it’s the normal way things go when war is on the agenda. It’s one reason why it’s safe to be against war in all circumstances — there is always a sham of some kind, people are always hurt, and there is never an agenda that benefits people.

It’s well about time we figured that out.

Lovingly,

Note, I’ve covered the events of the week, and of the Syria conflict and the associated astrology, in detail in two recent editions of Planet Waves FM. Additional research: Amanda Painter.
This week’s news briefs were written and researched by Amanda Painter, Susan Scheck, Carol van Strum and your friendly neighborhood news editor, Eric Francis.

 

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Mercury in Libra, Through the Maze

If this past week wasn’t an exercise in anger management (or stress management) with Mars making a square to Saturn, consider yourself fortunate. While this astrology presented a diversity of emotional challenges and may have offered some back-handed progress, I would propose sending out a big rousing ‘amen’ for the fact that the U.S. didn’t start bombing Syria, dragging Iran and Russia into another phase of endless war.

Planet Waves
Jonah, with Virgo Sun-Moon, uses The Moment of Astrology by Geoff Cornelius as a pillow. Photo by Beth Bagner.

Mercury in Libra takes the lead through the weekend. Monday, Mercury reached Libra (representing news about diplomacy). That put it on course for the often-mentioned Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto configuration (sometimes called the Uranus-Pluto square, now with Jupiter in the mix).

Located in Aries, Cancer and Capricorn, that’s a cardinal-sign T-square that’s been setting the tone of the times we’re living through.

Each week we live through a month of news or personal movement, remember that alignment. Every day that feels like everything, all at once, you know what to look to for information.

Libra is the open end of the square. It’s the one cardinal sign without a (well-known or traditionally used) slow-mover present. (There is a not-so-well-known slow-mover there, called Typhon, a strange object discovered orbiting our Sun in 2002.)

On a fairly regular basis something we recognize passes through Libra and completes the square — and currently that something is Mercury. Recently it was Venus; soon it will be the Sun. For now, it’s Mercury. Though my astrology tends to depend on the slow-movers for its emphasis, I’ve noticed that Mercury is a planet of truly extraordinary influence — underrated by most astrologers.

Its influence may come from the fact that we live in a time where nearly everything we do falls under a Mercury rulership — all of our gadgets, everything we say with them, this ocean of ‘communication’ that we live in, all of it is thematically connected to Mercury.

But Mercury is more than the means of delivery, such as the device or the printing press — it’s also the message itself. And going closer to the source, it’s also the awareness that conjures the thought — borrowing from the Bhagavad Gita, “the mind of the senses, the consciousness of creatures.”

Planet Waves
Mercury square Pluto on Saturday, Sept. 14. Note the imminent conjunction of Venus to Saturn in Scorpio (upper right side of chart).

Libra is the sign of beauty, justice, balance and fairness. I suggest you make sure these things are ingredients in whatever you do.

For the next few days, Mercury is passing through one of the most powerful aspect patterns of our lifetimes. Putting things into context, in my opinion the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto-Typhon alignment is up there with the top five most influential patterns of the past 50 years (two others took place from 1989-1991, and 2001-2002).

And now the ‘mind of the senses’ is about to jump into the fray. You may experience your thoughts going deeper, getting weirder, being more focused or more creative in unexpected ways. This aspect pattern has a touch of Tim Leary and Ram Dass to it — it’s the kind of thing that can change your perspective on life, and indeed can change you.

It’s a time to respect the power of ideas, something that’s too-rarely done, especially in our age of disposable thought. It’s a time to be real with yourself and real with others; it’s a time to recognize the importance of beginnings, endings and points of decision.

Venus emphasizes the point, now in Scorpio about to make a conjunction to Saturn. Along the way Venus will be part of the grand water trine, suggesting that you not allow emotions to rule everything — a fact emphasized by both the approaching conjunction to Saturn (a full stop, and moment of reflection) and the aspects that Mercury is making, described above.

As this develops, the Moon waxes toward full phase in Pisces — the Full Moon is on Sept. 19. That may come with a sense of gathering momentum, flashes of insight and maybe a touch of clairvoyance. You might be more sensitive, reactive or intuitive. You might find yourself up at night, which would be a time to use creatively rather than tossing and turning.

Yes, it may be a restless moment, and also a profoundly meaningful one, when real breakthroughs and turning points are possible.
Planet Waves

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.
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NSA Passing Citizens’ Data to Israel; Weakening Online Encryption

If you’re already incensed about the NSA intercepting your private communications — it gets worse. The Guardian reported Wednesday the NSA has routinely passed raw intelligence to Israel without first removing information about U.S. citizens.

Planet Waves
Skype worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video and audio conversations. With weakened encryption, why ask permission? Photo: Patrick Sinkel/AP.

“The NSA was sharing what they call raw signals intelligence, which includes things like who you are calling and when you are calling, the content of your phone call, the text of your emails, your text messages, your chat messages,” said Alex Abdo of the American Civil Liberties Union on Democracy Now! “It sounds like all of that was handed over.”

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden detailed the secret intelligence-sharing agreement between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart, which places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis. This is in contradiction of assurances by the Obama administration that safeguards exist to protect innocent citizens’ data caught in transit.

News of this raw-signal sharing came less than a week after Glenn Greenwald, collaborating with The New York Times and ProPublica, revealed that the NSA has developed methods to crack online encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records.

“Encryption is really the system that lets the Internet function as an important commercial instrument all around the world,” said Greenwald.

Documents released by Snowden show the NSA spends $250 million a year on a program that works with technology companies to covertly influence their product designs, deliberately weakening international encryption standards. Documents also show the NSA’s British counterpart, the GCHQ, is trying to gain access into encrypted traffic on Hotmail, Google, Yahoo and Facebook — the “big four” service providers.

 

Planet Waves

Public Asked to Protest Monsanto Protection Act

House Republicans are extending the controversial Monsanto Protection Act rider (officially named the Farmer Assurance Provision) that was quietly slipped into a governmental spending bill last spring, and later signed by the president amidst huge public protest. The previous bill containing the Monsanto rider is about to expire, and without action to remove it on the part of lawmakers, it will stay there.

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The rider in essence prevents judges from placing injunctions on GM seeds even if they are deemed unsafe. Planet Waves reported last March on the legal issues surrounding the Monsanto Protection Act and the intense opposition to it at that time.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), sponsor of a petition last spring that garnered more than 100,000 signatures against its inclusion, is taking action again. “I will fight the House’s efforts to extend this special interest loophole that nullifies court orders that are protecting farmers, the environment, and public health.”

GMO activists hope the public gets involved again, in greater numbers than they did before. Petitions last spring by Food Democracy Now picked up 100,000 signatures and one by CREDO Action, an online progressive group with about three million members, had more than 250,000 signatures.

“That’s big for us, the fact that it went from zero to 100,000 in just 24 hours,” Becky Bond, the head of CREDO, said in an article at the time. “People are really passionate about this issue. A lot of time people feel helpless with regard to corporate decisions … The fact that there’s someone in the Senate who’s fighting for this is exciting to people, and they’re eager to get their names on it.”

Center for Food Safety, another organization critical of the Monsanto Protection Act, is asking Americans to protest the rider once more. You can sign on to the petition here.
Planet Waves

After ‘Secret Fracking’ Expose, L.A. Leaders Call for Moratorium

City Council members in Los Angeles have called for a moratorium on fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in the region after residents near areas of the controversial drilling process reported increased health problems and severe property damage. Council members Paul Koretz and Mike Bonin are concerned that fracking threatens L.A.’s water supply, air quality and private property.

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Actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. speaks at a news conference on the City Hall steps in support of a ban on fracking in Los Angeles, with Councilmen Paul Koretz, left, and Mike Bonin, right. Photo: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times.

The move comes two months after Truthout and the Associated Press revealed that at least 12 fracking operations had been approved on oil rigs in the Santa Barbara Channel off the coast of California as long ago as 2009 — minus the updated environmental impact review that federal law may require, and without any public notice.

The California Coastal Commission and other state officials reportedly had expressed surprise at the news.

Koretz and Bonin are hoping to outlaw fracking by changing the city’s zoning laws. Several local and national citizen-action organizations are joining forces in support of the ban, in a state where the oil industry is the biggest corporate lobbyist and Governor Jerry Brown is reportedly fast-tracking a plan to build peripheral tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The tunnels would be used to transport massive quantities of water to oil companies’ fracking sites, as well as to agribusiness — threatening several species of fish.

“If a group of people poisoned millions of gallons of California’s water while no one was looking we would label it terrorism and call out the troops,” Koretz said. “Yet that is what’s happening with fracking right now in California.”

Koretz and Bonin’s measure has gone to the Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee for review and public hearings, which have yet to be scheduled. David Graham-Caso, communications director and environmental policy advisor to Bonin, let Planet Waves know yesterday that readers can support the moratorium by signing a petition with CREDO here.
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Planet Waves

“My outfit is not an invitation”; “Critiques about my body are not welcome”; “My name is not Baby, Shorty, Sexy, Sweetie, Honey, Pretty, Boo, Sweetheart, Ma” — just a few of the messages that could appear in street art by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh in a city near you.

Street Art vs. Street Harassment

When does someone cross the line from ‘just trying to be friendly’ to ‘being invasive’? Is it the tone of voice, the words said or an expectation that the person one is speaking to is obligated to respond in kind? It’s a fine line, and the men who cross it make life harder for those men who really do try to be sensitive, considerate and friendly — though arguably things are even harder for women subjected to it.

Brooklyn-based artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is challenging this rampant lack of awareness and respect through her street-art project Stop Telling Women to Smile. After talking to friends about their experiences with street harassment, she drew their portraits, coupled them with text speaking to offenders (who often are not called out), and began posting the work in Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

“For most of [my friends], we sat and had a conversation about their experiences and what it is they’d like to say back to harassers. I used those conversations as inspiration for the text underneath their portraits.”

Fazlalizadeh says she is open to expanding the project to men who have experienced harassment:

“I know it happens, and it’s important, and it’s something I may take on in the future. Right now though, I want to focus on women — of varying backgrounds — to really tackle the ways in which our bodies are sexualized and mistreated in the public space.”

Fazlalizadeh has started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for traveling to other U.S. cities to talk to and draw women across the country, putting the art up in their neighborhoods.
Planet Waves

Syria Scam Derailed; Sept. 11 Anniversary

In this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM, I look at the astonishing events that began the week, including a diplomatic path of resolution suggested by Margaret Brennan, a CBS News reporter who questioned Kerry Monday morning about what it would take to stop the bombing proposal.

I describe the astrology associated with this, though I neglected one meaningful point — there will be a development over the weekend when Mercury in Libra reaches its square to Pluto, and then continues on to an opposition to Uranus and then a square to Jupiter. That is to say, I hope the whole deal doesn’t come unraveled — however — the longer this drags on, the less likely there is to be a bombing campaign.

After the music break I tell the story of how I figured out that the official story of the Sept. 11 incident was a lie — from a photo of the Pentagon, reproduced in high resolution here. Look at the photo at full size and see if you can find any hint of an airplane crash. Remember, an airplane is 100 tons of aluminum, titanium and plastic, full of people, baggage and fuel.

I don’t talk about the astrology — though I’ve covered that many times. I reference an article called Were it So, in which I tell the story of my discovery of how the official story of Sept. 11 was not true.

My personal favorite astrology-news piece on Sept. 11 is called History, Turning on a Phrase. Here is last year’s podcast going into detail on the Sept. 11 incident.

 

Planet Waves

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

We published the extended monthly horoscopes for September on Friday, Aug. 23. We published the Inner Space horoscopes for September Friday, Aug. 30.  We published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Aquarius Full Moon on Tuesday, Aug. 20. The Moonshine horoscopes for the Virgo New Moon were published Tuesday, Sept. 3. 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.
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Weekly horoscope for Friday, Sept. 13, 2013 #966 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19)

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Someone close to you is going through what you recently went through, or at least something similar. Even if it seems to be less meaningful (to you) or seems (to you) to have less impact, I suggest you recognize their emotional reality for what it is. You, and the people around you, are having certain experiences of coming up against your limitations, which you may be experiencing as reaching a breaking point. What you may observe as both interesting and informative is the way in which a partner or loved one demonstrates their flexibility in ways that you tend to be rigid, stuck or stubborn. It’s not that they’re going through less than you — indeed, what they’re experiencing appears to be profound and to reach a deep place. Their response and approach to the equation is informed by other values, including the concept of equilibrium. This is something you would do well to learn, and you can learn a lot from observation.

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)

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Pause and reconsider your point of view. There’s an urgent need for a mature approach to a relationship question, and that approach involves getting clear about how not to make everyone or anyone into your parent figure. Our society is rife with parent-child dynamics, from how we interact with cops and politicians, to how we relate with intimate partners, colleagues and bosses. It’s up to each individual person to grow up and be an adult. Often the excuse for not doing so is not wanting to lose one’s child-like nature. Yet that nature is vulnerable without an adult to protect it, and that adult must be you, not someone else — despite what is currently a tremendous temptation to project that responsibility onto another person. This may be for the sake of companionship, or of seeking approval, or because you need protection. Yet is any of that true? I suggest you ask yourself whether how you’re handling things is more or less likely to offer you the sense of belonging and safety that you need.

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.
Gemini (May 20- June 21)

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Awareness of mortality is awareness of life. It’s closely related to awareness of change and growth. How we feel about death closely resembles how we feel about existence. It’s therefore unhelpful to deny mortality or to pretend that you have no relationship to death. Being mindful of how forms transform, and of what elements follow the story from one phase to the next, will all be helpful. If you find yourself feeling backed into a corner, like nothing matters or like your time is running out, you may be suppressing something from your awareness. In the most basic psychological terms, that might be the need to change. There appears to be some element in your environment that’s inviting you to do just that. It might be a commitment to someone, your sense of contact with something greater than yourself, or your changing relationship to the passage of time. Work with it, not against it.

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.
Cancer (June 21- July 22)

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — There’s certainly something elemental and childlike about sexual play, though for adults it calls for the conscious use of ethics. The way society deals with this is to turn sex into a moral issue, which it’s not. Imposed morality only tends to make people less answerable to themselves. Morality makes everything wrong, especially pleasure. As I define the term, ethics is about the ability to discern the shades of appropriateness, and to make a decision about what is right for you at any given time. If you can do that, you’ll have more freedom; if you cannot, you’re more likely to encounter an imposed limitation. As well, what you have now is the opportunity to explore the nature of a certain blockage that’s been lingering around in your body, emotions or energy field for the past few seasons. On one level this seems to be about what is right and wrong for you. On another it’s about how you take a risk in an ethically conscious way.

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.
Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Mars in your sign is showing you how consistency and persistence are the way to work through obstacles. If you slow down just a little, you’ll see that they are not providing the resistance that you thought they might offer. Brilliant ideas save work and get results. And they are available to you if you open up to them, which is another good reason for why you want to pause and think about any obstacle or problem before you attempt to tackle it. What you can have right now is a mix of inspiration and deep thinking. It’s not a matter of one or the other — every useful idea needs to be applied in a conscious way. The inspiration part is about the insight or the idea; the deep thinking part is about how to use it. Remember to match the right solution to the right problem. They may not be interchangeable but if you try out a few combinations, you will find a few perfect matches.

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.
Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Lately it’s as if you’ve been making your way along a narrow ledge on a tall building. While this would obviously be a tense situation, you seem to have a source of anxiety originating somewhere else. This is not about whether you’re right or wrong. You do so much of what is right that you should have no anxiety whatsoever. Here’s a personal question: have you considered the possibility that much of the background static that you experience involves your experience of your sexuality? This is a specific form of anxiety that psychologists don’t like to talk about that much, though not only is it real, it’s connected to the core source of vital energy — which is why it’s so powerful. This, in turn, is perhaps the most significant factor for determining a person’s self-esteem, particularly your own. Society sends many messages not to think about any of this, to focus on appearances and the supposed monetary value of your sexiness. What you experience over the next few days will reveal the value of going much deeper.

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.

Planet Waves

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)

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You have many options open, though they may feel like situations to which you must respond. That’s a compelling kind of option, and included in it is the chance to turn what looks like a problem into an opportunity. I know a lot of people have probably made a lot of money with that statement, which relatively few people know what to do with. Here’s how it looks in the chart: You encounter something that triggers you emotionally. You have the option to gloss over the issue and move on, or figure out what was at the bottom of your response. I suggest you do that, because as Mercury moves through your sign, it does so in an increasingly provocative and emotional way. The sooner you make contact with the material at the root of the matter, the sooner you will make sense of your situation and be able to find the opportunities within it. Most of them involve emotional healing and finding a place of clarity with someone who you really wish you could understand a lot better.

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.
Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — When in doubt, be brave. Take a chance. You have an emotional state that’s urging you to caution at the same time you have one that’s encouraging you to be bold and determined. The question is which one you’re going to listen to. I suggest you listen to the one that’s really you. Here is a clue: There’s one level of worry or concern that belongs to someone else. It comes from somewhere else and belongs to another place and time. There’s another dimension to what you’re experiencing that feels unusually bold, and in some ways unlike you but in other ways familiar and welcome. Though this feels good, and may make you a little nervous, you may be wondering whether that’s accurate or whether you’re feeling too big for your britches. Now take these two emotions and match them to people in your family of origin. What feeling resembles whom the most accurately? Which feeling seems unique to you?

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.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — It’s time for a dialog about what makes you the most uncomfortable — that is, your personal taboo. This will seem bolder and braver before you do it and maybe for the first five minutes, and then it’s likely to feel perfectly normal. Whomever you’re discussing this with is likely to have a similar experience, so don’t worry about burdening them or thinking that you’re pushing them into weird territory. Rather than push, lead the way with a personal disclosure that at least seems daring and like you must cross an inner boundary to get there. That will get the discussion going. There are likely to be a few surprises as you proceed, potentially quite pleasant and liberating. While there are a few possible emotional and intellectual destinations, you will discover something about your own point of view as well as that of your conversation partner. One discovery might be something like how little you need to have in common in order to have something really special between you.

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.
Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Focus on your message, which means having clear ideas and putting them into clear words. Keep it simple: don’t worry about being deep. You can do this without dumbing down anything, or compromising your point of view. Indeed, the idea is to get closer to your actual position, so that it can be more understandable to others. In that spirit, be accurate, precise and clear. If you’re writing and you make an error, admit to it and correct it visibly. Impeccability will lead you in the direction you want to go. Along this same line of reasoning: it’s important that you not push an argument or point of view; state it clearly and wait for a reply, even if that response takes several days to come back. Your words carry considerable authority, and one reason that someone may delay in responding is because they are having a response that they cannot articulate yet. Give any scenario till the 22nd to work out — the equinox is an obvious turning point. Till then, be patient. And be precise.

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.
Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You have a lot on your hands, including much that you were not expecting to be dealing with. Help is on the way. The key element in receiving that help will be trust, in particular, trusting whomever responds to your needs is not also running another agenda. If you have a real question, ask — and listen to the answer. You may choose to have faith in the situation despite some actual concerns. Sort those out. If you do, you’ll see that some are old and no longer apply to you or your current environment; this is a good time to address any lingering hangover from the past. Some will involve what may be a level of mistrusting women. That, too, is a lingering artifact of history. Treat people as who they are today. Setting all that aside, you need to delegate at least some of your responsibility to someone who arrives to assist you, which is always a matter of having faith in a person; so keep this on a human level and start there.

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.
Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Emotions are complex; lately yours have been especially so, though you now seem to be in a moment of clarity. I would suggest you not push too hard against anyone or anything. There is always an easier way to get a result, and I suggest you look for that easier way. One thing to bear in mind is that time is on your side, and that momentum is carrying you in the right direction. Plant the seed of an idea in anyone you need to persuade, and then allow the conversation to develop. Don’t worry if negotiations are stalled or if you seem to hold inferior cards. There are a number of developments that will come to light, as partners and associates gain an understanding of the environment and their own responsibilities. Then over the next week, as the Full Moon in your birth sign approaches, it will be easier for you to work out stalemates, deadlocks and impasses without needing to exert much effort.

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.

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Sept. 11, 2001: Call it what it is

Photo of the Pentagon crime scene taken by the Department of Defense on Sept. 14, 2001.

 

Dear Friend and Reader:

So here we are, at the 10-year mark of the Sept. 11 incident. Wars are still being fought, lives are being taken, there is chaos in the Middle East, and everyone who boards an airplane or makes a phone call is treated as a potential terrorist. Politicians will lay wreaths and many will take the opportunity to put a little more yeast in the brew of hatred and paranoia, but I wonder what we’ve learned. I wonder who is asking questions about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, why it happened, and how.

Pentagon before the wall fell down about 30 minutes after the explosion or missile impact on Sept. 11, 2001. Notice the lack of airplane wreckage, and how the wall is standing intact. You would have to use your imagination to see an airplane there. We all know how big jetliners really are. The scene above shows no sign of the 124-foot wingspan of the aircraft that supposedly struck the building. There is an entry wound, but it’s too small for an airplane, and there are large punctures deeper within the rings of the building. There is no airplane wreckage or debris field visible. Image from MSNBC.

I’m one of the people who doubted the official story of Sept. 11 before I even heard it. Once I started reading the explanations, I knew there were problems with everything that was being said. I anticipated that I would be involved in a long investigation, and I have been. Some of these inquiries begin with the sensation of scaling a wall with my bare hands; that’s how it felt to approach the Sept. 11 incident. My first breakthrough came seeing the astrology for the incident. Reading that chart, I warned that the ‘secret enemy’ who had done this horrid thing would be morphing to suit political convenience, and had an oddly intimate relationship to the government.

I had my second breakthrough looking at the picture at the very top of the page, which is a Department of Defense photo of the Pentagon crime scene from Sept. 14, 2001. This came into my hands six months after the incident, in early March 2002. Maybe you saw the email titled ‘Hunt the Boeing’ published by the French website Asile.org, which passed around the link. The premise of ‘Hunt the Boeing’ was, okay, if this event at the Pentagon is an airplane crash, then where’s the airplane? Where did it strike? Where did the 100 tons of composite aluminum and titanium go? Where is the impression of the wings, and those enormous jets? What about all the fuel on a plane that was bound for the West Coast? How come that big pile of rubble isn’t a burned-out bonfire?

During March of 2002, I studied this photo night and day for a week (I had fewer deadlines back then). At the end of that week, I understood that I was not looking at the photo of a plane crash. Besides the lack of wreckage, one really weird thing stood out. How is it possible that an airplane hit that building at a minimum of 250 miles per hour, but all the rubble collapses outward? When you see a photo of a car that’s been driven through the wall of a house, you don’t expect to see the debris all over the lawn. Most of it plunges inward and follows the direction of travel of the car, following the laws of kinetic energy. Here, the wall looks like it tumbled outward, which is what it did. This debris goes in the wrong direction, that is, if something large and heavy from the outside plunged in.

What did not happen — this is an approximate size comparison of a 757 with the breach in the Pentagon. The rubble would have gone the other way — and there would have been a lot more damage. Graphic from Asile.org.

To see an airplane crash here, you really have to use your imagination. You can pretend that the airplane is under the rubble. You can imagine that it burrowed into the building and disappeared, kind of like the planes did at the World Trade Center. You can pretend that it’s invisible, like Wonder Woman’s airplane. You can tell yourself that something had to happen to it — but it must be there someplace. But to do any of these things, you have to make believe.

After I did this work, studying dozens of other photos, I knew there was a problem with the official story, the one about the supposed airplane crash. One of those other photos is shown a few paragraphs above and to the right. It’s a picture of the Pentagon during the first half hour after the explosion. Notice that there is nothing on the lawn and that the wall is standing intact. There is no damage in the shape of an airplane; it’s more like a building on fire. About 30 minutes after the impact or the explosion, the façade collapses outward. In other photos you can see a round hole about 10 to 15 feet in diameter right around the second floor.

Through the first week after the Sept. 11 incident, I consoled myself mainly by listening to Steve Inskeep on NPR. He had been standing next to the Pentagon for the first three days after whatever happened there. I knew and trusted Steve from my days covering the state capitol, and I clung to his sane, moderated voice and temperament. Steve was in Afghanistan on a new assignment when I called, but my phone rang six months later and — faithfully — he was returning my call. I told him what I was thinking and asked for his honest opinion. Was I crazy?

He told me that he was one of the first people at the Pentagon after whatever happened. He was called to the scene of an explosion — not an airplane crash. He said it didn’t look like an airplane crash, but then not all of them do. He confirmed that there was no wreckage visible. However, he thought my theory was plausible and worth following up. I will save those stories for another time. While the Pentagon presents a mystery (covered in greater detail in this article), it’s not the most interesting one.

The Mystery of World Trade Center 7

By far, the most interesting and persistent mystery of Sept. 11 is what happened to World Trade Center 7. Most people don’t know that three towers of the World Trade Center fell down on Sept. 11. We’ve all seen the two big familiar Twin Towers fall down again and again, but there was a third — a 47-story structure called the Salomon Brothers Building. It was not hit by an airplane. Across the plaza from the Twin Towers, WTC 7 suffered some damage when the two other towers fell, but not especially severe. There were some scattered office fires in the building.

World Trade Center 7, or the Salomon Brothers Building, shortly before it collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001. Most people don’t know that a third tower of the Trade Center complex fell down that day. Photographer unknown.

Then at 5:20 pm, it collapsed at near-free-fall speed in its foundation, landing in its footprint in just under seven seconds. The impressive thing is how it just elegantly cascades to the ground, like a waterfall. It implodes and lands in a tidy heap. When something descends at free-fall speed, that means there is no resistance below it. For that to happen, all 50 or so vertical beams would’ve had to be cut at the same time, which does not happen accidentally.

There are lots of video clips of this in YouTube. There are clips of newscasters saying the building had fallen down when it was still standing; the most famous is the BBC live broadcast. On the local Fox News channel in DC, the reporters are saying it already fell down while looking at a live feed of the New York skyline — then it collapses while they’re talking. (This video has since disappeared from YouTube.)

WTC 7 was glossed over in the official investigations. This is true despite the tenants of the building including the FBI, the SEC, the IRS, the Secret Service, the NYC Office of Emergency Management and a diversity of banks and insurance companies. There is also a public safety issue. If it’s true that WTC 7 collapsed from some rubble damage and a few fires, one would think that there would be a major investigation into the structural integrity of skyscrapers, because such a thing had never happened before. But WTC 7 was treated so casually that most people have no idea that it even happened.

In a PBS interview done for America Rebuilds, the one-year anniversary special, the owner of the building, Larry Silverstein, admits that one of the Fire Department commanders called him up and told him they had to demolish the building — and he gave his consent to “pull it.” (You can see this on video here. I purchased the original from PBS to make sure it wasn’t a fake.) Silverstein, who also was the new leaseholder on the Twin Towers, admits the building was demolished intentionally, which is obvious from watching it implode. But I’m left wondering, if this really was done by the Fire Department, how it was possible to get a demolition crew into the building and prepare it to be imploded in a few hours, right in the midst of the Ground Zero catastrophe. I’m wondering how you just demolish a structure with a tenant’s list like that, without emptying the structure first. You know, the files and the safes and vaults and data centers and other secret bits.

Larry Silverstein, owner of WTC 7, said in a PBS interview that he told the Fire Department that, “The smartest thing to do is pull it.” Screen shot from PBS.

In order to accept that WTC 7 was not demolished, you have to pretend. For example, I once got into a heavy argument with a Wikipedia administrator, who said that what Larry Silverstein really meant when he said “pull it” was that the Fire Department could pull its men out of the building because it was about to collapse. Since when does the Fire Department need a landlord’s permission to get its own men out of imminent danger? (For more information on WTC 7, visit a website called BuildingWhat.org, named for the judge who had never heard of the thing and asked, “Building what?”)

There are a lot of other problems with the official story of Sept. 11. In a 2007 article, Robert Fisk, the eminent Middle East reporter for The Independent in the UK, states: “Even I question the ‘truth’ about 9/11.” He starts by saying he hates conspiracy theories, but these questions here are too big to ignore.

He asks about the plane crash in Pennsylvania: “Why did flight 93’s debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field?” He asks, “If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the Twin Towers — whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C — would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.)” And, “What about the third tower — the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salomon Brothers Building) — which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5:20 pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it?”

Then there are the firemen who said that there was molten steel flowing in the rubble of the Twin Towers “like a foundry” and “like lava.” The issue of molten steel, a factor in all three building collapses, is impressive. There are steel microspheres, which can only be created by melting it, in the dust of all three WTC high-rises that collapsed that day. I could go on and on — I’ve only described some of the more prominent questions. An organization called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has been asking a lot more of them, though they have a special focus on WTC 7. (You can visit their website at AE911Truth.org.)

Tracy Litts Karson, and Karson’s husband, Chris, watch as the casket of her son, Pfc. Douglas Cordo is placed in a hearse on the way to the cemetery. Cordo was killed in Afghanistan last month, believing he was defending the United States against the 9/11 attackers. The war goes on even as the truth about 9/11 comes to light. Photo by Eric.

The story that some terrorists from Afghanistan attacked us because they resent our freedom is the product of a nifty picture of world politics. It fits into a preconceived idea not of 9/11 but of how wonderful we Americans are. (Actually, the terrorists accused were from many different Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia.) If we look at the writing of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) published in the late 1990s, we find out about the need for a “new Pearl Harbor” so that the United States can fight a multi-front war early in the 21st century. Most signers of PNAC, which is basically a vision for perpetual war, became the Cheney/Bush administration.

Once you start gathering them, and looking at them with your eyes open, the facts are so obvious they can speak for themselves; that is, to anyone who wants to listen. Yet here is what I call the spiritual problem, though. It’s the implication of any of this information, if you accept it. If we shift the narrative of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, we have to change our worldview. I don’t mean this casually. Understanding Sept. 11 requires changing your perspective of the world.

If we accept that there’s a problem with the official story, we have to open up to the possibility that 1) we are being lied to and 2) that there is another version of events — such as the whole thing was a premeditated false flag event. I mean, it didn’t just happen all by itself. If, hypothetically, there were explosive charges put into buildings, and they had to be placed in advance, who did it? And why? Those questions have answers. And those answers challenge who we are as individuals and also on the tribal level.

This is too big of a psychological barrier for most people to cross over. Once you go down that road, as someone said to me the other day, you don’t know where you’re going to end up — or rather you do know and it’s not a pretty place. Your whole notion of both society and politics will change, and as a result, you will change. This makes the issue deeply personal — just like we experience it.

You can start by doing something easier, which is calling the Sept. 11 incident what it is, which is something that you don’t fully understand. That takes the pressure off of you to have the answers.

Lovingly,

 

Planet Waves FM: Sept. 11, science and astrology

The new edition of Planet Waves FM is done — thanks for the slight delay (usually PW FM comes out just past midnight Wednesday morning). I wanted to see the new film Explosive Evidence, created by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth before doing my first podcast on Sept. 11 for the 10th anniversary. I describe the film in this edition, focusing on the last section — interviews with psychologists explaining why so many people refuse to see the obvious.

In this edition, I reference a few articles. One is called Were It So, from March 2002. This is the first article I wrote deconstructing the official story of 9/11, which was based on one photo taken on Sept. 14. I look more closely at this image in today’s lead article above.

I also mention an article called Sept. 11, 1984, which gives a basic examination of the Sept. 11 chart. I conclude today’s edition with a similar discussion; you can see it in black and white on that page.

More recently, I wrote a piece called History, Turning on a Phrase, which takes apart the situation with World Trade Center 7 — the third skyscraper that fell on Sept. 11, despite not being hit by an airplane. Explosive Evidence spends an hour on WTC 7, discussing how the steel melted and the building fell at free-fall speed, despite the only damage being from some small office fires and debris striking the structure — not enough to make it fall down at all, much less collapse in its own footprint.

But at the heart of the matter of Sept. 11 is why we believe or don’t believe what is presented to us. The whole incident relates to our worldview; that is, how we see Sept. 11 is evidence of how we see the world around us, and what we believe about the world. That is the theme I do my best to develop in this edition, and with your help will continue next week.

Here is your program in the old player and a downloadable archive.

Thanks for tuning in.

 

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, Sept. 9, 2011, #874 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Revised and Updated! Click for Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — I suggest you ask yourself just what you’ve been through the past five or six weeks. It was definitely unusual, and by that, I mean not your typical emotional crisis. It was more like a series of initiations, or an extended ordeal designed to help you figure out who you are. You learned a lot — and now the question is how not to forget. If outright frustration has tamped down to a sense of mild irritation, allow that irritation to keep reminding you to stay awake and alert. Notice those relationships wherein there is a bit of push and pull, and the sense that things are not quite right but they work anyway. That tension can also remind you to pay attention, and mind the details of your personal associations with others. If you treat others as if they are here to help you, they are more likely to do so. Open up to receiving what they offer and they’re likely to give you more of what you need.

Aries, your birth sign or rising sign, is getting some of the most potent transits of them all right now. I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and a tarot card reading for you. Learn more by visiting this page.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You may be feeling like you’re out of your element, but I doubt that’s true. Where you are, however, is in a situation that’s insisting that you update your files in realtime. By that I mean set your mind in manual mode and size up your environment and your mental state every hour or so, or every time you remember. Rather than settling back into the sensation that things are how they are, keep your senses sharp and observe what they are telling you. Keep the conversation going even with the people who annoy you. They are likely to provide useful information that you would have missed ordinarily. Part of why one person in particular may be irritating, by the way, is that he or she is able to discern how much of your mind you’re actually using. It’s as if someone is lurking around while you’re sleeping, waiting for you to wake up. Waking up, at the moment, means living with the sense that you’re participating in an experiment. You don’t know the outcome, and that is the whole point.

I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and done a tarot reading especially for you. It’s information that will help with your relationships, your professional life and your personal growth. Visit this page to find out more.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You now have the awareness and strength to break free from at least one dysfunctional belief of your parents. This would seem to be a lifelong process of healing and growth. It is, yet there are moments of breakthrough, when you make a discovery that works on several levels. First, see what it’s like to not be angry when you discover that you’ve been deceived. Right under the deception is a contact point with your power. It’s as if you’re clearing the fog on some event or condition of childhood that obscured your ability to see contrasts, and to make coherent decisions based on them. Now that ability is suddenly coming back to you. Remember that the root of feeling and seeing the truth is emotional, as is your ability to act on it. You are making contact with who you were before the paralysis of denial set in, which is another way of saying that the kid who refuses to believe lies is alive and well in your heart.

Gemini is one of the most misunderstood signs — and as someone born under this sign, part of your role is to hold a mirror to the world. I’ve recorded an hour of audio for you, plus a 20-minute tarot reading. You can get access to these by visiting this page.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You don’t need other people as much as you think. Of course it can be challenging to test that belief, but I suggest you give it a try. You’ll benefit from proving to yourself that the dependencies you think you have are not so sticky, though to get there you have to confront the situation in some direct way. Do something on your own that you thought you needed help with. Solve a problem that you think is over your head. Challenge your sense of loneliness by diving into your creative talent. The quality of experience you have with others will improve significantly when it’s focused on writing, art or a service project rather than merely ‘social’. Look for a point of contact with yourself, develop that and then boldly engage in a real exchange with someone you consider smarter or more advanced than you. From that series of contacts you will make an important discovery about yourself.

I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and done a tarot reading especially for you. It’s information that will help with your relationships, your professional life and your personal growth. Visit this page to find out more.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Lack of self-esteem is one of the most serious issues of our day. It may be the most damaging problem that humans face, responsible for most of the misery and abuse in the world today. We then take this condition and bring it into our relationships, basically putting our self-worth into the hands of someone else. This is the root of what is commonly called codependency. I don’t think anyone is exempt, but Mercury and Chiron are about to align in a way that can clarify this issue for you. Imagine that there are many ways that two people can align; pretend we have hundreds of ways we can connect with others. Among them, there are just a very few alignments where this issue of how we handle, treat and mirror one another’s self-esteem can be seen for what it is. And what is that ‘what it is’? That’s for you to observe over the next few days. I suggest not looking for specifics, but rather treating everything that happens as an expression of this issue — and seeing where that leads you.

Hello Leo! Your birthday report is now available. I’ve recorded 70 minutes of in-depth astrology plus a 20-minute tarot reading for you, exploring relationships, personal growth and your professional life. Visit this page for additional information.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You’ve faced some serious challenges this week. You may be considering them emotional in nature, but so far as I can see, the deeper issues are spiritual. Since that’s a controversial term, I’ll explain what I mean. Primarily, you’re being called deeper than the sensory world, and the world of feelings. Those things are the starting point, but you’re being invited deeper. You’re being called beyond your individual past into what you can think of as the ancestral past. You’re going deeper than human connection, into a realm where you meet something akin to a ‘cosmic other’. You may discover this entity within you through a process of inner conflict. That conflict may feel like encountering some of the darkest aspects of who you are, but once you make friends with them, you discover the light within the shadow. To get there, it’s essential that you suspend judgment about yourself, i.e., not deciding that you’re so-and-so kind of person based on a certain experience you’ve had or feelings you discover within yourself. Observe, listen and keep your sense of humor.

Eric is working on your birthday audio — we plan to have it available shortly — sorry for the delay. Please stay tuned!

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Relationships are a delicate, sensitive dance. You can take nothing for granted — and while that may seem like torture to those who desire only stability and consistency, it is the more likely path to healthy interaction. We have all discovered at some point that relationships can be dangerous. We can invest enormous amounts of self-esteem into them, alter the course of our lives and make commitments that may take decades to work out. Often we have to do this working from a blind spot as we assess who people are — only to find out that additional information would have been useful much earlier on. If you’re pondering subject matter such as this, I suggest you consider which fears you were carrying around before you got into your present situation. At the moment you’re susceptible to the self-fulfilling prophecy. Keep an open dialog with those you care about, and do your best to avoid making claims on the future.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — One of the temptations you’re facing now is the idea of purity. You may be obsessed with it, though in a way that’s lurking in the background. This may involve themes like wanting to have an absolutely clear conscience, correct intentions, take impeccable care of your health, or absolute focus on your most important purpose in life. You know, that kind of impossible-to-attain stuff that could gradually drive you nuts if you take it too seriously. I suggest you invest your energy soothing your frayed emotions rather than trying to improve yourself. You need rest, you need water, and most of all you need to experiment with fulfilling some of the desires that have been continuously frustrated in recent weeks. I suggest you start modestly, with a sincere desire, particularly of a kind that you fear someone else might be inclined to judge. This is a good time to go out and make some new friends. Look for reasons to say yes.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Humans are complex beings. We seem to spend half our lives working out our contradictions, and the rest of the time working out those of the world around us. The good news is that you seem to be making progress. Despite the many intricacies and the maze-like quality of your life, you are actually finding common ground with people — with one key individual in particular, and also with certain groups that have a family-like quality. If we were to make a list of the most persistent mysteries that have faced humanity for its entire history, they might include questions like, ‘Where did we come from and how did we get here?’ But on top of the list would be, ‘What is the secret to human cooperation?’ You seem to be figuring this one out, and I suggest you put the information to work — especially toward advancing a long-held career goal.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — I suggest you connect the idea of professional advancement with fertility. Whatever your condition of employment, you’re in a phase of seeding the future. You can think of this as impregnating your own aspirations, which — when they begin to manifest — often have the sensation of ‘having a life of their own’. This is precisely what you’re going for. Be mindful of who you’re speaking with at all times. Listen for the ways you can work together, and pay attention for those visionary moments when ideas erupt spontaneously. Please keep a notebook to track both who you’re talking with and what you’re talking about. Give things a chance to develop, and also do your best to consciously evolve them. Notice when certain themes repeat themselves. Keep in contact with people who share similar ideas. Look for patterns of affinity, such as when you hear of organizations that have values similar to your own. This will work a lot better than sending out resumes.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You seem to be trying to fit yourself through a narrow opening of what you believe is possible. As you are discovering, you won’t fit through that passageway; you need a wider concept, and a bigger idea; that means you will need to enlarge your concept of who you are. One typical problem you encounter when you do this is that you can lose any sense of definition, shape or form — or you fear that you will. That suggests you need to work with structure and with a concept, but that concept needs to be flexible enough to adapt to different situations. But the heart of the matter is not about the concepts — it’s your beliefs about what you’re capable of. You seem to be using these beliefs as the basis of setting your goals. I suggest you work the other way, by defining some objectives, then determining how you’re going to get there.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Sex is like seawater, in that it contains nearly every element of consciousness. Many have noted the similarities between blood and seawater, both of which are like the ocean that refuses no river. This is more than a metaphor. Notice how your sexual ideas, emotions and experiences contain all of your feelings about yourself. Notice the overlay and exchange between yourself and the people close to you, including in fantasy experiences, dreams and the odd things that people say. Among erotic experiences there are times for blending energies more deeply, and times for sorting out who is who. At the moment, the cosmos is revealing a specific difference between you and someone close to you — which may translate to a difference between you and everyone else in the world. Yet this is the kind of distinction that can have a way of bringing people closer. True individuality provides the basis for respect and the authentic sharing of common ground much more often than it does the basis for separation.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.

History, Turning on a Phrase

“We don’t want freedom. We don’t want justice. We just want someone to love.”
— David Byrne / Talking Heads

Dear Friend and Reader:

The recent Libra New Moon quietly marked a threshold in world history, if you use astrology as a way of keeping track. We know that the 9th anniversary of the Sept. 11 incident was last month. Our culture is obsessed with anniversaries, but nature works on a little different schedule. Astrology points to its own moments of passage, and we happen to be at one right now. During the New Moon of Thursday, Oct. 7, the Sun and Moon were conjunct within two arc minutes — that is, 1/30th of a degree — to the ascendant of the chart for Sept. 11, 2001.

World Trade Center 7, or the Salomon Brothers building, shortly before it collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001. Most people don’t know that a third tower of the Trade Center complex fell down that day. Photographer unknown.

In the nine years since that incident, yesterday’s was the closest New Moon to the chart’s ascendant, and the only one occupying that degree, and it was close. My impression is that we have a rare moment of transparency around an event that shaped our lives, changed the world and, more significantly, reaffirmed something about human nature.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of the ascendant, it is also called the rising sign. In every chart there is a sign rising — that is, a section of sky, represented by a zodiac sign, rising above the Earth’s horizon in the east. In this case, Libra is the sign rising. There is also a degree rising, which is like the precise address of the chart and what it represents. Every chart with an exact time has a rising degree, including your natal chart. It’s a good thing to know. On Sept 11, precisely when Flight 11 was flown into the North Tower, that degree was 14+ Libra — remarkable because Mercury was precisely rising at that moment. Mercury in the exact degree rising gave the chart emphasis, and an ominous quality, part of which was ‘this is an event with a message’. (Let’s refer to this as the North Tower chart.)

Libra is an astrological way of saying ‘good show’. The events of Sept. 11 were compelling, even convincing, and they riled up our desire for justice, a Libra quality. But Mercury is the trickster. Behind the elegant image of Libra were a series of layers that remind us that things aren’t always what they seem, and that appearances can deceive.

I consider the North Tower chart to be a world horoscope. The event was used to reshape geopolitics. Several wars were started as a result of the attacks, which have yet to end, and the concept of the ‘post 9-11 world’ was born. So in a sense we have one of the birth charts of the 21st century: what some had thought would be the New American Century. The conservative think tank by that name argued for the new rise of a dominant American military, in a plan that called for waging a multi-front war early in the century. But in September 2000, one year before Sept. 11, it said that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Mercury is a reminder to depend on documentation as a way of keeping track of the facts. Who exactly was in the New American Century group of thinkers? Those who signed onto the New American Century manifesto included Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Dan Quayle — a Who’s Who of neoconservative politics.

The North Tower Chart

I’ve written a number of articles about the North Tower chart, most of them focusing on Mercury rising. Using classical methods of interpretation, Mercury in Libra was the planet associated with the secret enemy who perpetrated the attacks (the planet that rules the 12th house). It’s a perfect description of someone stealthy, clever, able to focus on an image and use images, and who understood how to use the media. Sept. 11 was one of the most spectacular Mercury-type events ever, broadcast on live television, orchestrated by someone with a stunning gift for creating spin.

Chart for the North Tower impact on Sept. 11, 2001. Note that Mercury is the planet in the ascendant on the left side of the chart. Click here for a larger version of the chart.

The planet representing the official government, the Moon (ruler of the 10th house), was void-of-course at the end of Gemini, indicating the government was asleep at the wheel. The other planet for the government — by default, Saturn, representing the ruling structure of the country, and also what you might call the homeland (as the ruler of the 4th house) or shadow government — was in Gemini. That’s also a representation of the twin (Gemini) structures (Saturn) involved and an image of the two faces of the government.

Now here is where the chart starts to reveal its secrets. Mercury is the planet of Gemini, and Saturn is the planet exalted in Libra: they are in reception: that is, they occupy one another’s signs. And they are in a perfect (to the degree) trine aspect, indicating cooperation.

That’s another way of saying that they can switch places. The secret enemy and the homeland government look like they’re functioning as one entity. From the first moment, we had an early warning that something was up, serving as an astrological notation of the many issues that would be raised by researchers and analysts in the decade to follow.

In particular, the relationship between Mercury and Saturn hinted at the government’s foreknowledge or involvement in whatever happened. The idea that ‘Bush knew’ was circulating widely, even in the news, by the spring of 2002. Two years later, the CIA, under public pressure, declassified something called the Presidential Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001. Just one month before the attacks, the administration was warned by the CIA that “Bin Laden [was] determined to strike in the US,” outlining a number of current terrorist threats. Notably, this was the first time ever that a PDB was released to the public.

Detail of Thursday’s Libra New Moon. Note the Sun and Moon at 14+ Libra, two arc minutes from the ascendant of the North Tower chart, and conjunct the infamous Mercury rising.

Even the official 9/11 Commission report said that the “system was blinking red” that summer.

Many writers and researchers have published on these and related issues, ranging from engineers asking how it was possible that the two towers collapsed at all, much less within 29 minutes of one another, to whether there was actually an airplane crash at the Pentagon. And with the thousands of planes intercepted by the Air Force for as little as veering off the course of the pilot’s flight plan, how was it even vaguely possible that these four hijacked flights — an unprecedented event — were not intercepted? Fifty-nine minutes elapsed between the crash at the North Tower and whatever happened at the Pentagon. One would think that an hour was enough time for the Air Force to stop an attack on the military headquarters of the free world.

The problem with these questions does not involve their validity. I’ve looked into them all, and they all have a value worth considering, raising significant questions lacking easy answers. The real problem is social: it involves what others will think of you, or the fear of what others will think, when you start asking. People tend to either get scared or accuse you of being a conspiracy nut. Some become openly hostile if you propose that anything but the official version of events is possible. A few will affirm that actual questions exist. Many polls indicate that the public is suspicious. More than half in one 2007 Zogby poll wanted Bush and Cheney to be investigated for their involvement in 9/11 and in the same poll more than 30% sought their immediate impeachment.

Even if the Mercury-Saturn relationship in the North Tower chart describes only the perception of the event, that perception has come with enormous pain and then a good dose of skepticism on the part of the public, and a lot of activity on the part of policy makers.

In retrospect, what did that look like? In The Shock Doctrine, published in 2007, author Naomi Klein describes “the intersection between super-profits and megadisasters” in which “the preferred method of advancing corporate goals [is] using moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering.” Essentially, the process breaks down to two parts: 1. Create or exploit a shock; and 2. Use the confused and chaotic aftermath to push through/assert a corporate and/or political coup with no threat of backlash from a traumatized public.

Klein proposed that, “This feat required two stages. First, the White House used the omnipresent sense of peril in the aftermath of 9/11 to dramatically increase the policing, surveillance, detention and war-waging powers of the executive branch — a power grab that the military historian Andrew Bacevich has termed ‘a rolling coup’. Then those newly enhanced and richly funded functions of security, invasion, occupation and reconstruction were immediately outsourced, handed over to the private sector to perform at a profit. Although the stated goal was fighting terrorism, the effect was the creation of the disaster capitalism complex — a full-fledged new economy in homeland security, privatized war and disaster reconstruction tasked with nothing less than building and running a privatized security state, both at home and abroad.”

The Chart for World Trade Center 7

There’s a second Sept. 11 chart that I haven’t written much about yet, timed for the spontaneous collapse of World Trade Center 7 on the afternoon of Sept. 11. Most people still have not heard that a third tower of the World Trade Center collapsed that day — a 47-story building with an impressive list of tenants. This building was not hit by any airplanes; it ‘simply collapsed’ at 5:21 pm. Notably, the 9/11 Commission did not look into how or why WTC 7 collapsed, so it came to no conclusions.

Segment of the chart for the spontaneous collapse of WTC 7 at 5:21 pm on Sept. 11, 2001. Note that the chart has Neptune (the blue trident) two degrees from the ascendant, indicating that the situation is veiled in deception and denial, and suggesting that the truth may never be known, and that if it is, it’s subject to being refuted by denial. The full chart is here.

First let’s take a look at the chart, which is for the moment the structure fell in its footprint in about six seconds. Having sustained no impact by an airplane and with several relatively small fires, we are told that a concrete and steel skyscraper fell straight down, on its own, at freefall speed.

Here’s the whole chart in a separate window; to the right is a picture of the ascendant, the most significant piece. In this chart, like the North Tower chart, there is a planet rising — but this time it’s Neptune.

Neptune rising presents a mystery. It’s also a beautiful image of how WTC 7 was a kind of non-event; it was invisible. Neptune is like a veil of fog, and that veil can indicate deception, denial or delusion (words that begin with the letter D tend to attach themselves to Neptune, including Drink, Drugs and Drama). In a public chart like this, one that potentially involves a crime, Neptune rising suggests we may never know the truth, or that the truth will be obscured or seem confusing. The sign involved is Aquarius; in fact the public (one of those Aquarius things) was so confused that most people have no idea that WTC 7 even existed, much less that it mysteriously fell down at 5:21 pm.

There are a couple of other interesting features to the chart. In the 11th house (a public place) there is a lot of activity. In particular, we have Mars in Capricorn on the South Node. In the shorthand notation of astrology we have an old story (South Node) about militarism (Mars) and the corporate/government system (Capricorn) — and we have this in the 11th, right where anyone can see it. In other words, what this aspect describes is happening in plain sight.

In the same house, Ceres is conjunct Nessus in Capricorn. This will be fed to people like poison food, with them convinced it’s some form of nourishment.

Opposite all of this, the Moon is in Cancer, on the North Node and opposite Mars: the people in their everyday lives, their home lives, taking care of themselves and their families, get caught in the mess. The Cancer Moon opposite Mars suggests the public can get emotionally swept away by a perceived enemy and security threat and thus lose track of the intellectual level — and most of us did.

What Larry Silverstein Said, and What BBC Predicted

Larry Silverstein was the developer of WTC 7 and its owner, and he held the lease on the twin towers (WTC 1 and WTC 2) as well. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was the landlord of the whole WTC complex, which included several other buildings. One year after the attacks, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired a program called America Rebuilds. As part of a somber, comprehensive documentary that was fitting for the one-year anniversary, the producers interviewed Silverstein.

Larry Silverstein, owner of WTC 7, said in a PBS interview that he told the Fire Department that, ‘”The smartest thing to do is pull it.” Screen shot from PBS.

In that interview, he told the story of what happened to WTC 7: “I remember getting a call from the Fire Department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it’. And they made that decision to pull, and we watched the building collapse.”

In other words, he is saying that the building was intentionally demolished. You can watch this on video here. I recently purchased a copy of the DVD from PBS to verify that this segment is actually in the documentary, and it is there in proper context.

Now, what is interesting is that it takes weeks and sometimes months to prepare a building for demolition. If we are to believe the landlord’s statement to PBS, this preparation was done in less than a day — and that a demolition team was brought in through the catastrophe at Ground Zero, consulted architects and engineers familiar with the structure, then working extremely efficiently, rigged the building with dynamite and took it down. Either that or it had a preinstalled self-destruct mechanism.

The building was occupied by Salomon Brothers, as well as American Express and a couple of other banks and insurance companies. In addition, it had as its tenants the CIA, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the IRS, the Defense Department and the New York City Office of Emergency Management. Like the other World Trade Center buildings, evacuation began immediately when the first plane hit, before 9 am. So the officials in all of those agencies, including many federal officers, had no chance to clean their desks, take copies of disk drives or do anything before the building fell down later that day.

BBC World reporter Jane Stanley announces that World Trade Center 7, also known as the Salomon Brothers building, has fallen down, even though it’s standing up right behind her. It’s the building to the viewer’s right of her head. To the left is the smoke from WTC 1 and 2. Photo: Screen shot from BBC World.

More interesting, BBC World, the international edition of BBC, broadcast that the building had collapsed at 4:54 pm EDT, 27 minutes in advance. This was also announced at the same time by BBC in the UK. In this video, you can see the reporter, Jane Stanley, saying that the structure has fallen down while it’s shown in the frame. We’re really talking ‘in plain sight, but might as well be invisible’ here. WTC 7 is easily identified by its location, and by the little notch at the top, next to the penthouse.

This bit of prescience has been explained away by claiming there was a lot of erroneous news reported on Sept. 11, 2001. Except for one thing: this turned out not to be an error. It was accurate, just a little early.

Indira Singh, a private pilot and EMT who was volunteering as a rescue worker at Ground Zero that day, said that by 1 pm the word was out on the street that the building would be demolished and people in the area, such as volunteers and emergency workers, were backing off and retreating toward safer ground.

“By noon or one o’clock they told us we had to move from that triage site up to Pace University, a little further away, because Building 7 was gonna come down or being brought down,” Singh said in a widely-reported 2005 interview on KPFA in Berkeley. She continued a bit further in, “There was another panic around four o’clock because they were bringing the building down and people seemed to know this ahead of time, so people were panicking again and running.” [Read the full interview here, and listen to it here.]

Apparently BBC was not the only network with a well-tuned crystal ball that day. About a minute before WTC 7 fell down, FOX 5 News in Washington, DC broadcast that a third building had fallen down while WTC 7 is shown in the frame. They are speculating that the smoke actually rising from the heap of WTC 1 and WTC 2 is from that third building that has supposedly already fallen. Then — while they are discussing this — WTC 7 collapses live, on the air.

That Turn of Phrase

The available facts add up to something a little weird, something that does not jive with the official story: controlled demolition was used to take down WTC 7, with all its highly sensitive contents in a rather sensitive moment. That this happened in a day is incredulous, particularly with the chaos of that particular place and time. The implication is that, if the building was indeed demolished, it was planned and set up in advance. If that’s true, the entire story of Sept. 11, 2001 — such as the surprise attack by Osama bin Laden — falls in its footprint at the speed of freefall. And this has both historical implications, as well as psychological ones.

The new WTC 7 has a smaller footprint and environmentally friendly features. It was the starting point of reconstruction of the WTC complex. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

There are some obvious questions here, such as why would Silverstein admit this? My theory is that the way he phrased his statement was a plausible alibi. He claimed the Fire Department pulled the building that day, for immediate safety. Who knows how long it takes to prepare a building for demolition? Who knows that the Fire Department does not do the work of demolition teams? It sounds true enough. Yet there has literally been a decade-long debate over what Silverstein meant by “pull it.” Or rather — what he meant by “it.” Clearly he meant pull something, but what?

When the time came to backpedal on his statement, Silverstein’s office claimed he meant pull the rescue operation — not the building. So let’s pretend that’s what he meant, and reconstruct the sequence of events using that scenario.

The following is a fictionalized, alternative version of events to test the theory.

The attacks happened just before 9 am, WTC 7 was evacuated, and WTC 1 and WTC 2 (the familiar North and South towers) both fell down by 10:30 am. WTC 7 was damaged by debris from the North Tower and there were some fires, but it was a modern steel and concrete skyscraper with numerous safety features, so it was expected to hold up. After all, it supposedly took direct hits from fuel-laden jet planes to knock down WTC 1 and 2.

However, the Fire Department commander was concerned about the fires and the stability of the building. So he called the landlord to check whether he should get his own firefighters out of the building, fearing it might collapse. This insinuates that the Fire Department needed the permission of the landlord, a civilian, on an immediate tactical decision in the face of some imminent safety issue.

Silverstein said, “pull it” [the search and rescue operation]. With that, the firefighters walked out, and everyone watched as the building mysteriously fell to the ground. [End of fictional scenario.]

You would be impressed the lengths to which some have argued — relentlessly, for years — that this is what he meant by “pull it.” Wikipedia has been a particularly intense battle ground, and administrators, for example, have reserved the right to ban users who question this point of view in edits to encyclopedia articles. Others have argued vehemently that as a developer, Silverstein could not be expected to know the terminology of the demolition industry; he merely builds the buildings. However, he does so in a city that’s the demolition capital of the world.

Referring to Silverstein’s use of the term “pull it,” one Wikipedia editor wrote to me, “Any other interpretation of this quote is a fantasy manufactured to fit a preconceived narrative.”

When there is a controversy over what a word means, I learned a while ago to look it up in the dictionary. “Pull” is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as to remove a fixed object from its place, and the term “pull down” is noted as meaning to demolish a building. Ontario-based independent journalist Jeffrey Hill called up Controlled Demolition, Inc., a demolition industry leader which was called in by the federal government to clean up the mess at Ground Zero, and the company told him that the term “pull it” means to demolish a building.

Selma the Pullet, who may hold the key to the mystery of WTC 7. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Remember — Neptune is rising in the chart for the building falling down. There is a veil of confusion and deniability. Even the Wikipedia editor refers to “fantasy,” a pure Neptune keyword. And the 11th house is packed with action in this chart. Whatever is happening is going on in plain sight, such as on BBC World, even if it seems difficult to see. By the way — in 2007, BBC’s editors finally issued a statement.

“We’re not part of a conspiracy,” they reassured the public, writing on the company site. “Nobody told us what to say or do on September 11th. We didn’t get told in advance that buildings were going to fall down. We didn’t receive press releases or scripts in advance of events happening.”

However, they added, “We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy).”

Oh, I’m happy it was just a cock-up. I would dread to think that BBC could be part of a conspiracy, or that they might delete their files to cover for such an odd occurrence that just happens to unravel so much of the official version of events. But if they reported that WTC 7 had already fallen down, and then it did so 27 minutes later, that just proves my theory that Brits make the best astrologers and psychics. And we should definitely put Jane Stanley to work covering the stock market.

I don’t like conspiracy theories, but in this case, I have my own. Silverstein was actually talking to his wife in that call, and she said, “Larry, what do you want to have for dinner?”

A devoted chicken lover, he said, “Pullet, pullet.”

Yours & truly,

 

 

Beyond Astonishing

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

In his New York Times opinion piece, That’s Where the Money Is, award-winning journalist Bob Herbert turned a phrase that gave me pause. “It’s beyond astonishing,” said Herbert, that John Boehner has a chance to become Speaker of the House. While many citizens haven’t the slightest idea who the House Minority Leader is, the notion that they might awaken in November to find him leading the nation’s lawmaking institution is, to me, beyond astonishing indeed. Mincing no words, Herbert went on to describe Boehner as “sleazy” and a “slick, chain-smoking, quintessential influence-peddler.”

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, center, has used his business ties to become a leading fund-raiser for Republicans. Photo: David Lassman / Post-Standard.

Herbert’s candor surprised and pleased me. Frank assessment of Boehner’s leadership should not be confined to the opinion page. Mainstream media has sidestepped its obligation to denounce views that go over the top, leaving truth-telling to risk-takers like Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, who recently reported on a Palin meet-up that, “The dingbat revolution is nigh.” This is not just an ideological war of words. This is a moment of enormous instability attended by a perfect storm of human petulance, paranoia and neurosis. Orchestrating that movement is a party interested in nothing less than complete power, which makes them, ultimately, ruthless. Mr. Herbert hit the nail right on the head. It’s not too much to name the current leadership of the GOP an extremist movement.

Baggers — the people who earned Taibbi’s comments — have sold themselves to the world as ‘real Americans’, the purest defenders of American values and liberty. They have impressed us with their fury at big, taxing government and captured the media with their passions. Those who are sincere allow an opportunistic political wing to exploit their simplistic idealism. In a reasonable political world, where opposing philosophies wrestle each other to a standstill in round after round of electoral prowess, it would be comforting to think that this season’s minority voter has a taste for something other than snake oil. I am not comforted.

Continued at this link…

 

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, October 8, 2010, #834 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

When you reach a communication impasse, that’s the time to take a new approach. It helps if one declares the impasse. That means admitting you’ve reached a place where you cannot pass through. It’s a kind of stalemate, which is an interesting word as well. The planets look like you’re at such a point, and the best strategy that I see is a change in the overall direction. This might seem like a reversal, but what is described is a reorientation that takes into account elements of the past and needs of the future that are factors in your current get-serious moment. The obstacle is not insurmountable. In fact no matter how heavy or loaded with gravitas the issue may seem, it will yield to communication if both parties can agree on a common goal and a couple of common values. Start there.

Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

The theme of applied creativity continues this week. It’s one thing to ‘be creative’. It’s another to put the creative mind to work in a constructive way. One thing that will help is shifting your perception from seeking insight into the psychological level of a partnership to the emotional level. The concept applied means that once you have an understanding of how things are, you put that to work right away. That may take some persistence and focus, but it will pay off fairly soon. You may face the perception that you’re up against something much larger than yourself, which will fade once you start to consciously explore the situation for what it is. What seems like a limit or a boundary is really the key to exploration and adventure — and a way to balance your life.

Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

The key to easing an emotionally challenging situation is by not being so emotional. I’m not suggesting you be cool or chilly, but rather that you take a full-spectrum approach to the question you’re facing. Let’s start with money. What role does that play? Then there is the question of how you handle the impulse by another person to be emotionally independent. Does that turn you on, does it make you insecure or do you have mixed feelings? And how do you feel about having a little more autonomy? One other matter to investigate is how your relationship to authority is influencing your feelings. You may be bringing past feelings about one of your parents into a relationship that wants equanimity and level ground. The power relationship is actually a lot more level than it seems.

Gemini Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

You seem determined to break free of emotional patterns that have served their use. This in turn is leading to a revolution in how you experience yourself, and how you perceive yourself. Granted, it’s a subtle revolution, but there’s no doubt that your perception of yourself is thawing, and as the ice melts, what is emerging is a deeper level of emotional confidence. This may initially be the confidence to stand on your own, and to honor feelings and desires that you’re pretty sure aren’t espoused by most other people. Yet you feel what you feel, and you’re beginning to understand what matters to you. There is little point in trying to convert anyone to your cause. Be available and you will notice that the people who understand are available to you.

Cancer Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

It’s all about ideas. Labor counts, the time you invest counts, but the ideas you have count for a lot more. I suggest you pause if you keep having the same ideas over and over, or if the new editions of the old concept don’t do what they’re supposed to do. There is an ease factor involved, and this is true no matter how large, old or insurmountable a problem seems. Extremely challenging situations sometimes have elegantly simple solutions. I suggest, in exploring the possibilities, that you be driven by your sense of fairness, and that you remember what you’ve learned in the past. It seems that you need to take into account some prior experience or lesson and make sure you extract every bit of value that you can.

Leo Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Venus retrograde is suggesting that you account for the ways in which you try to hide your feminine side. For a woman this could mean trying to conform to male values or rules, or to the desires of early caregivers who wanted a boy. For a man this could mean the ways in which so much as being aware of your feminine side can threaten people. If you find yourself asserting your authority, power or sex drive, check for the equal and opposite reaction. For example you may be trying to veil your passivity or desire to be dominated. More likely, you feel two distinct ways: a profound submissiveness and a potent sense of drive. That may be a contradiction you don’t want to talk about, but it’s as natural as the blue sky and the green sea.

The Virgo Audio Birthday Report is available. In the format of all the birthday audios, this offers more than an hour of astrology for Virgo and Virgo rising, covering the cardinal T-square from a personal perspective. I’ve also included a 20-minute tarot reading using the Voyager Deck. For instant access, order here for Virgo and Virgo Rising. Only $14.95, this also makes a meaningful and economical gift.

You seem unusually willing to admit something that you cannot usually get a grasp on. Yet for whatever reason, you’ve now got a handle on what it is. It’s almost like catching a dream in a net, or dropping a screen in front of a movie projector. What you have now that you may not have had lately is contrast. This is providing the opportunity to discern what is and is not pleasing to you, and to make some decisions based on what you’re noticing. Contrast is a useful tool, though it implies an exaggeration in perception — so be aware that things that seem off-putting are not as weird as you’re experiencing them, and things that seem appealing are not quite as potent as they appear — but overall your perception is accurate enough to make better decisions than you have in the past.

Libra birthday audio is coming soon.

What are you obsessing over? It seems like you can’t get your mind off of a mistake you’ve made several times in the past, and that you fear you’re making again. You may be wondering when you’re finally going to learn how to stand up for yourself, or how to change your mind when you find yourself doing something self-destructive or exerting too much energy for very little return. The current episode may be exaggerating your sense of isolation. Yet there is a simple enough lesson available, which is that when you assert yourself, you help yourself get what you want. Asserting yourself is another way of saying that you’re committed to what you want, as evidenced by taking action. Yes, part of you still wants to hesitate, but you cannot do both.

There are certain people who may not agree with you, though I suggest you go mellow on any authority trip and keep a flexible position. Someone you’re in contact with, or are about to be, has an idea, and they want to share it with you. I suggest you not take the role of the older and wiser one who knows more, but rather the wiser one who listens to people with ideas and those who are willing to express them to you. This person could become a good friend, and have a positive influence on your financial fortunes as well. Whether you agree with what you hear or not, I suggest you listen carefully, take it on board and consider what you hear. What’s interesting is that this person isn’t as influenced by certain biases as you are and is likely to be presenting an aware, intelligent point of view.

Take assistance as it’s offered, and as it comes to you. You’ve got a lot of responsibility and you’re handling it beautifully, but you will do better with the right assistance. This is likely to come in the form of information about how to handle a technical matter that you may not be familiar with. On anything involving an international situation, I suggest you get advice about the customs of the country you’re dealing with. What you learn in the next day or two can influence you to alter your longterm plans and expectations, and that would be a positive change. The whole point of knowledge is to take action. There are some parts of your plan that are going brilliantly and others that need revision. Remember not to delay things that are going well, and to take control of whatever you want to reevaluate.

Capricorn Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

You’re looking for the balance between what you want and what you must do; between what you inwardly desire and what you’re driven to achieve. This is an emotional state that’s pulling you in a few directions. It may take some time to work this out, and I suggest that you not take any perceived split in your feelings too seriously. You actually have some immediate situation or opportunity to work with, and it may be particularly exciting or a fresh twist on what you can do if you want. The thing is, you may be hesitating because of this emotional split. I suggest you consider the opportunity that seems appealing, and let your deeper stuff work itself out over the next couple of months. Life is an experiment; anything new that you try will give you valuable experience and information, if it feels right at the outset.

Aquarius Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

The most interesting aspects in your solar chart — Venus and Mars in Scorpio, and lots of activity in Libra — describe your rapidly evolving ideas around sex, commitment and religion. I suggest that there’s no limit to how thorough you can be evaluating these attributes of your life, because you want to be clear on all of them: such would facilitate your happiness. You need a working concept of relationship that embraces all three and that evaporates the concept of guilt having any value at all. Guilt is merely toxic. As such it is menacing. You have much better alternatives available now, and you have the option to recover parts of yourself that you’ve lost to these useless internal power struggles. Your existence is right. Your relationships are mutual. Desire is beautiful.

Pisces Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.