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Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistle-blower who leaked studies showing successive US governments knew the Vietnam war was un-winnable, had died aged 92. He was put on trial in 1973, charged with espionage, conspiracy and stealing government property, which could have landed him with a possible 115-year sentence and smeared as mentally unbalanced. The case against him was dropped  after a supreme court ruling due to gross governmental misconduct, including a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, which in part led to Watergate and Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

  By the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, more than 58,000 Americans were dead and 304,000 were wounded. Nearly 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed, as were about 1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerillas and more than 2 million civilians in North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

  He said he never regretted what he did – “I would not have thought of doing what I did which I knew would risk prison for life, without the public example of young Americans going to prison to make a strong statement that the Vietnam war was wrong and they would not participate, even at the cost of their own freedom. Without them, there would have been no Pentagon Papers. Courage is contagious.”

  In recent years he has praised Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

  He was born 7 April 1931 9.47 am Chicago, Illinois, with his parents, originally Ashkenazi Jews, having converted to become Christian scientist. His mother and sister died when he was in his late teens in a car accident when his father fell asleep at the wheel. He joined the marines, served three years in Vietnam, then after an economics PhD on decision theory, became an analyst.

  He had a 10^th house Sun, Uranus, North Node in pro-active Aries on the focal point of a T Square to Saturn in Capricorn opposition Pluto Jupiter in Cancer – hugely resourceful, courageous, impulsive, super-confident and determined, he was custom-designed to make waves and be a trailblazer.  His Sun Uranus was also trine an upbeat Sagittarius Moon.

  Such an emphasised Uranus can be a social catalyst and freedom fighter though can also be lawless, defiant of authority figures, aggressively determined on upsetting the status quo. Without his reckless confidence he would never have tilted his lance at the head of government when the risks were more than considerable.

  When the New York Times printed his information in 1971 his chart was ploughing through heavy seas in what must have been a fearful time with his Solar Arc Midheaven approaching the square to his Saturn; and the discouraging tr Saturn trine Pluto aspecting his SA Sun Uranus.

 Unsurprisingly Nixon disliked him (understatement) – with Ellsberg’s single minded Sun Uranus falling in Nixon’s 8^th setting off an undersea volcanic eruption and dragging secrets into the open. With Ellsberg’s Saturn in Capricorn putting a damper on  Nixon’s Capricorn Sun.

  Their relationship chart had a differing-agenda composite Sun, Venus, Uranus conjunction in an unsettled trine to Pluto; and a hostile, power-struggling composite Mars square Pluto.   That Mars Pluto (= fight to the death) was being elbowed by tr Uranus in Libra when the Pentagon Papers were released which set off the train of events leading to Watergate and Nixon’s near impeachment.

 Earlier this year he announced that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer and had given up his salt-free diet which had improved his life dramatically. He spent his final months eating “hot chocolate, croissants, cake, poppyseed bagels and lox” and enjoying “several viewings of his all-time favourite [movie], Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.

Glenda Jackson, two time Oscar winner for Best Actress for Women in Love and A Touch of Class, with three Emmy Awards, most notably for playing Elizabeth 1, and a Tony Award to her credit, has died.  

  Described as ‘overly fearless as a performer, and overly fearless as a woman’ she was as strong minded as she was talented. Oliver Reed, her co-star in Women in Love, described acting alongside her as like “being run over by a Bedford truck”.

One interviewer described her as “so defiantly charmless that there is something oddly engaging about her, even vulnerable”.

 She was born 9 May 1936 8am (from memory) Birkenhead, England with a bricklayer father and a barmaid mother, and after dropping out of school at 16 won a scholarship to drama college.  She worked constantly on stage, screen and in television to great acclaim but gave up acting in 1992 to become a Labour politician. Her dislike of Tony Blair’s politics made her early Westminster years unsettled and in 2015 she returned to acting, taking on the role of King Lear aged 80, no mean feat, and won a BAFTA for the dementia-ridden TV drama Elizabeth is Missing. Shortly before her death, she completed filming The Great Escaper, in which she co-starred with Michael Caine.

  She was a redoubtable Sun Taurus in the middle of Taurus stellium with Venus Uranus in early degrees and Mars conjunct Algol – not a lady for turning. She had the creative Saturn in Pisces opposition Neptune of the mid 1930s squaring onto Jupiter Moon in Sagittarius which would give her luck and confidence.  Her Jupiter was also on the focal point of a yod to Pluto sextile Mars Saturn which would also give her strong self-belief and allow her to have a social influence.

 Her steely, not to say ruthless edge, came from her Pluto trine Saturn sextile Mars, Algol, Sun. 

  Her creative and thespian abilities were of the highest order but she was not the easiest of personalities.

  I saw her once on stage in Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and for some reason was in the front row so got the full force of her uncompromising portrayal of the control-freak matriarch in a house full of trapped women. It was a powerfully and pungently scary performance.  “Tyrant of everyone around her.”

Pulitzer prizewinner Cormac McCarthy, deemed one of America’s finest novelists for his gritty portrayal of the backwoods of the US and the outcasts who operated beyond the mores of respectable society. Some criticised his work as too macho, violent and nihilistic, feeling that his books “floodlit the dark underside of the American dream”.

  In his personal life he was reclusive and austere, driving away his first two wives because of his obsession with writing over earning money.

  He was best known for The Road and No Country for Old Men – in the latter, which was turned into a Coen movie, his cowboy hero was a Vietnam War veteran turned drifter who stumbles on a large sum of money in the desert, a discovery that brings into play a psychotic hitman, a sheriff straight out of High Noon and a bounty hunter. ‘If it doesn’t concern life and death,’ Mr. McCarthy once told Rolling Stone, ‘it’s not interesting.’

  He was born 20 July 1933 and despite writing continuously since his twenties didn’t come to public acclaim until he was 60, after which it all took off.

  He was born 20 July 1933 Providence, Rhode Island, and was a Sun Pluto in Cancer square Uranus – creative, controlling, rebellious, not destined for a conventional life. His Saturn in Aquarius opposed his Venus and Mercury in Leo, squelching any inclination he might have had to the high life or playing to an audience.

   It is a chart that really needs a birth time to make sense of his life.

  When he finally broke through in 1992 he was on his Second Saturn Return and a Jupiter Return; with his Solar Arc Pluto conjunct his Jupiter and tr Pluto conjunct his SA Jupiter. He got it together courtesy of the fates of good fortune in a major way.

  His writer’s 21^st Harmonic is strong.

 Rarely has a political party suffered such an injurious blow as the SNP, with the chairman Peter Murrell and then the leader, his wife, Nicola Sturgeon, resigning and being arrested during the tortuous police investigation into the missing £600,000 referendum donations.

  Commentators say the arrest of Sturgeon, indicates the police inquiry is nearing its end, after which a report is handed to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal, who will decide whether to bring any charges or drop the investigation.

[The meaning of arrest changed in Scots law five years ago. Nick McKerrell, a senior law lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: “Arrest in Scots law can either mean now that you are arrested and not accused, that means to say you are going in to help the police investigate a crime, or you are arrested and charged with a criminal offence.”]  

  The SNP chart, 7 April 1934 is showing in the starkest terms the sense of catastrophic damage the affaire has brought. Exactly now there is a significantly disruptive Solar Arc Uranus conjunct the SNP Pluto at the same time as a trapped, high-risk, enraging Solar Arc Pluto opposition the Mars – upended and battered into paralysis.

  Nicola Sturgeon, 19 July 1970 3.16pm, who is proclaiming her total innocence and was released without charge, is facing a rocky path ahead. Tr Pluto was opposing her Cancer Sun in 2021/22, then moved to oppose her Sun/Mars midpoint and now her Mars through this year and next – which like the SNP chart hints at a dead-halt, meltdown – trapped.

  Exactly at the moment she also has tr Uranus conjunct her Saturn in Taurus for high tension and turbulence and tr Uranus then in 2024 moves on to square the Saturn/Neptune midpoint and then oppose Neptune in 2025 – so a long run of extreme anxiety and uncertainty. She’ll maintain her usual bullish confidence in patches this year but there will be a few disastrous dips as well in October/November this year and across the New Year into February 2024.

  Similarly her husband Peter Murrell, 8 December 1964, is looking poleaxed at the moment with tr Pluto square two of his Sun midpoints at zero degrees Scorpio which extends into and through 2024; with a debilitating series of Solar Arcs between 2024 and 2028. It may not all be this specific issue that is causing the strain but the days of wine and roses are surely over.

  It will put a strain on their marriage obviously with hitches and glitches from this August and Nicola pulling away from what has been in 2024/25.

  There is pressure to insist she resign from the party though at present that is being resisted.  Her relationship with the SNP does show a definite chill this year with tr Saturn square the composite Sun, Mercury Venus and next year Mars on the relationship chart; with an upheaval this August.

  The effect of Pluto moving into Aquarius and then teetering back into Capricorn to tie up loose ends does have the feel of an earthquake. The tectonic plates shift bringing old structures crashing to the ground – and toppling icons off their pedestals.

  Wonder who will be next?

Silvio Berlusconi, media tycoon, politician and billionaire, four time Prime Minister of Italy, responsible for his country’s decline in economic terms and in standards of public life, has died aged 86.

  He exploited his wealth and influence over the media to acquire and wield power in an undemocratic manner. Like Trump and others who followed, he had millions of adoring supporters — and numerous critics outraged by his scandalous sexual behaviour with younger women and his disregard for the law. Throughout his years at the top, Italian prosecutors launched hundreds of investigations into his business affairs. They sought to convict him on charges ranging from tax fraud and false accounting to bribery of judges and illegal political party financing. Only by 2013 was he convicted of tax fraud for which he did not serve a prison sentence but was made to perform a year of community service in an old people’s home near his sumptuous Milan residence.  

  He was born 29 September 1936 5.40am Milan, Italy, the son of a bank employee, graduated in law and went into real estate with questionable financing, and two of his business partners were later convicted of crimes, one of collusion with the mafia.    

  He had a Sun Mercury in Libra is his exuberant 1^st house with an equally super-optimistic Jupiter in Sagittarius in his 3^rd house. His Venus in Scorpio in his financial 2^nd house would give him a taste for spending money and indulging himself in the pleasures of the flesh – the 2^nd house being Taurus’s natural home. Venus also squares Pluto for passion, possessiveness and manipulation; and his Venus opposed an 8^th house Uranus in the chart area of business finances and sexuality – inventive, unpredictable, changeable.

  He also had a creative and neurotic Moon Saturn in Pisces opposition Neptune squaring onto his Jupiter – so he would channel his over active imagination into his boastful Jupiter in the 3^rd to great effect.

  His chart certainly reflects money and sex as foreground issues and given that he was blessed with a gift for self-promotion and communication with a 1^st house Sun and 3rd house Jupiter, his career choice of the media seems logical.

  He fitted the Italy Republic 10 June 1946 4pm chart well – with his Pluto on the Italy Midheaven and his Jupiter conjunct the South Node and his Sun conjunct the Italy 12^th house Neptune. He controlled Italy’s destiny and direction for a while, though pulling it back it into its less evolved traits with his bombastic cheer and appealed to its delusions.

Two criminal oddities have died in prison – Unabomber Ted Kaczynski of suicide and former FBI agent Robert Hanssen, perpetrator of the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history when he sold information to the Russians, of natural causes.

Kaczynski, born May 22, 1942 at 4pm Chicago, was a prodigy, up at Harvard at 15, a mathematician, who abandoned his academic career to pursue a primitive lifestyle. He murdered three individuals and injured 23 others in a nationwide mail bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the natural environment.

  He had a chart eerily similar to UK’s Fred West, a serial child rapist and killer, with an 8^th house Uranus, Sun, Saturn conjunction trine a 12^th house Neptune and sextile Pluto in the 10^th. West had a marginally earthier chart and also suicided in prison while awaiting trial.

  Kaczynski had a charming Leo Moon trine Venus in Aries sextile a 9^th house (of education) Jupiter Mercury in Gemini. He would be driven by the unconscious urges of his 8^th house planets and his 10^th house Pluto giving him an intense need to be in control.

Add On: The mystery was always how Kaczynski transformed from a star mathematics student to a terrorist. When he went up to Harvard, too young at 16, he was involved in a CIA-backed  mind-control experiment run by Harvard psychologist Henry A. Murray. The program (MK Ultra) sought to understand how to control subjects’ minds, using harsh interrogation techniques. Professor Alston Chase, author of a book about the Unabomber, argued these experiences at Harvard  helped create the Unabomber. They did “shape his anger and legitimize his wrath.”

 During that period of Kaczynski’s life – 1958 to 61 – tr Pluto in early Virgo was square his 8^th house Uranus, Sun, Saturn in Gemini which would dredge up his deeply buried unconscious. Even more tellingly his Solar Arc Mars was then conjunct his 10^th house Pluto making him acutely frustrated, enraged and fearful, trapped and powerless. The potential for him to flip into acute mental illness was always there but such grotesquely irresponsible experiments may well have tipped the scales.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/06/11/unabomber-ted-kaczynski-harvard-experiment/

Robert Hanssen, 18 April 1944 11.31am Evergreen Park, Illinois, an FBI agent, was an oddball with a religious background, member of Opus Dei and a perverse need to have his sexual relations with his wife filmed and viewed by a friend. Over 22 years he made £1.4 million in cash by selling US intelligence documents to the Russians. He was sentenced in 2001 to fifteen life terms without the possibility of parole, incarcerated until his death.

  He had a 10^th house Aries Sun and Venus also in Aries on his Midheaven. His Venus was in a Half Grand Sextile opposition Neptune and sextile Uranus and sextile Pluto. Charming and talented with his Venus, like Kaczynski, square Mars in Cancer. His 8^th house Pisces Moon was square Uranus and on the focal point of a Yod inconjunct Pluto sextile Neptune. It is not entirely clear where his wildly contradictory traits came from – extreme religiosity v sexual perversion; love of country/dislike of Russians v treason/spying.

  His Jupiter in Leo was on the cusp of his 2^nd house which would certainly give him a taste for money and the good life. And his 8^th house Yod Moon would make him emotionally unbalanced, disorganised, lacking solid emotional foundations. His Moon is also a singleton, the only planet in Water. The rest of his chart is Fire Air – a hot air balloon loose on the ocean.   Kaczynski was also mainly Air Fire.

Carole, matriarch of the Middleton family, grand mother to the heir to the heir to the throne is in embarrassment her Party Pieces mail order firm having collapsed into administration. Debts of £2.5 million, mainly owed to small suppliers, along with unpaid tax and a covid loan appear to be due to be written off since it is a limited company.  

  Given the Middleton’s conspicuous wealth over the years, funding seriously expensive private education for their children plus property investments and two daughters married ‘well’ it wouldn’t seem a stretch to at least recompense the small suppliers, if only for PR purposes.

  Carole, 31 January 1955, is a Sun Aquarius sextile a go-ahead Mars in Aries and maybe square a Taurus Sun. She also has Mercury in Aquarius opposition Pluto square Saturn in Scorpio – hard-driving, utterly determined and stubborn to the nth degree.  She also has a lucky Jupiter Uranus in Cancer square Neptune.

  Her Saturn is being upended by tr Uranus in opposition exactly now which will put her on a Saturnine guilt trip and that runs into a disruptive tr Uranus square her Pluto in 2024 and her Mercury in 2025  – so quite a sticky run of turbulence, prompting/inviting her to change which won’t be easy since flexibility isn’t her thing.

  Her relationship with daughter Catherine, Princess of Wales, is being challenged now with tr Pluto conjunct the composite Sun at zero degrees Aquarius and that will repeat through 2024. It was always a more demanding relationship than the cosy en famille brand suggested with a composite Sun square Saturn. Plenty of affection but super-high expectations as well.

  Husband Michael, 23 June 1949, an independent-minded Sun Uranus in Cancer, won’t appreciate tr Saturn Neptune in Aries in 2025 squaring his Sun Uranus which will also affect his relationship with Prince William.

  It’s a nothing story really but somehow odd. Given the amount of literally billions swilling round the Royal coffers you would have thought it could have been quietly paid up and shut down without fuss.   

Boris Johnson flouncing off in a narcissistic rage, spewing bile and blame in all directions, appears to have shot his bolt with only a few die-hards still bleating his cause. There will be three byelections when Tories’ polling numbers are down but the party on present evidence looks unlikely to tear itself apart.

   Though Rishi Sunak’s Prime Ministerial term, 25 October 2022 is generally in a sinking, panicky year with the failure-ridden tr Neptune square Mars back this October and in early 2024. The Tory Party 1912 chart similarly has power-ebbing-away with tr Neptune square the Pluto exactly now and running on and off till January 2025. Sunak’s own personal chart has a disastrous run from this August through the autumn, repeating into early 2024.

  What is interesting astrologically-speaking is Sunak’s personal Sun Mercury in Taurus at 20/21 degrees is catching the tr Uranus conjunction exactly now – and rattling up the Conservative Party 9 May 1912 chart with its 18 degree Taurus Sun and 22 degree Saturn in Taurus in July – and for both that will rattle and shake right through into early 2024.

  Uranus usually says – change or stagnate. And it is not a prospect that Taurus regards with any enthusiasm since Taurean strength is perseverance along the same track. Where the Tories are concerned this is only the beginning since tr Pluto will move to exert pressure on their Venus square Uranus through 2024 to 2026. Like it or not, they will have to shake off the old and get onto a new track.

  The Labour Party 12 February 1906 is also on alert for change from this July onwards with tr Uranus square its Sun Venus and since that links into its Jupiter in Taurus they should be on a lucky run through 2024 into 2025, the beneficiary of Tory woes.  But their winning streak may well end up running into the buffers in later 2025/2026.  The Labour 1900 chart and Keir Starmer’s also indicate calamities come 2026.

  The LibDems, 3 March 1988, will be upbeat this year but move into disaster territory in polling terms once tr Neptune Saturn move into Aries in 2025 for several years onwards. The Greens look to be limping as well.

  Into confusing times – more of them. Except for Boris who once he recovers from his tantrum will sail off into the sunset to earn gzillions from speaking, publishing and the like with Jupiter moving through his 8^th house from this July and thence onto his successful 10^th. Regrettably since life is unfair he will continue to be a vengeful presence somewhere in the spotlight. Wife Carrie does have tr Neptune conjunct her Pisces Sun this year and next which with a new baby may just mean a drifting and daydreaming spell in a backwater, but not contented.

 For previous Boris Johnson posts: 30 May 2023; 15 January 2023; 23 July 2022.    

Add On: Criticism of Johnson has been excoriating from several well known commentators. Max Hastings who once gave him a job as a journalist and then fired him. “Selfish, ruthless and a stranger to truth, this scoundrel destroyed respect for Britain. He is perhaps the most selfish human being I have ever met, indifferent to the welfare of anyone save himself. It is striking that he has few, if any, personal friends. He demands loyalty, but is incapable of giving it to others. —–Tony Soprano would find him a tad ruthless.

Biographer Anthony Seldon: “The damage Boris Johnson has done is beyond measure. Britain has been left weaker by a prime minister who demeaned its institutions and sullied all those who came into his orbit. He ran the government as if he were the wayward manager of an amateur theatre company, full of histrionics, changes of mind and cliques. Politicians, aides and officials whom we spoke to for the book attest to the fact that he was quite incapable of telling truth from falsehood: that “he lied morning, noon and night” was a regular lament. ‘

Times journalist: Jenni Russell. “Forget partygate for the moment. Think back to 2016. Johnson backed Brexit not because he believed in it but because he calculated that by doing so he’d get the backing of the Tory right and outflank George Osborne as next Tory leader. If Johnson had stuck to his europhile views Brexit would have lost, he’d have succeeded Cameron in 2018 or so, and could be heading for his second term as Tory PM in a far more prosperous Britain than today — not the divided, anxious, disillusioned, poorer country that’s the Johnson legacy.”

William Hague: No one in modern British political history has so quickly squandered immense goodwill — with sadly irredeemable flaws.

The most serious of those has been a tendency to damage the institutions around him – the Supreme Court was dragged into politics to strike down an unreasonable prorogation of parliament. The Conservative Party was driven to a mass resignation of ministers to terminate an untenable leadership. Now, fair-minded MPs are attacked as a kangaroo court engaged in a witch-hunt. Even as he bolts out of the door, Boris pulls out a few bricks from the wall of another vital institution, parliament, and leaves a stain on the carpet of one that is less vital but a part of British life, the honours system.

Pat Robertson, the televangelist, who has died at 93, is notable not just because he turned God into a cash machine. But more damagingly he spearheaded the intrusion of religion into the Republican Party and US politics, which has led to the present day furore over abortion, gay rights and racism. He saw Trump as God’s plan for the USA and as such no secular election could overthrow him.

  He is blamed for Newt Gingrich’s rise in the 1990s and the GOP’s scorched-earth political warfare backed up by conspiratorial thinking about the evil liberal cabal they were fighting against. He later blamed cultural liberalism for 9/11 and abortion policy for Hurricane Katrina.

  He was born 22 March 1930 in Lexington, Virginia, no birth time, with a militant Christian mother Gladys who told him God had a plan for him. He racketed around, married ten weeks before the first child was born, skipped military service in Korea, failed the bar exam and was ecstatically ‘saved’ from depression by a Baptist missionary. His wife thought he was drunk. On the orders of the Lord he sold the family furniture, abandoned his eight months pregnant wife, to attend a religious camp in Canada. His wife put his actions down to his being a “religious nut” with “schizoid tendencies”. But she remained with him.

  He founded the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the fifth largest cable TV programme network system in the US. Various financial criticisms loomed thereafter including about his diamond mine in the Congo, none of which dented his popularity amongst the faithful. After a failed run for the presidency he became a GOP kingmaker.

  Latterly he was ranting and raving with fundamentalist fervour about feminists  being “anti-family lesbians”, gays “demonic” and non-Christians “termites” and predicted the world would end in 1982 or 2007.

  He was a Sun Aries with Uranus Venus conjunct in Aries on the focal point of a T Square to Pluto opposition Saturn (Moon) in Capricorn. A focal point Uranus can be a trailblazer and catalyst for change though not always for the better. Determined to upset the status quo it produces an aggressive reformer.

  He also had a Mutable T Square of a publicity-attracting Mars in Pisces opposition Neptune squaring onto an over confident Jupiter in Gemini.

  The combination of the depressive Saturn Pluto and the pumped-up Jupiter would give him a precarious mental balance.

  The other factor in his chart is the Taurus North Node which usually brings wrangles over money throughout life as well as issues around sexuality.

  He certainly was karmically intertwined with the Republican Party – or if you prefer, was destined to be connected.  The 12 October 1853 GOP chart has its Pluto conjunct his North Node and his Jupiter is conjunct their North Node. They gave him gravitas and kept the money rolling in and he gave them a recipe for winning.

  It is less obvious why (astrologically speaking) he became the spark which sent the USA down the raging, holier-than-thou (maybe) anti-liberal road which peaked with Trump. When Reagan moved into the White House which was around the time of religious politics becoming embedded (I think) Pluto was then in the final decan of Libra. Thus it was the marker for the final quarter of the Pluto cycle before it slide towards the Return this year.

  Depending on which side of the argument you are, this could be an indication of the USA in decline, slowly subsiding  into brain mush before the necessary reconstruction as Pluto moves into enlightened Aquarius. Though the demented prayer-lobby would no doubt see the advancing liberal movements as the decline rather than the reverse.

  It has always seemed to me an extreme oddity having abortion and gay rights etc centre foreground in a country that holds itself up as a liberal democracy.

  Maybe Pat Robertson’s passing is a sign?