
2014 in L'Alpe di Siusi, fresh from the US and Australia.
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The Moon and water
Cancer
The Moon
The esoteric Moon
Esoteric Cancer
The full moon
A brief review
The SPIEF
The Straits Forum
Washington and Cancer
Ukraine update
Great expectations
Nuclear weapons
The main event
Does this button do anything?
The Prigozhin affair
From the horse’s mouth
Does Macron play fiddle?
Are you experienced?
Wider Europe and the future
The 4th of July
Americans
In closing
Greetings Everyone!
We recently had a unique experience, a couple weeks ago in fact. My wife gets informed of significant events here in Rovereto through her place of work. One of the events about which she was informed was a tour of the local waterworks for our fair city. Tours were offered on two separate days and we decided to go, thinking there might be some interest, but that it wouldn’t be too much, maybe a half-hour tour. We were to be pleasantly surprised. It turns out what comes out of our taps here in Rovereto is some of the best water in Europe. So the tour guide told us, anyway. It is good water, though. People from surrounding areas used to be sent here for the healing properties of the water back in the day. And on the tour that day, we found out why.
Living here in the foothills of the Dolomites we get our water straight out of the mountains, from what amounts to a very complex subterranean hydraulic system, having been carved out of the mountains over millions of years, and which now runs continuously, supplying far more than what we need. So, the mountain forms a natural filtration system and the water itself amounts to an oligo mineral water. There are three main springs which form the bulk of the water coming into our city. The largest one, not to be too technical, is called the Spino and supplies water for us on average at a rate of 600 liters a second – not bad going. About half of that water flows into a tributary that runs through our city and which eventually joins the river Adige, the main river that runs through our region, and the 2nd-largest in Italy. You can drink the water from the Spino without any treatment, but by law it has to be treated.
The Moon and water: The point to this story is its connection with water, which is co-ruled astrologically by the Moon and Neptune. The Moon in astrology rules water on land, as in lakes and rivers and smaller bodies of water, whereas Neptune rules the great oceans. The Moon got demoted from ruling all waters after Neptune was discovered. For those readers esoterically inclined, the connection of the Moon and Neptune with the astral plane is immediately evident. And, as it turns out both the Moon and Neptune rule the sign Cancer at its various levels,[1] the Moon being the orthodox ruler. It also turns out that Orcus is connected with Neptune as well through its orbital resonance, which has occult significance, but we won’t be talking about that here. Pluto is also likewise connected with Neptune. There is much to consider these days regarding the astral plane, the emotional state of humanity at the moment, waterways in general, and with these points in mind we move on to our consideration of the sign Cancer and what it represents for us this year.
Cancer: As stated previously, the orthodox ruler of the sign Cancer is the Moon. Esoterically, the Moon veils another planet, which in this case is Neptune,[2] and which we will get to shortly. In worldly matters Moon rules fresh running water, places of rest, one’s inherited tendencies, one’s sense of security, the ocean tides, motherhood, families and family life, cooks and cooking, the masses, waterways, places near water, the chest cavity, the breasts, the disease cancer, and the alimentary canals. The Moon itself rules public opinion in a mundane chart, the common people, houses, fortune-tellers (lower psychics), emotions in general, distribution systems for the public, and in fact most of the things ruled by the sign Cancer itself. There are some particular areas of interest upon which we will focus in this letter after our look at the full moon, and those are security matters, waterways and transport corridors, the masses and public opinion. But first we start with the orthodox ruler of the sign, the Moon.
The Moon: The Moon in any chart is generally associated with emotions (the water element). In mundane charts it represents the common people. However, it is much more than that, as in the following summary, paraphrased:
“In the Moon influence, we have indicated the native’s past. It summarises the limitations and handicaps under which one must work, and therefore might be regarded as embodying the tamasic aspect of matter, or that which “holds back” and which—if permitted to influence unduly—will produce inertia. In the body with which one is equipped lies hid the secret of past experience, and every lunar form through which we have to arrive at due expression is in itself the product or synthesis of all the past…
There is quite a lot packed into those two little paragraphs, with the bolded bits being the most important statements. All we can hope to do here is to mention a few points, whereas in reality these paragraphs open a wide and long vista for investigation. Starting with the first bolded text, in esoteric astrology and in esotericism in general every form is seen to be a limitation, a confinement, and of interest in bygone days the last period of human pregnancy and the days after used to be called ‘confinement’. In fact the period of gestation could be seen as the process of confinement for the incoming soul. We do not like to think of the body or our bodies as confining media, however. Instead we like to see them as instruments. But when we think about it, our brain consciousness limits our perception, for instance, whereas if we were freed from the confines of the physical body our consciousness would be much expanded. In this one example we have but one instance of a form (in this case a human body) confining the soul, the latter being one’s consciousness.
The second bolded text, speaking of the body with which one is equipped, points to the Moon being a legacy point in horoscope. In the physical (natal) chart the Moon represents the body legacy from past lives. In the astral body that represents our emotional legacy, and so forth. To be pointed about it, the Moon does not represent simply the immediate past life, but instead the legacy of many past lives, meaning our karma, which are to influence our present incarnation. As that bolded material states, the Moon represents the product or synthesis of our entire past, relevant to the present life. The next bolded text, regarding the influence of the Moon as the prison of the soul and handicaps to be met, simply carry on from the idea of the body being the ‘prison’ of the soul. But the italicized text just after the bold text brings in another dimension, in that eventually astrologers will have to erect three distinct charts at least for a person – natal (or physical), astral/emotional, and that of the lower mind.[4] And in each of those charts there is a lunar placement, along with all the other planets. So, everyone has at least three distinct horoscopes, or three birthdays, if you like. This is all material I have been collecting over the years to be presented in book form at some point. And finally with the last bolded text, we see the emphasis again on the result of past experience down the ages being represented by the Moon in any horoscope. Astrologers will be debating these points for years to come.
The esoteric Moon: When speaking of the Moon in esoteric astrology and the planets the Moon veils, we are looking at Vulcan, Neptune and Uranus,[5] depending on the level under investigation. In the case of Cancer the Moon veils Neptune,[6] whereas Vulcan is associated with the physical nature (transforming instinct to intellect) and Uranus is associated with the mental realm (transforming intellect to intuition). Throughout our considerations regarding the sign Cancer the theme of emotional interplay remains dominant, along with all aspects of water. Cancerians are known for their sentimentality, their interest in preserving legacy and inheritance (genealogy) and their more or less constant desire for security in all realms. Cancerians are natural historians as a result, and as well they are traditionally conservative, the sign being taken by itself. As such, Cancerians are somewhat averse to change, preferring the status quo so long as it suits them, with one of their favorite sayings being, “Don’t rock the boat!” This is key to our understanding of Washington and the United States, for instance, discussed shortly.
But why is the Moon said to veil Neptune instead of being a standalone influence? It has to do with the fact the life force has been removed from the Moon.[7] It is a slowly-decaying body and thus has no capacity to transmit any qualities or energy. In short, the Moon is a reflector and obstruction – a veil – instead of a transmitting agent. Perhaps instead of the Moon ‘veiling’ Neptune it might be a better expression to say the Moon reflects Neptune, esoterically considered. The Moon’s influence on our planet is largely gravitational, governing the tides, and reflective, with the phases of the Moon either reflecting or obscuring sunlight. And just to add another note, the greatest amount of sunlight reflected by the moon is at the full moon, which is why we celebrate the festivals of each of the 12 zodiacal signs at the full moon.
Esoterically the Moon’s effect is one of conflict, and is thereby associated with the 4th ray[8] – harmony through conflict. The conflict represented by the Moon is that of the form as it seeks to continue its own development and independence and that of the soul, which seeks to live through the personality as was intended. It is the old conflict between spirit and matter, yet they are two faces of the same thing, like what was described in the last letter (“Esoteric Gemini”), in that we live in and as a continuum. The Moon also represents the struggle one has on the spiritual path between the lower urges (the ‘animal nature’) and the higher aspirations. This brings us to the more esoteric side of the sign Cancer and Neptune.
Experience through Neptune enables us to “rise above the waters” and thereby overcome the overall pull of desire, one of the main features of the astral plane. In effect, though, the astral plane is represented to us in the Moon’s most refined aspect, because the astral body, instead of being a dominating force in the personality, should instead be a reflector of the soul’s higher purpose. This refinement of the astral body – we could say the process of ‘parting the waters’ – can be and often is a painful process. In fact the initiation (expansion of consciousness) which is associated with control on the astral plane has been called one of the most painful initiations. And one of the most painful things to leave behind are our sentiments – our attachments – what we mistake for being love. The true expression of love cares only for others and not the little self, like the love of a mother for her children. This is not to say we should not feel attachments and sentiments, but control on the astral plane means those sentiments no longer control us. What we are describing here is the process of ‘gestation on the spiritual path’, described in the Buddhist paths of accumulation and joining (probation).
In effect, what we do as we refine the astral body and overcome our emotional attachments is that the attachments no longer obscure the light of the soul. Instead the astral body becomes the reflector of the soul’s wisdom. The astral body becomes lighter, or ‘more lighted’. In that sense, with the sign Cancer we see in the process of astral purification the building and refinement of a spiritual body. We ‘build a lighted house and therein dwell’ as the esoteric motto of Cancer attests[10]. There is another aspect of this process which is important as it pertains to the spiritual progress made from life to life as we ‘struggle onwards toward the light’ (which is within us always anyway). What follows is probably the most important concept to grasp about this sign.
The more esoteric side of Cancer as it relates to the process of reincarnation, birth, death and samsara is better described as follows:
What we have with the Cancer interval every year then, is a careful assessment of our progress in life as it relates to our purposeful living. Are we on the right track? Are we rendering service (i.e. expanding awareness and consciousness for all our fellow sentient beings) or are we simply living day-to-day, only fulfilling bodily and emotional satisfactions instead of growing in wisdom and facility in service? What do we see when we look in the mirror, so-to-speak? Are we content with our progress as people, or are we simply marking time? Well, now especially in our daily lives we need clarity on all matters, to awaken ourselves and others to the factors that really matter in our lives, which largely relates to how we choose to live with others and how we choose to grow spiritually ourselves. With these thoughts in mind, we turn now to the full moon itself and to matters worldly and how we choose to live within that. The astral plane is in a storm of turmoil at the moment. We can do much to dispel the clouds if we choose to do so.
The full moon takes place on 3 July 2023 at 11:38 universal time. The figure for the full moon this year in Cancer is not nearly as stressful as some we’ve seen in recent months. Jupiter forms an easy opposition to the full moon axis, promising a more uplifting mood than what we have seen recently. Venus is conjunct Mars in Leo with both square to Uranus, indicating some unusual events in the realm of relationships. In addition the Sun is in a separating trine from Saturn, the latter being in its retrograde phase at zero degrees of Pisces, adding an additional note of sobriety and security. Pluto is at the bending of the nodes however, showing ruptures and changes in relationships, in the sense of ‘out with the old, in with the new’. Pluto in general represents the end of old situations and major separations. Being tied to Neptune gravitationally, one of Pluto’s main actions is to shatter sentiments, enabling one to view situations in the cold light of day, or even better, in the clear light of consciousness. This brings us to our considerations of current events.
In 1903, also a Black Rabbit year, Cuba leased Guantánamo Bay to the United States in perpetuity. This year there is talk out of Washington about China building a military base in Cuba, which may or may not be true, but it certainly plays into the election cycle in the US. Also in 1903 Germany and Italy reached a settlement with Venezuela resulting in the Washington Protocols. This year we see Russia and Iran making deals with Venezuela, much to the consternation of Washington.
In 1843, also a Black Rabbit year, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saints movement in the US received a revelation recommending polygamy. He was also hauled before the court for it. Now we see the growing debates and rejection of gender issues across the West, those issues being largely rejected in the world outside the West. The city of Shanghai opened for trade with foreigners for the first time in 1843. This year the city of Shanghai is a very busy hub indeed for world trade outside of the West.
In 1783, also a Black Rabbit year, Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States. This year the UK would do well to declare its independence from the United States. But the more interesting parallel from that year relates to Crimea, and that the Crimean khanate was annexed by the Russian Empire along with the founding of the city of Sevastopol, which is the site of the large Russian naval base in the Black Sea. Now we hear talk by NATO and Ukrainian forces of striking Crimea with long-range weapons, prompting Russia to warn those powers that they will be hitting the command centers in Ukraine if they try anything with Crimea. The peace of Paris was declared in that year which ended the American Revolutionary war. Now there is talk of Civil War in the United States itself. And there is no peace in Paris this year. In that year also we had the greatest environmental catastrophe in European history. This year we have one of the greatest economic catastrophes in European history, along with the leadership catastrophe. Speaking of environmental disasters, Greta Thunburg recently visited Zelenskyy in Kiev. Why, exactly, we don’t know, except it seems to be a right of passage for Greenies to go to Kiev these days. That European environmental catastrophe in 1783 was the 1783 eruption of the volcano Laki in Iceland, which caused crop failures in Europe and may have caused droughts in North Africa and India. The eruption and dust caused a drop in global temperatures and 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide was spewed in the northern hemisphere. There was another incident this year that spewed a huge amount of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Currently in Europe, in this Black Rabbit year, we see the Green movement in Europe spearheading European deindustrialization, the closing of farms, an energy crisis, and so forth.
With the preceding ‘rhymes in mind’, I had other material prepared for this letter, but have instead had to put it aside in light of recent events. That material related mostly to West Asia – Turkey, Iran and Israel in particular. These recent events will affect the trajectory of the Western powers in the immediate months and perhaps year or two ahead. They will not affect Asia so much. The events about to be discussed are the result of the waning influence of the West, relevant to the ray cycles discussed in last letters, as well as to the effects financial capitalism has had across the world. We are seeing the final phases of financial capitalism (a.k.a. laissez faire, market and/or neoliberal capitalism) as the dividends its adherents had professed to benefit society have run their course and not materialized, except to the richest and smallest percentile of the world’s populace. We know the latter also as the world’s elites.
Before we get to the main events for this letter, there were two important meetings and one ongoing in Asia that received little notice in the Western press. They were:
“Over the 26 years since its inception, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum has established itself as a fully-fledged institution for national development. Participation rates and interest in the Forum have returned to pre-crisis levels, showing that international business activity is recovering. Over the four days, more than 17,000 participants from 130 countries took part in the SPIEF events in both offline and online formats”, said Anton Kobyakov, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation and Executive Secretary of the SPIEF Organizing Committee.
The honorary status of guest country was accorded this year to the United Arab Emirates, whose delegation was headed by UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Among the high-level visitors who came to St Petersburg were the Presidents of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, the Republic of Armenia, and South Ossetia, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba, and over 150 top officials, including heads of international organizations and associations, foreign ministers and heads of diplomatic missions.
The biggest delegations were from the UAE, China, India, Myanmar, Kazakhstan, Cuba and the United States. More than 6,000 representatives of Russian and foreign businesses from over 3,000 companies located in 75 countries and territories took part in the Forum.”
Bolding and emphases added. The Forum, which is largely an Asian phenomenon, resulted in agreements worth over $43 billion, mostly within Russia. Italy and Spain signed agreements with Russia there. Russia is hardly collapsing, isolated or in trouble, unlike what we hear. This is just to highlight the fact we are not told anything truthful about Russia in the West, if anything at all. But the preceding are not the important points. There were many meetings within the Forum itself, not the least of which were the Valdai Club discussion (the theme being “The New World Economy: Not Global, but Interconnected”), the BRICS discussion focused on the African Continental Free Trade Area (where the West is being pushed out), a roundtable on INSTC (INSTC contains major waterways – the Caspian Sea and Russian rivers, and most importantly which bypasses the Suez canal), and a most important ASEAN roundtable with the focus on linking ASEAN with the EAEU, the ASEAN Monetary Fund and bypassing the US dollar. So, if you want to understand what is taking place and being discussed outside the West, have a read of Pepe Escobar’s reporting on it (linked above), where there are links to all the groups and discussions just described. Asia is on a roll and rising, much as the Western elites try to stop it.
The folks in Washington can harp on all they like about suppression of free speech in other countries, yet the United States is now seen as one of the more repressive countries when it comes to people actually trying to tell the truth in a public space. Once respected journalists in the US, like Seymour Hersh for instance, are no longer given airtime or press space in major platforms or publications. Instead they have to go to independent crowd-funded platforms like Rumble and Substack, or like Tucker Carlson (whether or not you respect him) who was fired from Fox News because he pushed back against the system and had to set up his own Twitter space, where he now receives a wider audience than he ever had on Fox, with tens-of-millions of views for each of his videos. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is likewise being sidelined by mainstream networks and news outlets, as is Marianne Williamson. Some of the latest polling in the US shows around 45% of Democrats would vote for RFK, Jr if Joe was not in the running, with 30% preferring Williamson. Why are these people not brought on to mainstream news to express their views? Well, the answer is rather obvious: The issues these people are addressing and the solutions they propose pose a threat to the power base of the people in office and the powers behind the scenes.
The Sagittarius Ascendant, when misdirected, gives adventurism abroad, excessive pride, judgemental bearing and a tendency to try to make its own rules, rather than abiding by international law. Hence, we have the American ‘rules-based order’ and the ‘lawfare’ for which the US is now infamously known. Then, we have the Mars/Neptune square which gives the United States its militant and evangelical idealism. Thus we have the constant use of and insistence on other nations of abiding by American concepts of ‘freedom and democracy’, and ‘human rights’, for instance. That Mars/Neptune square is often found in the charts of officials within the church and military command. Washington’s ruler in its personality is Sagittarius. So, the rulerships are reversed, with the soul usually being represented in the Ascendant, with the Sun sign representing the personality.
Of course there are positive expressions of all these factors just described, too. But currently largely the negative ones are showing in Washington. Now, we are talking about the power base in Washington here and not the general American public. Positive expressions of the Sagittarius personality are the love of adventure and nature, a wide range of view, of studiousness, a philosophical nature and attitude toward life. These are attitudes the American people express when they are supported by the government. They also care deeply about family, about real human values and are largely traditional when it comes to culture. Most Americans are alarmed by what has emerged regarding ‘woke’ culture, gender issues and the like. But keeping the points about Washington in mind, we can move now to the recent events of note and how Washington is likely to respond, or react to them, starting with Ukraine.
The preceding statements are harsh and hard words, and they will not sit well with many readers. The time is coming very soon, though, when the truth about this war will become common knowledge and people will then be asking a lot of very good and needed questions of their leaders. The powers-that-be will try to use the media to whitewash it once the Western powers abandon Ukraine, like they have tried to do with the Nord Stream incident. We would all do well to acquaint ourselves with those facts. Why has this travesty of international law happened? As a US citizen, what Washington has done with Ukraine and is trying to do with Taiwan is reprehensible.
As US General Smedley Butler once rightly pointed out, War is a Racket. Butler was one of those patriotic and level-headed generals, the man who stopped the coup against FDR fomented by the very same forces that want to prolong this war today and who cow every US president toward their ends. In so foiling the coup, the New Deal was saved and the founding of the UN was secured in the years following. The folks in Washington – not all of them, but enough of them to ensure the wars took place – lied to us about Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine. Sixty years ago, as recounted above, a US president was assassinated for seeking peace in the world. No US president since has tried (not very hard anyway) to bring peace to the world. If you want to know what such leadership would look like, do take another 36 minutes to listen to the nephew (video) of that US president and what his uncle had to say about US foreign policy and diplomacy, the latter sorely lacking in the West today. From here we move on to the most recent developments, again where diplomacy instead of rhetoric is replaced by scaremongering and obfuscation.
Nuclear weapons, you see, are a weapon of last resort. And they are largely meant as a deterrent instead of a first strike weapon. With that said, there are efforts now in the information sphere to prepare the West for some sort of nuclear incident in the combat zone of Ukraine, to be blamed on the Russians. The reasoning behind this, if one can call it reason, is to draw the full force of NATO into Ukraine. It would be a dubious gamble at best. Why would they do such a thing, ‘they’ being Ukraine and NATO? Because they now see the counteroffensive is such a disaster and their final recourse to stop any Russian advances would be to draw in the full power of NATO. Such would be the case with a proposed bill in the US Congress by Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal. We might wonder how much those two senators have been personally enriched by this war. The Russians have no reason to use nukes. They are easily pushing back everything Ukraine is throwing at them and pushing forward as well, and they control the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia Oblast at Energodar, which is now part of their territory. It makes no sense they would resort to nuclear weapons. But that is not what we are told in the West. We are told the exact opposite of the truth. What all this talk about an nuclear incident in Ukraine actually is, is emotional blackmail instead of anything true, keeping with our Cancerian and Neptunian themes regarding astralism.
The main event, if we can call it that, regarding a nuclear incident would be an explosion at the nuclear power plant at Energodar, which as it happens, lies in the center of the main body of the reservoir that was just drained by blowing up the dam at Kakhovka, speaking of waterways and Cancerian themes. There is a post on this on the blog site. Now the bed to the reservoir is quickly drying and the river that flows through it is relatively narrow, giving much easier access by Ukrainian forces to the nuclear power plant. That fact is another reason that points to the Ukrainians having blown up the dam rather than the Russians. And, as of this writing, the cities on the Ukrainian side, on the right bank of the Dnieper River, are being evacuated under the guise of a nuclear incident drill. The Ukrainians have plans to sabotage the nuclear power plant if they cannot produce breakthroughs on the Russian lines in their counteroffensive, which would be yet another environmental disaster. But unless they can strike the power plant with long-range missiles, their chances of taking the plant are very slim.
Thankfully, the US sees no plans by the Russians to use nukes or to sabotage the plant. The Russians have been clear, too, in that they would only use nukes if the existence of the state was threatened. That is hardly the case today. The nuclear plant itself is very heavily protected by Russian forces, who aim to keep the plant intact. Any attempts to sabotage this plant are simply acts of desperation, as a kind of Hail Mary move and last resort to draw NATO into the conflict. This would have to happen before the NATO meeting in Vilnius on the 11th of July. July 5th would appear to be the date for the big show at Energodar. It would also be hoped by Kiev that the world could be convinced to condemn the Russians for sabotaging the plant. On the whole, the world outside the West knows very well the Russians have no need or desire to create any kind of a nuclear incident. And it was recently reported that there was an attempt to smuggle Cesium 137 out of Russia by a group sympathetic to Ukraine in an attempt to create a dirty bomb. Cesium 137 is highly radioactive.
The Prigozhin affair: Some of the Western elites were all a-flutter over the past weekend (24th) at the thought that the revolt staged by Yevgeny Prigozhin, spokesman for the Wagner PMC, against the Russian General Staff was going to see the removal of the hated Putler. You know who we mean. They even announced their thoughts about the immanent chaos they thought was about to engulf Russia, which would lead to the splintering of Russia and that their dreams of subjugating Russia were finally coming true. I hear these same people have since acquired a grudging taste for small birds, like crows. We won’t go over the episode here except to make a few points. I have posted an analysis, based on our current information, on the blog site for background. It is an evolving story and it may be some time before we know the full details of what happened. What didn’t happen was what the Western elites dreamed of transpiring. The whole thing was over in less than 36 hours. Therein lies the basis for the points we can consider here.
The big question is who benefited the most from Prigozhin’s rebellion? At the moment it looks like both Russia and Belarus have benefited the most from it. The rebellion served to unite Russia, to expose people who actually opposed the Russian government and military within Russia, and gave Belarus a new lease on life for its military because Wagner’s troops who wanted to stay within the organization moved to Belarus, and it served to further firm the desire within the Russian public to get on with the military action in Ukraine and finish it. The Russian military command is also going through a reorganization as a result.
Losers naturally were Ukraine, for a start, because the Russian military didn’t miss a beat during the rebellion. It is stated quietly now, but there is a rumor of the Poles entering western Ukraine later this month or in August, which suggests the Ukrainian army would have been defeated. Poland and the Baltic states lost because now they have Wagner’s troops on their borders, the elite commentariat in the West lost, having shown themselves to be the clueless ‘experts on Russia’ they are (a clear case of confirmation bias), and NATO suffered a setback due to the fact of Wagner being in Belarus and stopping, or at least pushing back NATO plans to attack Kaliningrad. Western media and especially in the US are trying their best to paint this as a destabilizing moment for Russia, saying that cracks are appearing within the Russian government and military, which is patently false. Cracks are actually appearing the NATO alliance. Gerazimov, Shoigu and Putin, along with Lukashenko are still all in place. And the little coup d’état the Poles had been planning for Lukashenko has probably been taken off the table, at least for now. But Joe Biden says the Russians are losing in Iraq and Xi Jinping is a dictator. God save the Queen! I feel safer already. (FYI, the Russians aren’t in Iraq, Xi can be removed from office (having been appointed by the PRC on his merits. Scroll to see the list.) and the Queen is no longer with us, in case you didn’t know.)
From the horse’s mouth: Here is the short story of why all this matters, and straight from Zelenskyy’s office: Ukraine’s costly offensive must produce results before the NATO conference in Vilnius. That is in just a few short days. The Ukrainians have not committed the bulk of their 20,000 reserves, but now they have to. It will be a terrible result, a travesty of NATO planning, and Ukraine will be left the poorer for it. They may advance past the 1st line of Russian defences, which may buy them some more time and arms, but their losses will be tremendous. If they try and fail, and then try to blow the nuclear plant at Energodar and fail, and seeing the Western powers have already just tried their Hail Mary move with the Prigozhin affair……what is left? Well, it would seem to be either nukes or capitulation by Ukraine. Nukes are out of the question. So the main point here is the Western powers who have poured all this money and weaponry along with the financial warfare seeking to defeat Russia are facing down a very sobering few months ahead. Borrell’s garden is starting to go up in flames. And NATO is left without any recourse, because it has run out of weapons, at least in Europe, while all the while we were hearing it was Russia that was running out. Now retirees in the US are being recalled to produce Stinger missiles for Ukraine. In the 30 months that would take the war will probably be a distant memory. Well, the truth is coming out now, and in Western publications: Russia shows every sign it can keep doing what it has been doing in Ukraine for as long as it takes, as far as weaponry goes. So we turn to Western Europe now.
But the situation in France is not a revolution or civil war (from Italian):
“The “monopoly of violence” that defines the [French] state appears to have dissolved. Naturally this is not and cannot be a Revolution, because a revolution requires a guideline, political demands, demands some positive model to impose. But there is none of this here, nothing that can convert this social fever into a vision of a better society. On the other hand this is also exactly the reason why revolts of this kind succeed – in the sense that they put established authority in serious difficulty.”
The causes of the riots are not ethno-cultural clashes, left-right clashes or the result of video games. The causes can basically be boiled down to this simple statement (again, from Italian):
“But capitalism – and the liberal democratic societies of which it is the backbone – live in the short run and for the short run; and everything else is boring, until they burn out your car.”
Are you experienced?: The older more experienced societies in the world plan for the long term and have lived through the sorts of crises we are seeing in France – maybe soon to come to a nation near you or even yours – many times before. This is why and how, for instance, the Russians nipped the Prigozhin protest (which is all it actually was) in the bud before there was any escalation. The older societies, as in the ones like China, India, Iran, Russia and so on, countries with a millennium or more of experience, have integrated minorities into the larger society and lived alongside them for centuries. They also reject the newer Western concepts and practices of open borders, forced multiculturalism, ‘liberal’ values and so forth. But France has another particular challenge, related to its ray structure – 5th ray soul and 3rd ray personality. The faults of the 5th ray are “harsh criticism, narrowness, arrogance, unforgiving temper, lack of sympathy and reverence, prejudice.”[13] For the 3rd ray we have, “Intellectual pride, coldness, isolation, inaccuracy in details, absent-mindedness, obstinacy, selfishness, overmuch criticism of others.”[14] It is a ray makeup that readily lends France’s government to technocratic government and coldness to its people. All the high ideals and brilliant intellect of the French are there, too, but for the moment the technocratic leadership and ideal of an EU with open borders is causing immense problems across Europe, and especially in France, where racism is also playing a factor.
The riots in France have complicated and deep roots, too many to mention here, given France’s 3rd ray personality – erosion of worker’s rights, the technocratic financialized government, stagnant wages, inflationary pressures, austerity measures, organized crime, and on and on. It is not any one thing, but instead the combined factors. Then there is the factor of the EU immigration policies and disadvantaged and sequestered neighborhoods where many of the immigrants end up. The latter is the result of Europe (meaning NATO) invading and destabilizing North Africa and West Asia, displacing millions of people in those regions and sending them fleeing, very often, to Mediterranean Europe. The past wealth of France and its social policies have made France one of the preferred destinations for those refugees and migrants. France used to be a jewel in Europe – no longer. Some comments contend it is immigrants who are causing all the trouble, but it is doubtful given the riots and protests are all across France and now into Belgium and Switzerland.
The damage being inflicted by the rioters is immense, too, and the following just on one night – “The Interior Ministry said there were more than 2,500 fires during the night across France. The night before, 917 people were arrested nationwide, 500 buildings targeted, 2,000 vehicles burned and dozens of stores ransacked.” The toll is even higher now. In addition rioters are cutting down the poles that have surveillance cameras on top. The French government had recently ramped up the installation of surveillance cameras, allegedly for security at the Olympics next year. The people aren’t buying it. Armed protesters are shooting at police. A gun shop and police stations have been broken into, looted and ransacked. And the black market on weapons is thriving in France via organized crime groups, most of them organized from North Africa.
Wider Europe and the future: Europe has no military. Inflation is bringing European societies undone (video). When Washington finally abandons Ukraine (given past behaviour it surely will) Europe will be left with over 3 million Ukrainian refugees, who are largely women and children, a Ukraine they (Europe) will be left to rebuild at huge cost (Washington never rebuilds what it destroys, not since the Marshall Plan), an aging population and a very angry populace. 35% of Italians now can hardly make ends meet and the lines at the food banks in the UK grow by the day. The Italian PM, Meloni apparently has no clue as to what is coming in the months ahead. She is in the pockets of the Republicans in the US and now wants to cut Italy off from the China BRI project. That would be music to the Beltway’s ears. Europe’s elites are vassals to the Washington establishment:
“Europe, in short, has made itself a vassal – a willing, submissive vassal. When the EU followed the U.S. and embraced sanctioning Russia, EU leaders anticipated the rapid financial collapse of Russia. They were wrong. When the EU selflessly disavowed the purchase of Russian energy, they calculated that Russia could not manage economically – absent the EU market – and would quickly capitulate. They were wrong. When NATO led the war on Russia (via Ukraine), the EU expected a rapid rout of Russian and Donbas forces. They were wrong. When Prigozhin launched his ‘insurrection’, EU leaders looked eagerly to immediate civil war. They were wrong again.”
Europe is not in a good space now and looks to be diminishing further in the next few years ahead. That can change, of course, but it would mean ousting the leadership that has brought the EU to this place and replacing it with pragmatic and less idealistic leaders, leaders with some common sense. In 2008 the GDP of the EU was larger than that of the United States. The EU was one of America’s top competitors, if not the top at the time. China was only gathering steam then. That quickly changed after 2008. Now the situation is reversed. Europe’s economy is quickly sinking. Europe’s elites have sold out the European public, following in lockstep with US policy toward Russia. It would appear that to Washington and New York, the EU must be eliminated as an economic competitor, and certainly not be able to cooperate with Russia and/or China:
Yet, some European leaders are starting to say what was unthinkable even a months ago – relations with Russia must be normalized and Russia must be seen as the EU’s biggest neighbor.
“The West seeks to restore relations with Russia, despite all the obligations to Kiev. This will be announced by a member of the European Parliament (EP) and former Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski. “We are witnessing the process of convincing Ukraine of the need to freeze the conflict. It is assumed that it is necessary to repeat the situation of 2015, and then conclude an agreement with Russia,” said Polish politician Witold Waszczykowski, whose words are quoted by the site. Energetyka24 [in Polish].”
Business is business. There will be n freeze in the confict, though. It will simply be brought to an end. How, is anyone’s guess, war being unpredictable as it is. But if Europe wants to reclaim and rebuild itself it must of necessity return to doing business with Russia. It is the natural partnership. The battle with the Washington establishment and the New York financial interests will be long and difficult as Europe seeks its independence, so embedded in European politics is Washington.
The 4th of July: The week of the 4th of July is the traditional summer holiday week for the American worker. It is a week that celebrates all the qualities that made America the great nation everyone in the world used to look up to, and which will some day do so again. Nations across the world love the American people for those qualities. They have grown to despise the American government for the commandeering of those qualities and twisting them towards the ends of a small select group, which has come to comprise the American aristocracy. 250 years ago, almost, the fledgling nation of the US rebelled against the European aristocracy which saw the American colonies as their own, and the colonies declared their independence, which is celebrated every year in the US on the 4th of July. The world evolves within and according to the quality and timing of cycles, some known and others unappreciated. The 250-year cycle falls into the latter category. When America declared its independence at the last turning of that cycle it sparked a wave of revolutions across Europe, the seeds of which had been sown in the hearts of the peoples of Europe yearning to be freed from their own aristocracies. European democracies, one-by-one were thus born. Today, we see similar pressures building across the West to be free once again from the aristocracies that have taken root in our nations and who have robbed the people of the West of their hard-earned rights and wealth. A new tide of freedom is about to rise across the West. Many of us sense it. The human heart can never be silenced for long. The nature of the soul is to be free.
Americans: In describing the astrology of Washington, several main factors in the national chart were listed, above. The American people have exhibited those factors, too, but in a different manner to Washington. And it should be noted Washington, DC is populated and staffed by patriotic American people, along with the selfish factions there who seek only their own wealth and power. How are those qualities manifested, the qualities the world loves about America? There is the wide and enthusiastic pursuit of knowledge, far-distant worlds and wisdom (Sagittarius rising), the can-do attitude that does not admit defeat and perseveres against the odds, which created America’s wealth and dynamism (Sun in Cancer square to Saturn), a real depth of creative and restless thinking, able to quickly grasp the essence of situations and thereby to innovate (Mercury opposite Pluto), and finally the indomitable idealism, positivity and self-assuredness that leads Americans to believe they will succeed, no matter what. It can exhibit as jingoism, red-white-and-blue, America do or die, etc., but underlying it is the sense of self-assuredness. I have heard the latter sense of positivity commented to me on numerous occasions, with a sense of marvel on the part of Europeans, since I came to live in Europe.
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Picture credits:
Cancer: Farmer’s Almanac
Orcus sculpture: Bomarzo, Italy, Wikimedia Commons
The Moon: Cosmos Magazine
Doorway to incarnation: Hindu American
Space and Time: PBS Space Time
Rabbit with moon: Korea by me
SPIEF: Sputnik
Straits Forum: CCTV
Censored: old WPA poster from WWII, Wikimedia Commons
Peace talks: Atlantic Council
WMD cartoon: Quotesgram
Do not push button: Junkee
Macron as Paris burns: Kevork Almassian tweet
Putin, send troops: PBS, sign in Russian in France
Biden and Boris: The Times UK
Lady Liberty: Hindustan Times
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