15 thoughts on “Questions & Comments

  1. Marjorie: I just watched Beto O’Rourke’s rousing speech (via huffingtonpost.com) at his anti-wall rally in El Paso TX last night. Very impressed. As I recall, you said the forecast for his presidential candidacy (should he decide to run) doesn’t look promising. Can you provide the date of that post? Would like to read it again.

  2. Hi Marjorie

    How about a look at our monumentally, transcendently incompetent, transport minister, Chris Grayling? Would you be surprised to learn he was born on the 1st April, 1962?

    What might we look for astrologically to describe Failing Grayling’s cosmic levels of appalling uselessness? And Williamson……? Why are these tossers still in a job, and will that change anytime soon….?
    Thx. Alex

  3. Justin Bieber, Hailey Baldwin Getting ‘Divorced After 139 Days’

    Guess things didn’t work out. “Marriage is hard”, says Justin. Rumors include trysts with Selena Gomez. Well, there’s always the next roadie for him…

    • To date still only on gossip tabloids which aren’t always the best guide. Didn’t look hopeful as a long term romance but will wait for definitive
      story. Maybe they were just having a bad date and it looked like a split.

  4. Hi Marjorie,
    Sky News had its 30th Anniversary on 5 February last, it started broadcasting on 5 February 1989 at 6p.m., from London.
    Thoughts if you have any please?
    Thank you if you do.

  5. Stepping away from the “Battle over the Young, Rich, and fabulously-entitied Royal Wives”, can someone explain the astrology why raping and killing young girls is such a fascination in India?

    “Girl, 5, abducted, raped and murdered in Mumbai”.

    • I would suspect it happens all over the place and is just not reported. But there have been several high profile under age rapes in India so the media will tend to pick up on any new stories that come round.

      • These are thoughts picked up from across the web, so don’t shoot the messenger (I don’t agree with them either). And please don’t be offended. That is not the intent.

        Due to a preference for boys, the gender ratio in India is badly skewered (in parts of India, about 700 girls for every 1000 boys). While some would welcome such competition, this can and does lead to physical violence to get a woman/wif. There are instances of women being kidnapped and trafficked to the other side of India to be sold as wives, as are stories of multiple brothers (and occasionally the father-in-law) being married to one wife and undertaking conjugal duties in turn.

        Seen from that point of view, rape is seen as one form of sexual fulfilment. And younger girls are less able/likely to resist.

        Other factors are the race/caste aspects (among Hindus, one can’t marry within the same gotra/clan – or to certain castes – and entire families would be massacred if such a marriage did take place) and a vast population of migrant young men who often have to live and work for months away from family.

        Indian movies also tend to make a song and dance (or several) about how a girl says No, but means Yes, thus normalising sexual violence. And it is the raped girl who is effectively the punished, as she is unlikely to get married in future, while the rapist is perceived as masculine and virile.

        Lack of sanitary facilities (where women have to defecate/urinate in the open, without any privacy) is another factor that the government has been trying to address. The physical violence in the Delhi rape case in 2012 (where an iron rod was used to violate the victim) has been attributed to the relative success of women in comparison to men in certain fields.

        So, as you can see, there are multiple social factors at work that cumulatively cause this issue.

        As Marjorie has mentioned, these rapes and their root causes have been around for a long time. It is just that the press has become more vocal about it. The advantages of a free press. I am fairly certain that Pakistan and China (who have similar factors) also have the same issues with rape, but it is more likely to be hushed up.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_union_territories_of_India_by_sex_ratio

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotra

        • Thanks, much is made more clear. On the rare occasion I shop at an Indian store for spices, there is the ever-present DVD/video playing where an older man is dancing around several “girls” holding their hands. It’s like a musical. So the movies normalize & publicise young girls with the older virile male? I’ll stop at this point.

      • On that point, Marjorie, is there any astrological indicator for the status of women in a country? Perhaps, Venus or the Moon or their relationship to other planets or something of that nature?

        • The problem with looking for negative attitudes to women on charts is that most countries historically weren’t much better. Women were treated as property and effectively enslaved, blamed for being raped etc. It’s just that the west has (kind of) moved out of the dark ages and great swathes of the world haven’t caught up. The Muslim thing isn’t a help either in this context; mind you Orthodox Judaism isn’t much better. India being Hindu should be more liberated but there is a definite bias against women with its roots in the past.
          Nearly two in every five women in the world who kill themselves are Indian. Experts blame the trend on early marriage – one-fifth of Indian women still marry before the age of 15 – along with male violence against women and other symptoms of a deeply entrenched patriarchal culture.

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