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Current Moon Phase
THE SCORPIO FESTIVAL 2022
8 NOV 2022
© Malvin Artley
“Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.”
Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck
Scorpio
The hydra
The laws of the jungle
The full moon
Our beautiful garden
Dirty deeds
Let deception rule
It’s a MAD, mad world
Are there any adults?
An embarrassment of ‘wars’
There’s a new Rishi in town
The dark triad
Frankenstein’s virus
The killing of science
All a big scam?
Completing the puzzle
In conclusion
Greetings Everyone!
Sometime last week my wife and I went to one of those everything-for-the-home shops – you know, where they have all the decorations, scented candles, wicker chairs that fall apart after a season and the specialized cutlery you give to someone as a gift that they will use once, put in a drawer and finally after a few years give to Goodwill – yeah, one of those shops. We had gone there at the last minute, before they closed, looking for artificial flowers (Oh, yeah, they sell heaps of those, too.) to decorate the house for autumn and to put on the family tombs. The latter is something I learned after coming to Italy – remembering the ancestors after death. It’s a mark of respect. It also shows you come from a good family background. In the US we generally don’t bother, same in Australia. No doubt some of you, dear readers, do find occasion to go to grave sites, clean around the site and put fresh flowers there. If so, good on you. Artificial flowers these days almost look real – the illusion of reality – and you can find some really nice ones. Those go on the tombs and are rotated according to the season, or when they accumulate too much dust. Anyway, back to the story, off we went to this shop. It’s a big place, as such stores usually are. We also wanted to find some decorations for Halloween. It’s the season, you know?
So, we walked into this store, all brightly lit, expecting to see all the Halloween and autumn decorations. What do we experience instead? – Christmas music coming from a few of those little rotating Chinese Christmas scenes, shelves full of Christmas lights – which reminds me, it’s about that time to check the strings of lights we have – artificial Christmas trees and every sort of gaudy Christmas decoration one could think of. Yes folks, it’s beginning to look a lot like Halloween (?!). We did manage to find a few items at that shop not Christmas related, made the obligatory tour through the whole shop (and it really is obligatory, without saying more) and then went to the Chinese ‘everything-shop’ across the street which still had what we were looking for. But they also had some interesting looking Christmas lights. Hmmm…I may have to go back.
After returning to the house we started talking about those Christmas lights and what the locals would say if I were to put up all the ones we have and run them after dark. There is supposedly an energy crisis here in Europe, in case you hadn’t heard. I intend to put them up, regardless, and I did some checking. Did you know on Amazon you can get all you need to run those things for 24 hours for around 200 bucks – solar powered, ‘green energy’, ‘sustainable’ and whatever other sort of word-of-the-moment you want to attach to such a contrivance – and not add un centesimo to your power bill? Well, I was intrigued. But again, I digress. A few days later we actually received our power and gas bills, expecting a real horror story given all the media hype about Piuteen’s destruction of our economy here in Europe and that we all need to take cold showers now to weaken Russia. That aside, we were pleasantly surprised to see the bills were actually reasonable, as reasonable as they can be now our fearless leaders see fit to put us in this dilemma. So. speaking of tombs, honoring the dead, smashing illusions darkness giving way to light (or the other way around), we come to the subject matter of this letter – Scorpio, the sign signaling the descent into darkness, conquering our inner demons and then arising victorious into the Light. In thatm there is much to discuss in this letter, but we start with Scorpio.
Scorpio: When it comes to the essence of Scorpio, the sign is associated with the smashing of illusion and rising above our petty and temporal concerns into a life of greater light, love and service. The sign in the orthodox is ruled by Mars, the god of war, representing the inner wars we wage upon our own illusions and misgivings, and that at all three levels of our personality – physical, astral and lower mental. Mars rules the personality.[1] All of us live in a state of illusion to some degree, at least. It cannot be helped. The illusion comes from being bound to and identifying with the realities of the various planes of our being, as in having to gain experience on those planes by working through a body, be it physical, astral or mental. We begin to escape illusion when we are able to disassociate our consciousness from identification with those forms (bodies) we inhabit and thereby contact the state of buddhi, which is ‘beyond’ the mental plane. Buddhi is the beginning of the bliss of enlightenment. In Buddhism buddhi is the realm of the demi-gods. Words, being constructs of the lower mental plane, fail to accurately describe such realms and beyond.
“The keywords of this sign are significant and illuminating. Deception and triumph—control by Maya and control by the soul—conflict and peace—such are the hidden secrets of this sign and these are summed up for all disciples in the two keywords. Upon the ordinary wheel, whereon the soul is found, blind and apparently helpless, the Word goes forth in the following terms: “And the Word said, Let Maya flourish and let deception rule”; upon the reversed wheel, the soul chants or sings the words: “Warrior I am and from the battle I emerge triumphant.”[2]
The deception mentioned is, in effect, self-deception, as in identification with our bodies, desires and thoughts instead of our soul. A few words are in order regarding this mythical labor of Hercules, all of which were acts of penance. The hydra was a mythical creature created by Hera for the purpose of killing Hercules (Herakles). As the legend goes, every time one of the heads was cut off, two grew back in its place. So, Hercules had to be inventive in order to kill the beast, because he could not simply cut off the heads. In the legend he employed one of his nephews to cauterize the neck stumps after the each of the heads were severed, thus preventing them from growing back. (It’s a good Halloween horror story, yes?) The ninth head was immortal. Once that one had been severed Hercules placed it under a rock and dipped the arrows from his quiver in the hydra’s blood, rendering them as deadly weapons wherever they struck. The beast lived in the nether world – Hades – hence we have the Scorpio connection with Pluto (Haides). During Hercules’ battle with the hydra, Hera sent a giant crab to help out the hydra by distracting Hercules, whereupon it was crushed under the foot of Hercules. Once both animals had been killed, Hera placed them in the heavens as the constellations Hydra and Cancer. Various planets pass through Hydra in their southern declinational transits when astrologically in the signs Leo, Virgo and Libra. This is true of Orcus, another chthonic god and dwarf planet, which makes an extended stay in that constellation. Among other sojourners in Hydra are Eris, Gonggong, Salacia and Varda, all dwarf planets.
The main father tantras are divided according to the three obscurations to omniscience, or the ‘three poisons’ – anger, desire and ignorance. Each of those in turn can be subdivided into three, giving us the nine heads of the hydra. These three poisons also relate to the three etheric spinal channels – ida, pingala and sushumna. Respectively, those father tantras are Yamantaka (anger), Guhyasamaja (desire) and Manjushri (ignorance). These three in turn transform the three poisons into loving kindness (Yamantaka), generosity (Guhyasamaja) and wisdom (Manjushri). As a Buddhist practice, Manjushri is particularly suited to Scorpio types, who will need the disillusionment (otherwise known as the dispelling of illusion) that the Manjushri tantra confers.
The laws of the jungle: We have all heard the term, “Life is a jungle”, or “It’s a jungle out there”. Many perils await in the jungle. When we are outwardly-focused (identified with the bodies) we are indeed in the jungle of the world’s massed illusions. Most people have quite an attachment to and fixation upon their desires. These ‘three illusions’ are subject to the laws of the individual states of being. These are otherwise known as the systemic laws of the planes.[3] Mental illusion is governed by the Law of Fixation, also known as the Law of Cleavages. Glamour is ruled by the Law of Love, which could also be called the ‘law of satisfaction’ – the satisfaction of doing the things we ‘love’, instead of what we need for spiritual progress, once again pointing to the dual language of words. Maya is governed by the Law of Sacrifice and Death, which is also the control of the elemental forces of the physical form – sexuality, appetites, comforts, etc. – all of which bind the soul to the ‘death of being born in samsara’. These laws, like every other factor in life, have their positive and negative expressions.
On the Path we overcome each of these illusory levels as we progress toward full soul consciousness, resulting from the lesser initiations. Scorpio is associated with each of these initiations, which in Christian terminology are called Birth, Baptism and Transfiguration. The latter initiation releases us into soul-consciousness and victory over the personality. Buddhism also has its corresponding expansions of consciousness, which is what an initiation is – Purification, Accumulation and Seeing. At each expansion we perceive our victories and see greater and greater realities. Our perception of reality thereafter comes on the wings of Mercury, borne of bliss. We become the Hero, in Buddhist terms and in truth. Scorpio, when all is said and done, is the sign that blesses us with the status of the Hero – the Warrior who has fought the good fight and lived to tell the tale. Living, in this case, is being in the world but not of it, in forms, but in-formed by the light of the soul. May we all attain to that great and victorious Day. With that, we move on to the full moon and a few Halloween stories.
The full moon takes place on 8 Nov 2022 at 11:02 UT (10:02 pm AEDT). This full moon is the ‘Beaver Moon’ and is also a total lunar eclipse. We will address the eclipse in a separate blog post. But as a note beforehand, the eclipse will be visible across the Far East, all of Oceania, in varying degrees across North America and is basically centered on the Pacific Ocean. The greatest eclipse is at 10:59 UT. The full moon axis has the Sun conjunct Venus and Mercury, the Moon conjunct retrograde Uranus and with Saturn at the bending of the axis, forming a t-square with all the planets mentioned. It is a complicated mix of factors. The full moon axis forms the following structure: Sun/Moon=Mercury=Uranus, with the Sun and the Moon forming Uranian midpoints by themselves, denoting sudden, perhaps revolutionary and unexpected events, described as follows:[4]
“ + The urge for freedom, the urge to act independently, lack of adaptability, inner rebellion. – Sudden events in friendship, marriage, parental home, shared upsets, sudden conflicts, separation of the partners.”
Adding Saturn to the mix creates a potentially explosive situation. More than that it indicates the struggle between emerging realities and the old order. With Uranus conjunct the Moon the indication is for a shakeup of the old order, the Moon representing the past and form. Venus and Mercury with the Sun show appreciation of beauty, dialog, recognition of shared values and in the negative, conceit and vanity. The Sun is at the south node (the eclipse is a north node series), showing perhaps too much ease with accepted ways of doing things, whereas the Uranian opposition to that will highlight an imperative to change habits and incorporate novel approaches. With Saturn at the bending of the nodal/full moon axis there will be difficulties in resolving the two poles. This is not difficult to see in the world, which we will cover in a moment. When it comes to individuals, if you have planets or angles at 16° of Scorpio or Taurus, what was just described will apply to you, depending on the planets and houses involved. There are other factors present in the full moon figure, but these are sufficient for our present considerations. With Halloween, Scorpio and the smoke and heat of purgation being our themes for this letter, we keep the preceding points in mind we move on to consider a few of our present horror stories.
Our beautiful garden: Josep Borrell, speaking at the inauguration of the new European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges, Belgium, made the following remarks:
“Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. And the rest of the world, and you know very well Federica [Mogherini] is not exactly a garden. The rest of the world, most of the rest of the world is a jungle. The jungle could invade the garden. And the gardeners should take care of it. The jungle has a strong growth capacity and the walls will never be high enough to protect the garden. The gardeners have to go to the jungle.”
Dirty deeds, and they’re done dirt cheap. It is quite important we consider what is about to be outlined here. Sixty years ago on the 27th of October we as humanity almost met our end due to a nuclear holocaust. It was thanks to a Russian admiral we are still here. (unroll and read the entire Twitter thread). Why this is important is because the use of a nuke by either side threatens all of us with the end of our lives as we have known them. The use of nukes, aside from being profoundly stupid strategy, is also criminally insane. In the Chinese New Year letter this year we saw the possibility, with history often rhyming, of a repeat of an event resembling the Cuban Missile Crisis (topic, “the Cuban missile crisis”), which brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. It would appear we are again at that point, this time in Ukraine.
The Russians say they have credible evidence the Ukrainians, guided by the British and with American knowledge, are in the final stages of completing a ‘dirty bomb’. Such a bomb is an ‘area denial’ device and is used as an instrument of terrorism, causing mass panic. Why would they do that, one might ask? It would not deter the Russians, but it would poison a large area of the Nikolayev region for decades, rendering it uninhabitable. That region, along with the old Chernobyl site is the alleged place where a dirty bomb is set to be deployed. Word has it civilians are now being evacuated from the Nikolayev region. The Russians are almost ready for major offensives north and south, meaning Nikolayev and Kharkov. For the West, time is of the essence to stop Russian advances, with the US midterms as one marker and the next six months as a general timeline as to economic woes in the West and developments in Asia.
The Nikolayev Oblast lies to the immediate west of the Kherson Oblast, which just recently joined the Russian Federation, the latter oblast forming part of the land route to Crimea. It is also the gateway to the Odesa Oblast. Odesa is the only remaining seaport in control of Ukraine, aside from Nikolayev. Therein lies the reason why the Ukrainians would want to use a dirty bomb – to prevent the Russians from taking Nikolayev and advancing on Odesa. In addition, the Nikolayev Oblast used to be a part of Novorossiya and it is predominantly Russian-speaking and Russia-friendly. In all this, we have a big reason why the Russians would never consider using a nuke of any type in Ukraine. For more on this story we need to backtrack a little.
It would seem rather obvious that if we want to avoid a nuclear conflict with Russia we should stop talking about it. Biden instead, at a fundraiser on the 7th of October, was invoking Armageddon and the use of nuclear weapons by Putin. CIA director Burns made a ‘secret’ trip to Ukraine in early October, on the 7th actually, where he ‘shared intelligence with Kiev’ and warned Kiev about the Russians possibly using a dirty bomb. That’s the Western spin, anyway. It was at this point the Western media began spinning the ‘dirty bomb’ narrative. This is all fog of war rhetoric, probably without substance, or perhaps it is something darker, like what we saw with Biden’s warnings of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine right up to February 24th, when in fact a week before it was the Ukrainians who began their heavy shelling of the Donbas, prompting a response from the Donbas, with both sides denying culpability for injuries. The OSCE documented the shelling, which clearly showed the greater majority of shells coming from the Ukrainian side. Biden even said it was possible the Russians would invade on the 16th of that month. What did he know then, we might ask? Well, Burns had made a similar trip to Kiev in January (translate from Ukrainian) to discuss the situation of the ‘threat of Russian invasion’. When the CIA pays a ‘secret visit’, trouble is never far behind. We do know the Western powers had planned their ‘sanctions from Hell’ against Russia well in advance of any Russian military action in Ukraine. Sanctions, like any warfare, are targeted and planned in advance, instead of willy-nilly and overnight.
“It’s all very complicated, and the risks of loss of surprise are very high. But their [American] chances of success are not zero. With the visit of West Virginia [submarine] to our ‘soft underbelly’, the Americans clearly show how far they are willing to go if they deem it necessary. The Americans are sending an extremely clear signal – for them, nuclear war is no longer unthinkable, and not impossible.”
We might wonder what those American officials are drinking. They seem to ignore a few things, to our peril, starting with Russian air defenses, which are quite efficient. They have a lot of them, too. What the Americans don’t talk about is the complete lack of any missile defenses on the American side, for instance. When is the last time anyone in the West ever saw a missile defense system near a major city or essential facility? The Russians have them. The Israelis have them, and so do the Iranians, as well as other nations. Americans may launch a first strike, but if they do, a few Russian missiles getting through to American airspace would sort of ruin the American dream. The entire continental US is virtually unprotected against a nuclear missile strike. And the American military is busy sending ‘messages’ to the Russians that such an American nuclear success story is entirely possible (?). We, as in the Western public, know nothing about this. So, the Russians have just announced their nuclear drills simulating their own massive strike, sending their own ‘messages’. Madness. Mad men.
What Biden’s talk of nuclear Armageddon smacks of is getting the public ready for some sort of provocative incident that would ‘justify’ a strong NATO response. On the other side of the story, such scaremongering keeps the public onside with the ‘hate Russia’ narrative, and it is also an attempt to scare nations who may be sitting on the fence regarding Russia in order to peel them away from any thoughts of siding with the Russia-China-Iran alliance. We have this from a recent article by the Arms Control Association, speaking of what would happen if Russia used a nuke in Ukraine, keeping in mind our print and electronic media lies to us on a regular basis:
“Not only would the use of nuclear weapons be enormously destructive, it would blow apart what support Putin still has from China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi, unleash international wrath, trigger even more dissension to Putin’s rule within Russia, and possibly lead to exactly what he wishes to avoid: direct U.S. or NATO intervention on the side of Ukraine.”
Do the bolded bits not sound exactly like what Washington and the other NATO partners would like to see? So, why not set off a dirty bomb or low-grade nuke and blame it on Russia? If that just sounds like the craziest conspiratorial nonsense ever, well, Washington and London have done this sort of thing before with chemical weapons, most recently in Syria. This Western piece quoted just gave away the game. If we apply a little common sense to what has been outlined in this topic thus far, who would stand to gain the most from the use of a nuclear weapon, which in effect would be a war crime as well as a provocation? Neither Russia nor Ukraine would gain. If Ukraine somehow managed to retain control of that territory it would be uninhabitable. They had that experience with Chernobyl, which is still a no-man’s land. The explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 had the same effect as a ‘dirty bomb’. The only way Ukraine might gain is by using the incident to try to pull a large international military force into Ukraine or to discredit Russia in the minds of its friends and allies, but the former would mean a new military world war. That would also be very unlikely. On the Russian side, they are winning (I know there are many readers who still do not believe it, but time will bear out the assertion.). They are advancing. We have heard nothing of any Ukrainian gains since the last letter.
Russia took its claims about a dirty bomb to the UN Security Council. Shoigu, Russian Defense Minister and Gerasimov, head of the Russian General Staff, made phone calls to their counterparts in Washington, India, London, France, China and Turkiye with their concerns and evidence (no doubt) of what is being planned in relation to the bomb. They were heading off the inevitable hysteria that would occur should such an event take place and reassuring their strategic partners, as well as notifying the parties involved they knew all about the little plan. UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace dashed off on a ‘mysterious trip’ to Washington to discuss ‘matters beyond belief’ on Oct 17th. This was after the Russians began disclosing the alleged plot publicly. Apparently he didn’t want any ‘ears’ in the room when he spoke to US officials. Of course the Western powers just dismiss the Russian claims as rubbish, as they would. But according to the grapevine, the Western officials, in turn, called the Ukrainian counterpart and told him there had better not be a dirty bomb and to dial down the rhetoric. According to the Russian ambassador addressing questions on the matter at the UN, the Ukrainians are in process of winding down the project.
We might dismiss the Russian claims in the West, but the Russians take these matters seriously, because they have defused two such bombs in the past on their territory in attempted terrorist acts. Hopefully the exposure of the present plot, if any, is enough to dissuade its implementation. If it turns out to be all a lot of hot air, then nothing has been lost. And if you are going to do a false flag, then you certainly don’t want to have it exposed, or advertise it yourself. Then, too, any use of nuclear material can be traced to its source. Every isotope and scrap of nuclear material has a ‘signature’ or ‘fingerprint’ as to its origins. We hold the thought this is the last talk we will hear of nuclear weapons being used in Ukraine, or anywhere else for that matter. Having addressed this issue in this topic, the actual chances of a nuclear exchange or a dirty bomb are said to be quite low. Having scared us all with the media coverage and rhetoric from Washington about nukes, we can probably ignore it now and move on to matters that actually do matter to the public at large. It does make for a good Scorpio Halloween horror story though, to end this topic on a note of levity.
What we have with this nuke story, in effect, is the new Cuban missile crisis that isn’t. These things are worth considering, though, in that the militaries with these devices still talk to each other, seek to de-escalate (while at the same time chest-thumping), show off their wares and then go on without incident, perhaps making a few more sales of missile defense systems in the process. There is one thing for certain: The pimps of war want the conflict in Ukraine to continue indefinitely, and to actually grow, if possible. Any sort of major provocation being pinned on the Russians would be just the ticket to do so. And as an example, the feckless ‘progressives’ in the US Congress just withdrew their letter, signed by 30 Democrats, imploring Biden to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. The midterms are going to be very telling regarding Ukraine.
The war to pivot the Fed is one of the more important conflicts, and is entirely Western in nature. If the Fed were to pivot to zero interest rates and QE it would allow the powers that be to print a seeming endless supply of fiat money. Inflation would balloon, and the dream by the financial class of a sort of great reset would be assured. From the linked article at the start of this topic:
“The Fed however, may be attempting to implement a contrarian, controlled demolition of the U.S. bubble-economy, orientated precisely to haul America back onto more traditional financial tracks. To break the ‘leveraged-asset culture’ … You begin to resolve the huge societal inequality divide that the Fed has helped create through QE facilitating giant asset bubbles … You begin to rejuvenate an American economy by ending the distortions. You dissipate the urge toward [American] civil war because the issue no longer becomes just between ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. This vision may itself be a tad utopian, yet break the ‘everything bubble’, break the leverage culture, and it stops the ratchetting extreme of bubble beneficiaries versus 18 straight months of U.S. falling real wages. But … but this is only possible if nothing systemic breaks.”
To clarify this a bit, we are at the very end of the neoliberal experiment, with its insistence on financializing everything, zero regulations, fiat currency, wealth inequality, the dominance of the FIRE sector (financial, insurance and real estate industries) and the steady degrading of social programs in order to ensure the ‘freedom of the markets’. In other words, the markets are king in neoliberalism and the people do not matter, except as they benefit or detract from the markets. So long as the Fed refuses to pivot to zero interest and QE (which produces austerity policy for the public and enables stock buy-backs for corporations) we will see a gradual return to saner fiscl policies. We see the opposite happening in the UK, where the City of London has become one of the beating hearts of financial capitalism, leading us to our next horror story.
“It has been a week of firsts in British politics. The country has rightly celebrated the fact that it has its first Asian-heritage and Hindu prime minister. A rather less noted milestone, however, is that Britain also has its first investment banker PM. Rishi Sunak’s first job was at the US investment bank Goldman Sachs. He went on to spend 14 years in the sector before becoming an MP. In many ways, his unelected appointment marks the highpoint of big finance’s takeover of Britain’s political and economic system – a quiet infiltration of Westminster and Whitehall has been taking place over several decades and gone largely unremarked.”
David Cameron once made a most revealing remark, never reported before now: “If we lost Rishi, we have lost the future of the party.” Welcome to the future. Apparently what we see now is what Cameron had hoped for. But Sunak is a symptom of a failing system, like the PMs preceding him, like the Conservatives. His appointment is hardly a globalist coup, as some comments are saying. It is, instead, a financial capitalist coup – a coup for the City of London. But it is also simply continuation of the same policy as the UK has had since Thatcher, having gradually moved in this trajectory through the years by salami-slice cuts in programs and tax cuts for the wealthy. The people hadn’t noticed until the pandemic hit. The same tired old cabinet members are in place and the collective British society, minus the wealthy caste, shake their heads in despair. Meet the new boss. He’s the same as the old boss, at least in what he represents.
What exactly does he represent, then? To put the matter simply, Sunak represents the end stage of neoliberal capitalism, which results in a collapsing social order. Sunak is one of a long line of the Sad Little Men – sent to boarding school, taught to suppress emotion, separated from society at large, trained in the art of government and steeped in the power of money. As much as he tried to portray himself as coming from a commoner’s background (He didn’t. Commoners can’t afford elite boarding schools.), he is now the richest Member of Parliament, the first with a MBA and with more net worth than King Charles. He married his money to start, though. Sunak’s wife is the daughter of an Indian billionaire, the latter having made his money through IT – having founded a company called Infosys. And all this together regarding Sunak is where his loyalties become clear: They are not to the British people, but beholden to the markets. Sunak’s father-in-law has led quite a career. His mother-in-law put up the funding to start Infosys and sits on its board of directors. Sunak’s wife is a venture capitalist. Most of the Sunak household legacy wealth is actually held by the in-laws.
The dark triad: Infosys is valued at about a billion USD, but its tentacles reach far into the halls of governments and corporations across the world. The company has been investigated for fraud of various kinds. It gets a whole page spread on the WEF website, so scions of Davos rather like the company. Davos itself represents what is wrong with neoliberalism, yet another symptom of decline. Perhaps what we see with Sunak is a curious karma working out between the UK and India/Pakistan. There was no independent Pakistan prior to 1947, when the Brits divvied up India as they hastily left. The Indians kicked them out. Perhaps the UK will see some divvying of itself under or as a result of Sunak. The four regions of the UK are certainly divided enough among themselves. What does Sunak really represent, then? Before we get to that, consider the following:
“The U.K. is now an object lesson for other countries dealing with a dark triad of deindustrialization, de-growth, and denigration of foreigners. Having offshored industry in favor of finance, its economy wasn’t resilient. The resulting erosion in living standards made the public desperate for something to blame. Blame-seeking conservatives spotted bogeymen abroad. Brexit cut off the economy from further growth and set the stage for a rolling political circus.”
And so forth. And the horror show political circus continues. The “other countries dealing with a dark triad” include much of the West and many nations in the so-called 3rd World who were cajoled into IMF/neoliberal policies. The entire article linked is quite descriptive of the UK’s situation as it stands. That situation is what Sunak now faces as the newest PM. Can he change things for the better of the British public? Ut is doubtful considering the cabinet he has assembled, discussed below. I will do a separate post on the Sunak administration in the coming days, But to summarize briefly, Sunak is a libertarian neoliberal, a scion of Goldman-Sachs, having thereafter worked at two hedge fund firms he founded with his wife. He is in favor of free ports, is strongly pro-Israel, gives his blessing to Israel moving its embassy to Jerusalem, opposes BDS, is Russo-phobic and ‘supports Ukraine all the way’. He is looking forward to meeting Zelenskyy (beware the Zelenskyy curse. Hey, it’s Halloween).
Sunak is proud of how he moved money from struggling communities to richer neighborhoods. He wanted to be a Jedi when he was young (the comments under the tweet are telling). Sunak says “The Conservative Party is an open, welcoming family to everybody across society, no matter who they are and irrespective of their background.” It just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it? From all appearances, Rashid Sanook (as Joe Biden calls Sunak) has very similar grooming to that of Macron, Obama, Trudeau and other young global leaders – coming out of nowhere, rags-to-riches, clean-cut, articulate, attractive to the public, always with slick advertising, harping change and hope, – and toeing the establishment line. To top it off, the rising sign for his administration, if not the rising degree is the same as that for the national chart of the US at the middle of Sagittarius. There will be more on that in the coming blog post. He stated at his first speech outside No. 10, “Together we can achieve incredible things.” He has already done incredible things.
Sunak has appointed seven members of the ERG to his cabinet, all in key positions deciding UK policy. Suella Braverman, who chaired that think tank from 2017 and 2018, gave a very evasive interview when asked about public funding for the group and the list of members in it. She has been named Home Secretary, responsible for all national security, policing and immigration policies of the United Kingdom. It was she who said it is her “dream” and “obsession” to see the first flight take off for Rwanda, the much-reviled immigrant deportation scheme. Sunak supports the scheme. She is also probably going to be very short-lived in that position due to ‘inconsistencies’ and lack of confidence (she is seen as a security threat). Then, there is the environment minister, who reckons the use of recyclable cups will save the UK’s environment. Sure…why not? Horror show, right there on your TV, to quote an old hit song.
And who are the ERG, we might ask? From its Wikipedia entry, the ERG “…is a secretive research support group and caucus of Eurosceptic Conservative Members of Parliament of the United Kingdom. The journalist Sebastian Payne described it in the Financial Times as “the most influential [research group] in recent political history”. Serving an annual average of 21 MPs including cabinet members, the group’s focus is the single issue of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.” In other words, this is the group of MPs who spearheaded and pushed Brexit through Parliament. Now the UK bears the cost of Brexit. It has been a disaster for the UK. We won’t go more into Sunak here, except to say he faces a daunting task and has been set up to fail, partly by the actions of his predecessors and partly through his own actions. But like a good Jedi, he says he is undaunted. There is one more horror story to relate and then we can move on to happier themes.
Frankenstein’s virus: What follows here is information that has recently come forward. The reader can draw their own conclusions. On 17th of October the Daily Mail in the UK posted a headline about a new COVID variant with an ‘80% kill rate’. It was a sensational headline. Then a day later 1News in New Zealand added the same headline, but with the caveat, ‘in mice’. Then in the article the latter go on to explain how it all came about, at the very end of the piece adding that the breed of mice used in the experiment were not necessarily as compatible with humans as breeds of mice with DNA more compatible with humans. They could have put that in the lead paragraphs. But there is much more to this, which a recent video by Dr. John Campbell explains. That video is a must-view (19 mins). The first point here is to show how media outlets will seize on sensationalist claims, reinforcing people’s fears and doubts, rather than invoking, much less inviting a calm examination of the facts. Such sensationalism is also used to stir doubt in the minds of the public about the efficacy of science.
There has been a recent flurry of activity in social media regarding reports about the origins of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The suggestions from these reports are pretty clear: As much as the official narrative tried to claim the virus was of natural origin, these papers and testimony lean toward – without claiming outright – the virus came from a bio-lab (video, must watch). American officials like to claim it was of Chinese origin and vice-versa, if so. Much of the world outside the West points their collective fingers at the US bio-lab origin. In reverse-engineering the virus and from known data thus far, increasing numbers of virologists feel emboldened enough now to question the claim of natural origin. The ‘chain of custody’ for the gain of function research that would produce such a chimera (synthetic/artificial) virus goes straight back to the United States. The next point here, in keeping with the Scorpio theme of this letter, is about the illusions we live with 24/7. Someone is lifting the lid on what will be a Pandora’s Box about this virus and how it was handled if conclusively proven. Much of the world’s public now rejects the lockdown and anti-COVID measures that have been undertaken in the past few years. There is more to this than whether or not the virus is of synthetic origin. There are illusions in public opinion about the true nature of the COVID disease itself, about the virus still circulating. In short, COVID is not a flu-like ailment, though many symptoms are similar. Since orthodox Scorpio is ruled by Mars and since “Mars is red and full of blood” this disease bears another look, especially regarding heart disease, strokes and sudden deaths due supposedly solely to vaccines.
There has been a marked rise in myocarditis and pericarditis since the pandemic started, and that was noted before the vaccines were rolled out. There are rare cases, especially in adolescents and young adult males after receiving the mRNA vaccines, too, especially after the 2nd dose. Then again, it depends on how one defines ‘rare’. This information brings up many questions and no doubt sparks vivid ‘discussions’ on the matter of vaccines. And for the record, I have no interest in debating any of this. It would do little good anyway. Opinions are hardened on these matters and without the ‘smoking gun’ proving this Franken-virus (or was it natural) was created in a lab and wilfully released, the arguments just go round and round with no resolution. US bio-labs will probably never be investigated regarding the virus, or if so, the findings will never be made public. Readers can go to the links provided here and decide for themselves. We all have our ideas on these matters, all valid and all needing to be addressed. The reason this is brought up in this letter is not to say yeah or nay to vaccines. The latter are a matter of conscience and concerns by the individual. There is another reason to bring it up.
I have had two very mild cases of COVID. I have fared well with it. Yet, I noticed shortness of breath for a while even after the first case of it especially, along with fleeting and very mild pains in the chest for some months afterward. For a person of a certain age (my wife likes to kid me about having entered ‘the third age’), this would normally be put down to the need for a better assessment of cardiovascular health, which I have since done. It is normal for heart failure to increase as age progresses if one does not attend to proper exercise and sits quite a lot (like writers, for instance). ‘Heart failure’ is a misunderstood term. It simply means one’s cardio health is not up to snuff. The heart does not pump as well as it should. The heart is a muscle, after all, and it, too, needs exercise. ‘Heart attack’ is quite another matter and needs immediate medical intervention. But I digress.
Here is the point to be made: If you have had COVID or the vaccine and are experiencing shortness of breath and pains, anywhere in the body actually, afterwards, get yourself checked. Inflammation has been especially noted after doses of the mRNA vaccines. Trying to ‘push through it’ with these symptoms, like young men are prone to do, can lead to more serious concerns, like death or stroke. There are simple tests, starting with the one-minute sit-stand test, for instance (see link for details) while monitoring the blood-oxygen saturation level. If it drops more than 4% during the test, go to a doctor and express your concerns. Blood-oxygen saturation meters (oximeters) are cheap and available at most pharmacies. Amazon has them, too, for instance. A simple blood test can show if there is clotting (D-dimer). There is a long Twitter thread by Dr. Claire Taylor that explains all this. This is not medical advice. These tests were suggested in Clair Taylor’s thread.
Ursula von der Leyen’s husband sits on the board of Orgenesis, which was involved in the development of the mRNA vaccines. She was trading texts with Pfizer in the month before signing the contracts for 900 million Pfizer vaccines, side-lining the competition for the contracts. To this day Pfizer is the predominant supplier to the EU for those vaccines. Non-American COVID vaccines are excluded from the EU market. The EU prosecutor is said to be looking into the matter, but there is no news. Will she be snared? Your guess is as good as mine. Pfizer early in the COVID piece said its vaccine had a 90% success rate in preventing infection by the virus. Recent viral tweets tried to claim Pfizer admitted the vaccines prevented transmission. There is a difference between transmission and infection, the latter meaning developing COVID symptoms. People, meaning all of us, tend to believe what we want to believe rather than investigating. But the thing is, the green passes required to enter facilities were supposed to be based on the vaccines’ efficacy at stopping transmission. So, rather than the green pass saying you were not a walking germ-carrying danger to society, it said instead (unstated) that you were protected from the worst case of infection. The whole thing turned out to be a misrepresentation or misinterpretation of facts, but it caused a great deal of hardship for people and was ill-applied (yes, that’s my opinion). For one, and I am far from alone, I am glad to see them gone, as well as the vaccine requirement for the general public.
All a big scam?: There are further questions, though. Was the pandemic response across the West basically a total cock-up or was it instead a deep structural event? There again opinions vary greatly. In discussing this we come to realize that science is cherry-picked and used by people in positions of power and influence to advance their own agendas, sometimes at great cost to the general public. The tobacco industry is a case in point and there are many more examples. And there is little doubt this sort of practice took place regarding the COVID pandemic. But was it all a big scam? I tend to side with Hanlon’s Razor – never attribute to malice what can otherwise be adequately explained by stupidity. ‘Ignorance’ in this case can be substituted for ‘stupidity’ in otherwise well-meaning people who have been caught up in all the politics of COVID. But science has been used as a potent weapon in the propaganda game, and there is indeed a ‘science of propaganda’. We see it in relation to every sphere of human existence.
Completing the puzzle: In his Valdai address, Putin addressed the current evolving situation between the West and the other 85% of the world. It is important to keep that latter percentage in mind going forward, because we in the West hear very little about public opinion and developments in the real international community. The entire speech is worth reading and should be read. Given what we have been looking at in this letter, this particular bit of his speech stands out:
“Humankind is at a fork in the road: either keep accumulating problems and eventually get crushed under their weight, or work together to find solutions – even imperfect ones, as long as they work – that can make our world a more stable and safer place. You know, I have always believed in the power of common sense. Therefore, I am convinced that sooner or later both the new centres of the multipolar international order and the West will have to start a dialogue on an equal footing about a common future for us all, and the sooner the better, of course. In this regard, I will highlight some of the most important aspects for all of us.”
Bolding added. “Multipolar world”: It is a mantram that keeps the folks in Washington, Wall Street and the City of London awake at night. It is a veritable nightmare for them, the horror of losing control, not yet realizing they already have lost control of much of the world’s resources. It is a cause for celebration actually, because it is fulfilling a return to sovereignty for the world’s nations and ending hegemony and imperialism.
Regarding China’s work on avoiding the Malacca Strait, we have the following projects either in the late stages of planning or undergoing development:
Samarkand in Uzbekistan will complete parts of this puzzle, driven by Russia and China, both seen as responsible partners in Asia. China is central to the economic development of Asia, while Russia provides the security and resources, along with a very competent and growing industrial/tech/research sector, not the least spurred forward by the conflict in Ukraine and American posturing militarily. Kazakhstan is getting in on the greater Eurasian union bandwagon, too, having recently held the CICA conference, where 30 Asian nations were in attendance.
But the thing at the moment that really has the West’s knickers in a twist is the strategic triangle that is strengthening between Russia, China and Iran. These are the major players in terms of strategic interests in Asia. And Israel is feeling the heat, notable by recent missile strikes against Iranian targets in Syria. They dare not attack Iran directly. Instead they, along with the US seek to provoke regime change through the riots we see now in Iran. We looked at this in the last letter. The ‘regime’ in Tehran is hardly showing signs of cracking. Then, there are the economic unions.
“The collapse of the Soviet Union destroyed the balance of forces. The West felt like a winner and proclaimed a unipolar world order in which only its will, culture, and interests had the right to exist. Now this historical period of undivided dominance in world affairs is coming to an end. The unipolar world is becoming a thing of the past. We are standing at a historical milestone. Ahead is the most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time important decade since the end of the Second World War. The West is not capable of governing humanity alone, but it is desperately trying to do so. And most of the peoples of the world no longer want to put up with this. This is the main contradiction of the new era. In the words of the classics, the situation is, to a certain extent, revolutionary – the upper classes cannot, and the lower classes do not want to live like this anymore.”
In conclusion: It would benefit all of us to open our minds and hearts to the fact that maybe – just maybe – the world outside the West is not a jungle, but instead is becoming a garden itself. The soul of the Orient is patient, inclusive and stands as an example of what can be achieved through unity in diversity, in win-win dialog. And this includes all of Asia. It is the same outside China. We see the same in Oriental Russia, in Japan, the Koreas, Thailand and so on. It is worth noting, too, that American aboriginals are original descendants of East Asian ancestry, and they exhibit many of the same Oriental traits of patience, inclusiveness and care for the environment so long as they are left in peace. The Hopi prophecies show this sort of thinking, for instance. But again, I digress. We in the West have lived for too long in the illusion of our greatness, only to find it is now falling down around us. Will we reach out and find a welcoming hand or will we self-isolate and fight among our ‘own kind’? In this Scorpio interval, it would benefit us to confront our illusions, find the truth behind our disillusionment with our governments, our press, our science and rise above it. If we tarry for too long we will find ourselves in a poorer place. Our world is a beautiful place, and that goodness and beauty lies within the heart of every sentient being. We have only to find it by seeing past our own illusions and disappointments. Be the Heroes!
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Related blogs by this author:
Picture credits:
Scorpio: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/scorpio-by-thelemadreamsart-on-deviantart–442830575864984706/
The three poisons: https://twitter.com/safalniveshak/status/1227481064442122240
Hercules Slaying the Hydra: Louis Chéron (1655–1725)
The Transfiguration: James Tissot (French, 1836-1902)
The European ‘garden’: https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/189408800054/satirical-map-of-europe-from-2nd-part-of-19th
Dirty bomb: https://theweek.com/political-satire/1018015/the-dirty-bomb
Thank God for the bomb: https://imgur.com/t/nuclear/S1Xgv0b
Dr. Strangelove: https://www.ifccenter.com/films/dr-strangelove/
Old interwoven war bond ads: http://oldcaradvertising.com/Studebaker%20Ads/1942-45/1942-45%20Studebaker%20Ad-16.jpg
Rishi Sunak: https://www.politico.eu/article/rishi-sunak-commit-ukraine-kyiv-dream-boris-johnson/
Dark triad: https://www.newsweek.com/dark-triad-personality-quiz-how-find-out-psychopath-sd3-1697534
ERG members: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/motivates-tories-erg-jacob-rees-mogg-european-research-group-brexit
Blood clots vs. covid: https://thrombosisuk.org/news/post.php
Killing science: https://www.amazon.com/Playbook-Science-Killing-Corporate-World/dp/B09MZVJJ9D
Daily Mail cartoon: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Cartoon-by-Clive-Goddard-Source-Clive-Goddard-Courtesy-of-the-artist_fig11_301095112
EU stabbed in back: https://mronline.org/2022/05/14/natos-northward-expansion-risks-turning-europe-into-a-new-powder-keg/
BRICS, SCO, EAEU: ht tps://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2019/08/05/russia-chinas-positioning-within-belt-road-shanghai-cooperation-organization-eurasian-economic-union/
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