I guess you could say March came in like a lion… if the lion was brain-damaged, gynophobic and high on meth
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In the USA, Republicans reinvigorated the 19th-century war on birth control, Rush Limbaugh called a Democratic law student a slut, and a Montana judge sniggered in an email that the president’s mother had had sex with a dog. Such is the state of American public discourse as the Equinox gets ready to shoot us into Phase 2 of the Cardinal Crossroads.
Meanwhile, at the U.N., where Uncle Sam continues to call the shots, Iran is being cast as the next evil country to “get tough” about. That this pistol-packin’ cowboy buffoonery could still be considered a viable approach to international affairs in the current world, crippled as it already is by financial, environmental and military chaos, can only strike a thinking person as completely insane.
Memory Loss
The good citizens of the NATO countries seem to be suffering from total memory loss as regards the last time they let their leaders drag them into a protracted tragic mess in the Middle East (and the war in Iraq is by no means over. Overseen by the biggest embassy in the world, CIA spies and Special Ops have a firmer foothold than ever in the country Uncle Sam has turned into a semi-permanent war zone.) Further heating up the rhetoric right now is the fact that the USA, Iran and Israel all happen to be preparing for elections at the same time. So, with grim predictability, we are seeing jingoistic, trigger-happy posturing winning the day, while appeals to reasoned diplomacy are derided as cowardly and unpatriotic.
With retrograde Mars (machismo run amok) and the Pluto-Uranus square triggered all through the month (see the March Skywatch), we are hearing every cynical politician with a bully pulpit trying to score points with saber-rattling grandiosity. The US candidates are putting on a particularly detestable display, each trying to outdo the other with escalating threats against Iran; not excluding the president, with his dark hints about “military solutions” — an oxymoron if there ever was one.
Not surprisingly with Pluto (destruction) in Capricorn (monetary infrastructures), so far the strategies Uncle Sam has up its sleeve against Iran are largely economic. Warfare is becoming more and more a starkly financial enterprise: “sanctions” really means economic strangulation. Having failed to bring Iran to its knees through spy plots and assassinations, Washington’s new plan seems to be to weaken its economy enough that the government collapses.
History-challenged Americans seem to have no clue about how chillingly the current scenario parallels their government’s machinations from sixty years ago, when the CIA coup toppled the democratically elected government in Iran, and installed the shah in its place. This inaugurated a 25-year-long reign of horror for ordinary Iranians, while shoveling their country’s resources over to US oil companies and banks.
Seized Assets
In recent months Uncle Sam has seized tens of billions of dollars of Iranian assets. Surrounded by U.S.-occupied countries and well aware of the abiding desire of American corporations for the oil beneath their feet, the Iranian people know all too well what really motivates this global nastiness. Contrary to media spin, the goal NATO leaders are pursuing in Iran has nothing to do with human rights, and everything to do with raw power.
It is Plutonian logic, not practical logic, that would lead an American to believe that his own country, with its stockpile of 10 and a half thousand nuclear warheads, and its unique position of being the only country in the world to have actually used nuclear weapons, should be the one to dictate international nuclear policy. Indeed, at the same time that inflammatory warnings about Iran’s nuclear program blare forth from his TV set, the American taxpayer is paying for the U.S. Department of Energy to triple its own nuke budget.
Washington’s long term plans for Iran are a textbook case of the Sibly chart’s misused Pluto (total control) in the 2nd house (resources). These plans involve casting Israel in the role of regional strongman, as a means of keeping the Middle East safe for American interests. That is, safe for the financial interests of the American 1%. In every other way, arming to the teeth a reactionary regime like Israel’s represents the exact opposite of safety.
Its arsenals fattened with US-taxpayer-subsidized weapons, Israel has consistently refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as it has refused to allow international monitors to inspect its arsenals. Neither of these dangerous gestures has elicited a peep of protest from the American and European politicians fulsomely sputtering right now about Israel’s sui generis “right to defend itself”. With Netanyahu’s visit under Mars-inflamed skies, the war rhetoric ratchets up higher by the day.
Uranus-Pluto
As the Uranus-Pluto square builds to exactitude (first hit: June 24th) the air is buzzing with polarization. The essential conflict here, however, is not the over-hyped contest between the various stooges of American electoral politics. Nor is it a conflict between one country and another. The real choice point right now is one that is activating the minds and hearts of world citizens everywhere: the one between the power of change and the forces of fear.
Though we don’t hear much about them on the news, the numbers of individuals being inspired (Uranus) by the power of change (Pluto) right now are multiplying exponentially. For example, in the USA environmentalists are suing to block construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia that would be the nation’s first since 1978. In Japan, where the nuclear reactors damaged in last year’s quake have sprung new leaks, clean-energy activists continue to organize and protest despite a blackout of reportage on their activities. In Germany and France, the anti-nuke movement is even stronger.
In Russia, dissidents against Putin’s corrupt government have refused to be silenced despite a campaign of suppression that has included assassination. In Syria, Yemen, Jordan and Bahrain, despots (Pluto) continue to brutalize participants in popular protests (Uranus); but the activists keep coming back, filling public arenas and city squares. Even in Israel, last month attorney general Yehuda Weinstein declared unconstitutional Knesset bills that would sharply restrict funding for human rights groups.
Power of Change
We are living in a time when the power of change to transform the world will not and cannot be stopped. Ordinary people are far less geo-politically naive than a generation ago, and able to see global patterns for what they are. Few who have been watching the world scene can kid themselves that the conflicts of the past two years are isolated flashes in the pan. For our part, astrologers have been saying for a while now that the forces of negative Pluto can be expected to tighten their grip — not relax it — when up against Uranus, as the square reaches exactitude between now and 2016.
In the months and years upcoming we need to get into the habit of taking the long view on the world situation. Bemoaning conflict is not enough; we need to remember what these energies signify. The Cardinal Crossroads period is forcing long-unquestioned injustices, obsolete group assumptions and mass delusions to the fore. With each new global event that arises, the healthy response is to resist the fear reaction, and get in touch with the intelligence and courage that is innate in each of us.
