Why Should We Care? & Edward Snowden's Natal Chart

By the time I click on the publish button the current surveillance saga will probably have moved on to yet another chapter. I'm still not as invested in the whole public outcry as most, mainly because we should have realised it was going on, and had been ever since 2001 - maybe even before that to the extent that technology then available could cope. A trawl through the nets to see whether I'm missing something crucial that'd kick my reactions up a notch or two followed.

Thinks: terrorism, though it poses a clear threat, doesn't pose such a huge threat to the USA as to warrant the allocation of billions of dollars to surveillance programs said to be the best way to circumvent such threats, when such programs involve wholesale invasion of telephone and internet communications of hundreds of millions of individuals - a mind-boggling volume, daily. In effect, though, chances of anyone's e-mail or phone call to friends and family being intercepted has to be tiny indeed, or even chances of defining the patterns of any individual's habits of communication, come to that - or so I assume. But the expense of all this to the country, when not in the most robust of financial health - there's that!

The item I found with a possibility of getting me engaged more in this issue was a comment at a blog called Lawyers Guns and Money, where a post by Erik Loomis asking why people were getting so much up in arms about this issue and not about several other important matters facing us. A commenter "Yankee Frank", responded well, I thought, and I trust he would not object to my spreading his words here:

The only reason people don’t care much is that they don’t really understand the import of this. Once the government can examine everything (pretty much) about someone’s past, that person is no longer free. If the government wants to, they can doctor up anything about you they want — to prove you are “evil”, or mentally ill, or a liar… and once they can do that to anyone they have total control over us. They can retroactively examine anyone’s life and find whatever “evidence” they want of anything they want to charge you with.

Why do you think criminal lawyers tell their clients never to speak to the police without their lawyer present? Even if you tell 100% truth and are innocent they can turn your words against you. All they need is a “witness” who saw you somewhere you (or your decades of internet history) claim you weren’t and they have you as a liar, and if you’re lying about an alibi, well then you are very likely guilty. They don’t even have to fabricate the witness. People want to help the police, and they “see” things they didn’t see all the time. This scenario plays out regularly in this and other ways. Hence lawyers tell you to say nothing to the police. These records mean you’ve been talking to the police since 2006, and they can catch you in any number of “lies” to weaken your credibility. People get life sentences for things they didn’t do based on evidence just like this.

Once you are a suspect, that is the beginning of the end of your freedom. The fact that we are all under threat of becoming suspects based on something we said or wrote 15 years ago, or whenever, because the NSA has all our history, means we are all constantly under threat of suspicion. This is what totalitarianism looks like.

The reason this is more important than income inequality and unemployment, and I think those things are hugely important, almost as important as this… is because this freedom underlies all the others. WIthout the freedom to speak out without the government being able to silence you and/or destroy your life, forget protest. Forget fighting for the unemployed, and forget arguing against any government activity period. We will live in a world where 99% of us are too terrified to even raise our voices, let alone dissent.

These things are only abstract because most of us just don’t understand how the state works when it goes after you. Hopefully I have shed some light on this.

I don't think we're quite at that stage of a totalitarian-like state quite yet, but an atmosphere where such things could become a daily worry may not be that far over the horizon.

Something upon which to chew, indigestible as it may be!

There's a good run-down of the situation in this video interview : Jake Tapper and Glenn Greenwald on CNN (around 14 mins)




For any passing astrology buffs, here's a natal chart (12 noon version) for Edward Snowden constructed using birth data given by Wikipedia - "The army did confirm Snowden's date of birth: June 21, 1983." Place of birth stated is Elizabeth City, but that's not an option on my software so I've used the nearest place available. (Update: see comments below for exact time of birth and a link to updated chart on site elsewhere- Gemini was rising by the way).

Snowden has lots of Air in his chart, unlike Greenwald : 3 Gemini planets and 2 in Libra. 3 in Sagittarius (Fire), with Uranus conjunct Jupiter - I'd bet on that conjunction as his "daring" trade mark. Natal Moon will be in Scorpio whatever his time of birth - between around 10 and 23 degrees. Whichever, transiting Saturn is heading that way, indicating some kind of restriction or limitation in his future. It's actually already happening, so his time of birth was likely to be earlier in the day rather than later, I think.

Pluto conjunct Saturn in Libra form an harmonious trine to his Sun and Mars in Gemini, blending a passionate, almost obsessive draw to legal matters (in this case Constitutionality?)with his naturally energetic and communicative core personality.

"Star" and key element of his chart, in the circumstances, for me has to be Uranus conjunct Jupiter.