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Introduction Greetings loyal readers! It's getting to be that time again. According to my PsyPlan (if you don't have one you can get one right here at http://www.psyplan.com) Mercury went retrograde on May 16 and will go direct on June 9. However, the orb of Mercury retrograde has been affecting us since around April 25 and will continue to affect us until the end of June. Some Mercury retrograde cycles are worse than others. Judging by how things were going at the end of April and the beginning of May, this cycle is going to be particularly bad. What that means is, prepare for transit delays, problems with electronic devices (especially computers and telephones), and miscommunications with people. Be sure to confirm appointments and double-check all meeting arrangements. Mercury Retrograde's Effect on World Events Although it seems paradoxical, Mercury retrograde can actually have some good effects. How is that? Mercury retrograde, in combination with Pluto in Sagittarius (the truth coming out) can act to reveal secrets that the power structure has been trying to keep a lid on. For example, it was recently revealed that the anthrax strain that was sent to Democratic members of Congress in the wake of September 11 turns out to be the progeny of the very anthrax grown in a U.S. biological weapons research laboratory. Regular readers will recall that I was highly suspicious of the timing of the anthrax, coming so closely upon the heels of the September 11 events. I was saying from day 1 that the Bush administration was behind the anthrax mailings. This hunch was further validated by the fact that the very first person to die from said anthrax, Robert Stevens (photo editor at the tabloid The Sun) "just happened" to be the same photographer who took those photos of George W.'s twin daughters drunk. And now it turns out that the anthrax came from our own biological weapons program – which just happens to be in violation of a biological weapons treaty to which the United States is a signatory. But then, what does our government care for playing by the rules? When Venezuela's democratically elected ruler, Mr. Chavez, was overthrown in a coup (which turns out to have had U.S. government support – surprise, surprise!) democracies all over the world decried this distinctly un-democratic event – with one exception, of course: the United States. That notorious CIA mouthpiece, The New York Times gleefully supported the coup in an editorial calling for Chavez's ouster. Of course, the coup was over in a matter of hours and President Chavez was restored to his rightful place (unlike our White House resident, who took power in an illegal coup when his brother Jeb gave him the state of Florida and for some reason the entire electorate rolled over and played dead). Remember last year when we were told we were living through the biggest economic expansion in our nation's history? Well guess what's happening now – we're finding out it was all a big lie. What the average person in this country needs to understand is that Enron is NOT an aberration – it's business as usual. There never was a huge economic expansion – it was all the result of "creative" accounting that resulted in overstated earnings. And what wasn't due to "creative" accounting was due to outright fraud. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) is not exactly blameless here – many accounting irregularities were included in the required SEC filings and the SEC either failed to understand them or ignored them completely. And now we have Harvey Pitt as the head of the SEC – a lawyer who used to represent accounting firms. Do you honestly believe he is going to aggressively investigate his former clients? The good news is that investors are now very chary about putting their money into companies with complicated corporate structures and "creative" accounting schemes. The ordinary investor is starting to understand that the more complex a firm's corporate structure is, the more likely they are to be committing financial fraud. Investors are now examining in detail firms that are split into a zillion subsidiaries that all own pieces of one another in complex and interconnecting ways. As if the conflict of interest in accounting firms that also provide consulting were not bad enough, the conflict of interest of financial services houses that recommend stocks and investments they don't believe in is now coming to light. New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer is currently investigating Merrill Lynch for conflict of interest in stock recommendations. Of course, the business community is "shocked, shocked!" to find out that financial services houses have been committing fraud. They're about as shocked as the Catholic laity is to discover that there is an epidemic of pedophiles and pederasts in the Catholic priesthood. The Catholic Church has been covering up this sort of thing for generations, so why is everything coming to light now? Pluto in Sagittarius is one reason, because Sagittarius shines the light of truth and Pluto restructures social and political institutions. Mercury retrograde screws up communications, which can operate to unlock information that disreputable people intended to keep secret. More Juicy Facts People who blasted Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney for calling for a 9/11 probe with tentacles into the White House are now having to eat humble pie as recent revelations have emerged about the FBI's prior knowledge of the events leading to the 9/11 attacks. Memos were written about certain foreign nationals attending flight schools, expressing concern that people of Middle Eastern origin with ties to Al Qaeda would be able to infiltrate the US aviation industry and become employed in our nation's airports as well as our nation's airlines. It has also been revealed that the FBI had an active investigation into Osama bin Laden last summer, but was instructed by the White House in August to "stand down" from their investigation. Now why in the world would the Bush Administration want to quash an investigation into dangerous terrorists? Why indeed? First of all, the bin Laden family and the Bush family have been business partners for years in the Carlyle Group, a notorious and highly profitable outfit that makes enormous amounts of money consulting to defense contractors. The Carlyle Group brokers the sale of arms worldwide. Every time there's a violent confrontation or a war on this planet, you can hear the Carlyle Group cash registers go "ka-CHING!" The bin Laden family quietly divested their Carlyle Group interests last October – a coincidence about as likely to be a coincidence as Robert Stevens being the first victim of the anthrax outbreak. The timing of this was too coincidental in and of itself, coming so closely on the heels of September 11th that it could only have been designed to scare the US American populace into willingly relinquishing what few civil liberties we had left in this country on September 10. The Bush family experiences huge financial profits every time there is a war. This is why the Bush Administration keeps telling us they want perpetual war – because the Bushes want perpetual profits. The fact that such profits come at the cost of great human suffering and environmental destruction doesn't bother them one bit. They make huge amounts of money in the oil business – polluting the planet and killing wildlife – yet George W.'s ranch in Crawford, Texas does not use oil heat! It turns out that Georgie's ranch has a geothermal heating system – totally non-polluting, and off the electricity grid completely. If George believes in this technology so much, why doesn't he want it for the rest of us? The Bushies have now reiterated their desire to drill for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge – a totally boneheaded maneuver if ever there was one. Even the Republican's environmental analysts say they cannot predict the effects of oil drilling on the region's caribou population. Logic suggests that if you don't know what the ecological consequences of oil drilling will be, then you shouldn't do it. But despite the findings of his own analysts, Spurious George recently issued a statement that the caribou in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge "love" the pipeline: "They love it. They rub up against it and they have babies." Supposedly Spurious George doesn't do drugs or drink alcohol anymore, but when he issues statements like this, I find myself dying to know what it is he's smoking. Or maybe it's in the pretzels? Copyright 2002 Marcy J. Gordon. All rights reserved. The author wants you to know you are free to copy and distribute this article for noncommercial purposes, provided you reproduce it in its entirety and credit the author. For quotation permission, please contact the author at mgordon@pipeline.com. |