Um, really?

Friends, Readers:

The Moon is in Libra, trine the Sun in Gemini. This gives us a loose grand air trine, with the Aquarius alignment making the third side of the triangle.

Helping out on the Earthy side of the equation, Mars in Taurus is trine Pluto, and Venus is about to enter Taurus. Venus is entering a new sign for the first time since completing her retrograde in Aries (which briefly touched the last degree of Pisces earlier in the spring). So this should shift things a little, for those who identify with Venus; her Aries placement is not particularly easy, defying her nature in many respects but helpful for firming up female identity in a world where it’s still more closely associated with lipstick than with ideas.

Venus and Mars, close on one another’s heels for the next few weeks, will soon make a conjunction precisely at the Taurus midpoint — the Beltane point — on the Cancer solstice. That is an interesting chart, which we will of course come back to; when the Sun enters Cancer on June 21, it will be in an exact conjunction to Vesta.

As Mercury in late Taurus is gradually emerging from storm phase, moving toward a square to the Aquarius alignment this weekend. It would appear that a storm is what got Air France Flight 447. That possibility is so plausible that no other idea may ever have more validity; in other words, whether it’s true or not, that version of events will work so well for most people that we can pretty much skip any other serious discussion. But from reading the Reuters article that Cam dug up, posted below, the theory is very plausible. I personally would not want to be flying i that region at this time of year.

As for Mercury itself, the conjunction is in a bright spotlight as Mercury perfects its square to the alignment, and then it will be a second time as the Sun makes a trine from Gemini.

Still, given the news the past few days, it’s hard to be optimistic about this conjunction; you have to see and feel the potential. These spates of weird news following a Mercury station direct or retrograde often give the feeling that the world is a science fiction story, which is basically true. Topping the list of today’s dystopian madness is the proclamation by Dick Cheney that he believed Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 incident.

Really? I seem to remember hearing an endless litany of reasons to blame Saddam for 9/11, before the invasion of Iraq, that is. It seemed like every time Cheney (or his talking dog Bush) opened his mouth he was making this nonexistent connection, and he sold us another seemingly endless war as a result. Maybe we’re hearing this idea from a man who is apparently regarded as the shadow president because it’s time to go after the “real” perp; whoever that might turn out to be. As I have said in print and elsewhere, I believe that perp was none other than Chaney and Rove themselves. I would bet good money that it was Rove who came up with the date, because it has that touch of Madision Avenue branding perfection. Here is an oldie from the Planet Waves files about Sept. 11.

The assassination of Dr. George Tiller is worth some reflection. Our news editor Judith Gayle has this comment in her blog, Political Waves.

Note, I will not be doing Planet Waves Radio this week, under my new policy of taking every opportunity to do less rather than every opportunity to do more. I plan to return June 9.