Sept. 13, 2004.

THIS MERCURY RETROGRADE has been a dark dimension. Mercury leaves its shadow phase the 15th, after the Virgo New Moon. Charts for the past few days have had me a bit nervous for a while -- in particular, last week's station direct of Mercury in Leo looked like it would bring some dramatic events, though I did not have a sense of the scope of shock, tragedy or loss.

This was, however, the timeframe wherein some were expecting terrorists to strike the Republican National Convention, which was wrapping up just as the Russian school hostage situation in Beslan was beginning. And Thursday (Sept. 9) as I write, the Australian embassy in Jakarta has been car-bombed, and 19 more British soldiers face criminal investigation for their alleged actions in Iraq, including murder and manslaughter. It goes on and on, like a brush fire in a dry summer.

The coordinated and simultaneous downing of two Russian aircraft on Aug. 24 was a kind of warning shot, managing to kill nearly 90 people. Though I had no concrete reason for the observation except a chart in front of me, it seemed like this was about something bigger. The message I took from that particular act of terrorism was that the people who pulled it off were saying, "We can do anything we want."

Snapshot of the chart: Aquarius on the 12th house cusp -- the house of secret enemies. Uranus, modern ruler of Aquarius, planet of revolutions, inventions and explosions, in the 12th house, in Pisces (intercepted). Pisces is itself floating in the 12th, swallowed whole. Interpretation: secret saboteur (Uranus), deeply hidden to the point of their identity or agenda never being found out. The 12th is always working on a much bigger scale than we imagine, as is its cousin Pisces. They both tend to magnify their message or that which comes through them. And given Uranus in Pisces, that message is not always especially clear, or predictable, in its results.

Uranus, in any event, signifies a group. The question is how large a group. That it has some guts and resources is now obvious.

Then came the school situation in Beslan less than a week later, an unconscionable nightmare with terrorists, many said to be mercenaries from the Middle East, taking more than 1,000 children, teenagers and teachers hostage.

The stress and anticipation were more than most parents watching around the world could even bear to see. I had spent the past three weeks living in Germany with a friend and her newly-created, fabulous little kid tugging at my jeans, mastering the art of standing up. This was my first experience being around a child for so long, and I got to feel that amazing oceanic love. And have a beautiful up-close experience of the love between mom (Sun/Moon Leo!) and her daughter.

So I knew, watching this crisis on German TV, that I could not imagine the unbearable pain of parents holding vigil outside that Russian school building, some of whom were offering themselves as hostages in exchange for their children.

Then I happened to be watching CNN at about 3:00 a.m. in Nuremberg, Germany, up early for a flight, when those two ominous explosions occurred inside the school -- the terrorists' explosives going off by mistake. This happened live, as the correspondent was doing a stand-up in the midst of a war zone. I was in Nuremberg to touch the ground where the international war crimes tribunals sought justice against Nazi atrocities in 1945 and 1946. The post-Nuremberg motto -- the very lesson of the Holocaust -- was always said to be "never again." I don't hear those words any more. I used to think they meant something.

Germany is always a difficult place for me to be. I am somewhat obsessed with observing or understanding how it is that the down-to-earth people there could, so recently, have gone along with Hitler's ethnic cleansing plan, how they could have supported such hatred, how they could have believed his lies, how they could have worked in the concentration camps killing their neighbors: in sum, how they could have fallen for the whole thing. It feels like it happened so recently. And Germany is so similar to the United States in that it's a middle-class, largely Christian, industrial country.

There were really three policies that led to the "Final Solution": Fear, economic stress, and lies. There was also something about a people so proud that they could do no wrong. There was something about being a young nation; Germany was made of old tribes, but only recently organized politically.

The old concentration camps are just about all still there, and open to the public. Visiting them is both eye-opening and soul-deepening. It is in truth a wrenching, harrowing reminder of what is possible in this world, and you can't really believe it till you see it and feel it, and put your feet on the ground and touch the iron fences and see the beer garden and zoo across a small road from the prison portion of a camp. Yet how it's possible that it happened is what has perplexed me for a long time. When I look at the bill of goods that America is now being sold, including giving up liberties, the rapid rise of a police state, the widespread trust of absolute power, and so many people supporting the bombing of a country that did nothing to us, all for the professed sake of "protection from terrorism," it's clear how it happens. And I am more deeply concerned about the future of the United States than ever.

Now, nearly six decades after Nuremberg -- at the second Saturn return of the Nazi trials -- the main thing that's changed is that atrocities are broadcast into our bedrooms live, such as from Beslan. Now they are part of the world entertainment war, and exposure to what we see and feel makes us sick and weak. And even though we are in the "nothing is shocking" era of history, Beslan was, and remains, shocking. I sat there thinking, please don't fuck this up, hoping the Russian government would negotiate this crisis out. But then something went wrong. Given that the terrorists had seized the building in the midst of a Mercury station, it was likely that something would change directions or unpredictably reverse itself before long.

A few weeks earlier, I had visited the court where the Nuremberg archives are kept -- the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Interesting that there is no budget to preserve those papers and artifacts; they are merely locked in storage in a big palace in Holland, slowly rotting away. Nobody can even see them. In that building, I sat at the massive conference table in Room 3, where the 15 justices of the court meet to deliberate and vote on cases, getting an introduction to the court from a court press attache. He said that when tourists come through the court, they are skeptical that the court can have any effect because rogue nations will never listen to its directives. Then the guides have to explain something that may be difficult for many Americans to believe, which is that the United States is the problem.

He went over the variety of cases in which the United States has refused to cooperate or recognize the authority of the court, which is a branch of the United Nations. Most of these cases involved the death penalty, where, for example, foreign prisoners facing execution have been refused attorneys from their home countries, in violation of their rights under international law. In most other countries in the world, the death penalty is neither the light subject nor the game that it is in the United States. (Saudi Arabia is an exception, where some beheadings are public; China makes a spectacle out of its hangings; these, too, are exceptions rather than the rule.) American politicians get off on acting tough, and on the false satisfaction of retribution. Quite a few voters seem to like this a lot.

But if (for instance) you went to Japan and somehow found yourself in trouble, you would expect to be allowed to speak with officials of the American consulate. That is your absolute legal right, secured by treaty to which Japan is bound. Yet foreign nationals in the United States, protected by the same kind of treaty, have been put to death without ever having had this chance, even as their home governments, principally Mexico, worked frantically to secure their rights before the International Court of Justice and through other diplomatic and legal channels. None of this surprised me, it was just very sad.

Two days later, I visited the much newer (actually, not yet open) headquarters of the International Criminal Court (ICC), also in The Hague, which is specifically designed to prosecute war crimes and genocide. The ICJ (written about above, a moment ago) handles civil litigation between countries.

The ICC, a criminal court and entirely separate institution, is actually the inheritor of the Nuremberg legacy, and a permanent standing court that will take the place of the Milosevic tribunal in similar cases, also in The Hague. The ICC, when it opens in about a year, will deal with war crimes outside the former Yugoslavia. Here is a little something from the ICC web page that tells about its mission:

"The ICC is a legacy of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi officials after World War II, which were the first ever convened by multiple states for the purpose of trying individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The United States proposed holding the Nazi leaders accountable for their crimes during the war and persuaded Britain and Russia that trials would be the most effective way of proving to the world the justice of the allied war effort. The U.S. believed that once the extent of the Nazi atrocities was brought to light no one would ever be able to claim that they had not taken place, and that the detailed record of their occurrence would so shock the world that such crimes could never happen again. The result was a revolutionary moment in international justice. For the first time in history, victorious states chose to use law to explain to the world why a war had started and who was responsible for it. For the first time, individuals, including high-ranking government officials, were held accountable for their actions without regard to their official status."

Going through security entering the ICC, I asked the armed guards if anything interesting was happening. They kidded that they were expecting George Bush any time.

That will probably never happen. In the cafeteria of the heavily fortified building, feeling like I was sitting in an episode of Star Wars, I listened to a press officer explain how the United States was not involved with the court. The US signed the original treaty establishing the court in 1998 (called the Rome Treaty), then withdrew its signature after George W. Bush took office. Israel did the same thing. And, apparently, the US cuts off military aid to countries that have signed on, except for members of NATO and other of its larger allies. So, for example, if you are a small African nation and you want military aid from the US, you cannot be part of the ICC's jurisdiction, essentially giving you carte blanche to do what you want with the weapons. By not joining the court, a country is immune from international war crimes prosecution.

One of the issues involving the ICC treaty is specifically that the United States wants immunity from international and local law for the criminal conduct of its troops in combat situations, such as in Iraq. And US military leaders obviously have grotesque past situations like Vietnam and Panama on their minds. And all for good reason. In truth, the whole situation from the Abu Ghraib prison should end up before the International Criminal Court. Under the Rome Treaty there are specific statues against torture, abuse and sex crimes. And it's becoming obvious that the accused in those situations will be claiming that they were just taking orders.

Those familiar with what became known as the Nuremberg Principles, created during the Nazi trials, know that there is no legitimate defense from war crimes prosecution by claiming that one was following orders; this was the defense that the German leaders used. In fact, soldiers being given illegal orders to commit atrocities and war crimes have a legal obligation to refuse those orders. However, this is not what actually happens most of the time, as we are seeing and will see much more of as the Abu Ghraib military mock-trials unfold over the next few months.

So, that is the state of international justice on the third solar return of the Sept. 11 attacks. And at this juncture, it looks from Europe like a world war is beginning to take shape, with nothing much in the way to stop it. ++