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How You Can Tell Syria is a Scam

Dear Friend and Reader:

Saturday afternoon, with an aircraft carrier battle group underway to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Pres. Obama managed to stun the world by saying he would defer to Congress the decision on whether to bomb Syria. The prior week Obama was ready to move against Syria without congressional approval under the War Powers Act.

Michel Foucault's pendulum swings in the Pantheon of Paris, tracing the turning of the world on its axis. Photo by Eric Francis.

Obama's and Kerry's rationale for the bombing campaign, as you've no doubt heard, was an alleged chemical attack by Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad on rebels involved in an internal war within the country. That war was an outgrowth of the Arab Spring protests, which began with a government crackdown on protesters in March 2011.

The alleged gas attack on the Syrian rebels is said to have taken place in a Damascus suburb the morning of Aug. 21. The exact time is unknown; the death toll varies by a factor of five, depending on whose estimate you listen to; and a U.N. team has not yet produced its report on the incident. No proof has been offered who actually did the attack, assuming it happened. Even after Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, government officials are asking the public to just simply trust that they are telling the truth and know what they're doing.

Last year Obama made his infamous red line statement -- that the U.S. would get involved in the Syrian civil war if the government used chemical agents on the rebels, who include al-Qaeda fighters and who are now supposedly allies of the United States. The U.S. has been providing weapons to these insurgents for about a year, who this week were shown executing seven members of the official Syrian army in a video obtained by The New York Times.

Obama and Kerry reminded everyone of the horrors of chemical weapons in World War I and how the world was almost unanimously against their use. Gas also has an irrevocable connection to the Nazis, who killed many civilians in the death camps using Zyklon B, a cyanide-based insecticide used to murder millions in Nazi gas chambers.

Assad was accused of using chemical weapons, and Obama immediately promised to retaliate, presumably along with the British and the French. But days later, the House of Commons dumped a proposal by Prime Minister David Cameron to join the United States in a bombing campaign. Public support in the U.K. and the U.S. was and remains nonexistent.

British Prime Minister David Cameron speaks during last week's debate over Syria before the House of Commons. Many MPs defied orders to vote with their party. Photo: Daily Mirror.

That's when Obama got on television and said he would be seeking congressional approval. You can look at this as a clever political move, deferring potential blame back to Congress and in particular the Republicans in case the project went badly (or dragged the U.S. into a long war, as may be the plan).

My impression is that Obama was under pressure from corporate leaders and his own top military advisors to go in without congressional approval. But with no backing from the U.K. and no public support at home, he had to pass the responsibility for the decision.

Notably, the British government was accused of "breathtaking laxity" in its arms controls after it emerged this week that officials authorized the export to Syria of two chemicals capable of being used to make a nerve agent such as sarin a year ago, the [UK] Independent reported.

Speaking of nerve gas, a Turkish newspaper reported that, "Russia has called on Turkey to share its findings in the case of Syrian rebels who were seized on the Turkish-Syrian border with a 2kg cylinder full of nerve gas sarin." This calls into question who actually deployed the chemical agent, assuming it was used, the night of Aug. 21.

Meanwhile, reports that the Assad government has a stockpile of chemical agents at least seem plausible; after this is all over, assuming they exist, they will end up in the hands of someone, and neither side in this struggle seems particularly friendly -- the government we're planning to punish or our supposed friends the rebels, who are demonstrably vicious as well.

In light of this impressive mess, it's not surprising Obama balked on his threat of military action and deferred to Congress. He knows that congressional approval is required to start a war (even if that requirement has been ignored many times). I don't think he wanted to take full responsibility for whatever might happen next, or if any of these facts -- not reported in the American press, so far -- came to the surface.

Kerry testifies before Congress in 1971, protesting the Vietnam War. He asked his famous question, "How can you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Photographer unknown.

Then Kerry went on a kind of dead children tour, repeating again and again, in press briefings, in congressional hearings and now on an international trip, his one and only talking point: that there were lots of dead bodies, including 426 kids, insisting that the U.S. must respond with bombs. It's the right thing to do. It's the only thing to do.

Don't worry, it'll be limited action -- in theory designed to send a message and to destroy chemical weapons facilities. It will send a message to Assad, whom the American government claims has more WMDs than Saddam in his wildest dreams.

Don't worry mom, I know the garage is full of oily rags; it'll just be a small fire. I just want to send one smoke signal.

This week as the congressional debate set in and people started taking sides, the rationale shifted, but it's others who are delivering this part of the message, from a diversity of political points of view: the United States (in the person of Obama) promised to bomb Syria and it must do so, lest we signal our weakness to Iran or North Korea; lest we signal that the United States doesn't speak with one voice. (This, as if nobody knows that Democrats and Republicans can barely get together to pay the bills.)

If we don't bomb Syria we lose our credibility. In order for that to be true, we would need some credibility to begin with, and where matters of war are concerned the United States is running an extreme deficit. That's why the entire public is telling Obama and Kerry to sod off and why brutal dictators do whatever the heck they want.

Then let the commercial break go by and you see video of Kerry talking about the 426 dead kids. In a gas attack. Just like World War I. Which the civilized world abhors. It's our responsibility. We must maintain the rule of law. We will bomb them and it will all go beautifully. This week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee narrowly approved the use of military action; it goes to the full Senate next week, and to the House of Representatives.

Members of both the House and the Senate are facing overwhelming resistance from their constituents. And any Republican who goes along with Obama risks being forced out of office by a primary race from someone to the right. This is putting hawkish Republicans in the odd position of being against military intervention -- their favorite thing ever.

Medea Benjamin and other members of Code Pink hold up hands symbolically painted in blood as Kerry testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week. C-Span video.

If it's not plainly obvious that Obama and Kerry are lying, and working several layers of some agenda they are not stating out loud, the bald hypocrisy of their moralizing over a chemical attack and dead children should be enough to provoke extreme nausea.

After the Bush War I, the United States and the U.K. maintained a bombing campaign of civilian facilities in Iraq that killed 500,000 children, mainly through destruction of fresh water plants that resulted in outbreaks of cholera.

Madeline Albright, then Bill Clinton's secretary of state, said on 60 Minutes that she thought it was worth it. It still amazes me that we don't think of this every time we see Clinton's face.

Add to that all the children killed and displaced in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, East Timor, the first bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan, Bush War II featuring Nixon retreads Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and then relentless drones in Pakistan, and Yemen, and all the "unidentified enemy combatants" that Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange told us about, and it sounds disingenuous that Obama and Kerry want to go to war over some dead civilians in Syria.

In the 30 months the Syrian civil war has raged, 100,000 civilians have been killed; we didn't find it necessary to get directly involved before last week (though the U.S. has been aiding the conflict in various ways for two years). Do they think it's better to be killed by a cluster bomb or by starvation or disease than it is by a chemical agent?

Here's how you really know the gas attack rationale is a lie: it's the only reason they're giving for going to war. This would be a war in an extremely volatile part of the world, which could have entirely unpredictable results. Besides the facts on the chemical attack not adding up, there's never just one reason for dropping bombs on a country. You know Kerry is lying because on Thursday he told MSNBC's Chris Hayes: "I don't believe this is taking America to war."

You know Obama and Kerry are lying because they're making it sound so simple, stating just one rationale. No country ever goes to war for one reason alone. In addition to concealing all of their other motives, they're refusing to address the supposedly 'unintended' consequences of military action, such as the enemy fighting back. Nobody seems concerned that we would be going to war to support a branch of al-Qaeda, and that the Senate version of the bill calls for arming the rebels.

Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright on 60 Minutes saying it was worth killing 500,000 Iraqi children, mainly from cholera, after the first Gulf War. See video here.

Both Obama and Kerry, who are clearly spokesmen for a larger organization of some kind, are omitting from the discussion the incredibly vast complexities involved in the Middle East situation, including unstable governments, extreme factionalism and the way that the region is like an exploding chessboard where an eternal proxy war is being staged.

They are omitting the influence of petroleum in the region and its central role in the American and global economies. They are omitting the fact that Syria is Iran's closest ally, and many in the United States power structure have wanted to bomb Iran for years.

Yet the macabre, pointless and expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made that challenging. We also didn't have an explicit reason to bomb Iran -- but now we have an excuse to go after Syria, which would be an easy way to get Iran involved in a war.

Before getting into the astrology of this whole scenario, let's consider a few of these potential influences, the reasons that nobody is talking about. I don't know if you watch cable news, but when you turn on a news channel all you hear about are basically two things -- the gas attack and the credibility of the United States in keeping its promise to bomb Damascus.

Situation One -- the petrodollar. Most oil is traded in dollars, which creates an artificial demand for American currency. Countries must stockpile dollars and treasury notes in order to have money to spend on oil. That demand props up the value of the dollar, which would have little value otherwise because it's backed neither by gold nor by exports.

Nixon took the dollar off of the gold standard, locking in the petrodollar.

Basically, the dollar is our export. And if countries don't buy it, we have nothing to fall back on. The Federal Reserve is in essence printing counterfeit dollars, but those dollars are in demand because they can be traded for oil. This pumps wealth into the United States, which we've largely used to buy a massive military machine.

If oil-exporting countries switch to the euro as a standard currency, the value of the dollar and thus the whole U.S. economy can go into free fall. That's what Iraq did just before the U.S. began its latest 10-year bombing campaign there in 2003.

This doesn't make that much sense in terms of bombing Syria, which ranks 35th in world oil reserves, but it makes a lot more sense if you consider how a war with Syria would be a proxy war with Iran. Read more about the petrodollar issue here.

Situation Two -- Iran. Granted, the United States is not very good at handling Iran; U.S. policy always seems to make the problem worse. But the central powers of the United States and its business partners want a Western-controlled Iranian government, just like we had under the Shah of Iran prior to 1979. And one way to do that is to clobber them in a war or two. That is the theory anyway.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.

The United States is made nervous by any country that it doesn't control. Our government is still freaking out over Cuba, which is stockpiled with sugar, cigars and sex.

And it has a lot of reasons to want to control Iran. The ongoing excuse to go after Iran has been that they might turn out to make an atomic bomb. That's true enough -- every country with nuclear power sooner or later ends up with a nuclear arsenal, and Iran has nuclear power. That fear is made worse by the notion that Iran might give one of its bombs to terrorists.

However, there's a lot of oil sitting under Iran. And that oil is going to be sold somewhere, in some currency. As peak oil takes hold, these big stashes of oil become even more valuable. Saudi reserves are not all they're cracked up to be.

Far from being a "limited intervention," an attack on Syria could lead to something akin to a world war, though certainly a war with Iran is possible. It's so possible that it seems to be an intentional means of drawing Iran into the conflict, and giving the U.S. an opportunity to 'defend' itself and end up in a not so finite, not so limited war that goes on forever.

Situation Three -- intra-Muslim politics. I know so little about this that I can barely write a whole sentence, but I know the issue exists and that it's extremely complex. The Sunni and Shia branches of Islam have been slugging it out since the earliest days of their existence.

The situation in Syria is complicated by the fact that Assad and most of those in his regime are Alawite (a branch of Shia Islam) but most Syrians are Sunni. This contributes to the conflict, since Alawites are a minority in Syria yet they have been in power for decades.

I know that most Americans think of all Muslims as being the same thing, but that's not how Muslims see it. If we get into a war with Syria, we are jumping not only into the midst of a civil war in that country; we would be plunging into the Sunni-Shia battle.

U.S. officials might have a political intent in doing this; for example, Saudi Arabia is Sunni; Iran is Shia. We owe Saudi Arabia about a million favors after both Bush Wars and in particular how badly the second one went. The U.S. consumes a lot of Saudi oil -- oil that is running out. So the U.S. pretty much does what the Saudis want.

But don't think about that -- think of how heinous chemical warfare is. Don't think about how the U.S. waged chemical war in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia, featuring napalm and Agent Orange, and forget about the white phosphorous that the U.S. used in Iraq, including on civilians.

Forget how American police departments use chemical agents on American activists on a regular basis, less dangerous than sarin but chemical agents nonetheless.

Think about the sarin victims, even though we don't know who they are, by name or family affiliation; and we don't have a suspect based on real evidence -- we don't know exactly what happened, who set off the gas if indeed any was used, or where the suspects got it (except for the part about the Brits selling the stuff to the Syrians last year -- don't think about that part). And just because someone has something does not implicate them; one would think that to go to war evidence besides the government's say-so would be necessary.

Well, Obama has done us a big favor by referring the proposed bombing of Damascus to Congress -- we are at least having a discussion, even if you get very little of it in the mainstream media; there is plenty to read about on the Internet. In this case the pretense of following the Constitution is not such a pretense.

What all of this says to me is that there is some other much larger agenda at work, one that is currently obscured by the fog of war.

Astrology of the Syria Situation

The Syria situation is making a lot of charts. The problem is that there is no one accurately timed chart to connect the situation to. After doing hundreds of news chart analyses, I'm made skeptical by any widely notorious event that cannot be precisely timed. The gas attack has no known exact time. Many people would have heard the first missile strike.

Syria's natal chart, per Nick Campion's Book of World Horoscopes. Note the Mars-Uranus-Vesta conjunction to the upper right side of the chart. Also note that Syria's Sun is at 9+ Capricorn -- right in line with the Uranus-Pluto square. This goes on for a while longer.

My astrology collaborator Tracy Delaney said Thursday, "Trying to read that chart seems to bring home the fact that this did not happen in a vacuum; it kind of says go join the dots then."

When we start doing that, we find a pattern of interlocking charts that includes the 1944 chart for Syria; Pres. Obama's chart; the current Uranus-Pluto square, including the night of the chemical attack; the current charts; and the fact that Bashar al-Assad was born during the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1965-1966.

Let's connect some of those dots, considering a few of the charts involved. The background is the Uranus-Pluto square -- the 2012 aspect pattern that lasts from 2011-2015 with effects that will reach into the end of the decade. Uranus is in Aries; Pluto is in Capricorn; Jupiter is now in Cancer; planets keep moving through Libra, completing the grand cross in the cardinal signs. Through all of this, Chiron is in Pisces, just like it was for the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1965-1966.

Here are some highlights:

The Syrian Protest Movement Begins on March 15, 2011. This happened just four days after Uranus ingressed Aries, and officially takes its part in the Uranus-Pluto square. That's also four days after the tsunami and earthquake that set off the worst nuclear disaster in history -- at Fukushima, Japan, which has apparently killed the Pacific Ocean and is at this moment spinning out of control. This is the same astrology that sets off the rest of Arab Spring, the Wisconsin movement and the international Occupy movement.

The Aquarius Full Moon. This was exact the night of the alleged sarin gas attack. The time range of 2 am to 4:40 am directly encompasses the exact Moon-Sun opposition, which was at 4:44 am (daylight savings) local time. The Full Moon was conjunct Nessus, a centaur associated with revenge, poison and karma coming back to the person who sets off the chain of events (in the myth, in the form of how his own poison comes back to Heracles and kills him).

The alleged sarin gas attack was timed with the second Aquarius Full Moon. The Moon was conjunct Nessus, which is associated with poison and revenge. The event sets off Syria's natal chart as well.

This is a colossal chart. Within hours of the Full Moon, Jupiter in Cancer makes its exact square to Uranus in Aries and a trine to Chiron in Pisces. Speaking astrologically, it's one of the biggest moments so far in the 2012 era. It's the moment of first contact between Jupiter and the square; and Chiron is right there to pick up the energy and throw the door open to something a lot bigger (one expression of the trine aspect).

A reading of the full aspect list from that day shows Mercury making five different exact, simultaneous aspects to minor planets, including a door-opening trine to Eris, who in one manifestation exists to precipitate war and strife, and a square to Varuna -- the breaking of a promise.

The dubious chart for 2 am, the earliest stated time of the alleged gas attack, is indeed a chart illustrating a situation where "the government attacks its own people," but that chart takes a ride and it's not clear what really happened. But it's clear that something happened.

The Natal Chart of Syria. The source of this data is the eminent Nick Campion's Book of World Horoscopes. This is not a friendly chart. We really do have the horoscope of a duplicitous, volatile, pent-up raging enemy of the people of the world. Go figure.

The chart features a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini on the 8th/9th cusp. The chart has Pluto in Leo on the North Node, like a warhead. We really don't want this country in possession of too many fancy weapons. Is this really someone we want to bomb?

The chart was set for hair-trigger the night of the Full Moon. And it fits another world horoscope rather nicely…

Natal chart for Barack Obama. It fits many ways with the Syria chart and the chart for the current moment (see SKY section below).

Barack Obama's Chart. Barack Obama's sensitive Gemini Moon is conjunct Mars-Uranus in the Syria chart. He feels personally provoked and he probably does not know why. But he had the good sense to pass on responsibility for the decision to bomb Syria. Meanwhile, Obama and Syria have planets piled up all over one another -- when you put the two charts around one another, you get all kinds of conjunctions, with Obama's Neptune making an impressive appearance in Syria's chart: it's square Syria's North Node and Pluto.

The Current Chart -- Mars square Saturn. One last. We are currently under the influence of Mars in Leo square Saturn in Scorpio. I unpack this fully in the current edition of Planet Waves FM and in some detail in SKY below.

The upshot is that Mars in Leo is bringing a lot of passion, drive and vital force into contact with Saturn, which in Scorpio is chilly and represents some form of stuck energy. The sensation is that of pressure building, which comes to a head on Tuesday -- the congressional debates of early next week will sure be interesting.

What stands out is that the Mars-Saturn square fits -- to the degree -- Pluto and the lunar nodes in the Syria chart, and Obama's Neptune. And along comes Mars, plunging into the whole arrangement.

As has been asked before though never often enough: what could possibly go wrong? What has ever gone wrong before?

Lovingly,

Additional Research: Wesam Badr, Sunya Bhutta, Priya Kale, Kelly Karalis, Amanda Painter, Susan Scheck and Lizanne Webb.




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Mars-Saturn: The Slow, Steady Burn

The Virgo New Moon was exact Thursday at 7:37 am EDT. That's a conjunction of the Moon and Sun in Virgo. This New Moon stands out because it's the last New Moon before the equinox, and it stands out because it's opposite Chiron.

Simplified chart section for Mars square Saturn, exact at 7:06 am EDT Sept. 9. From top: lunar North Node, Saturn and Moon in Scorpio, Mercury in Libra, the Sun in mid-Virgo and Mars in Leo.

On one level this chart contrasts fact and imagination, mental experience and emotional experience. It points to the need to balance the two sides of the Virgo-Pisces equation. This translates to keeping a mental perspective on your emotions. This can be challenging in a world where we're taught to emote in all directions rather than to think in any one direction, though it'll be worth rising to the occasion.

In the background of the current astrology is an aspect that's developing -- Mars square Saturn. While this aspect is exact early next week, we are under its influence now. It contrasts the fiery passion of Mars in Leo with the chillier, potentially tuck quality of Saturn in Scorpio.

You will likely experience this as some form of pressure or drive. It might be emotional pressure, such as experiencing the effects of emotions and desire you've denied; it might be creative drive, such as a push to express an idea or bring to completion a project that you started a while ago.

The key to this aspect is the slow, steady burn. Don't try to storm the mountain or demolish all your inhibitions at once. Take them one at a time; approach your feelings gently, or at least as gently as you can. If you push too hard, you run the risk of burning out. If you don't apply enough heat and pressure, your energy could fizzle out.

Mars in Leo encountering Saturn in Scorpio is calling for a conscious blend of yin and yang, of assertive change and voluntary letting go of what is blocking your progress.

As this develops, on Friday (today) the Moon ingresses Libra; on Monday, Mercury follows suit. Anything that ingresses Libra (as the Sun will soon do) gets involved with the longstanding Uranus-Pluto square and will come with events that reveal deeper facets of the times in which we're living.

For those following the situation in Syria, Mercury ingressing Libra is a sign of 'news about diplomacy'. But Mercury makes a series of surprising moves over the next week, as it passes through the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto configuration. That means agreements made now will be subject to some radical revisions over the coming days.

One last astrology item: the Moon eclipses Venus in Libra Sunday. There's something here about sussing out the difference between desire and need. If you find yourself in a discussion on the emotional content of a relationship, that would be a topic to bring into focus.




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Proposed Syria Attack, Virgo New Moon & Mars square Saturn

Will we go to war with Syria? Why are we asking this kind of question again? Yes, we're being invited once more to endorse the state of perpetual war. I do my best to untangle this overwhelming situation. Mars is the leading planet -- the congressional vote requested by Pres. Obama on Saturday is likely to happen just as Mars and Saturn form their exact square. Along the way is the Virgo New Moon, exact Thursday morning EDT, bubbling with tension, passion and the sense of something about to happen. My musical guest today is Graveyard Lovers from New York City, with two songs from their new CD "Dreamers."