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The Aquarius Full Moon conjunct retrograde Neptune, opposite Saturn, is exact Wednesday at 12:54 pm CED (central Europe), 11:54 AM BST (UK), 6:54 am EDT (Goshen, Keator's Corners, Manhattanville, Peabody, Miami, etc.), 5:54 am CDT (Chicago, New Orleans), 4:54 MDT (Ft. Collins, Las Vegas), 3:54 pm PDT (Oxnard, LA, Nevada City, Yreka, Vashon Island, Portland, etc.). I don't guarantee I got those right. I'm also going to not attempt to do any calculation for Oz because I might screw it up, and Oz is the size of good sized asteroid and there are many time zones. But basically it's late Wednesday night, Oz time. And while I'm at it, Hello Japan! As of very early Weds. morning in Europe, the Sun has already made its conjunction to Saturn. The Moon exactly opposes Saturn hours before opposing the Sun, then opposes Neptune. Details of this whole shebang, highly subjectively reported, are in the article, "The Swiftly Tilting Planet," posted to the universe on the PW homepage. Let's take the ride, cousins. We need to send a lot of chill vibes to whoever the Israeli government thinks God is, because they are making a huge mess of a lot of lives right now in a relentless, incomprehensible show of violent force and cruelty against the people of Lebanon. The feeling I get reading about this is that it just must stop, and all we can really do from here is insist in our hearts and souls that it do so, and agree out loud, and encircle the planet in those green and blue bands of light that can protect anyone or anything. e Saturday/Sunday August 5-6, 2006 | Meat and Cyber, Saturn and Neptune I'VE BEEN entertaining Planet Waves Weekly readers the past month with my metaphors and messages from the rapidly developing Saturn-Neptune opposition. It seems to be the ultimate encounter between 'fantasy' and 'reality'. Along this thread, I've been rambling a bit about weaving Meatspace and Cyberspace, the first term being a hacker/gamer word for the physical world. We all know what Cyberspace is. Right? Since around 1995, I've pretty much merged my identity, soul, working life and much of my social life with the Internet. That was round the same time I pulled in quite a ways from the affairs of the world, quit investigative reporting as a career, and started buying astrology books from this Aquarius guy out in California who always has a lot to say and handed me exactly six of the 12 necessary things you need to be an astrologer. Let's call him Raj. This was also around the same time when my old friend Allan Rousselle, with whom I have an exact Mercury-Mercury conjunction in Pisces, said, "You need to be on the Internet." Ah yes, many years of enduring Allan's horrible jokes made up for in seven little words. No, seriously, Allan is extremely funny. I even remember a poem he wrote nearly 25 years ago: Why is it he's done the things he's done, and said the things he's said? Could it be when he was young, they dropped him on his head? Okay Allan is an Aries, which covers the subject matter of 'head', and he was 15 when he wrote this, the day he snuck onto the staff of Generation (a kind of student magazine precursor to Planet Waves at SUNY Buffalo, still consuming paper and ink regularly) with a university ID card that they gave him because he could do math really well. I have no fucking idea why we checked his campus ID card. In fact, I am inclined to think that he showed us his ID voluntarily so that we would believe he was really a student; he knew how old, or rather, young he was; we did not. I can almost see the scene, him taking it out of his pocket with the approximate gesture of, 'Look, really'. Anyway, he is the guy who years later told me to get online, which I assumed meant get an email address. This I did, buying a Mac laptop and signing up for both AOL and a local ISP called MHV.net around the same time. I do remember the feeling of diving into AOL, a strange little world where anything felt possible, and a kind of consciousness opening up. From the first moments, I felt like I was inside an environment, and one in which I had a sense of my own presence. I noticed early that you could declare yourself anyone you wanted, within reason, and so could everyone else. And that any subject was available. I got into some chats so hot I can still feel them. In my particular experience, the Network had a psychic resonance. I saw that it was a first cousin of energetic communication, and the contacts with people I met seemed to mirror, more or less, on another level at the same time. There were a lot of people out there, located in all kinds of weird places, but the thing seemed to be a dimension suspended above or inside the Earth were you were, oddly, removed from the world's activities. It felt possible to go very deep into this space, and go anywhere, any time. Very early in the morning local time, in New York, seemed to bring particularly rich contact with people. That winter was one of the rare drifting, floaty moments of my life, where I had no specific direction for a while. I lived in the woods with my cats, so that feeling of discovering cyberspace is mingled with the forest and the clarity of those cold nights with Mars shining high in the sky every night, and glowing Venus appearing in my window before dawn every day. I was plunging into the Net at the same time I was diving into the concepts, mystery and environment of astrological thought. I was getting to understand my chart for the first time, I could move through the ephemeris, and Patric Walker was still writing his column. Behind my house was a forest. The building I lived in was once a mule barn for the Norton Cement Works that had been there about 100 years earlier, and the land was full of mine shafts where argillaceous limestone was blasted and carted out of the ground to build things like the Brooklyn Bridge and the wings of the Capitol Building in DC. There were, and still are, cement kilns everywhere, 20 feet high, nestled into countless hillsides. At this point I spent a lot of time in a mine I called the Chironian, making fire, roaming the woods, sleeping down there sometimes, and doing what I knew then was getting grounded. The space was there, and it was extremely cozy (if a little chilly, but a fire took care of that), and it was always calling me, so I spent a lot of time about 25 to 150 feet under the ground, the approximate range of choices you have there. And, slowly, I made a new connection to the Earth, anchoring myself, doing a lot of New Moon and Full Moon and sacred aspect rituals. One of the first things I used astrology for, in my first months, was to pick the time of rituals, which seemed an intuitive and useful thing to do with it. So, at that point, I would say there was a true balance of physical space (involving a lot of rock and trees), cyberspace and the idea space (and experience) of astrology. All three environments had a deeply interior feeling, as did my little apartment; in reality, I was doing a lot of opening up inside. I think at that point, I plunged into all those worlds as one simultaneous trip that I still seem to be on. That moment delivered me, with circuitous directness, to the present instant, where I'm sitting somewhere in the middle of Europe late on a Friday night, with two DSL connections coming into my space and three computers running, once again reaching out into the fabric of consciousness, feeling it yield to my thoughts, and weaving in and out of physical experience. I can feel my hands typing, I can see these ideas forming, and I know that in a moment they are going to go from being a local thought pattern known only to me, to a voice that appears anywhere and everywhere in nearly no time, making a sound inside your mind. Suspended between Saturn and Neptune. I think I'll go out for a walk. Tuesday, August 1, 2006 | Beyond Belief Mirrored at: http://www.planetwaves.net/ericfrancis/reports/ TODAY working on the September horoscopes at the Natural Café, I got into "the discussion" again. After answering the question, what do you do, I was asked the next question, "You don't really believe in astrology, do you?" Oh, God. Not again. Only in cafés does this one happen. In cafés, everyone is a skeptic. Or a genius. It must be the caffeine. The person did not know it, but I was interviewing her for a freelance gig. She was a 25-year-old travel journalist from Italy who writes in English, and I am always scouting the world for writing talent. Her question was authentic enough, though not exactly what you would call incisive. I explained that I don't "believe in" astrology, I just work with it. It's as natural as the seasons changing. Once you start working with it, you can see and feel it happen. An astrological chart is data; an astrologer interprets the data, just like in every other field. Then came the leap. "So you mean our lives are fated?" -- with the usual, I refuse to believe that, etc., etc. (Yes, our lives are fated: you will go home; you will turn on the TV; you are fated to see advertising and senseless violence; and it will rearrange your mind. No, I did not say that.) I explained that just because I can predict that winter is coming doesn't mean I can predict whether you'll freeze or be warm, but I can indeed tell you that winter is coming. I can also point out that you have options. This was too complicated for her. Free will is confusing. I tried a new approach, new metaphor. "Let's say you're about to cross that street. I can pretty much tell you there's traffic and you need to look both ways before you step off the curb. I can't tell you what you're going to do." "But you can tell me a car is coming?" She was having a hard time with this. "I can tell you it's a street with traffic. I can suggest you look." The discussion did not get much further. To her credit, she did ask about what the earliest sources of astrological knowledge were and I said a lot of it goes back to Ptolemy, and they got a lot of their information from the Arabs, who also (the story goes) came up with math. However, I did not ask for her email address and she did not get my usual courtesy of a comp subscription that I extend to anyone who's interested, who I happen to meet in real life. This is, usually, part of my ongoing project of mixing cyberspace with what hackers call meatspace; that is, weaving virtual reality with physical reality. But I was entirely disinterested in any form of contact with her, and the fact that she was a journalist I found most unimpressive. Being a journalist calls for being open minded, if only for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. Oh, she was an Aquarius, and so was her boyfriend. She said people would always say to her, "You and your boyfriend are both Aquarius. Aquarius is such an independent sign. How can you be in a relationship?" (This was offered as proof that astrology is bullshit.) I gave her Jonathan Cainer's answer to this one: "There's no reason two Aquarians can't be in a relationship any more than there is that two people from Australia can't be in a relationship." Praise the Lord, an email came in on her laptop, offering her a job, which some weeks ago she was turned down for, but a new one opened up. She disappeared back into cyberspace. I did not mention that Mercury was now direct. I just kept working on my horoscopes. But I was left, once again, with the feeling that belief is like a glass box we walk around in. The box is heavy, the air is stuffy in there, and reality is indeed predetermined. For the world to get past its current juggernaut, we are going to need to work with our beliefs. Let's see, a lot of people believed that George Bush would be good for the country/world. God knows who next they will believe will be fantastic. A lot of people believe it's the end of the world and Jesus is coming back, so why bother. A lot of people believe there is an endless supply of oil. Plenty of people believe that nobody (such as themselves) has an impact on the world. The problem with belief is that it's very difficult to reason with. It exists within its own reality framework and nothing else matters. The young Italian journalist, for example, was claiming that I believed something, when in reality, her belief is what she was looking at. She was claiming to take the rational approach ("not believing") without any data or facts to inform her position. This is arbitrary, not based on reasoning. If you pretend to believe in science or scholarship, presumably something must be tested or studied before it's judged. But usually, all that data is ignored. Belief gets in the way -- and we really need to get beyond belief. It may indeed be difficult to get people to believe there's an energy shortage until they actually show up at the gas pump and there's nothing left. A lot of people who had their houses washed away now believe in climate change. Many are now observing that you cannot make war on terror; all you get is more war, and more terror. Most people don't set aside their beliefs and come to astrology until they really need it. Monday, July 31, 2006 | Where am I? GLANCING at Sunday's cover of CNN.com -- 60 Lebanese refugees killed "by mistake" in an airstrike -- I was met with that sense of paralysis and powerlessness that seems to be going around in pandemic style. I don't just think we feel powerless to have any influence over the increasing number of wars supported by what's called the Coalition; I think it spreads right into our sense of what is possible here, now, in our brief lifetimes. There are plenty of people going on with life as if nothing at all is happening -- particularly in the US, the UK, much of Europe and probably a ton of Canada and Australia. Oh, the English speaking world. It's pretty much life as usual even though, speaking for my fellow Star and Stripers, there is a definite undertone of struggle in the United States these years. Economic, usually, but in truth psychic and emotional. It's like the meaning of existence is getting vacuumed off the planet. I am lucky. I am just thrilled to devote my life to a long political struggle. Not like it's anything new. But if you can't relate...if Civics was not your absolutely favorite class ever...if you didn't totally dig covering the Sewer Authority when you were a cub reporter... Okay. Fuck it, I'll say it. I have long envied and admired the generation of kids that stood up against the Vietnam War. I never wished for a war to oppose. I don't think it was entirely romantic. I appreciated the ability of that generation to stand up in the face of a crisis, and take a little leadership, and not let some old farts push them around. I was born in 1964, but over the next 25 or so years, I learned a lot from many people who participated in the antiwar struggles, and related social movement conquests, of the 1960s and 1970s. What I observed, was told, and am now seeing the obvious wisdom of was the awareness that ultimately spread, which said: that struggle, fueled by the war of the Dark Lords, pushed society ahead because so many people saw it as an opportunity to take leadership, and leadership of themselves. This process of seeing what's related and "linking the issues" came in innumerable forms. The waves of energy going through society took many forms, from rock music to students who stayed on to get their Ph.D., and thus learned, grew, and developed a peaceful skill they could give back to society; many became professors. Journalism broke free of its rigid little mold expanded to a new dimension. The therapy processes that emerged from the Human Potential movement that unfolded through this era were among the most astute ever developed. Many saw fit to make things better, to work from within or without, to have an awakening, to be present for others waking up, to admit that their lives were part of the whole picture. Many artists of that era broke free of it all and devoted themselves to their craft. The environmental movement we have today was born then and the direct result of people who decided that they had to take action. We need a lot better environmental movement but at least we have one. The crucial field of civil rights law was developed. The reason this could happen was simply that so many people cared, so many people observed they had a role in the process of society, other than passive victim. In the shadow of war, young boys, high school grads, college students, found themselves needing to make the decision to buck all of society and history and refuse military service because they knew the war was such a lie and so messed up and yeah, they didn't want to get shot up or toasted with Agent Orange. Can you blame them? The energy faded like an enchantment; though we have remnants of what we gained in that era, as individuals and as a community, it, too, is fading fast. Today we have this professional Army that gets sent on our behalf and there is no lottery that can, in theory, send anyone right to the battle front. So that's a BIG incentive for nobody to say a word, because the situation is abstract. Every young guy and/or his brother was easy meat and you were out there. Or, you grew up and took control of your life, went to Canada, burned your draft card, sued, hid, whatever. If I were a young guy with a war happening, that would have been a pretty important point of growth for me. You could reasonably call it claiming your life. I think that, from that point on, my life would have been my own. I did have such a moment, as a freshman at SUNY Buffalo. I decided, or it occurred to me, that if a war happened, I not only didn't have to go, I was not going. Whatever it took. I was 18 and there was not a draft, just a lot of memories. But in that moment, I basically chose sides. I chose not to kill. And in the same gesture, not to be subject to some politician's orders. Do we have any reason to make that kind of decision today? I would say so. I think that the poison of war, in part, is indifference to existence, including one's own. It's the feeling that your life is not your own and that your life does not matter. Why should you feel good about being alive when you're seeing images of a Lebanese mother grieving her whole family? Let's make it worse. Do you have any concerns that the situation we're witnessing and experiencing feels a bit world-warrish? Like, all at once, everyone could jump into the fray? Like it could spin out of control at any time? Just a little glint of fear? I mean, even if you like Dubya, you have to admit, the guy and his minions are not military geniuses. Now for the big question, my point of going on about this for the past hour: how does this make you feel about your life? Does it feel more or less motivating to make choices? Can you perceive your future any differently? Does the global ecological crisis make you think of your family line any differently? Like when you think of your kids and grandkids inheriting the crisis we face now, only so many years more developed? With much in the way of future resources consumed, currently, in debt? How personal can we make it all? It is so screwed up. Does that make you want to do something? Like, dust off your paints, or your tools, or your guitar, or your unfinished book...or does it just freak you out and make you want to get through the day and hope it's better tomorrow? This is the thing...this is the final space...this is the inner territory that can, indeed, be surrendered to nothingness -- or not. Nothingness is when it all means nothing. Something is when you realize that your brothers and sisters and cousins and neighbors and friends and all the dogs, cats and cows are in the same situation right now...it's so easy to see and feel...maybe when it gets dark, go out and look up and ask yourself: Where am I? When is it? What am I doing here? Sunday, July 30, 2006 | Two Letters from Readers In Friday's edition of Planet Waves Weekly, I asked parents to write in with experiences of teaching their kids about sex. The first letter covers this. The second relates to a woman's experience with "Abstinence Only Sex Education." The congressman mentioned, Tom Coburn, who makes a personal appearance at the writer's elementary school to personally advocate abstinence, is the same one who opposed to the airing of the film "Schindler's List" on television because of one scene depicting frontal nudity. (This scene takes place at Auschwitz in what is feared to be a gas chamber, but which turns out to be an ordinary shower.) Thank you both for your letters. Other readers may send their contributions to me at francis@planetwaves.net -- all will be considered for publication, if space and time permit. Thanks for your contributions. e Dear Eric~ You asked for our input about talking with our children about sex. I found this always to be an area of interest as such a potent physical drive. There is no real way to separate the body/spirit/mind. People try to separate them but I believe that creates imbalance… so… when my children have come to me with questions regarding sex, I accepted their interest as with any other question and did my best to answer it to their satisfaction. Sometimes we would look up pictures in the anatomy books and discuss the physiology. It depended on their age and I could always tell when a simple answer was enough. They would say, "Oh" and return to play. Sometimes I brought it up… helping them to understand basic issues such as hygiene. I knew I couldn't stop curiosity when they were playing with other kids, so I would say that if they touched genitalia, to wash their hands before and after as well as to keep their genitals clean every day… simple. When they were interested in girls in high school, I kept a supply of condoms and told them where to find them. I don't know for sure if they ever dipped into the stash. I just wanted them to have a safe option. That way I was not distributing them and they didn’t have to ask or risk embarrassment at the store in public. To keep them from being foolishly wanton in sexuality as well as conscious about health issues, I taught them the importance of spiritual connection. As my older son left for college, I presented him with a copy of a book about Tantric practices, The Multi-orgasmic Man. I guess that was quite the conversation piece among his roommates and I know that I held some manner of mystique anyway. I am a very young looking woman and a singer… but it was worth it for him to understand the importance of revering his sexuality. He is now engaged to be married with a beautiful woman. For my younger son it was more complex. He is paraplegic from a gestational malformation and I have no first hand experience with those sexual issues. When he was 16, I found a workshop called "Sex on Wheels" by a man who wrote a book called Life on Wheels. It is a good exploration. For him it is especially important that he be communicative with partners so it was good to help him to open his mind to the issues of sexuality. I am proud of these gentlemen and I am so glad that we appreciate and enjoy the full experience of our lives with healthy pleasure and deep spiritual gratitude. Speaking of strong gratitude, I wish to express mine to you for the wonderfully enlightening writing and this beautiful project that you perpetuate. Blissings~ Karen --------------------- Eric, I read your article "the wheel" in this week's planet waves issue...it's extremely relevant to everything in my life the past few weeks. recently, i have started looking for a therapist to go to regarding my inablility to talk to anyone, including my girlfriend, about sex. it's very likely that the block comes from 1)parents and 2)religious/spiritual background. and your article helped me give words to my ambiguous feelings. thanks for writing it! you mentioned what it must be like to talk to kids about sex. recently, one one of my art students who is 14, asked me if a guy's sperm could crawl up her leg and make her pregnant. her older sister, who was 18, said it could. i said, "do you have like a class or something that teaches you this?" and she said, "yeah, but i don't want to ask them." so i said, "no, that won't get you pregnant." and i thought, for her age, and especially her sisters, why hasn't anyone told her any of this?? this reminded me of my own parents in oklahoma, who didn't want to talk to me about sex and so they relied on the "new and progressive" sex ed classes to teach us... this ultimately meant that my congressman, tom coburn, came to school and showed us slides in the auditorium, slides of dozens of infected penises that looked like sweet potatoes and vaginas covered in puss and told us over and over, "not preventable! not curable! except through abstinence. now, who wants pizza?" no positive talk about sex, nothing but the creation of fear, like some old fifties drivers' ed film. you can find out more about tom coburn on the web, i am sure. he is not a very sex positive person; one wonders who decided to have sex ed taught by a congressman in the first place. but i digress. i never dated anyone until i was 23. your attitudes towards sex and sexuality are extremely helpful to me. during the past few weeks, i've questioned why i'm looking to therapy. part of me thinks that i'm doing something very selfish. your article helped me understand how much sex fits into the rest of my life, and that i need to work this stuff out to be more complete, and as you say, "claim the right to exist". those were very inspiring words. thank you for your help, Eric. sincerely, rachel (virgo esq. ) (i've always wanted to be an esquire) Saturday, July 29, 2006 | The Nature of... PART of why so few people speak up against rampant injustice and having their lives destroyed is because so few people do it. Everyone who is silent has their "reason." Maybe if you speak up against the mayhem in Iraq, you're afraid you'll get fired because your boss is Republican. Who knows, maybe your husband is Republican and you want to preserve the so-called peace in your house. Perhaps you don't know what to say. Perhaps you've got the message of the NSA wiretapping program and you're afraid to even mention it to a friend on the phone, or in an email. Or perhaps you know that if you speak up, you may bring out the nature of the beast. That is -- you may fear that when you open your mouth, you will invoke the evil that we all feel lurking behind the façade of patriotism and the color of law that allows disasters like Iraq, Afghanistan or Lebanon to proceed unchecked. Sometimes the nature of the best is revealed -- and that is one of the most crucial functions of protest of any form. In order to retaliate against you for being against a war, your [theoretical] boss would need to reveal his position, and reveal the true nature of not only his politics but also the vengeful quality that informs the viewpoint. Anyone who wraps himself in the flag and then persecutes someone for expressing a political viewpoint is full of shit. And they would be revealed as such by their actions. This is why protest of any kind is so important. The word protest is not about being against something -- the prefix "pro" means you are for something. What are you for? Life. Existence. Reality. The most important form of protest is breaking the silence. It can happen at the kitchen table, it can happen in a discussion next to the water cooler, it can happen in the hallowed halls of Congress, the very Cathedral of Denial. Please talk to your friends about what's happening in the world. Ask how they feel. Visit the local offices of your congressional representatives (you may not get to see the big dude himself/herself, but you can almost always meet with a ranking person in the local office). Visit your local newspaper (weekly or daily) and insist on coverage of local soldiers and marines. Call into your local call-in radio shows. If you don't like politics, or even if you do, any life affirming statement, any creative act, any gesture of giving yourself permission to exist, to express your heart and soul...counts right now, from music to art to fucking. Yours & truly, e PS: Check this out! http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/cspan_airing_conference_shows_mainstreaming.htm Attention all you Chelsea Bottinelli Fans out there in Internet Land. Does everyone know Chelsea (the Planet Waves business manager) has a web page? She creates these quilted paintings, which are basically mixed-media artworks that combine fabric, photographs, paint and other stuff, as well as something called "free sewing" where the sewing machine is used a little like a paint brush. Go straight to the GALLERY to see a lot of examples of her projects. And please drop in and say hello! http://quiltedpaintings.com/gallery.htm
War Profit Litany by Allen Ginsberg
Tuesday, July 25, 2006 | Leo New Moon THE LEO New Moon is just a few hours away, as I get ready to wrap up for the night. The Moon is void of course, as of this writing. Personally, none of my gears are connecting and I'm sitting here listening to Atom Heart Mother for about the 10th time since I spirited it from a friend's house Saturday evening. A friend in the states just wrote to me: "I was thinking that right now, you almost have to take a god-like perspective to be able to stand the news. Imagine you're up on a cloud somewhere, looking down. But then, even the gods must get bothered by our extreme flawedness...and then it comes down to, if I were Athena, who would I smite, which isn't very useful if you're not actually Athena." I am guessing there are many Planet Waves readers who are freaked out by what has been happening in Lebanon, which is just heaped on top of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As my friend suggested, it's not really possible to look at this and make any sense out of it on a human level. What does the Leo New Moon say? Justice is a living factor in the equation. The other shoe will fall. But I must add this, from Judith Gayle, editor of Political Waves: "Statistics show that in any war or violent conflict, 90% of casualties are civilian; over two-thirds of those civilians are women and children. I can't look at any more pictures today. The reptiles are in charge and all I can feel today is disgust ... and bitter tears, unbidden and unstoppable, for the children ... so many beautiful little children ... and those people in the world today who FEEL this terror, this calamity, in their very cells and call it by any other name than murder." We all know right from wrong. Many of us want to do something about it. Today, take a chance. Speak up. Refuse to allow your conscience to go silent. News... This just came over Political Waves -- well worth the read: a conservative talk show host apologizes for voting for Bush. It took a while...the lies have all been so transparent...but this ls clear. Paloma comments that it has a feel of Saturn-Neptune -- I get it, to me, it feel like the side of the aspect that is about Saturn in Leo (clear sense of identity) vs. Neptune in Aquarius (mindless conformity). Note, in next week's Planet Waves Weekly (subscriber edition), I'll be looking at some of the more constructive aspects of this http://snipurl.com/to16 Here is a second item: the first article to really make it clear, in my mind, what was going on in that dialog between Bush and Blair that was transmitted to the world. I read the transcript and thought it was interesting enough to work with the chart, but I knew there was something that I just did not get about the essence of what was happening. Here, the Observer in the UK makes it plainly, painfully clear. This should be appearing on Political Waves soon. It Wasn't the 'Yo' That Was Humiliating, It Was the 'No' http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0723-30.htm There is also news about the UK breaking from Washington in its stance over Israeli retaliation in Lebanon; this happened last night. The US is sitting on its hands, giving war a chance. Here is a link, below, also from Political Waves. Note the intense photo, by Getty Images of Seattle, ah if I could pick just one freelance gig, it would be working for them -- the most passionate news wire photography I've ever seen. This particular picture looks a bit dangerous, but check out the face. British split with Bush as Israeli tanks roll in http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1826969,00.html July 23, 2006 | Giving War a Chance THE SUN is in Leo and Mars is in Virgo. Hopefully this will provide a change of scene to a more reflective state of mind on the violence of the world right now. Mars (aggression, warfare, passion, desire) could surely use some Virgo (grounding, clear thinking, analysis, self-criticism). If you're looking blankly at the war between Lebanon and Israel, wondering what the holy hell is going on, you need look no further than today's news. The United States is rushing shipments of precision bombs to Israel. Iran and Syria, say the US, are involved in rearming Hezbollah, which is not a country; it's a political organization with a military wing. Hence, this is a proxy war between the United States, and Syria and Iran. The Lebanese people, including many Americans and other expats, are caught in the middle. Israeli citizens are getting pretty badly hurt, too. Arms manufacturers are making a lot of money. I think we really need to pay attention to exactly who they are -- the people who put dinner on the table by making the bombs that are used to blow up towns and bridges. Like any good proxy war, this one is preying on pre-existing hostilities and local territorial and political competition. It looks good -- that is -- it looks convincing, everyone knows those Jews and those Arabs hate each other, it's always been that way. The important thing is that it be convincing. It cannot look like what it really is. But it also serves a larger purpose, and is pushing the divide between the US/Israel alliance and the Arab world that much wider. And it's already pretty darned wide. Bush referred to Israel as "sovereign state" yesterday but that's not exactly true. Israel is the working end of the US stick in the Middle East and has always been well-funded to do its bidding there. So at the very least, Israel is not going to act without tacit consent from Washington. Israel is also the only developed society in the Middle East that is not regularly bombed to the ground. Sooner or later, everyone else gets it. Of course, shipments of bombs hardly counts as "tacit" approval. It's a bit more direct. Yesterday's comments by Condoleeza Rice, the US secretary of state, were particularly twisted. The question going around many living rooms is why the US does not push for a cease-fire (or for that matter why there is not more help evacuating refugees, who are piling up places like Cyprus). Rice said Friday that a quick cease-fire "will be a false promise if it returns us to the status quo." She added that Hezbollah is the source of the problem in Lebanon and must be disarmed. "We must work urgently to create the conditions for stability and lasting peace," Rice said. I think this translates loosely to, "Give War A Chance." Can you see Condi and George in bed in the lobby of the Amsterdam Hilton, with the press and TV cameras gathered round, strumming the guitar, All we are saying Is give war a chance... Rice continues in her supposedly down to Earth, hippy-girl metaphors, "What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East. And whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one." - PS, I thought you might find this interesting - it was just sent to me by our photo editor, Paloma Todd: http://www.serialno3817131.com/ Here is one more, on the subject of love and not war; also female photographer; also female subjects, sent in by Annemarie: http://www.vontauber.com/home.html Thursday, July 20, 2006 | A glance at tomorrow... PLANET WAVES is supported by your subscriptions. It's true that you get lots without paying anything; we are always doing more for all our readers, those who subscribe and those who don't. Here is a taste of what we offer: http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/1144288280.html Please be as committed to us as we are to you. 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You can call in your order, and if you're short on cash, you can click on the link and call up our troll-free number, talk to Chelsea down in Florida, and request a comp subscription. We will be happy to give it to you. If you need a discount rate, we can give you that too. But If you're working, and value Planet Waves, and come back frequently or feel like you've made a special discovery by stumbling upon our project, please sign up. It's easy, it's inexpensive, and you get a lot for your money. And so do we. Here is what our subscribers say, nearly 80% of whom say they are VERY SATISFIED with our services, but these testimonials are better than statistics: http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/feedback.html Here is the introduction to tomorrow's edition: LOOKING for astrological metaphors to explain the feeling of the times we're living in, I keep coming back to Neptune in Aquarius. Yesterday, researching a different subject -- corporations and a form of government called corporatism -- I found a recent sociological study that to me reveals the essence of Neptune in Aquarius. The research, published last month, shows that more people have nobody to talk to about important matters. Indeed, it was the most common response, or "mode" in the study. Of those people who do share the intimate details of their lives with others, the number of confidants declined from nearly three to two over the past 20 years. "Mr. Speaker, We make war with such certainty, yet we are befuddled how to create peace. This paradox requires reflection, if we are to survive. Making and endorsing war demands a secret love of death, a fearful desire to embrace annihilation. Creating peace requires the mirror of compassion, putting ourselves in the other person’s place, in all their suffering, with all their hopes, and to act from our heart’s capacity for love, not fear." -- Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s speech, delivered on the House or Representatives floor on Tuesday, July 18. Monday, July 17, 2006 | The Trib Trib SO perhaps it will comfort nobody to hear this, but when I was but a tadpole in the spiritual training pond known as Miracle Manor, most people would talk openly about a "tribulation period." This was held by my fellow future amphibians to be an anticipated timeframe of life on Earth characterized by intense and life-changing developments, including environmental changes which were generally sorted in with the general term "Earth changes." There was the continuous suggestion that it would really be good to know how to swim. There was no proof that this was coming, and the traditional basis for the prediction was probably Edgar Cayce: but it seemed to be coming into consciousness through a few different sources. I never really had an opinion on the issue, nor did it concern me that much, except that for a while I worked on a parody of a future newspaper which you could read from the front or the back, depending on your point of view. From the front, it was the New Age News. From the back, it was The Tribulation Tribune, also known as the Trib Trib. Ah that's right, it was David Crismond, our resident doctoral student and approximate equivalent to the Professor on Gilligan's Island, who would refer to it casually as The Trib. That is, he would call the forthcoming Tribulation Period or Tribulation Phase the Trib. This must have been an in-house joke at Hilda's, this guru he had a relationship with who (as gurus do) had some really fun stories of the "this is impossible but it happened" genre. Like the night all the dogs showed up at their land upstate after Hilda prayed to the Archetypal Dog seeking assistance finding a lost dog. Anyway, theologically, it's easy to lump the Trib in with all of the The End and Rapture stuff we keep hearing about. All you need to do is sit at home, wait for your doorbell to ring, and you will have a Junior Religious Scholar or three tell you all about The End and how you can prepare for it. The fact that the initials of this particular church are an anagram of LSD adds but a little irony, yet The End is in fact a fact of life for these folk and many others. There are also Rapturists, who are awaiting that glorious moment when we are all shed of our clothes and go ascending, in body, to heaven; except for those going to hell. There are the Left Behinders, the scifi-ish book series telling the tale of the sinful who inherit the Earth after all the good people are taken back by God -- sells better than ice cream. To millions and zillions of people, this is all as real as I-5 blazing down the West Coast. I don't quite know how to put this any more politely, but a fuck of a lot of people are not concerned about the future because they think there is no future. Where do you fit in? The whole joke of my newspaper was basically this. We have a choice in the matter. We humanity can head for the "New Age," a world in which people try to get on together, and heal their stuff, and help the world; or the Tribulation, a daemonic catastrophic dystopia. I'll tell you one thing, it never occurred to me that the political process could be so abused, and I am a hardened cynic when it comes to the Corporatist entity. I am sitting here working very hard right now to not go into a tirade on the arms trade. I'd like to stick to my main point, but it's not easy these days. I have a feeling we're in the midst of the beginning of this supposed Trib at the moment: a test, a journey, an experiment in creating the future. Friday, Dec. no Jan no July 14, 2006 | Word UP This Week's Theme Music is at >> http://planetwaves.fm Late into the morning Friday, word on the street is that Valerie Plame has sued Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and a bunch of other hacks. For -- conspiracy to destroy her career as a CIA agent, out of revenge; she lists fraudulent concealment as one of the causes of action: that is to say, she's sued them, including the almighty Vice President, for fraud. Incredible enough and super fun drama in Conspiracy Theatre, even if you're not a news junkie. Yet in the same moment, Robert Novak, Journalist Zero, has fingered Monsieur Karl Rove as a leaker of Plame's identity. It is true that all hell is popping in the Middle East as Israel kicks the shit out of Lebanon beyond any sense of reason or appropriateness; that Fitz may need Calis; and that the end is near; but we can certainly observe a micro-moment of glee for their scammy little scam falling apart, and for a dramatic lawsuit being filed by the glam, legendary spy wife of the playboy ambassador. The astrology has promised more -- but we are beginning to see The Revenge of the Aries Point. Houselights dim, turn off your cell phone please. PS, this just in, courtesy of the Brad Blog via resident hardcore news rehab/mouse replacement candidate Eileen. We need to remember that civil lawsuits take time and don't always work, but in the United States, they have a lower standard of proof than criminal prosecution (preponderance of the evidence rather than beyond a shadow of a doubt), and they have the excellent quality of producing truckloads of documents that always find their way into the newspapers. Right now we don't need our whole system to function. We just really need any one or more parts to work, so that at least we can get the sausage factory moving. For more info see: http://www.bradblog.com/
Archives 2006: January 7 to July 6 |