Saturday’s 7th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq passed nearly without notice. I mentioned this in Friday’s edition of Astrology News, which describes how we are in an anti-Sixties moment, characterized in part by a lack of response to an injustice of epochal proportions: one that is costing incalculable pain and draining the wealth of our nation. To the extent that people care, it seems to be a private concern, never mentioned with passion. The Iraq war is like background noise; an afterthought; but not to those on the ground, or their families.
I quoted Michal Lang, the creator of the Woodstock festival of 1969, which happened under mirror-image astrology to what we have today. I had long suspected Woodstock was a peace protest, so I thought I would ask Michael, who I see from time to time because he lives in my area. “The war was definitely at the center” of the minds of those creating Woodstock, he said in a March 11 email. “Everyone’s thinking was focused on stop the war.”
A war, mind you, that had only officially started a mere five years earlier, with the fraudulent Tonkin Gulf non-incident. If you have any interest in the history of Vietnam, I suggest you read that Wiki page. Vietnam started with pure, refined fraud: nothing actually happened that day in August 1964, nothing except a bunch of rumors.
I was reflecting on my thoughts at the time of the Iraq invasion at this time in 2003, which I recall distinctly; these were pervaded by a sense of horror and impossibility, and outrage that Iraq was being blamed for the Sept. 11 incident. Two things were on my mind. One, the Neocon team was trying to crash the economy. It seemed obvious. Two, they were bombing the cradle of civilization out of contempt for humanity. We forget easily that Western Civ began in the The Tigris and Euphrates River Valley — also known as Mesopotamia, now known as Iraq.
I spent a lot of time with the chart, which was a Pisces chart with the Sun void of course in the last degree of the zodiac. It seemed like the chart for the creation of an intentional quagmire. If they wanted a war, they would have waited for the Sun to enter Aries in a few hours. I look at the astrology of the war in this article.
I can’t tell you these things are true in any absolute sense, but that was my thinking at the time; and when, early in the war, the Iraqi Museum of Antiquities was sacked, while the Ministry of Oil was guarded by U.S. Marines, I had some confirmation. Now that we see what the war has done to our economy, driving the United States into debt to the tune of about $12 billion a month, every month, we have another clue. The combined cost of Iraq and Afghanistan is now close to $1 trillion, with no end in sight.
So I wonder, today — how long is this going to last, and what’s going to get us out of there?
Eric,
I guess people where you live are not as vocal as the ones here where I live then. People here do talk about it when I go out. Not as much as I would like them to but they do talk about it. The problem is the way they talk about it. They say “think of all the money we would have for education or state programs that are being cut if the wars ended.” No word about the atrocities we are perpretrating, just how it would benefit us to end the war. That is what bothers me; no words about the Iraqi people and Afghani people being occupied and killed for greed and national interests. No disatisfaction about the government we have that allows this to continue. Just how it would benefit us if the wars stopped. The sense of injustice is entirely missing for the most part.
Apropos of my earlier remark, by coincidence this comment from a friend at CNN was in my mailbox in the morning. She was writing about camerawoman Margaret Moth, who was fearless and unrelenting in her war coverage:
“…reminds me of a documentary I saw about war photographers — when asked how and why they continue to photograph atrocities like wars and holocausts, when they can’t really do anything to stop them, a female war photographer said: “Because there needs to be a record of what happened. Otherwise, anyone can come along and make up whatever they want.”
It’s the decisionmakers who are running the major news organizations – ALL of them – that must return to being fearless and unrelenting in pursuit of the truth.
I’ve an honest answer. I’ve baked on this long and hard,.. for years.. The cats in power are inconsequential. Puppets. It’s all a dog and pony show. WE, need them not.
This is my mission. Over the next year I’m kickin’ it in california, hoping that I get to kick it with my daughter, after the b.s. court crap runs out at the end of virgo. After that, I’m packin’ up myself and runnin’ across this land playin’ music, chattin’ with folk, networking conscienceness, (hopefully not owning a damned thing),.. and this will last ’til I’m 40. I’ve got 5 1/2 years. After that, I’m going to jump farm-to-farm instilling how-to knowledge, helping others to set their shit up well, making sure self-sustainability is an actuality.
That’s the short answer.. It’s truthful.
..You ask, “What’s going to get us out of here?”
I answer, “Me.”
I Love you, cat.
Jere
Eric,
I think the adage, “out of sight, out of mind” lies behind people’s seeming indifference on Iraq.
My generation grew up watching the Viet Nam war on the nightly news. Every night, while my mom prepared supper, I watched the war on TV because that WAS the news. It was generally the lead story, too, unless they were busy murdering RFK or King, or landing on the Moon or descending on Max Yasgur’s farm. A story had to be major to bump the war from the lead. For years, the war reporting didn’t stop, and neither did the images. It was real film footage we saw, real combat, reporting from the field, thousands and thousands of flag-draped coffins returning home on planes – not bars and graphs and tweets and green screens. I was seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve years old and older, and that war was relentlessly there, front and center in our consciousness and our conscience. It was part of my sixth grade curriculum. In short, it was unavoidable.
You talk of the opposite astrology between now and then, there’s got to be something there, too, about the near total media blackout that has accompanied this war. People here in Spain don’t believe me when I tell them that Americans came out in numbers to protest when the invasion began. Because they never saw the images, they never saw a single news item. And because I saw them only fleetingly myself, with the passing of time I now wonder whether I ever really saw them at all.
We are visually oriented first and foremost. Washington knows that and has censored this war from the very beginning, and the media have allowed, accepted, fallen for, and in the end bought into that censorship. Most people don’t have it in them to stand up and cry foul if they don’t see others around them willing to do the same. Images provide a common point of reference, and in this invasion that’s what we’ve been denied.
This is bad news. Cats who keep the stellar conciousness, this will flow. You only need yourself, not someone else too ring in the token. Yes, I am a structure. Yes, I will mitigate the flow.. We have access too the realm.. I’ll deal out my mindframe accordingly.
And this is tripper’s shit.
Let it roll…
J
Yep, I remember this all too well. Vernal Equinox 2003. Here in Austin, everyone I knew was walking around with a rag stuffed into their heart centers, trying not to bleed out despair. It was the weirdest resonance: The day was fantastically beautiful. SxSW was opening its new Interactive and Film components. And we were bombing the Fertile Crescent on Spring Day.
The sudden plummet of temperatures yesterday (40 degrees or so) was something else. It feels like a curiously literal metaphor: Cool it off. I haven’t taken many pictures of the humandala flooding the streets here, but yesterday the tats and the gauges, the dreads and hipsters were all bundled up.
Carrie, I deeply appreciate your activism. And maybe *these* are our ‘streets.’
Carrie, hello
I’m really not talking about out the streets — I am talking about hearts and minds.
I don’t know anyone (in 3-D) who is vocally concerned, except in passing. Planet Waves people are another story; we’re a kind of affinity group.
I mean when I walk out my front door.
e
Many of us are not taking to the streets but instead are writing, faxing, and calling our congresspersons and doing the same to Obama to pressure them to stop the war. I personally have encouraged people via twitter, FaceBook and other outlets to write or call their congresspersons and Obama and remind them that they work for US and we want this war ended NOW. I tell people to tell their congresspersons that all the PAC and special interest money won’t save them their congressional seats if they don ‘t listen to WE THE PEOPLE. I tell people to remind their congresspersons that PAC and special interest money didn’t save those that lost their seats in 2006 and 2008…and to also tell them that we are using these internet venues to foment term limits by attrition.
I write letters to the local paper editor and pass on group and rallying info via the internet. These things are what I have time and energy for so I do them.
This summer, if I could, I would figure out what companies have war contracts that also sell stocks or other goods and encourage everyone to stop buying the other products, cash in their stocks, TELL the companies that you are going to stop their cash flow to the best of your ability. Tell congress that you will donate to any candidate that is NOT an incumbent and that you will vote incumbents OUT to clean up congress. Get others to TEL congress the same. Write about it in chat rooms, on blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook….the powers that be keep an eye on those things.