Glenn Greenwald & Astrological Links to Current Events

Glenn Greenwald is the journalist who revealed (or perhaps more accurately re-revealed) details of NSA surveillance practices, the PRISM program, and other tid-bits of leaked information last week. He said on Sunday that there is yet more to come. It's getting hard to keep up! He now, probably wisely, is a resident of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Did I say "hard to keep up"? I'd barely finished drafting this post yesterday, before discovering that the identity of the person who leaked information to Mr Greenwald had been revealed: Edward Snowden, a 29-year old former CIA technical assistant and current (?) employee of Booz Allen Hamilton. Mr Snowden is reported to be in Hong Kong at present. Relevant Guardian article.


There ought to be astrological red flags of some kind showing in Glenn Greenwald's natal chart just now, being the agent, if not the source, of these revelations. I couldn't find anything on his chart online, so had my software do its thing on a 12 noon version with his birth data as provided by Wikipedia:
born 6 March 1967 in Queens, New York.

Without time of birth we cannot know exact position of Moon and the ascending sign and degree. Born before 10PM Moon would be in late Capricorn, between 10 PM and midnight in early Aquarius.

I'm not trying to interpret Mr Greenwald's personality here, simply looking for any indication that this particular span of time we're in has significant markers via transiting planets conjoining, or aspecting, any of his natal planets.

Transiting Uranus (eccentric planet of the unexpected) now at 11 Aries is just two degrees from his natal Venus -that has to be significant. Such a conjunction will happen usually just once in a lifetime, as Uranus takes around 84 years to circle the signs.

Transiting Saturn (planet of structure, law and limitation) is conjunct natal Mars in Scorpio - that could be a warning sign for the journalist perhaps?

Transiting Neptune (planet of illusion/delusion, mystery) is close enough (5*) to natal Mercury in Pisces to be considered conjoined - Mercury is planet of communication, and as Greenwald's profession is in communication, that has to be especially significant.

Even more significantly though, there's a trine between Neptune and Saturn currently formed, almost exact, in the sky (at 5 degrees of Pisces and Scorpio respectively). That aspect is linking to Greenwald's natal Mars at 3 Scorpio. This trine is fairly rare, and long-lasting due to the slow movement of both planets: Saturn's orbit of the Sun takes around 29 years, and Neptune around 165 years. A trine between these two planets last occurred in 2001/2, but then the planets were in Air signs, Aquarius and Gemini, now they are in Water signs. Oddly, Air signs would seem a better match to what we're seeing just now, based on journalism and communication, which are more in the province of Air than Water. However, unless Moon and/or ascendant were in Air sign(s) at his birth, Glenn Greenwald has no natal planet/point in Air, which has to be quite unusual for a journalist or writer, I suspect. In astrology the element of Water relates, in one way or another, to emotional matters, in the case of Scorpio there's an added element of secrecy and some potential darkness. This trine, tickling Greenwald's natal Mars in Scorpio where Mars is comfortably at home, dynamic, unadulterated, could almost represent a personal vendetta being triggered....though I'm not convinced that's the case.

There are definite markers here, but I haven't untangled them to my own satisfaction quite - any offers? .... The story isn't over yet either!

"Pour encourager les autres"? ~ Bradley Manning

One of this week's highlighted news stories is the trial of Bradley Manning. Sadly, I'm not optimistic of any lenient verdict. As I've commented in the past, it's a sad old world where, when the military kill innocents as collateral damage shoulders are shrugged, but when a guy with high ideals crosses the line he is punished in such an excessive way.

Yesterday at Common Dreams: Bradley Manning Trial Begins: A 'Danger Zone' for Civil Liberties
Snips:

Law professor Marjorie Cohn, describing The Uncommon Courage of Bradley Manning, wrote:

When he was 22 years old, Pfc. Bradley Manning gave classified documents to WikiLeaks. They included the “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts U.S. forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and wounding two children.

“I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Bradley told the military tribunal during his guilty plea proceeding. “It might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day.”


Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who taught constitutional law to President Barack Obama told the Guardian that the trial, and Manning's most serious charge of 'aiding the enemy,' could hold a dangerous precedent:

Charging any individual with the extremely grave offense of 'aiding the enemy' on the basis of nothing beyond the fact that the individual posted leaked information on the web and thereby 'knowingly gave intelligence information' to whoever could gain access to it there, does indeed seem to break dangerous new ground.

"The case is a sledgehammer," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Huffington Post last week. "It is there to try and terrorize anyone else into being a force for the media, by trying to terrorize this young man."

This is shaping up to be a classic case where "pour encourager les autres" applies. It's a phrase I first learned when I sat in on employment tribunals in my old UK civil service job. The chairman would occasionally use it when commenting on some particularly harsh-seeming dismissal doled out by an employer determined to stamp out certain behaviour among his workforce. Chairmen were not usually in favour of such arbitrary dealings, so it would be said in decidedly cynical tone.

The French phrase is sometimes used in the media whenever official punishment for an act seems to be out of proportion to the act itself, or where the punishment has an element of political bias to it - in order to encourager les autres (the others) to shut up and keep their heads down.

The phrase's origin is interesting: it's a a quote from Voltaire's 'Candide': in full ~ "dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres" (in this country, it is good, from time to time, to kill an admiral, to encourage the others), and refers indirectly to the unfortunate fate of Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1756 at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War.

Byng was sent to relieve Minorca from French assault, the island being as valuable at the time as Gibraltar. A French fleet lay around the island, and it was Byng's job to seek battle and smash through; but when the time came his attack was half-hearted, and Byng soon withdrew to Gibraltar. Minorca fell, the Admiralty were appalled, and Byng was hauled back to England for court-martial. The court found that he "did not do his utmost to take, seize, and destroy the ships of the French king, which it was his duty to have engaged". He was convicted of negligence.

The verdict did not actually state that he was to be punished in order to encourage other admirals to fight harder, and indeed clemency was recommended, but when Byng was executed - by firing squad, on the deck of HMS Monarch as it lay in Portsmouth harbour - the message seemed clear enough. Britain's navy distinguished itself during the rest of the war, although whether this was because of Byng or simply because it was a very good navy is unrecorded by history.

The phrase 'pour encourager les autres' has subsequently entered the language.

(SEE HERE)

WHISTLEBLOWERS

NOTE: An eagle-eyed passing reader might notice subtle adjustments in the blog description, and in the "about me" section in the sidebar - as well as the change of header illustration. I haven't lost interest in astrology, but feel that I've covered most of what I set out to cover, on astrology, since August 2006. Posts from my archives or linkage to something there, whenever appropriate to a new issue, will keep the background astro-flavour going, and I'll definitely continue to post on astrology when situation demands or if something alerts me to an interesting new angle I can present. Links to other astrology sites, remain in the sidebar of course, as well as access to my archives either by date or Label Cloud.

WHISTLEBLOWERS

I wonder which movie producer is already planning the Julian Assange biopic ? Who'd be in the shortlist of actors to play the guy who is currently holed up in the London embassy of Ecuador, resisting return to Sweden to face some rather mild questions on his sexual demands of a couple of Swedish women? I doubt that Assange is afraid of Swedish questioning techniques, though he could well wish to avoid the risk of Sweden, when done with him, sending him to the USA to answer charges of leaking information via his organisation, Wikileaks - whistleblowing to put it another way.

Link to my post from December 2010 touching on Julian Assange and related astrology.

I can visualise the movie: fictionalised in places - lots of poetic licence, a few sweaty sex scenes, some nice shots of Swedish landscapes, a dramatic stand-off.... It would join others of the same ilk:

Daniel Ellsberg/The Pentagon Papers. In 1971, he was the State Department officer who gave the "Pentagon Papers" (history of the United States’ political-military involvement in Vietnam 1945-1967) to the New York Times.

Karen Silkwood/Silkwood – in 1974, she was a blue-collar worker who raised concerns about plutonium plant safety. Unfortunately she died under mysterious circumstances after she started investigating claims of irregularities and wrongdoing at the Kerr-McGee plant. The 1983 film Silkwood is an account of Silkwood's life and the story.

Other famous whistleblowers, not necessarily subjects of movies listed HERE.

We very recently watched the DVD of a 2011 movie called simply The Whistleblower. I bought it as David Strathairn, whose films I'm collecting, plays a fairly minor but pivotal part. It's the story of Kathryn Bolkovac, a former US police investigator from Nebraska. She worked as a U.N. International Police Force monitor. Originally hired by the US company DynCorp in the framework of a U.N.-related contract, she filed a lawsuit in the UK against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on 2 August 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor. DynCorp had a $15 million contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia at the time she reported such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking - of children as well as adults. Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia.

I'll wait patiently for the Assange movie then. There'll be a few more twists in the plot though, before the cameras start to roll - we can count on that!