Month: November 2022

A fresh faced 27 year old is the unlikely successor to Marine Le Pen as President of France’s far-right National Rally party. Jordan Bardella was elected by 85% at the party conference, after Le Pen said it was time for her to stand down to concentrate on directing its actions in the national assembly, where the party has a record 89 seats, which robbed Macron of his parliamentary majority. She is widely expected to make another presidential bid in 2027.

  Born 13 September 1995 3.42pm Drancy, France, he has a good-at-PR Sun Venus in Virgo opposition Saturn in Pisces and sextile Pluto trine the generational, highly-strung Neptune Uranus in Capricorn. He’s certainly got the makings of a successful player. His Virgo Sun and Venus fit well with France’s Virgo Sun and he shares France’s do-or-die-determined and vengeful Mars in Scorpio in his career 10^th.

  Tr Pluto conjunct his Uranus at the moment will be upending his life and tr Uranus opposing his Pluto will do the same in 2025 and there’s certainly a great deal ahead for him in career terms though he’ll hit a setback or two in 2026/27 as tr Pluto squares his Mars.

  He is said to be Marine Le Pen’s protégé though his Uranus Neptune opposition her Mars and square her afflicted Saturn will make for a few outbursts and awkward moments. Her Pluto is conjunct his Sun so as long as she holds the power it may be OK but that may not be the case for ever.

  Their relationship chart has a power-couple Jupiter Pluto conjunction which again can be successful as long as they direct their joint energies to an outside goal but there’s also an ego-clashing Neptune square Mars so it could go wrong and will be damped down by tr Saturn through Pisces in 2023/24 and then tr Uranus square the composite Sun after mid 2025.

  The party chart looks very deflated around the next presidential election in 2025 with tr Neptune Saturn opposition the Mars Pluto. And she is looking trapped and frustrated in 2023/24 with tr Pluto opposition her Mars.

Greenwashing and sportswashing have their downside as Qatar has been learning recently. Egypt is now the target of unwanted publicity about its dire human rights record on the eve of the COP27 climate change conference.    Thousands of political prisoners have been detained since Al-Sisi took over in a military coup in 2013 and although 800 have been released this year because of outside pressure that is a small number relative to the overall population of political prisoners and there is no indication of new arrests slowing down.

  Despite his human rights record, Al-Sisi has enjoyed sound relations with western capitals who regard him as vital to regional stability.

 Abdel Al-Sisi, a Sun, Venus, Saturn (and Mercury) in Scorpio square Mars in Aquarius which is opposition Pluto  has a dominating and ruthless autocrat’s chart. He has been rattled by the Eclipses this year though, with a fixed and extremely controlling temperament, change is not in his lexicon. However tr Saturn square tr Uranus is also hammering away  at his Mars, Venus, Pluto Sun over the next two years so even he will find it a challenge to hang onto the tiller through a stormy passage ahead.

  Egypt, 14 March 1922 10.43pm Cairo, has tr Neptune undermining its Pisces Sun until early 2023 but then has a high-confidence Solar Arc Pluto conjunct its Jupiter exact in late 2023. This is echoed in both Al-Sisi’s personal chart and his Presidency chart so a major push of one sort or another is to be expected. The combination of Pluto and Jupiter leads to a might-makes-right attitude and a sense that even wildly ambitious plans can succeed, so it can boomerang.

  His birth chart, 19 November 1954, has tr Pluto square his Jupiter in 2023/24 and his Presidency chart 8 June 2014, has his Solar Arc Pluto opposition Jupiter exact in late 2023; followed in 2024 by Solar Arc Neptune square the Sun. Whatever forceful steps he takes are likely to end with him in quicksand.

  Astrology doesn’t do climate predictions. But as an interesting thought: ‘about a quarter of all greenhouse gas pollution produced by humans comes from the United States. More than 80 percent of planet-warming emissions comes from the world’s 20 largest economies.’ By contrast, Pakistan is the source of less than 0.4 percent of historic carbon pollution and after the blistering heat wave this summer — an event made 30 times more likely by climate change, according to scientists — there were dozens of deaths, huge crop losses and a massive flood from a melting glacier in Pakistan. The country suffered again after record rainfall during monsoon season caused catastrophic flooding. At least 1,700 people were killed and 2 million homes were demolished by the floodwaters. A scientific analysis of the disaster found the rainfall was made 50 to 75 percent more intense by human-caused climate change.

  There is pressure from the most affected countries for the climate polluters in the north to pay for damage. Which given the present economic and energy crunch is likely to lead to fractious and ultimately unwinnable arguments.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, oligarch, close ally of Putin and founder of the Wagner mercenary group, has stepped away from the Kremlin line to praise Zelensky as a strong leader. He and the Chechen Kadyrov have both been critic s of the Russian military tactics in Ukraine.

  Born 1 June 1961 he is a Sun Gemini square Pluto, maybe on the focal point of a Yod inconjunct Neptune sextile a Capricorn Moon – controlling, ego-centric. He also has a volatile, no-compromise Mars conjunct Uranus in Leo and Saturn in final degree Capricorn conjunct Jupiter in Aquarius.

  He looks rattled in January 2023 with tr Uranus square his Mars and before then with tr Saturn opposition his Uranus.  He looks stuck in 2023 and facing a discouraging slog with tr Saturn opposition his Pluto and tr Pluto conjunct his Saturn into 2024.

  He will have some successes but looks nerve-stretched for the next two years.

The Wagner group first saw action in 2014 in Crimea which kicked off with a pushy Jupiter opposition Pluto square Uranus.  

Red lights are flashing as tension rises and rifts widen over the EU’s response to the credit crunch.  Eurozone inflation jumped to 10.7pc in October with Germany at 11.4pc which puts it in much the same boat as the UK. The difference being that a single currency necessitates a focused response, impossible when it services disparate economies. Italy with huge debts objects to credit tightening backed by France which has an even bigger debt burden while Germany with its historic fear of inflation demands it.

  Thomas Mayer, Deutsche Bank’s ex-chief economist and author of Europe’s Unfinished Currency, said the ECB has already gone beyond the point of no return. He predicts that the EMU experiment will end in much the same way as the Latin Monetary Union in the 19th century. Switzerland eventually pulled out because it lost patience with chronic debasement. The eurozone is a sturdier beast but the pressures are the same. “It can’t survive,” he said.

  Germany and France always were about to head into stormier seas in their relationship with an exasperated stalemate continuing on from this year till late 2023; with even more serious rifts and upheavals now and across the New Year, worsening from May 2023 onwards for the following three years.  Macron and Scholz are in a bad place as far as agreement is concerned right through till 2024.

  Though France is not, despite the comments above, getting on well with Italy for two years ahead; with Macron and Meloni increasingly at odds.

  Italy elected far-right, EU-sceptic Giorgia Meloni just as the history-changing tr Uranus Mars North Node was square the composite Sun of the Italy/EU relationship chart. At the very least that will make the next few months disruptive and will continue to generate bad feelings through till 2025.

  Germany will harbour grave uncertainties about EU policy through 2023 and is entering a longish spell of aggravated relations with Brussels, worsening in 2025/26.

France and the EU are not faring much better with an exceptionally bumpy ride through the next few months and massive upheavals from May 2023 onwards and worse in 2024.

 See previous post: Italy & Germany – EU’s early warning signals (16th July 2022) which suggests that the EU pressure cooker will blow around 2025.