Gaza: The Cheney-Bush Endgame

Dear Friend and Reader:

My take on the violence that has erupted in the Gaza Strip between Israel and the Palestinians is that we’re witnessing the Bush administration’s endgame in the days before Barack Obama takes office. Obama will inherit the whole mess, making sure that he has a rough time getting started. We don’t know how rough. Things are moving fast between Israel and the Palestinians, and the two weeks till the inauguration is suddenly seeming like a long time. (The madness that has seized the appointment of his successor in the senate, Roland Burris, also seems to be a sign of things to come: endless, senseless political scandal.)

It’s important to remember that we are not just in the last weeks of an ordinary administration; we are in the last weeks of a military dictatorship that has made global chaos its one and only priority.

In viewing politics from the outside, it’s easy to think that you’re seeing the whole thing. More accurately, it’s like watching a movie for two hours, having missed the years of scripting, casting, production, editing and marketing that has led up to it. It’s easy to get caught in the emotion and the apparent level of “right and wrong.” Basically, we get caught in the movie and not the movie business.

Personally, until I figured out what was happening, I kept getting caught in the idea that Israel has the right to defend itself, and that Hamas is suicidal. The emotional, right-and-might vision of the world is like being lost somewhere and not looking at a map.

The map to look at turned out to be George Bush’s natal chart. I have avoided writing about this chart for years because it’s so painful. Mr. Bush is a death dealer; he can barely open his mouth without talking about death in one form or another, and not related to Tibetan Buddhism or psychological transformation.

Bush, with Mercury and Pluto rising close to his ascendant and all the ambition of west Texas politics, is into good old fashioned murder, spurred by his supposed minion, Dick Cheney and an entire economy that is based on military spending (an economy which includes the Carlyle Group and Hallliburton, family companies in the war business).

George has an aspect in his natal chart that I never noticed: Pallas Athene, the asteroid of politics and law, square Neptune. This is one way of saying that his politics are a fraud. It’s possible to be an honest person with an important planet or point or several of them square Neptune, but you have to be humble, very intelligent and want honesty more than anything. Unfortunately, I don’t think he quite reaches the level of that description in this lifetime.

At the peak of this crisis yesterday, with Israel talking about invading the Gaza strip — which would be a miniature of the United States invading Iraq — Bush had Mars squaring his Neptune and making a conjunction to his Pallas. In other words, this aspect of fraudulent politics — Pallas Athene in Capricorn square Neptune in Libra, just a few degrees from the widely-public, high-impact Aries Point — was ignited by Mars, who really does manifest as the God of War from time to time. Mars, Neptune and Pallas Athene aligning in a square with the Aries Point is like practicing your fire-breathing act in a munitions plant in a crowded city.

Note, world governments including the United States (which basically funds Israel’s defenses), areВ  being curiously silent as Israel pummels the Palestinians and sets up its ground invasion (of a territory that it just gave up a few years ago). All of the “calling for diplomacy” feels like a three year old pleading with mommy and daddy to make up after he justВ  broke her nose and she smashed a vase on his head. I would love to hear the phone calls between U.S. and Israeli state departments.

Nobody would deny that one has a right to defend one’s country from people firing rockets at bus stops and schoolyards, which is the plausible deniability factor. It looks presentable to conventional human (especially American) logic; that’s what counts on CNN. What counts more is that prejudices are maintained; Arabs look like the usual assholes and Israel looks like someone overzealously defending its right to exist, then we get all the usual images of tanks, rubble and flashing red lights: another day in Babylon.

Appearances are not what counts when you’re walking in as a the new president, and they are not what counts if you’re an honest observer of world events. Unfortunately, what counts does not make for polite or uninformed conversation. We forget quickly that the entire war in Iraq is a fraud: the mushroom clouds and the WMDs and Saddam Hussein conquering the world, and now the United Stats is in Iraq and has left its legacy there for generations.

Most people don’t know about the many other times that the Cheney/Bush/Reagan dynasty has played both ends against the middle in Arab politics. You could count the American invitation for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990 (the ambassador telling Saddam that the U.S. does not get involved in Arab-Arab disputes). You could count how we provided weapons to both Iran and Iraq during that long, long war. You could count back to the beginning, 1980, when Reagan/Bush made a deal with the Iranians (our official enemy) holding the American hostages that the United States would provide weapons if the hostages were held through the election. The hostages were kept, Jimmy Carter lost because of the hostages, the weapons were provided — and this became 1. the beginning of the Bush dynasty and 2. the Iran-Contra scandal.

The Bush II administration walked into office amidst the chaos, crashing trust and toxic dust of a constitutional crisis, and began its term with an avoidable, probably manufactured calamity, the Sept. 11 incident leading to endless war. Then came Enron, Worldcom and Arthur Anderson financial scandals. They are leaving office in a world still torn by war, with the economy all but collapsing and a population having very little clue what’s happening. The Tao Te Ching tells us that the end is written in the beginning: a bit of good old wisdom, because the end, now that we’re seeing it, surely does resemble the beginning.

Eric Francis
Kingston, NY

5 thoughts on “Gaza: The Cheney-Bush Endgame”

  1. This picture of cheney has been bugging me everytime I see it. First glance said there is something going on in the eyes or maybe nothing going on in the eyes, hard telling. I have no planets in Gemini with which to judge. So I modelled his posture and I became some kind of lizard. Heavy handed reptilian stomping upon the earth, crushing everything in my path.

    Whew! That was fun.

    So I would expect that there is something going on in my house ruled by gemini. I take it into consideration.

  2. upyonder,

    I said that with “tongue-in-cheek” and am sorry for the way it came across to you. Actually, it is probably my favorite sign, if it is possible to have a favorite sign. My dad was a Gemini and I adored him. My Venus is in Gemini.

    The fact is though, as Tachikata alluded to, a negative characteristic of Gemini and Pisces – and all signs have negative characteristics – is to fabricate facts, but for different reasons usually. However, Gemini, in my opinion, is the most fun of all “signs”, especially in conversation. They know something (interesting) about everything!

    Oh, and I also have Pisces rising. Again, so sorry. . meant it only as astrology sarcasm. Won’t do it anymore (well, there goes my Gemini/Pisces lie-telling again. . .probably!!)

  3. …”the two-timing, lie-telling (and on occassion) dirty dog sign of Gemini”.

    This must be the single most vicious, judgemental and prejudiced putdown of an astrological sign that I ever saw / heard.

  4. Eric;

    Glad you’re back and “mad as hell” and so impressed that you found that square between Pallas Athene and Neptune. I guess we should have known something was going on behind the scenes because Bush was so quiet. It actually crossed my mind that he might be glad to be getting out of the role of the Decider and pass the responsibility on to Obama. Why the hell would he DO this? And it doesn’t help that his Mars is in the two-timing, lie-telling (and on occassion) dirty dog sign of Gemini. I know Barack has Sun square Neptune, but I just can’t see (or just would not look at) him doing anything so crass and low-down. What to do, what to do?

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