Romania – Born out of the shadow of death and revolution

I was asked by a loyal follower of mine Maia about the situation in Romania, and true to my word, I'm responding to her request, and actually it's quite appropriate. Modern Romania was born on the moment Nicolae Ceausescu fled by helicopter on 22nd December 1989 from the headquarters of the Communist Party in what used to be called Palace Square (now known as Revolution Square) in Central Bucharest. There had been demonstrations against the Ceausescu regime in Timisoara and 8 minutes into his speech in Bucharest on a freezing cold morning in front of an agitated crowd, the people scarred by years of impoverishment rounded on him defying years of state terror and control. Their patience had finally snapped after years of suffering and communist lead failure, and the protests turned into a full scale revolution. Fearing for his safety, Ceausescu fled to a waiting helicopter and escaped seconds before he was caught. He was located days later, immediately tried, convicted and sentenced to death; a sentence carried out in brutal fashion in front a firing squad. There was a news report from a Yugoslav news agency TanJug at mentioning the fleeing of Ceausescu at 11.48am in Bucharest, and this is the time I take for the moment that Romania turned a corner.

Libya - tearing itself apart through fractional fighting.

While the eyes of the world have been on flight MH17, Ukraine, Israel and the Gaza strip, in Northern Africa, civil war threatens to tear the country of Libya formally ruled by Colonel Qaddafi to pieces. The situation is so dangerous that the British foreign office have told all Britons to leave the North African nation and the Americans recently pulled their people out too.

Humbled Brazil facing a long road of recovery.

What on earth happened to Brazil last night? In a competitive soccer match they had not lost at home since 1975 but everything changed in 90 minutes of heartbreak. Brazil were demolished 7-1 by Germany and yet I wasn't so surprised. This was a long time coming.

Ethnic tensions plague South Sudan

Back to the Astrology, I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas. I have been saying that the dangerous degrees on any chart at the moment are 10-12 degrees of most signs as they are in range of Pluto, Uranus and Mars which is starting to slow a little now and this leads me onto the country of South Sudan.

Canada – A summer of unfortunate events

Canada has been a bit in the firing line this summer for unfortunate events. I can think of the floods in Alberta which caused catastrophic damage to several towns including to much of the city of Calgary. Then there was the Lac Mégantic derailment where a freight train loaded with oil tanker carriages exploded killing 42 people and destroying 30 buildings in the town. A couple of days ago another train collided with a bus in Ottawa causing mass casualties. What has been causing Canada to have a bad time in the summer of 2013? Look at the natal chart and you can see.

Syria – A very serious situation gets even worse.

Heart-breaking. That’s the only word I can think of when considering what is transpiring in the country of Syria. A civil war has been raging for 2 years, many thousands on both sides have been killed including women and children, mass graves have been found and now news of chemical weapons being used. If you look at the astrology chart of Syria, one can clearly see the horrible situation that has developed.

Egypt – Unrest harking back to the past

The horrible violence in Egypt and the armed forces’ aggressive response to the protests by the pro Mohamed Morsi supporters have shocked the world. The violence that precipitated on the 14th August where more than 600 people were killed really showed that Egyptian society is now deeply divided. Morsi’s party the Muslim Brotherhood still has a lot of support in the country, but the feeling is that General al-Sisi and his backers want to outlaw them and return Egypt back to the kind of military rule that sustained Hosni Mubarak for 30 odd years. In Astrological terms a return to conditions of the past are often seen through the movement of the Nodal axis or transits to them. On the Egyptian natal chart, this is exactly what is happening.

Egypt – Disruption, violence and confusion reigns

In Egypt since the military coup last week taking down the government of Mohamed Morsi, the now former President, there has been celebrations, violence, more protests and still no-one has stepped into the breach to officially take over to lead the country out of the confusion that now has a hold over the population. In looking at the transits and the history of this chart, you can see repeated themes popping up through the years.

South Korea suffers cyber hacking attack

Interesting story out of South Korea over night as authorities are investigating a cyber attack on several broadcasters KBS, MBC and YTN as well as two banks, the Shinhan Bank and Nonghyup Bank. Representatives of the banks said that their computer systems went down and their operations were severely affected and spokespeople at the three TV companies said that their computers crashed and were not able to be restarted, with screens simply displaying error messages. The local authorities are looking into the matter, however the obvious thought is that this might be an attack by their North Korean neighbours.

China begins the process to usher in a new set of leaders

In Beijing at the Great Hall of the People, the current Chinese President Hu Jintao has been chairing a congress of 2000 hand-picked delegates to oversee a new Chinese administration. I an curious who actually selects the timing for the new leadership congress in China and I wonder if the Chinese actually secretly look at Western Astrology and the planets to select the days, as this conference date was set months ago and yet it is perfectly aligned against the natal Chinese chart for a change in administration.

Vatican City – Is the Catholic church out of date for today’s world?

Stinging criticism has hit the church and the leadership of Pope Benedict from a leading cardinal. Cardinal Maria Martini lashed into the running of the papacy saying that it was tired and 200 years out of date. This is not the normal language that you would expect from a Cardinal, however he waited until just before his death last Friday to issue the challenge to the ruling elite at the Vatican. It seems as if all is not well in Rome and the astrology of the Vatican itself appears stressed. If the indications I see are correct, then big things and changes could be occurring to the Catholic church before long.

Huge underground water supply found under the deserts of Namibia.

I love astrology!! From my last post where in China they are having too much water and rain falling on them causing floods to this story from the deserts of Namibia. Scientists have found a huge underground store of water, such a precious commodity in dry countries sitting deep under the Northern Namibian desert. Apparently there is so much sitting there in this aquifer, that it could supply the north of the country for 400 years!!

Spain – Facing a financial storm in the autumn.

I’ve been looking at the charts of several European nations trying to see if any other countries are due for a difficult time, and facing the upcoming Uranus Pluto with potential financial worries will be Spain. Spain has serious financial problems caused by the explosion of an over inflated housing market back in 2008. Spain also is blighted by 20% unemployment coupled with over 5 million immigrants, who put a great strain on a fragile economy.

Portugal – On the slow road to recovery

All of the recent focus has been on Greece as Europe lurches towards in inevitable crisis but there have been several other European countries who have been really suffering in the past two to three years, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal. I was asked a few days ago by one of my regular readers Rick to have a look at Portugal and today I am pleased to do so. The only problem with Portugal is to know which chart to use since the country has a long colourful history. Because we are looking at modern financial problems, I decided to look at the 1974 Carnation revolution chart, the one formed after the breakdown of Portugal’s overseas empire.

Syria – The world sits and watches as the death toll rises.

A bit more on the Syrian crisis which continues to dominate the news channels across the world. President Assad is continuing to assert his iron grip over an ever desperate population. Unlike in Libya, the world powers seem reluctant to step into the viper’s nest that is Syria, possibly because there are no oil reserve in the country, and a whole lot of potential religious problems to deal with if you get stuck in there. The world it seems has no more stomach for a drawn out conflict, as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russians who vetoed the latest round of proposed sanctions have self interest at heart, as they have provided Assad with much of the military hardware that he is using on his population, and China’s veto against sanctions probably was related to it’s own problems with Tibet which is bubbling again. The Chinese view seems to be that they do not want to sanction any intervention, because they themselves are supressing the Tibetan minority against their will, and their view is that the leaders of each country must be able to do exactly as they need to control their own people, and their right to national sovereignty is absolutely sacrosanct.

Russia – A bear with a sore head in 2012

The modern post-communist Russia was born out of the wave of revolution of the late 80’s and early 90’s as the Soviet Bloc and Iron Curtain were dismantled country by country, piece by piece. The people had had enough of the old staid authoritarian rule and wanted some Western freedoms, and goods in the shops. When I was in Eastern Europe around the same time, I heard all the stories of people queuing for tomatoes, just because there had just been a delivery to the state run grocery store. You never knew when you would have the chance to purchase them again. Under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev whose policy of Glasnost loosened the cords and the revolutionary passion of Boris Yeltsin who rose to power sweeping away the old guard, Russia was swept into a new capitalist era, where the old communists became the new capitalists and the poor stayed, well poor as they always were. At least under the new philosophy there were more things to buy and people grumbled but were a bit more content. The rise of Vladimir Putin however has seen the country lurch back to many of the old ways of thinking. The free press which burst up in 1991 like spring flowers after a deep freeze winter has had an iron grip placed on it again, and the latest round of elections were tainted by alleged massive vote rigging by Putin’s United Russia party. Protests are planned again this February as exceptionally harsh winter bites in Eastern Europe. The natives are restless and the Russian bear is once again waking this time with a rather sore head.

Israel and Iran – Tensions rising to boiling point.

The murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist yesterday, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan blown up outside a Tehran university has raised the temperature of the already strained relationship between Iran and Israel. Now there is no proof that Mossad agents were to blame for the unexplained attack, however veiled threats coming out of Israel that Iran should “expect unusual events this year” has left the Iranians rather unhappy. Very unhappy indeed…

Jamaica – Ready to go it alone as a Republic

This is Portia Simpson Miller, the brand new Prime Minister of Jamaica. She has raised eyebrows by openly committing Jamaica to become a republic and pulling away from having Queen Elizabeth as head of state in the year of the Monarch’s diamond jubilee and just before an official visit by Prince Harry. Looking at the placements of the planets, one can see exactly why there is a call for change in the Caribbean nation.

Iran lays down the law to America in the Gulf of Hormuz

There is serious sabre rattling in the Gulf right now, and tensions are rising as Iran tested 3 medium range missiles after a week of “military” manoeuvres and then told the US 5th fleet not to return to it’s base in Bahrain, lest Iran may act in retaliation. As if the Iranians are going to engage the Americans when they do go back (they wouldn’t dare), however with Iran flexing it’s muscles and getting potentially closer to building a nuclear device of their own, this is brinkmanship that the region could do without.

India – Parliament trying to clean up it’s act in the wake of corruption. A look at the Astrology of the world’s 2nd most populous nation.

Corruption in India, hmmm. I’ll tell you a story. Many years ago I was a travel representative with a holiday company and I was posted by the travel company out from Britain to India. We had an aircraft that flew into Agra, the city in Uttar Pradesh where the Taj Mahal is found. The chief immigration officer there would not allow anyone through the airport off that tourist plane unless we bribed him!! What could we do? I had the best part of 250 British tourists on a Boeing 757, and to allow them to enter India to enjoy their very expensive holidays, we paid off the official. Yes corruption was endemic, everywhere and I mean everywhere and it seems it still is!! Now in the Indian Parliament, an anti corruption bill (the Lokpal Bill) ended up in argument, stalemate and the ruling Congress party and the opposition BJP accusing each other for failing to get the bill, which gives an independent ombudsman powers to prosecute politicians and civil servants in the case of suspected corruption, through to the Indian upper house for a vote so that it could be passed into law. Do you think turkeys vote for Xmas? This was a mess that allowed each party to do some political points scoring against each other, and realistically there was no way that anyone wanted this through, especially the way things normally work in India.