Arty Farty Friday ~ My Bargain by Bart Forbes

During a short trip to north Texas in late April I bought a signed limited edition print (97/780) of a watercolour painting by Bart Forbes, the picture measures around 25" x 30" in its frame. It was being sold 50% off (original price was only $25). A bargain, I thought, even though the painting's backing was damaged and the framing needed some strengthening, it had once been well-framed, and with expensive non-reflective glass. It was the subject matter of the painting that had first caught my eye though.

Painting's title, written in the artist's own hand is "Venezuela". I hadn't deciphered that until I got a closer look. I did appreciate, or suspect, that the painting was a kind of potted history of the oil industry. Yeah - I know, it's in bad books these days due to environmental destruction and contribution to climate change. However, in a similar way to coal, for use of which our predecessors were eternally thankful I feel sure, oil was another natural resource which catapulted civilisation forward at an amazing rate - possibly too fast - but that's another story.

In the painting, starting top left, is a representation of the forest where basics of oil were laid down aeons ago, to the right of that is a basic oil derrick. At bottom left oil has become the means of easy travel in the 1920s and 30s. The inset illustration shows a couple of oil men standing before a fully fledged oil field. At far bottom right - hmmm - was that patch foggy darkness a depiction of oil itself - or a prophecy, I wonder ?

The picture hasn't translated to computer screen too well, the frame is not black, it's a mid-brown wooden frame. The painting's colours are more subtle yet more distinct, a little sharper than shown. It does have a generally faded look but I don't think it has faded, I think it's in an intended washy water colour style, in shades of aquamarine and grey, with just one splash of a pinkish shade. Click on image for a slightly bigger version.

Husband has now replaced and strengthened the picture's two layers of backing and fixed remaining frame problems - good as new! It now hangs to the right of my compuer desk.

Bart Forbes, I have now discovered was born on 3 July 1939 in Altus, Oklahoma, now lives in Dallas Texas. Wikipedia has a short piece on the artist; there's a 2 minute video featuring Mr Forbes:



More images of his paintings, including lots of sports subjects, can be seen via Google Image.

Keystone (not the Kops) XL (not the record label)

What are the odds now, given the results of last week's midterm elections, that President Obama will give his seal of approval, or will it be his veto to the Keystone XL pipeline?

There are small pockets of resistance around in Canada and in the US - even in Texas, in the city of Denton a small group of protesters did their best - see HERE.

Refresher on the Keystone XL pipeline (see HERE)

What is the Pipeline exactly?

The Keystone Pipeline already exists. What doesn’t exist fully yet is its proposed expansion, the Keystone XL Pipeline. The existing Keystone runs from oil sand fields in Alberta, Canada into the U.S., ending in Cushing, Oklahoma.

The 1,700 new miles of pipeline would offer two sections of expansion. First, a southern leg would connect Cushing, Oklahoma, where there is a current bottleneck of oil, with the Gulf Coast of Texas, where oil refineries abound. That leg went into operation in January 2014. Second, the pipeline would include a new section from Alberta to Kansas. It would pass through Bakken Shale region of eastern Montana and western North Dakota. Here, it will pass through a region where oil extraction is currently booming and take on some of this crude for transport.

The southern leg of the Keystone XL ties into the existing Keystone pipeline that already runs to Canada, bringing up to 700,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries in Texas. At peak capacity, the pipeline will deliver 830,000 barrels of oil per day. While the pipeline is initially carried U.S. light crude, it is expected to carry more heavy Canadian oil harvested from tar sands over the next year.

In passionate opposition to this pipeline "The Way of the Warrior" points to one way it might possibly be stopped, or at least construction of it and of other proposed pipelines be slowed down.
The Way of the Warrior: How To Stop A Pipeline by Abby Zimet, staff writer at Common Dreams.

With a newly elected Congress gearing up to pass Keystone, the inspiring story of the Unist'ot'en Camp, an indigenous resistance community established in northwest Canada to protect sovereign Wet'suwet'en territory and blockade up to 10 additional proposed pipelines aimed at expanding Alberta Tar Sands operations. The Uni’stot’en Clan, which has families living in cabins and traditional structures in the direct pathway of the Northern Gateway and Pacific Trails fracking lines, argues that "since time immemorial" they have governed Wet’suwet’en lands, which thus remain unceded and not subject to Canadian law "or other impositions of colonial occupation" - an argument that has been sustained in court cases, and bolstered by the camp's recent peaceable ejection of a drilling crew........."

More strength to all protesters, everywhere!

Dang! If I don't laugh, or at least drag out a wan smile, I'll cry. So...

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans. And then one day, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl, sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no-one would have to get nalied to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and so the idea was lost forever.”

― Douglas Adams, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

SYRIA

I hesitate to utter a single word about anything connected to the Middle East - unless it's a quote from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. However, Syria is starting to push other stuff off the headlines, so I felt I really should try to understand what it's all about.

Americans and Brits - more accurately their governments - have a fetish about the Middle East. There's hardly ever a 24-hour span when an atrocity of some kind isn't going down over there, there where the sun rises; inter-tribal violence is a way of life and has been for as long as I can remember, and much longer than that, I'm sure. The same could be said about parts of Africa though, but that doesn't elicit the same passions from USA and UK governments. The reason has to be that dirty three-letter word OIL, doesn't it? What else is there?

What brought events in Syria to the fore currently is the alleged use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad against the rebels (a body of mixed sects, who no doubt also fight against one another at times.) What proof is there that Assad did use chemical weapons? It seems the rebels were already being defeated anyway, where was the need?

A paragraph from Brit politician George Galloway's piece at Red Molucca:

"It is entirely implausible that the Syrian regime chose the moment of the arrival of a UN chemical weapons inspection team to launch a chemical attack on an insurgency already suffering reverse after reverse on the battlefield and steadily losing international support with each new video showing them eating the hearts of slain soldiery and sawing of the heads of Christian priests with bread knives.

In the absence of conclusive evidence one would have to believe that the Assad regime was mad as well as bad to have launched such a chemical attack at a time when it is in less danger than it has been for almost a year. I do not believe that Bashar is mad."

Remember those dire warnings that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction, back in the early 2000s? Did they? Look what happened when that warning was acted upon!

“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
~ Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

UPDATE
Thursday 29 August 2013:
British Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a stunning defeat in the night's Parliament vote to endorse UK/US military action against Syria. Cameron's motion was defeated 285 to 272, a majority of 13 votes. Cameron said it was clear Parliament does not want action and "the government will act accordingly."

We can only hope that on this side of the pond our leader will follow suit and at the very least do nothing without Congress taking a vote on the issue.

Oddball Giant of the Original Oilmen: H.L. Hunt

During a bit of curiosity-driven research into an individual I'd never heard of, one H.L. Hunt, I slid down one of those internet rabbit-holes which await the unwary seeker.

To start at the beginning.....after watching TCM's showing of the remastered classic 1950s movie Giant, I casually looked for old reviews, noticed one written in 1996 by a favourite writer of mine, Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove etc.) Men Swaggered, Women Warred, Oil Flowed. McMurtry is a Texan, so would definitely be on the Giant wavelength. His review is very good - from such a writer how could it be otherwise? These snips from several paragraphs set me searching further:

What was perhaps not recognized in 1956 was that "Giant" was an elegy not merely for the cattlemen but for the wildcatters too - for the wildcatters were but an exit or two behind the cattlemen on the road to disappearance.......... by the end of the 50's, the more prominent wildcatters - H. L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, Glenn McCarthy, Clint Murchison Jr., Michel T. Halbouty, John W. Mecom - were citizens of a world on the wane. They were still making millions, and in Hunt's case, even billions - but a different and a duller day was about to dawn in the oil patch: the Day of the Accountant...........THE GREAT STORY FROM the wildcatting era, a story yet to be touched by novelist or film maker, is the story of Hunt..... Hunt was from Smollett, Gogol, Dickens - a brilliant, untutored, full-fledged American crank, with three families, an exact replica of Mount Vernon to live in and a conviction that crawling was the best possible exercise. Yet before he was through, he probably made as much sheer spendable money as any American ever had. At least that's what his rival Getty thought.....When I think of the Hunts, or of the wildcatters in general, or of the big ranchers either, I'm reminded of the historian Richard Southern's wonderful book, "The Making of the Middle Ages", in which he writes, "from having too much to hold on to, they slowly lost what they had." Prof. Southern was speaking of the Germanic emperors of the 11th and 12th centuries, but he might have been speaking of the oilmen and cattlemen of our own.

Several sources indicate that H.L. Hunt and his family provided inspiration for the TV series Dallas. I decided that H.L. Hunt (in full: Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, Jr.) could be an intriguing subject for a post, maybe with a touch of astrology thrown in - nobody else seems to have touched that, nearest I came to any mention of astrology was this from a piece by Peder Zane in the New York Times in 1994

"If people knew how many people, especially the very rich and powerful ones, went to psychics, their jaws would drop through the floor," said Rosanna Rogers, a psychic from Cleveland who claims to have 4,000 names in her Rolodex. "But we know Nancy Reagan, she had an astrologer, and John Lennon and H. L. Hunt and J. P. Morgan used psychics. Morgan, you know, he said, 'Millionaires don't use psychics, billionaires do.' "

The life story of H.L. Hunt follows a fairly recognisable trend - I've seen it before when scribbling posts about some of the USA's best-known business tycoons of past decades, men such as Erle Halliburton, Sam Walton, Ray Kroc. From humble beginnings many decades ago their enterprises have, by now, exploded into monsters: Halliburton, Walmart and McDonalds in the case of the before-named individuals. H.L. Hunt didn't come from an exactly poverty-stricken background, his father was a prosperous farmer, but in his wildest teen-dreams I doubt that H.L. ever envisioned becoming the richest man in America.

The story goes that he began his career running a cotton plantation in Arkansas. It failed after a flood. He was a gambler - bit of a card counter it seems - after his plantation failed he made a lot of money playing poker in New Orleans, allegedly turning $100 into $100,000. He went on from there to dabble in the oil lease business. He pulled off a veritable coup when a drunken companion signed away his interest in his Rusk County E.Texas oil field to HL for a reported $1,000,000, said to be worth billions. After that there was to be no stopping him. He founded Hunt Oil Company, eventually became the largest independent oil producer and gas supplier in the country. He expanded his boundaries, using innovative business ideas, invested in producing canned goods, health products, and cosmetics. He became one of the world's richest men. Below: Hunt's former house (now sold by his heirs) on a 10-acre Dallas estate. The house is an elaborate replica of George Washington’s plantation house, Mount Vernon.

His personal life was something of a jigsaw puzzle. He married Lyda Bunkerin Arkansas in 1914. They had six children. On Armistice Day 1925 a Franklin Hunt married Frania Tye in Florida. They had four children. On November 11, 1975, after H. L. Hunt had died, Mrs. Frania Tye Lee filed a civil complaint against Hunt in which she revealed the history of their relationship. They had married in 1925 and lived together in Shreveport until 1930, when they moved to Dallas. In May 1934 "Franny" had discovered Hunt's other marriage (to Lyda). Hunt apparently shipped her off to New York and in 1941 provided trusts for each of the four children. A friend of his, John Lee, married her and gave his name to the children. Lyda Bunker Hunt died in 1955. In November 1957 Hunt married Ruth Ray and adopted her four children, who had been born between 1943 and 1950. Ruth Hunt admitted in an interview that H. L. Hunt had, in fact, been their real father. H. L. and Ruth Hunt became Baptists. (See Texas State Historical Association site HERE)

None of the above had a particularly rabbit-hole flavour, but wait....Hunt's life circled around controversies, and secret dealings - and not only in his love life. Though not directly involved in politics, he provided wads of financial assistance to those he supported, and was an outspoken opponent of John F. Kennedy. In three of four places online, where H.L. Hunt was being discussed, I noticed mention of the JFK assassination. After all, it did happen in Dallas, so perhaps this wasn't surprising? Wandering deeper into the rabbit-hole I found discussion on the topic and some conspiracy-type theories holding that JFK's assassination involved, among others, a cabal of Texas oilmen including H.L.Hunt, intelligence operatives & anti-Castro Cuban exiles (in other words a cast of thousands!) I don't know how much truth there could be in the theory, and am sure it has been discussed practically non-stop since that November day in 1963, with no clear conclusion ever being reached.

H.L. Hunt's politics were hard right-wing, for sure. He was avidly anti-communist and pro-segregation. According to John Curington, Hunt's right-hand-man during the 1960s, Hunt had a direct line to J. Edgar Hoover's office. Hoover supplied information about Martin Luther King to Hunt who broadcast it in his nationally aired "Lifeline" radio programmes. He portrayed Dr. King as a communist. When the 1964 Civil Rights Act went into effect, it's said that Hunt opened up a "Whites Only" lemonade counter in his downtown building, just to defy the law.

A quick look at Hunt's natal chart, along with a few quotes about his personality - to see how far they match up.

"Hunt was an eccentric. He drove a 1956 Oldsmobile until he died in 1974. He took his lunch to work in a paper bag. He was heavy into right-wing politics."

Eccentricity, in astrology, is always connected to Aquarius and/or Uranus - here we have Sun and Mercury in Aquarius in harmonious trine to Uranus in Libra. That fits like a glove. The ordinariness of driving an old car and taking lunch to work in a paper bag would usually indicate a humble unpretentious nature, but in Hunt it conflicts strongly with the ostentation of his home - so perhaps here we see his rather strait-laced and careful Virgo Moon coming into play against his more eccentric opulent side.

Right-wing politics, anti-communism, pro-segregation reflect the Saturn side of Aquarius. Aquarius has two rulers, Saturn traditionally and Uranus in modern astrology. It's often the case that people with prominent Aquarius fall into two distinct camps politically - far left or far right, reflections of that dual rulership.

The New York Times described HL as an "unconventional renegade who possessed the money to pursue his whims", and the in-fighting of the Hunt family as "entertaining as any soap opera".

More reflection of his Aquarius/Uranus trine.

Hunt established the reputation of treating the people who worked for him well, keeping his word and being loyal to those who had befriended him. I guess we could add "as long as they were not black, not Democrats or socialists and didn't answer back"! Not sure where to pin that attribute astrologically - for I suspect strongly it would have had those provisos attached to it! But to give credit where it's due, Aquarius, and Leo where his Sun's co-ruler Saturn is found, are both Fixed signs. The Fixed signs are thought to be the most loyal of the zodiac (also the most stubborn!) Then again, in his love life Hunt was anything but loyal - he was actually a bigamist! That tends to go against both Aquarius Sun and Virgo Moon. He has no planets in Water signs and there's another close trine aspect between Saturn in Leo and Venus in Aries. Don't know! He's a puzzle, an enigma!

His Aquarius Sun and Mercury would have reflection in a naturally sharp intelligence - not necessarily academic but a kind of intelligence which seems to be built in to the bones. That would have alerted him to opportunities as they appeared - and given insight in how to grasp them. Oilfields were a new enterprise back then, Aquarius/Uranus love to be at the cutting edge of anything new, and seem to have vision enough to understand how to get to that edge.

I didn't go to high school, and I didn't go to grade school either. Education, I think, is for refinement and is probably a liability. (H.L.Hunt)

Sources include:
AOGHS.org

Wikipedia

Education Forum - Nixon/Hunt

Phorum - H. L. Hunt

JEAN PAUL GETTY

I'd best type with one hand, hold my nose with t'other as I write this post about a guy who was a fully-paid up member of the 1%!

Today, 15 December, in 1892 was the day Jean Paul Getty was born into George Getty's family in the petroleum business in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He was one of the first people in the world with a fortune estimated at over one billion U.S. dollars.

After studies at Universities in California he graduated, in 1914, from Magdalen College, Oxford with degrees in economics and political science. He spent his summers between studies working on his father's oil fields in Oklahoma. Running his own oil company in Tulsa, he made his first million by 1916. However, in 1917, he announced that he was retiring to become a Los Angeles-based playboy. Although he eventually returned to business, Getty had lost his father's respect. Just before George Franklin Getty died in 1930, he believed that Jean Paul would destroy the family company, and told him so.
(See Wikipedia. Photograph from MSN)

As well as his entrepreneurial and industrialist hats Getty had another - that of the womaniser. Astrodatabank offers an unusually juicy tidbit about JPG: "he was a lifelong philanderer noted for his prowess and it was reported in a biography that he had a penis close to 9 inches long."

After taking a few years off from the money-making grind to enjoy spending his earnings on women, Getty returned to Oklahoma in 1919. During the 1920s he added about $3 million to his already sizable estate. His succession of marriages and divorces (three during the 1920s, five throughout his life) so distressed his father, however, that J. Paul inherited a mere $500,000 of the $10 million the senior Getty left at his death in 1930.

In 1953 he struck oil in the Middle East (not a hard thing to do by all accounts), then became the world's richest man.

Getty moved to England in the 1950s and became a prominent Anglophile. He lived and worked at his 16th-century Tudor estate, Sutton Place near Guildford; the traditional country house became the centre of Getty Oil and his associated companies and he used the estate to entertain his British and Arabian friends (including the British Rothschild family and numerous rulers of Middle Eastern countries).

Getty lived the rest of his life in the British Isles, dying of heart failure at the age of 83 on June 6, 1976. (Wikipedia, link above)

In spite of his obscene wealth Getty was a notoriously mean man. He installed a pay phone in his English castle for house guests to use; also famously refused to pay a $17 million ransom when his teenage grandson was kidnapped in Rome in the 1970s. Said to be very vain, also, he resorted to periodic facial cosmetic surgery. Never had a nose job though, from the look of things!



Birth data from Astrodatabank. Birthtime graded "B", so fairly reliable, from a biography - or possibly from his autobiography, As I See It.

Briefly: Venus, Moon, Uranus and South node of Moon all in sexy Scorpio no doubt reflect his womanising and reported sexual prowess. Capricorn rising is a classic representation of a character perceived as miserly or "cheap", whilst being a whizz at making money and conducting business matters.

Sun and Mercury in a usually jovial Sagittarius doesn't seem to fit this guy too well - other than giving a hint of his draw to excess - in both sexual appetite and in amassing an excessive fortune.


I like this configuration in his chart. It's what astrologers poetically term a "Mystic Rectangle", but it has nothing to do with mysticism. Always reliable Skyscript tells us that in such a configuration "the combination of tense and harmonious aspects produces the best possible potential for the constructive use of natural talents."

The configuration links 2 sets of harmonious trines, 2 sets of helful sextiles, and 2 potentially challenging oppositions.

Planets involved by trine are: Saturn & Neptune/Pluto and Mercury & Jupiter

By sextile: Mercury & Saturn and Jupiter & Neptune/Pluto

By opposition: Saturn opp. Jupiter and Mercury opp. Neptune/Pluto.

The planets are in Fire and Air signs, so a core of dynamism and mental acuity is indicated. The planets themselves represent business and discipline (Saturn);
creativity, oil, eroticism (Neptune/Pluto); communication, excess, mass production (Mercury, Jupiter).

The "interactions" of these planets, mostly benign with oppositions challenging or bringing potential for balance, are what make the Mystic Rectangle interesting. the Mystic Rectangle is a very useful configuration to have in one's natal chart, as long as one learns, from experience, how to maximise its benefits. Jean Paul Getty, whether he knew it or not - obviously did this to perfection!

IS ISLAM A THREAT ONE SHOULD FEAR?

GUEST POST by GIAN PAUL

The Arabs, mostly all Muslims, have a close connection with astrology. It's they who brought it back to the Christian world during the Middle Ages, when most of Spain was under their control and the Vatican had banned astrology from being permitted - except, it is reported, for the secret use of some of the Popes. (This, I guess, is one of the reasons the Vatican's Library is hermetically closed to outsiders).
(Illustration (left) = Blue Mosque in Istanbul)


Islam has a precise starting date: July 16, of the year 622. At Sundown (18 hours 44') at Medina. Mohammed had then had to flee from the violent opponents to his ideas in his home town of Mecca ("Prophet in his own land..."). At Medina where he had just arrived, on July 16, after a New Moon 3 days before had just passed, the Moon's crescent was becoming visible in the early night sky. And thus the crescent Moon turned out to be the symbol most Islamic nations carry in their national flags. This was the exact moment when Islam was "born". (Right = Flag of Turkey)






Permitted question: Here we have the first beginning of a major religion where the starting moment is precisely known; are we presented here with an astrological "gift"? (Rather then some obscure manipulation of dates as with the beginnings of Christianity).

An interpretation of Islam's horoscope is very revealing in terms of what this latest major world-religion represents. A stellium of 3 planets, Moon/Uranus/Neptune, opposed by Jupiter is the main "axis" of this map. Neptune and Uranus, in Virgo, opposite Jupiter in Pisces, the sign and main symbol of the Christian Era! Reinforced by the crescent Moon, a guaranee for a lot of "emotional spark" to develop between these two religions. An almost precise trine between Mars (in Virgo) and Pluto (in Aries) also indicates that if there will be conflict, it will be rather fierce (Mars) and fundamental (Pluto).
(Right = Flag of Pakistan)

Since ever the two religions have been fighting either to conquer the other's lands, or to try to get them back (the Crusades, aiming at taking back Jerusalem and the Holy Lands). The Suez Canal, Oil, and of course, Israel...

Some are intrigued, others proud and grateful that the bulk of the world's oil reserves are found in the Islamic Middle East. Allah's special gift to his followers, they say. Without that, the Arabs would not have been able to take the rest of the world hostage at various not so distant occasions. There were repeated conflicts around oil in the last 50 years, some costly wars in the Middle East, attentats by Al Queida and their allies in the USA, Britain, Iraq, India (Kashmir), Somalia, Yemen etc.

(Below map of Middle East taken from http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/maps_charts.htm)




But Islamic militancy also is to be found in behavioral patterns: head-scarfs and Mosques in provocative places, anathemas pronounced against writers (Salman Rushdie) or humorists depicting Mohammad, to cite the most controversial events.

Islam is by no means a united religion. There are the Sunni, the Shiite, the Druze etc. Often secular power and Islam (remember Saddam?), the Iranian Clerics, Khadafi in Libya etc. make particular alliances - and can be strange bedfellows. Oil has tended to unite them - and combined with that the existence of Israel at their doorstep. Or what unites them ideologically is foremost Israel and the equivocal role the Vatican has always been playing in the Orient.

There are however places in the world other then the West which are under much more serious threat of being "islamisized" than we are: the Philippines, much of Africa, part of India, Russia beyond the Urals, China in some sectors. Islam can be said to be a religion of "no fear" and expanding as no other. The Koran promises special rewards to whom dies for its faith. There is a better world promised in the beyond for all Muslims in general and more so even for the martyrs. This, for the simple-minded, stigmatized by some fanatic, can rapidly turn them into suicide-bombers or Taliban-type, fearless fighters.

What is going wrong in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Egypt's President Mubarak, a moderate Muslim, said years ago to Bush father and son that military intervention in the Islamic world by the West will never bring any results. Fight (and even catch) Bin Laden (left), another 300 will appear! It's a "Pandora's Box". And Mubarak knows his world. Egypt is under permanent internal threat of Islamic fanatics. So are Pakistan, Indonesia, to mention the most populated.

The problem of the Taliban, extreme "believers and fierce fighters" is that by opposing them they become fiercer. If left alone they will fall back into fighting each other. And so with the Iranians and the Iraqis. Providing the West can stop mixing up oil and "fighting for so-called democracy" (which few Muslims care for), an easier relation between these forces could probably be found.

For this Israel should be convinced (why not by threatening them with the withdrawal of unconditional support?) to play it's full part in de-fusing the powder keg (even nuclear) on which the whole of the Middle East + India/Pakistan are now sitting. And this once and for all. But as long as Israeli leaders can say in public that the US Government (Obama) is "easy to deal with", this can only help the Muslim fanatics in their argument that the USA is against Islam. Obama knows that, so he tried to establish some bridge in his ill-fated Cairo speech which as an only result earned him a much ridiculed Nobel price. Now exactly one year ago. Any results? It's not words that are needed. It's the West which should leave others alone and, as unfortunately now needed, has to learn to better control its frontiers. (Left: Bust of Golda Meir in New York)

The horoscope of Islam's beginnings is an inescapable fact. It can't be changed. What is possible is to take into consideration the inherent tension points, mentioned at the beginning of this post. And act accordingly, not by "patronizing" as the West is terribly inclined to do with others in this world.

Oil, USA, and the love affair with cars.

The chart for the "birth" of the USA which appeals to me most is that for 2 July 1776, shown below - the Armistead Chart. I prefer it over the popular 4 July charts for reasons of both history and symbolism. The sharp opposition (red line vertically crossing the circle) between Moon/Pluto (public/passion) and Mercury (communication, mental processes) symbolises, for me, the sharp, passionate divisions of opinion which have arisen in every important matter throughout this nation's relatively brief lifespan. In the US I, as an outsider, sense this as a far more bitter, all encompassing and absolute division than generally occurs in other countries.

The other very interesting alignment, given current circumstances, is a harmonious trine (the blue diagonal on left side of chart) between Neptune, representing oil, and Moon representing the public -& Pluto representing passion and potential threat.


Chart copied from Astrodatabank.

In the USA, more than any other nation, the people simply love their vehicles. Beloved cars, SUVs and trucks need gas/oil of course, and here's where that harmonious trine (oil/people) manifests. Vehicles represent that highly-valued sense of freedom craved by The American People. Vehicles are also a necessity in many areas. Much of this vast country isn't served by public transport. There is little or no access to sidewalks (footpaths), so use of "Shanks' Pony" is strictly limited - if one values one's life.

Motor vehicles then, outside of metropolitan areas, are the only means of transport. In some cases several cars are owned by a single family, to meet the the demands of differing job/school/college locations. From such necessities has arisen this love of Americans for their vehicles. As an extension of that, there is an insatiable need for gas (petrol). I ought to mention also that the US Military Industrial Complex - a truly gargantuan entity - uses gazillions more gas than the average Joe.....and the MIC is indeed insatiable.

The current tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico has to be bringing home to many (or should be bringing home to many) that halcyon days in the love affair of Americans for their vehicles are almost over. We are rapidly reaching a fresh state of affairs. Things must, somehow, change if we and the planet are to survive.




There's a must-read article on the topic by Johann Hari at Huffington Post: We Are All Trapped in a Global Oil Slick. The piece closes thus:

And so we are all left slithering in the global oil slick. Yet the anger of the sane citizenry -- those of us who don't want to engage in collective self-destruction -- has been weirdly muted. Most of us know instinctively that we can't carry on like this. Most of us know Big Oil is a swelling tumor. But it is still much more common to see protests for cheap oil than to see protests to build a world beyond it. We wait passively for a rational politician to emerge through the corruption, when we should be relentlessly pressuring them all.

The oilman John Paul Getty once joked: "The meek will inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights." If the sane proponents of a post-oil world stay so meek and mild, we may not inherit much worth having at all.

There are doom-laden articles and comments about the oil leak all over the internet at present. I avoid such writings for the most part, but occasionally feel a nagging responsibility to investigate these cries of "Wolf!" There is talk of methane gas deposits exploding and causing earthquakes or a tsunami. Talk of movement of tectonic plates. Talk of oily/poisonous rains falling when noxious fumes are carried up into the atmosphere; and of hurricanes still to come.

O joy!


By way of antidote - or not - I decided to pull 3 cards from my tarot deck. I asked "What do I need to know about the future in relation to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?"
Strength/7 Wands/7 Cups emerged after a good shuffle and cut.
Hmmm - definite cause for some slight feeling of relief? The Strength card is the most important one of the 3 as it comes from the Major Arcana. Its meaning is obvious, really needs no further interpretation.

7 of Wands = showing defiance and holding out against pressure, resisting authority, showing conviction. 7 Cups = procrastination, avoiding being pro-active, lacking focus, having a variety of options but being indecisive. Is this a picture of the current US administration?

7 Cups is the dangerously undermining card of these 3, otherwise hopeful, cards. Strength could and should overcome it with the stamina, courageous outlook and unshakeable resolve indicated by the card.

Looks like the tarot is casting a dividing line reminiscent of that in the US chart. In this case it's Strength v. procrastination and indecision.



(Illustration above is taken from Prop Art, by Gary Yanker, on my bookshelf. This poster and the one earlier in the piece were issued in 1970 and 1971 after an oil spill off California.

When will they ever learn?

THE BIG O (no, not him!)

Somewhere on our travels recently I picked up an old copy of Newsweek in a junk shop. The image above was the first thing I saw as I flicked through it. It was one half of a double-page advertisement placed by a corporation: FMC

Part of the advert's blurb on the opposite page read:



Ironically the issue of Newsweek is dated 12 November 1973.
Ye Gods! Progress on developing those "different fuels" has been negligible to non-existent in the intervening 37 years!

Oil in astrology is thought to be "ruled" by planet Neptune. I'm a wee bit unclear as to why. Neptune rules the oceans - that's clear enough via mythology; extrapolating from that, all liquids come under Neptune's rulership I guess -including oil - and alcohol (other Neptune governorships include dreams, illusions, mysticism etc. etc.)

In 1973 Neptune was in early Sagittarius. As I type Neptune is in late Aquarius, in the interim period having passed through the rest of Sagittarius (Fire), all of Capricorn (Earth) and most of Aquarius(Air). Neptune will enter 00 Pisces (Water), its own rulership, in February 2012.

Aspects made by or to Neptune, most importantly involving the other slow movers, are significant of course, but the zodiac sign in which Neptune spends a long period - around 14 years in each, is also very important. In a compatible (Water) sign, perhaps there will be a more helpful "astrological atmosphere", and a new era where oil is concerned.....with oil largely staying in its own home, under the ground or ocean.

Let us hope sincerely that Neptune, when settled into Pisces, the sign where it is most at home, will somehow bring about the right atmosphere for an end to the insanity that has been our quest for oil. Let that be our dream (dreams also being part of Neptune's domain).

HALLIBURTON

I read recently in our local newspaper that Halliburton have started laying-off employees. It seems that no company is immune from current financial problems - even this giant. Digging around in the archive files I came across my February 2007 post about Halliburton. I've wiped away a few cobwebs, added chart and photograph of the man himself, and now give it a re-airing:


THE FOUNDER OF HALLIBURTON & HIS ASTROLOGY

What follows is the result of a walk in the park on a sunny winter's afternoon. I stopped for a photograph by a statue, and thereby hangs a tale!

Halliburton is a dirty word these days. Not many can find a good thing to say about the company, perhaps for very good reason. It was not always so though, and nowhere is it more apparent than in this small Oklahoma town where Erle P. Halliburton established the headquarters of his first company in 1919.

One of the inscriptions on his statue (left) reads:

"Erected 1993, in memory of a man who left an indelible impression on Duncan and Stephens County. He touched the lives of many people, no only as the county’s largest employer, but as a perpetually inquisitive person whose technical inspirations became legends in the oil industry around the world. His deep and abiding concern for the welfare of the people of this area and is remembered fondly."

Erle P. Halliburton was born in Henning, Tennessee on 22 September 1892. (No time of birth known, chart below set for 12 noon).



Sun conjunct Saturn may account for many of the characteristics highlighted in the extract which follows. It's said that this conjunction can indicate the "self-made man" who has succeeded through sheer hard work and determination." An abundance of Air and positive polarity in his chart endowed him with an agile mind - quick in thought, determined in action. There's a Grand Trine in Air linking Sun/Saturn in Libra to Mars in Aquarius to Neptune/Pluto in Libra. These Airy and helpful links emphasise Mr. Halliburton's innate intelligence, inventive talent, and ease in dealing with all things intellectual.

The chart also likely contains a "Mystic Rectangle" - a configuration consisting of two oppositions Mars/Venus and Moon/Jupiter (depending on time of birth) with trines and sextiles joining these Air and Fire planets.

Kevin B.Burk, astrologer, says this about mystic rectangle configurations:
"Once an individual has integrated a Mystic Rectangle, it represents a core of strength for them, and a solid foundation that can be a great gift in handling whatever else life throws at them."



The generational Pluto/Neptune in Gemini conjunction is a part of the Air Grand Trine mentioned above, Neptune is connected, astrologically, to oil - very fitting!





A short extract follows. It comes from Dan Briody's book "The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money" The passages highlighted in red relate rather well to the astrological factors I've mentioned above.

"Before there was a $13 billion company, before the World Wars and the Texas oil boom, before there were pet presidents and vice presidents, campaign contributions and gov ernment contracts, union busting and sanction dodging, there was simply a man, fiercely struggling to escape poverty, doggedly pursuing his piece of America's manifest destiny. At the time of his birth, September 22, 1892, in a small farming town on the outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee, the name Erle Palmer Halliburton stirred no national emotion. It held no political intrigue. It had no impact on government or business. It was only the name of one of five sons of Edwin Gray Halliburton, an anonymous jack-of-all-trades, who would not live to see Erle's thirteenth birthday. Halliburton, as a name, meant virtually nothing to anyone outside of Henning, Tennessee. But Erle Halliburton was determined to change all of that.

As a young boy, Erle Halliburton showed a natural inclinaion toward mechanics, often dismantling and reassembling devices for pure recreation. While boys his age in Henning were playing with toy trucks in sand boxes, Erle was tinkering with gears and repairing simple machines. His curiosity drove him to understand how things worked. He was an excellent student, completing both elementary and high school courses over an eight-year span by age fourteen. Yet, even then, Erle Halliburton was uninterested in the idle trappings of youth. In what would become one of his trademark characteristics, he was intensely focused on higher aims.

After his father passed away in 1904, the Halliburton family was left with little money and even less opportunity. Two years later, hopelessly impoverished at age fourteen, Erle decided it was time he left home and pursued his fortunes elsewhere.

Diminutive in stature at just 5 foot 5 inches, the future of the Halliburton clan was resting on Erle's narrow shoulders, the new man of the house. But he brimmed with confidence, promising his family he would not return to Henning until he had pocketed a million dollars, a claim that no one could have taken seriously at the time. Underestimating Erle Halliburton would be a mistake that many of his contemporaries would repeat over the years, for as author and Texas historian J. Evetts Haley put it, Halliburton was "fired by the stern disciplines of hunger and want."


Alone, directionless, and penniless, Halliburton embarked on a worldwide journey that would take him from Brooklyn to Manila, working dozens of jobs as varied as driving a locomotive to selling automatic stokers. At age eighteen, he joined the U.S. Navy and received the first formal training of his young life, serving two tours and working engineering and hydraulics before leaving the service in 1915. The work suited Halliburton's mechanical mind, and he ultimately ended up in Los Angeles, running a pressure irrigation project for the Dominguez Irrigation Company, pulling down $100 a month.
After nine years of wanderlust and job-hopping, Erle Halliburton found the oil industry."...................

I'm tempted to add "the rest is history". I wonder whether Erle P. Halliburton would approve of what his company has come to stand for ?

Under my original, unedited, post of February 2007, HERE, there's a lengthy comment which might be of interest to passing readers.

PLUTO and 12 August

On 12 August 1944 Pluto was in the news. Not astrological Pluto, nor Disney's Pluto, but Pluto the acronym = Pipe Line Under The Ocean: arteries which carried millions of gallons of fuel from Britain to Allied forces in France and beyond. The first line was laid on 12 August 1944.
Wikipedia - Operation Pluto

Isn't it oddly appropriate that astrological Pluto rules oil? Throughout the early 1940s when this project was developed and brought into use, Uranus, planet of invention, innovation, technology etc. and Pluto were in close harmonious sextile to each other (60 degree aspect - Pluto in early Leo, Uranus in early Gemini).

The engineering involved here boggles the mind. The video below, using film from the 1940s, is narrated in German, but illustrates fairly clearly how the pipelines were laid, by a ship pulling a huge cylinder from which the pipeline was dragged to the seabed.



Pluto Origins: ( here)

"A reliable supply of petrol for the advancing Allied forces following the D-Day landings was of the highest priority. Planners knew that the future invasion of Europe would be the largest amphibious landing in history and without adequate and reliable supplies of petrol any advance would at best slow down and at worst grind to a halt. A loss of momentum could jeopardise the whole operation as German forces would have time to regroup and counter-attack. Conventional tankers and 'ship to shore' pipelines were in danger of cluttering up the beaches, obstructing the movement of men, armaments and materials and, in all circumstances, were subject to the vagaries of the weather and sea conditions and they were easy targets for the Luftwaffe.

The idea of a Pipe Line Under The Ocean, (the English Channel), was an innovative solution. It was known that oil storage facilities located near the English Channel would be vulnerable to attack by the Luftwaffe. To reduce the risk of losses, a network of pipelines was, during early discussions about PLUTO, already under construction. This was designed to carry fuel from safer storage and port facilities around Bristol and Liverpool to the English Channel. This network would later be linked to the planned pipeline at Skanklin on the Isle of Wight and Dungeness further to the west. The terminals and pumping stations were heavily disguised as bungalows, gravel pits, garages and even an ice cream shop!
Soon after D Day, a continuous flow of petrol to meet the heavy demands of the liberation armies and air fleets was maintained by the 'Pipelines Under the Ocean.' These pipe-lines were vital arteries, which enabled the Allied Air Fleets and Land Forces to maintain the vital momentum needed to secure victory. Moreover Operation PLUTO made it possible to dispense with the fleets of tankers, which otherwise would have been necessary and spared them the ordeal of concentrated enemy attacks in congested waters, thus undoubtedly saving many hundreds of gallant lives."