Hello and good morning! By now you have likely heard much about the Afghan War Diary -- the 91,000 classified US military documents released this week by WikiLeaks. What you likely haven't seen much of in mainstream news is an astrological take on the context for this event. Astrology News this week looks at how these documents both present and conceal information. Clues to the importance of these themes -- concealment and revelation, truth and deception -- are found in abundance in the charts for both the day the database was released and the natal chart for WikiLeaks. There is even a striking tie to the charts for Sept. 11, 2001 and the 2004 Asian tsunami. For this week's full subscriber edition complete with all 12 of Eric's uncanny, insightful horoscopes, please consider a three- or six-month subscription to Planet Waves Astrology News. Brand-new to our service? There is a free one-month trial offer available, too.


Clearing the Smog of War

Dear Fellow Traveler:

In the dozen years that Neptune has been in Aquarius -- a transit that started the same year Bill Clinton was impeached, 1998 -- there's been an absurd increase in secrecy by government agencies. Particularly since the Sept. 11 incident, it seems like everything has become a state secret, held in the interest of national security and fighting terrorism. George Bush even traveled to Europe with a Secret Service portable potty to prevent foreign spies from analyzing his poo.

At the same time, despite much lip service paid to privacy, government agencies such as the NSA have taken it upon themselves to collect our email and phone calls in vast databases, and provide themselves with all kinds of power to read our computer disks, enter our homes without leaving a trace and track our location by GPS anytime they want. People who live in cities are photographed walking on the street many times every day. The result is a sickening mix of nearly total lack of transparency by the government and the disappearance of any notion of the privacy of individuals.

There's a reason for all the cloak and dagger: presumably, the government has something to hide and is paranoid about it. Secrecy is a form of deception; each would be impossible without the other. And there is a reason for all the prying ears and eyes: the fear that we might be spying on them, or plotting the BlackBerry revolt, or learning too much and putting it up on Blogger. Much of that secret information would presumably involve the ongoing occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, packaged as the "War on Terror." These are projects on which the American government has invested about $1 trillion (plus interest) of our tax dollars, and those of our children and grandchildren, in just nine years. Along the way our government has killed somewhere around 100,000 civilians in those countries (that is the documented number; it's really much higher, such as by a factor of four). Specific reports of civilian deaths have been especially difficult to track down, while the military reassures us how precise their bombs are, magically only hurting the bad guys -- such as when a whole town is bombed.

We know exceedingly little about those wars or even why they're being fought; nearly all of what we get is processed, filtered news from embedded reporters, jingoistic political rhetoric about freedom, and lots and lots of spin. We hear terms like "mission drift," which means a war was started for one purported reason, with one stated goal, and it now has a different rationale and a different objective.

We have gradually discovered that the impetus for these wars was based on lies, whether you consider that American forces chose not to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001, or that the WMDs that Iraq was going to use to blow up the world didn't exist -- nor did its connection to the Sept. 11 terrorists. Wars, even the ones we think we love, are always based on lies. For example, numerous American companies provided supplies, equipment and technology to the Nazis during World War II, including Standard Oil (Esso, which became Exxon), IBM, ITT and others. Where there is war, there is deception.

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 30, 2010, #826 - BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries Confidential	You need to handle a relationship situation carefully, which means gently and consciously. Current cosmic energy patterns suggest that you might be inclined to push or struggle toward a potential future breakthrough, or go to great lengths to get your point across to someone. Be aware that the whole situation could easily blow itself out of proportion with you as the main energy source, and you would do well to set the thing aside for several days and pick up the conversation Monday or Tuesday. Yet you may be feeling obsessed or driven to press on with an issue or a blockage in communication. If you do, I suggest you be willing to let go of the relationship itself -- you just may take things past the point where trust can be repaired. Therefore, if you value the relationship, take a vacation from it. If you're ready to go to the mats, then soldier on.
Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Leo Confidential	Something has shifted in your mental environment, and as a result, your perception of relationships. You may be under more stress about this than you've been aware of, then it surfaces, and then it fades into the background again. The current pressure seems like the urgent need to make a decision. It's like you're living in a holoworld where you have to re-think and re-decide every decision you've ever made, and yet at the same time you may have many insecurities about doing just that. This state of being is here to teach you something, but it's not literally true. It would be more accurate to call the whole effect an illusion, which you will be able to see more clearly once the feeling has passed. Then you will be either left wondering what all the fuss was about, or having the whole experience fade like a dream. Yet the symbols in the dream matter, and they will tell you a lot about yourself.
Leo birthday report coming soon.
Sagittarius Confidential	Try to avoid it as you may, you might find yourself in the midst of a controversy of some kind. Remember that controversy is a game, and it has little in common with what it is supposedly about. What you may be seeing is a dramatization of what happens when you dare to stretch out of your prescribed confinement. Prescribed by whom? Well, we could start with all those absurd social rules that we're supposed to follow, and which most people follow knowing how silly they are. What we understand less is what this game takes away from us. I would propose that any controversy you may encounter is a distraction from your creative process that is so rich and promising right now, or that certainly can be if you tune into your core fire. There, I would propose, is the place to focus your love, your energy, your heart, your soul.