“It’s amazing. These 15-year-old kids are doing such a much better job than our traffic police.” — former diplomat in Cairo, Egypt.

Eric mentioned this weekend with regard to Egypt’s natal chart that the placement of Mercury and the Moon in mutual reception indicated that Egypt’s armed forces likely play “any role that is convenient at the moment.” At this particular moment, the popular movement is looking pretty strong against Mubarak’s government — and the people do not fear the military; this potentially gives the people a strong ally in the changes they are pushing for.

In fact, when the police were ordered to retreat Friday and the military sent in, protesters welcomed the soldiers — cheering and climbing atop the tanks to pray.

Democracy Now! senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is in Cairo, grew up in Egypt and has traveled back many times since moving to the U.S. — but says the Egypt he returned to late last week was a changed country, never to be the same regardless of how things progress. With regard to the reception of the military by the people of Cairo, he remarked today that “what’s important to understand is that, you know, over the past decades, three decades, the state, the security forces and the police have been brutalizing, have been torturing the Egyptian people, have been wrongly imprisoning them, have been corrupt. But the army has not done this. The army has not had an interaction with the civilian population since the 1973 war with Israel. And so, people trust the army.”

Of course, the people are also perfectly aware of who has outfitted the Egyptian police and army. The tanks are either American-made or American-designed and built in Egypt by agreement. Kouddous describes protesters coming up to him with spent teargas canisters, pointing to the “Made in the U.S.A.” label. They are not protesting the U.S., but rather pointing out that they know how close the two governments are, and desire to choose for themselves what the new government will look like — regardless of how it does or does not fit the agenda of American politicians and companies.

But perhaps most encouraging is the description Kouddous gives of the overwhelming sense of community springing up among the protesters, who span classes, religions and ages:

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By Len Wallick

This week’s astrological highlights are the Aquarius New Moon and the Sun reaching the halfway point between the Capricorn Solstice and the Vernal Equinox. Mercury and Venus will also be changing signs. All of that, however, will not come to pass for several more days. There are meaningful events in the meantime. We can start with a look back at over the last couple days.

It appears to have been quite the weekend on both the personal and political levels of experience. Quickly-evolving events in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East have probably found some sort of parallel in private lives for many of us. On the one hand there is the phenomenon of what has been gradually building to become inevitable and on the other, the sudden release of what has been accumulating. The combination serves once again to make us mindful of where we are in a longer epoch. This year is a continuum connecting discreet events.

Last year, there was the cardinal T-square. That repeated tableau put us in touch with some of the longer, historical cycles corresponding to the movements of the outer planets. Access to those cycles was accomplished by the participation of the trans-personal planets, Jupiter and Saturn, in the same spatial patterns. We thus were given the opportunity to experience similar and concurrent episodes in personal and cultural history. The experience is still there for us to refer to.

2012 begins the other set of discreet events, the resumption of cardinal point squares between Uranus and Pluto — five more of them in fact over the several years to follow — with lingering inertia into the new decade. Historical precedent indicates that the residual momentum will gradually shape new paradigms that may endure anywhere from a century to as long as a millennium. We now are seeing the beginning of that next rendition of the cardinal square expressed in recent days.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Scorpio weekly of Feb. 18, 2005

As Chiron crosses over the security and home angle of your chart in the next few days I suggest you stop and examine any feelings of fear and see if you can get to the root of the problem. I’m going to propose that it’s got something to do with your father or perhaps his father. These people grew up and lived through a very different time than you did. Ideas of past generations are handed down like heirlooms. They are not worth the old newspapers in which they are wrapped — but you may want to throw away the antiques and scan those yellowed pages for the reminder that you live in another day and another place.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. New horoscopes by Eric are published weekly plus twice a month in Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light. The Oracle itself is a divination tool available to subscribers to either of these services.)

Interesting video here.

Back in the 1980s, one of my very favorite cartoonists, Tom Toles (then at the Buffalo News) drew a map of the “Muddle East.” It had countries like Irant and Irave. Toles must have been looking at the astrological chart for Egypt when he gave it the name Edgy.

Repubilc of Egypt. Source: Book of World Horoscopes by Campion.

It’s the perfect description for this chart, with the very last degree of Aries rising, and two centaur planets in the house of government. Chiron in particular is pressed right against the 10th house cusp — in Capricorn, the sign of antiquity. I can hardly imagine a more fitting image for the modern government of a country that can rightly trace its roots back more than 5,000 years. Even when Egypt was ruled by other empires, it was reasonably autonomous. I believe that the Great Sphinx is the oldest architectural artifact on Earth, with its age greatly underestimated by most archeologists.

Chiron retrograde on the 10th house looks like a claim to the past, and it’s constantly being confronted by tests. The presence of Anwar Sadat, the venerated leader who was assassinated in 1981, stands as a haunting presence inside that Chiron in Capricorn, so intimate with the affairs of state — the fallen emperor.

Pholus in Aquarius is close by, directly on the North Node. This has the feeling of wild populism that was bound to burst out sooner or later — we are seeing it now. Pholus, of course, represents the uncontainable force, and in Aquarius, that’s about the people of the country. It is more than interesting that when the government tried to cut off the power to the citizens, it went for cellular phones and the Internet first — both of which are Aquarian in nature — but that Pholus only came out more powerfully.

Take a look at the Sun at 27+ Gemini. The Sun is a representative of the leader of a nation (there will be several such symbols in the chart for a country) though for Egypt the Sun is particularly poignant. It is now being squared by Uranus — the same aspect that took down Richard Nixon. And it is being trined by Chiron and Neptune, suggesting that there is a way to healing if people are interested in finding it. There always is, really, but the interest level is the variable. It’s easy to make nose and it’s difficult to run a country.

As for the role of the military: that is a 6trh house matter, and Virgo is on the 6th cusp. The Moon is right there, conjunct its own osculataing apogee (Black Moon Lilith). The Moon’s presence speaks of the reputed closeness between the Army and the people (represented by the Moon) though the relationship is not stable. There is something two-faced here. Virgo’s ruler is Mercury, and this we find in Cancer (again, a reference to the people) and square Neptune and Saturn. Mercury is making a lot of aspects, and notably it is in mutual reception to the Moon — they occupy one another’s signs and are in aspect. It’s almost as if the military plays any role that is convenient at the moment.

For now the situation is entirely up for grabs, however, with a powerful New Moon on Wednesday, there is almost certainly going to be some enormous turn of events right around that time. The New Moon is up in the 11th house — it looks like the populist view will prevail, for now. With Jupiter coming up on Eris, we shall see if yet another Muslim theocracy is not born out of the chaos.

I have some leads on documents in the WikiLeaks database that I will share with you while I’m reading them. These provide we here netizens with an unprecedented look behind the scenes of a rapidly-evolving world situation. Check it out. Thank you Julian, Liz and the WikiLeaks editors who dug out this information.

World Clock

1. The Egyptian military planned for a “smooth” transfer of power to the president’s son in the event of regime change, according to recently published US diplomatic cables.A remark interpreted by the US official as a “pointed reference” to Gamal Mubarak. Dessouki went on to dismiss the possible danger of protests against the current regime, calling opposition parties “weak” and democracy a “long term goal.” Read more.

2. The suppression of dissent and collective action for change goes beyond direct use of force; it includes using legal threats to prosecute even the most harmless forms of dissent, including poetry: “A recent series of selective GOE actions against journalists, bloggers and even an amateur poet illustrates the variety of methods available to the GOE to suppress critical opinion, including an array of investigative authorities and public and private legal actions.” Read more.

3. A cable originating from the U.S. embassy in Cairo written Feb. 23, 2010, states, “Comment: Mohammed El Baradei’s presence on the political scene remains more notable than his message, which echoes existing opposition demands. Yet El Baradei’s sober and broad-ranging criticism of President Mubarak’s regime, buttressed by his credentials as a Nobel Prize winner and former IAEA chairman, distinguished his message from that of largely ineffective opposition leaders. Despite his reluctance to declare himself a candidate, he appears, for now, to have captured the imagination of some section of the secular elite that wants democracy but is wary of the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood.” This is a wide-ranging and detailed primary source document that describes what we are now seeing, only it’s nearly year-old news. Read more.

Editor’s note: Thanks to Fe, it has come to my attention that this article may swing a bit wide — or downright dishonest — in some of its assertions. I am leaving it up, because I do think the issue is important. But please do read the response by Stonyfield’s CEO and comments. As Eric wrote about late last year, ‘organic’ does not always mean what it used to on labels, but one thing is clear: our food supply is under assault and we’re going to have to work carefully together to protect it from powerfully moneyed corporations. – amanda

by Ronnie Cummins
Director, Organic Consumers Association; from Huffington Post

“The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must.” — Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation’s 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America’s organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it’s time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for “coexistence” with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and “seed purity,” gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the “conditional deregulation” of Monsanto’s genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. Beyond the regulatory euphemism of “conditional deregulation,” this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.

In exchange for allowing Monsanto’s premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants “compensation.” In exchange for a new assault on farmworkers and rural communities (a recent large-scale Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers’ and rural residents’ risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto. In payment for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil’s crucial ability to provide nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous greenhouse gases (recent studies show that Roundup devastates essential soil microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the Biotech Bully of St. Louis to agree to pay “compensation” (i.e. hush money) to farmers “for any losses related to the contamination of his crop.”

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Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Fermentation. Clarity. Conjunction.

After a necessary period of ‘being in the dark’, remaining still, and trusting on those abilities that lie beyond the five senses, it is time to take what we have received and bring it into the wider world — that world where our lives touch those of others.

When I looked at The Moon having drawn the three cards for this week’s tarot reading, the first thing that came to me is the word that opens this article: fermentation.

The Moon, Ace of Cups, 10 of Cups from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.

“Psychologically, the Fermentation process starts with the inspiration of spiritual power from Above that reanimates, energizes, and enlightens the alchemist [read: anyone who is on a conscious journey of self-development]. Out of the blackness of his Putrefaction comes the yellow Ferment, which appears like a golden wax flowing out of the foul matter of the Soul. Its arrival is announced by a brilliant display of colors and meaningful visions called the “Peacock’s Tail.” Fermentation can be achieved through various activities that include intense prayer, desire for mystical union, breakdown of the personality, transpersonal therapy, psychedelic drugs, and deep meditation. Fermentation is living inspiration from something totally beyond us.“  — alchemylab.com

The Moon is a time when our inner world is set into a different relief. Things that we’re used to seeing clearly are shrouded in shadow; feelings and sensations relegated to the background in everyday life start to make themselves known. This is symbolised by the creatures in the card: the dog-like figures have ceased their usual activity, transfixed by the moon, while a crustacean — denizen of the deep — crawls on to the land.

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