Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Saturn in Leo: Karma, Cloaked Donations & Schwarzenegger

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's troublesare continually mounting as Saturn has transited form Cancer, his Ascendant sign, into Leo, his Sun sign. Things done covertly under Saturn in Cancer are being karmically brought to his doorstep under Saturn in Leo.



This time the hammer is coming down, according to the Los Angeles Times, in the form of revelations about massive donations he has taken from nonprofits that lobby for certain pieces of legislation. WHile it may not be techniclly illegal, ethically it smashes Schwarzenegger's campaign promises of craeting an open government accountable to the public. His attorneys are now sayiung he doesn't have to say anything about the several million he gets in goods, services and bills paid from these nonprofits.



From the LAT: One group controlled by a powerful corporate consultant pays the $6,000-a-month rent on a Sacramento hotel suite used by the governor, who is a multimillionaire. Others have funded media events and political rallies featuring Schwarzenegger and helped pay for his foreign travel. So far, five tax-exempt groups aiding Schwarzenegger have collected $3 million.



Former Govs. George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Davis benefited from a tax-exempt nonprofit that helped defray the cost of their Sacramento housing. All three lived in a home purchased by supporters of Deukmejian; the state paid the $1 annual rent. Davis' fund paid tens of thousands of dollars for repairs, maintenance, cable television and parties. Schwarzenegger's current residence fund pays for an 1,800-square-foot Hyatt Regency Hotel suite.



The pounding on the Schwarxzenegger ego is getting significant and we are only a month into the 30 months that Saturn will be teaching him some strong lessons. How will Schwarzenegger handle this latest crisis? By remaining quiet and hoping it will pass over?



Meanwhile, the special election for which he has called and which has lowered his popularity, looms ever near. Commercials informing people of his plan to "create a phenomenon of anger" against teachers, nurses and police officers play nearly everyday.



Something will give..........



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Tuesday, August 23, 2005

A Conservative Call to Murder A President

Things are hopping over in Virginia Beach, Virginia in the USA. The bloodlust is high. Marion Gordon Robertson, more famously known as Pat Robertson, the head of the Christian Coalition is calling for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez .

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

With his close ties to U.S. President George Bush and the Republican party, Robertson has ignited a firestorm with his arrogant and aggressive words. Astrologers would note that he is an Aries (ruled by Mars, the God of War) born on March 22, 1930...and that Monday August 22 when he made the remarks the Moon was in Aries. One could say his emotions fgot the better of him. Or just that he spoke his true thoughts aloud........

The reason for his vitriolic call for Chavez' murder? Because, Robertson says, Chavez wants to turn Roman Catholic Venuzuela into "the launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism".

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Sun in Leo Trine Pluto in Sag

The powerful Sun in Leo is trine equally powerful Pluto in Sagittarius and we are getting a visual of life (the joie de vivre of Leo) intertwined with death (the endings of Pluto). George W. Bush is doing some chest-puffing in the form of threatening to wage yet another war, this time on Iran, because they are choosing to arm themselves with nuclear weapons.

Another war. Another war? Another war! Oh god, another war. With resignation, yes, another war.

Chalmers Johnson spoke of this as one of the sorrows of empire that would be visited upon the world as the United States of American continued on an imperialistic and militaristic path. Here in his book "The Sorrows of Empire" he says

The sorrows of empire are the inescapable consequences of the national policies American elites chose after September 11, 2001. Militarism and imperialism always bring with them sorrows. The ubiquitous symbol of the Christian religion, the cross, is perhaps the world's most famous reminder of the sorrows that accompanied the Roman Empire--it represents the most atrocious death the Roman proconsuls could devise in order to keep subordinate peoples in line. From Cato to Cicero, the slogan of Roman leaders was "Let them hate us so long as they fear us."

Four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal "executive branch" of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens. All I have space for here is to touch briefly on three of these: endless war, the loss of Constitutional liberties, and financial ruin.

….....If the likelihood of perpetual war hangs over the world, the situation domestically in the United States is no better. Militarism and imperialism threaten democratic government at home just as seriously as they menace the independence and sovereignty of other countries. Whether George Bush and his zealots can ever bring about a "regime change" in Iraq or any other country is an open question, but there is no doubt that they already have done so within the United States. In keeping with the Roman pretensions of his administration, Bush often speaks as if he were a modern Caligula (the Roman emperor who reigned from 37 to 41 AD and who wanted to appoint his horse to the Senate). In the second presidential debate on October 11, 2000, Bush said, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." A little more than a year later, he replied to a question by the Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, "I'm the commander--see, I don't need to explain--I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."(1)

(George W. Bush has Mercury in Leo, so what a perfectly arrogant Leo communication that is; he also has Venus, Pluto and his Ascendant in Leo. You can possible view that as a tendency towards preening in the spotlight)

Bush and his administration have worked zealously to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of the other branches of government. Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution says explicitly that "The Congress shall have the power to declare war." It prohibits the president from making that decision. The most influential author of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote in 1793, "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man."(2) Yet, after September 11, 2001, President Bush unilaterally declared that the nation was "at war" against terrorism, and a White House spokesman later noted that the president "considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason."

During October 3 to 10, 2002, Congress's "week of shame," both houses voted to give the president open-ended authority to wage war against Iraq. It permitted the president to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq as soon and as long as he--and he alone--determined it to be "appropriate." The vote was 296 to 33 in the House and 77 to 23 in the Senate. There was no debate; the members were too politically cowed to address the issue directly. Thus, for example, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico) spoke on the hundredth anniversary of the 4-H Club; Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) talked about the Future Farmers of America in his state; and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) gave Congress a brief history of the city of Mountain View, California.3

Equally serious, the Bush administration arrogated to itself the power unilaterally to judge whether an American citizen or a foreigner is part of a terrorist organization and can therefore be stripped of all Constitutional rights or rights under international law. President Bush's government has imprisoned 664 individuals from forty-two countries, including teenage children, at a concentration camp in Guantánmo, Cuba, where they are beyond the reach of the Constitution. It has also designated them "illegal combatants," a concept unknown in international law, to place them beyond the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. None of them has been charged with anything: they are merely captives.

  1. (1) Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 145-46.
  2. (2) James Madison, as quoted by Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-West Virginia), October 3, 2002, speaking in opposition to a resolution granting the president open-ended authority to go to war whenever he chooses to do so. See John C. Bonifaz, "War Powers: The White House Continues to Defy the Constitution," TomPaine.com, February 4, 2003.
  3. (3) Winslow T. Wheeler, "The Week of Shame: Congress Wilts as the President Demands an Unclogged Road to War" (Washington: Center for Defense Information, January 2003), p. 17.



Chalmers Johnson is the president of the Japan Policy Research Institute in California and author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. This essay is an excerpt from his forthcoming book The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books; and London: Verso).

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We are at war in Iraq because Cancerian Bush used the office of president to try to destroy the man he said tried to kill his father. Bush has a Leo Ascendant and now the chest-puffing and roaring goes even further....and the U.S. people may find themselves forced to kill not just Iraqis, but Iranians to satisfy Bush's prideful bloodlust and thirst for power. There are sure to be more American deaths. One wishes Johnson were wrong.

On a personal level, this aspect will light up the two houses where you have the transiting Sun in Leo and transiting Pluto in Sagittarius. They will most likely be four houses apart, if you know how to read chart houses. That means the issues of those two houses will be strongly activated today and in the next few days. Before acting or saying anything dramatic, try to THINK first, for something may well be forced to die in order for something else to come into being or grow. Maybe in the long run it is not worth it.

Saturn in Leo is working its way down through Bush's 12th house and onto his Ascendant. Saturn is coming out of the dark and will do its work on Bush (and everyone with a Leo Ascendant or first house Leo planets) in public. There are some hard lessons coming to Bush as 1) he loses face as Saturn sits on his Ascendant, then 2) Saturn conjuncts his Mercury and curtails his arrogant communications, then 3) Saturn conjuncts his Pluto in Leo and smacks him down, taking away some of the power he thought he had and finally 4) he loses even more of the love of the people when Saturn comes to his Venus in Leo. If you have a Leo Ascendant or first house Leo planets, are you preparing yourself for what is to come? Those of you in the Pluto in Leo generation are going to find Saturn in Leo particularly challenging!

It need not be negative. Be sure to purchase the Saturn in Leo report so you can gain a better handle on things. Stop or prevent endless wars in your individual life.

Unmasking Child Rape

Due to statements by and investigations conducted by noted journalist Seymour Hersh, it appears that under Saturn in Cancer, Iraqi children (specifically, boys) were sodomized and raped by U.S. soliders at the Abu Ghraib prison. Cancer is the sign of the Mother who is to take care of her family, to take care of the children. Now Saturn is in Leo, and Leo governs, among other things, children. Normally that would be children enjoying life, having joyful experiences. But this continually unfolding revelation about U.S. torture and abuse war crimes shows children being set upon by an abusive Cancerian regime. The cameras were apparently rolling on these heinous acts and photographs taken are being withheld by the Pentagon despite demands that they be released.

Hersh's original story was published in The New Yorker, and the subject is being discussed in various other places including here.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Saturn in Leo: Schwarzenegger's Chickens Come Home to Roost

The warning drums are beating in Sacramento, California.

Saturn is in Leo now, and will be for another 30 months. As I have already written in earlier articles, it holds an important message for people with significant placements in Leo, especially Sun, Moon or Ascendant. The message - do right or you will get disciplined. It is time when if you have done the right thing in the past you will see rewards now; if you have not, you will feel the Lord of Karma sitting on you.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a Sun in Leo. He already began having some rather painful and less than meritorious secret past deeds exposed while Saturn was in Cancer. He has a Cancer Ascendant. Now that Saturn is in Leo, it seems he is facing a full-on blast of the message to atone for secretive deeds, to not make secret deals that are in any way unethical or smell of such, and to act in a straight-forward manner. Saturn is delivering the message that ego will no amount of roaring and seeking of the spotlight will win friends and influence people in a positive manner. Across California and the national spotlight people are citing what was a closed door (secretive) plan Schwarzenegger had to discredit teachers, nurses, and firefighters and turn public sentiment against them so he would achieve his financial goals. The plan was exposed and turned against him, with daily commercials featuring actual California teachers, nurses and firefighters at work talking about the plan to blame them for the state's financial woes.

Then it was revealed that he had forged a 5-year/$1 million per year deal with a magazine publisher. He ended the deal but said he is keeping the two years of income he got from it thus far.

Now the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press are reporting a new revelation: about that secret deal and it ties into his race for governor in the recall election of 2003: two women who could have testified about having extramarital affairs and/or connections to him during several years of his marriage to Maria Owens Shriver, were signed to a confidentiality agreement (one for $20,000 and one for $1,000) by American Media, the same company which then offered Schwarzenegger the multi-million dollar publishing deal. This was done on while Saturn was in secretive Cancer, on August 8, 2003, only two days after Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy.

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A tabloid publisher that was negotiating a business deal with Arnold Schwarzenegger arranged a $20,000 confidentiality agreement with a woman who said she once had a relationship with the actor, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. Malibu resident Gigi Goyette signed the deal on Aug. 8, 2003, with American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, Star and other celebrity tabloids. That was two days after Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy in the recall election against then-Gov. Gray Davis, according to the Times.

Later that year, American Media reached an agreement with Schwarzenegger that made him editor of two of the company's fitness magazines. Schwarzenegger was to be paid at least $1 million a year for five years under the deal. The governor severed his financial relationship with the company last month after conflict-of-interest concerns arose, although he continues to write columns for the magazines.

The Enquirer in 2001 published a cover story about an alleged seven-year sexual relationship between Goyette and Schwarzenegger during his marriage to Maria Shriver. But American Media never sought additional information from her after she signed the confidentiality agreement, Goyette told the newspaper.

The publisher also signed Goyette's friend, Judy Mora, to a similar contract for $1,000, the Times reported.

Goyette, who worked as an extra on Hollywood film and TV productions and acts occasionally in commercials, told the Times she thought the contract would lead to a deal for a book about her life. She said she didn't think American Media would buy the rights to her story but do nothing with it.

"In my mind, it was trying to seal a deal so I wouldn't do the book with anybody else," she told the Times.

American Media referred calls Friday to New York attorney Stuart Zakim, who did not immediately return telephone calls from The Associated Press.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Rob Stutzman told the Times he believed the governor did not know of AMI's deals with the women and denied a link between their confidentiality agreements and the governor's own contract with the media company.

Schwarzenegger is on vacation and unavailable for comment, Stutzman said. On Friday, the governor's staff said it would have no further comment.


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What comment can you make and come off smelling like a rose when Saturn in Leo has taken up long-term residence in your home? It sounds like the message to do the right thing still is wending its way to Sacramento and the Schwarzenegger home and hearth in Los Angeles.

It remains to be seen whether the special election that he has called will take place in November. With three of four ballot questions removed by the state (Saturn restricting and making things smaller in the interests of truly righteous discipline) who knows if it will take place. It will cost millions of dollars that the state could use for other things and some are calling for the one remaining question to be moved to the June 2006 primary election. With Schwarzenegger's reputation sinking dramatically and sitting at new lows in the polls, even members of the Republican Party, his political party, are calling for that move.

Will the call be heard over the loud roaring of a Hummer-sized ego that some would say needs downsizing to a more economical mode of expression?

I can see my grandmother sitting at the kitchen table, rolling flour to make a crust for a homemade peach cobbler and shaking her head while saying "God don't like ugly" and "Well, now, his chickens came home to roost, didn't they?" When it comes to secret deals, extra-marital affairs and coverups, those statements bear some significant truth. Grandmommy told it like it was.

God acts through this universe of ours and we are wisest and most successful when we listen to the message. For now God is speaking through the movement of Saturn in Leo, whether one scoffs at astronomy/astrology or not.

God, through Saturn in Leo, is watching.............

Monday, August 08, 2005

Ego Illusions (Sun opp Neptune)

Today there is a major aspect building that will be exact just after 8am PST/12noon EST/2pm GMT. That aspect is SUN opposite NEPTUNE. But, you ask, why should I be concerned?

The Sun represents identity, ego and self. Neptune represents dreams, illusions, veils, spirituality, creativity etc. How this combination is likely to manifest today as the two planets comes into exact opposition is what I call EGO ILLUSIONS or EGO DELUSIONS.

People will be quite willing to get into fights and do or say negative things based on lies, illusions and deceptions or delusions. Chests can be puffed up over much of nothing. Because it is a Sun in Leo and Neptune in Scorpio this could mean some loud "roaring" and some deceitful, sneaky actions.

What is your best path today in light of this? Stay to yourself, intentionally be humble, spend time writing or doing something creative. Keep silent and do not get caught up in your or someone else's delusions. Sometimes you must just let things pass by without comment or excuse yourself from participation in something for a very vague reason.

This aspect will strongest as it builds and then it will be in force for the remainder of the day. Take it easy!

It is a day to be sure that YOU are doing the best thing and not being misled by rose-colored glasses or intentional deceit. The aspect's effect will be strongest as it builds to its exact point and then will begin to wane, but you can expect to feel it for about 12 hours. If something should occur, it is possible that the actions of today could reverberate through the week.

Peace, Truth, and Love

Barrett