Women in Power ~ Benazir Bhutto

This is a blog post of mine, originally published in the summer of 2007, about Benazir Bhutto a woman I much admired. (Apologies, should any link within the post be now defunct).

There has been one piece of good news this week, amid the gloom.
See HERE"Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, has agreed to drop corruption charges against Benazir Bhutto to allow her to return to Islamabad as part of a power-sharing deal, the former prime minister has claimed.

Ms Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People's Party who lives in self-imposed exile in London, and Gen Musharraf, who is beset by challenges to his eight-year rule, are near to a deal that would pave the way for the general to be re-elected as president and Ms Bhutto to return to contest parliamentary elections."

and HERE, from Nathan Gardels:

"LONDON -- By returning to Pakistan and leading her party in October's elections, the pro-American Bhutto will fundamentally alter the way the "war on terror" is being waged in this frontline state. She offered me this analysis in London on Wednesday:

There are moments in history that prove decisive and mark a turning point for the future. The American Civil War was such a moment in the United States. The fall of the Berlin Wall was such a moment for Germany and the European Union. Today is Pakistan's moment of truth. Decisions made now will determine whether extremism and terrorism can be contained in Pakistan to save it from internal collapse. The stability of not just Pakistan but the civilized world is at stake."

I've long admired Benazir Bhutto. I don't fully understand the corruption scandals which led to her exile, and somehow doubt that things were exactly as portrayed by her adversaries. Her platform was always leftist, including food for the hungry, health care, jobs, slum clearance and a monthly minimum wage. She has been opposed by Islamic fundamentalists.

I can see only good coming from her return to her homeland. She has suffered a great deal of hardship in life for the sake of her political career. See HERE for more detail and an excellent summary of her life so far.



Ms Bhutto has a natal stellium in Libra at midheaven - very good placements for politician or diplomat. Three natal planets in Cancer, including Mars within 5 degrees of Sun in Gemini, Jupiter also in Gemini, and Venus in Taurus.
The mix of Libra, Cancer and Gemini indicates a beautiful blend of tact, compassion and caring with an agile mind.

The current Mars/Jupiter opposition is touching Ms Bhutto's natal Jupiter at 10 Gemini - it must surely have something to do with this turn of events?

These paragraphs give us some idea of what she has gone through in the past - the period during the summer of 1981 she describes below coincided with the transit of
Pluto over her natal Moon/Neptune/Saturn conjunction at midheaven, in Libra !

"Bhutto's persecution began in earnest after the dismissal of her father's government in 1977 and his execution in 1979 as she intensified her denunciations of Zia and sought to organize a political movement against him. Repeatedly put under house arrest, she was finally imprisoned under solitary confinement in a desert cell in Sindh province during the summer of 1981. Bhutto described the hellish conditions in her wall less cage in "Daughter of Destiny":

"The summer heat turned my cell into an oven. My skin split and peeled, coming off my hands in sheets. Boils erupted on my face. My hair, which had always been thick, began to come out by the handful. Insects crept into the cell like invading armies. Grasshoppers, mosquitoes, stinging flies, bees and bugs came up through the cracks in the floor and through the open bars from the courtyard. Big black ants, cockroaches, seething clumps of little red ants and spiders. I tried pulling the sheet over my head at night to hide from their bites, pushing it back when it got too hot to breathe."

Released in 1984, she went into exile in Britain until 1986, when martial law was lifted in Pakistan"

A quote from this very brave lady:

"You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea."

On 27 December 2007, Benazir Bhutto was killed while leaving a campaign rally for the PPP at Liaquat National Bagh in the run-up to the January 2008 parliamentary elections. After entering her bulletproof vehicle, Bhutto stood up through its sunroof to wave to the crowds. At this point, a gunman fired shots at her, and subsequently explosives were detonated near the vehicle killing approximately 20 people. Bhutto was critically wounded and was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital. She was taken into surgery at 17:35 local time, and pronounced dead at 18:16. The cause of death, whether it was gunshot wounds, the explosion, or a combination thereof, was not fully determined until February 2008. (WIKIPEDIA)

A footnote from my blog post later the same year:

Although I didn't actually try to predict anything in my post last summer [above], my comment that "nothing but good can come of her return to Pakistan" was most unwise. I finished the post with some of her words: "You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea." I hope her ideas will not die with her.
R.I.P. Benazir Bhutto - the world could ill afford to lose you, especially at this point in history.

Good Astrology Bloggery (+Benazir Bhutto).

Tom Coates, an early blogger, in 2001 re-discovered an old newspaper column by Keith Waterhouse, in which he had listed his own rules for good column writing. The article can be accessed via the link above. Tom Coates considered that some of Keith's 25 points are as helpful in blogging as in column writing.

Keith Waterhouse was a favourite newspaper columnist of mine, back in the UK. He's seen below (left) with Peter O'Toole, doing what journalists love to do.



I chose 9 points from Keith's list of 25, and added minor modifications and comments, in red. Not only is astrology blogging different from newspaper column writing, it's also different from straightforward blogging - but these points still gave me some useful insights.

The body of this post was drafted a few days ago. Yesterday's dreadful news, of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, highlights some of Keith's points, as well as the sterling work of our astrologers and bloggers who commented on the tragedy, using a variety of astrological references.

(i) It's not so much what you say as the way that you say it. Your column(blog) must have a distinctive voice, to the extent that if your byline(blog name) were accidentally dropped, your readers would still know who was writing. If your style isn't instantly recognisable, what you have there is not a column(blog) but a signed article. (I think he meant "un-signed"?)

(ii) The fact that your column (blog) contains no facts does not mean that you need not have checked them like any other journalist. In other words, you must be sure of your case. You are allowed to generalise - "Our children are the worst educated in Europe" only if your wild generalisations, when tamed, can be substantiated.We should make sure it's possible to "tame" generalised remarks, such as...erm..
"there are more geniuses born with Sun in Aquarius than any other sign". (I do remember seeing that in print, more than once, over the years!)

(iii)Avoid kneejerk reactions. You don't necessarily have to produce a paragraph every time Fergie(or Bush) does something stupid or a politician's wife announces that she's standing by him. If the readers can predict what you're going to say, there's little point in saying it - and even less in their reading it.This one could apply to astrology bloggers, except that sometimes, what happened to a well-known individual might serve to illustrate an astrological point.

(iv) Let the bandwagon roll by. Even if every columnist(blogger) in the land is commenting on the mother unjustly sent to prison or the teacher who handcuffed the child to a radiator,(or a comet, or eclipse, or a celestial peculiarity), you don't have to jump aboard unless you have something to say that the others haven't already said.Same applies here as in (iii).

(iv)On the other hand, although it's not always necessary to write about the main news event of the day, there are times when the occasion demands it. Given a Hillsborough (for those in the US, this could read "New Orleans") disaster, for example, there is no point in writing about anything else since nobody will be talking about anything else.New ideas or a different astrological perspective would ensure readers do actually read, not just glance, at your hard work though. It may still be best to desist, after a brief mention of the topic, unless fresh inspiration presents itself..

(vi)Don't ever try to fake it. Nothing is so transparent as insincerity - pile on the adjectives though you may, false indignation has the ring of a counterfeit coin.This applies to all writing, I guess. If we don't have confidence in a particular astrological method or process, it's best not to try to write about it sounding as though we do..

(vii)Do not expose your spouse to the glare of the public - especially not by the whimsical name of Him Indoors or She Who Must Be Obeyed. The same goes for the misadventures or quirky comments of your family and the daffy behaviour of your family's dog.Ooops! Here's one I'm guilty of. ("HeWhoKnows" = my husband). The internet is somewhat different from newspapers, and bloggers are in a different situation from newspaper columnists. Anonymity is commonplace in internet communication of all kinds, for a variety of reasons.

(viii)There is no real need to mention that you have been on radio or television again. Your readers no longer regard it as any big deal.Any astrologer or blogger who manages to get themself in front of a radio mic or TV camera - heck - shout it from the rooftops! Astrology needs all the exposure it can get.

(ix) Should you wear a hat, do not ever offer to eat it. Predictions are for astrologers. If you do make a prediction and you are wrong, as you are almost certain to be, don't start your subsequent column(Blog) with the words "All right, so I have egg on my face". Forget it. Your readers already have.This one speaks for itself to astrology bloggers, and especially to me in view of yesterday's tragic news about Benazir Bhutto.

Although I didn't actually try to predict anything in my blog post about her last summer HERE, my comment that "nothing but good can come of her return to Pakistan" was most unwise. I finished the posting with one of her quotations: "You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea." I hope her ideas will not die with her.



R.I.P. Benazir Bhutto - the world could ill afford to lose you, especially at this point in history.

Benazir Bhutto

There has been one piece of good news this week, amid the gloom.
See HERE"Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, has agreed to drop corruption charges against Benazir Bhutto to allow her to return to Islamabad as part of a power-sharing deal, the former prime minister has claimed.

Ms Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People's Party who lives in self-imposed exile in London, and Gen Musharraf, who is beset by challenges to his eight-year rule, are near to a deal that would pave the way for the general to be re-elected as president and Ms Bhutto to return to contest parliamentary elections."

and HERE, from Nathan Gardels

"LONDON -- By returning to Pakistan and leading her party in October's elections, the pro-American Bhutto will fundamentally alter the way the "war on terror" is being waged in this frontline state. She offered me this analysis in London on Wednesday:

There are moments in history that prove decisive and mark a turning point for the future. The American Civil War was such a moment in the United States. The fall of the Berlin Wall was such a moment for Germany and the European Union. Today is Pakistan's moment of truth. Decisions made now will determine whether extremism and terrorism can be contained in Pakistan to save it from internal collapse. The stability of not just Pakistan but the civilized world is at stake."

I've long admired Benazir Bhutto. I don't fully understand the corruption scandals which led to her exile, and somehow doubt that things were exactly as portrayed by her adversaries. Her platform was always leftist, including food for the hungry, health care, jobs, slum clearance and a monthly minimum wage. She has been opposed by Islamic fundamentalists.

I can see only good coming from her return to her homeland. She has suffered a great deal of hardship in life for the sake of her political career. See HERE for more detail and an excellent summary of her life so far.



Ms Bhutto has a natal stellium in Libra at midheaven - very good placements for politician or diplomat. Three natal planets in Cancer, including Mars within 5 degrees of Sun in Gemini, Jupiter also in Gemini, and Venus in Taurus.
The mix of Libra, Cancer and Gemini indicates a beautiful blend of tact, compassion and caring with an agile mind.

The current Mars/Jupiter opposition is touching Ms Bhutto's natal Jupiter at 10 Gemini - it must surely have something to do with this turn of events?

These paragraphs give us some idea of what she has gone through in the past - the period during the summer of 1981 she describes below coincided with the transit of
Pluto over her natal Moon/Neptune/Saturn conjunction at midheaven, in Libra !

"Bhutto's persecution began in earnest after the dismissal of her father's government in 1977 and his execution in 1979 as she intensified her denunciations of Zia and sought to organize a political movement against him. Repeatedly put under house arrest, she was finally imprisoned under solitary confinement in a desert cell in Sindh province during the summer of 1981. Bhutto described the hellish conditions in her wall less cage in "Daughter of Destiny":

"The summer heat turned my cell into an oven. My skin split and peeled, coming off my hands in sheets. Boils erupted on my face. My hair, which had always been thick, began to come out by the handful. Insects crept into the cell like invading armies. Grasshoppers, mosquitoes, stinging flies, bees and bugs came up through the cracks in the floor and through the open bars from the courtyard. Big black ants, cockroaches, seething clumps of little red ants and spiders. I tried pulling the sheet over my head at night to hide from their bites, pushing it back when it got too hot to breathe."

Released in 1984, she went into exile in Britain until 1986, when martial law was lifted in Pakistan"

A quotation from this very brave lady:

"You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea."