Saturday, November 1, 2008

Willow's November 2008 Astro Perspective

There are a lot of shifts going on this month. Here is the highlights reel:

- Neptune and Uranus (in mutual reception) going direct
- Saturn in Virgo opposition to Uranus in Pisces (the first of four oppositions in those signs)
- Pluto entering Capricorn for a 16-year stay

We’ve inched our way toward the changes we wish to see or have been dragged kicking and screaming and now we’re at the pinnacle of the big hill in the roller coaster ride. There were a couple dips and weaves in September to get our stomachs dropping out and our mouths running dry in preparation, but this month seems to be the whoooosh toward real movement. Saturn in Virgo has us climbing the big hill bit by arduous bit, waiting on it, waiting on it, step-by-step, grinding closer to the big paradigm changes. We have to want it; more than that, we have to earn it, going over every last detail…and now, this month, our momentum takes us up over the hump and we let go into the unknown. All the while, it’s still Scorpio season in a big way, baby, as the collective becomes ever-more aware of, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, the brutish realities of this foul year of Our Lord 2008 (almost 2009) on Planet Earth.

That is, if I’m reading this crap right.

;-) Just kidding.

The Sun and Mars remain in Scorpio for the first part of November (Mars until November 16 and the Sun until November 21), on the tail of the New Moon in Scorpio, October 28. We’ve reached a new level of “cutting the crap” in our lives.

Mercury will join the Sun and Mars in Scorpio on November 4, just in time for the U.S. people to speak in their election. Taking on the do-or-die intensity of Scorpio with what they say with their votes is quite fitting, isn’t it?

We cleared the Mercury retrograde shadow on October 30, so we’ve just nicely gotten into new intellectual/communication territory as November begins. Also fitting that Mercury leaves Libra just as the U.S. election is completing. The gloves are off! No more Libra surface-level, playing-to-your-crowd social wizardry. Now we see who was really elected.

And we deal with the inevitable nastiness that rises to the surface after one of the most hardcore, teeth-bared, divisive political races in history.

Because of the power and current foreign policy of the U.S., this is an election that affects the entire planet.

The Sun in Scorpio is keeping our conscious moment attuned to the things that have to come out in the wash, or else. Getting down and dirty with the nitty gritty. Mercury keeps us speaking our gut-level truth, and Mars ensures our actions reflect that truth - our soul’s truth.

The fixed and unrelenting gaze of Scorpio is important now for stability as we experience a very big astro event - the Saturn in Virgo opposition to Uranus in Pisces on November 4. Also on the day of the U.S. election, of course. (The White House really MUST have an astrologer or two on staff. The Internet rumours are right.)

I wrote about this opposition last month, but basically this is an opposing clash of the material structures as they exist (the “way things are”) - Saturn - and our vision for the future as an impetus to revolutionary change - Uranus.

Preparatory work for Pluto in Capricorn, as we’re infused with the spiritual vision to guide and sustain us during the next 16 years of structural transformation.

Saturn and Uranus will oppose each other in Virgo (earth) and Pisces (water) four times - November 4, 2008, February 5, 2009, September 15, 2009 and April 26, 2010. We’ll be working on this stuff for a while, but the first major dose of spiritual - structural re-alignment happens with the initial opposition on November 4.

Flashes of insight showing the way forward and once seen, nothing is ever the same as it was. Nothing CAN be the same as it was.

With Uranus and Pisces involved, expect things to get a little weird, a little surreal, a little bizarre. Unexpected and shocking spiritual revelation-type stuff. Rebellious energy straining in opposition to dense, material confines.

The material structures are getting a shake-up due to the fact that we are speeding along toward the Aquarian paradigm. How things have been set up in the past no longer serves our imperatives, and they need to change. Simple as that.

Both Virgo and Pisces are mutable signs, meaning changing and adapting to conditions. These oppositions will toss unexpected events and insights our way designed to shock us out of our current structures. Confusion and chaos could threaten to overwhelm, which is why the fixed Scorp energy is so necessary.

Scorpio keeps a cool, clear gaze on what’s really going on, on the surface and below, and to both extremes. It sees the highest spiritual highs (eagle) and the lowest physical lows (scorpion).

This keeps us honest. Scorpio holds us in a place where we are unable to deny those “brutish realities of this foul year of Our Lord” as we experience future flashes and pick up speed. Can’t get drunk on change here, people, believing we’ve left the cares of the past behind us. When all that Aquarian air starts going to our heads (after the poor little Piscean fishies thought they were suffocating, flopping around on the floor), there will be an overwhelming temptation to buy into the oxygen overdose jubilation, believing “we’re already there.” Well, we aren’t. There is much to be done to actually get us there, and we have to keep a close eye on where we are, on the damage that has been done that now asks to be repaired, and on the practical adjustments that need to be made. We’ll get there, but we have to integrate and successfully deal with all parts of the human experience (the true test of tail-end Pisces), even the ugly parts. We have to deal with the details, unpleasant as they may seem.

(And for anyone who insists that yes, we are already in utopia, again, take a look at what the U.S. army has been up to lately with depleted uranium munitions in Iraq and Afghanistan: http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/DU-Baby2003.htm. Careful! It’s not nice. But this is what we’re doing these days. Let’s take an honest look at it.

And for those who claim the photos are fake or that this is propaganda, please watch this documentary on the subject and decide for yourselves: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5146778547681767408)

Thank goodness for the Scorpio energy this month, keepin’ it real and puncturing the utopian fog (not to mention the political bullshittery).

We can’t get too caught up in the rosy vision (a distinct possibility with Pisces involved) and believe it is effortless. With Saturn involved, that is not the case. We each have to take individual responsibility for bringing the changes into our daily lives and it’s going to take adjustments, practice, diligence, self-mastery. That’s not to say there won’t be levity. Some things will come about seemingly effortlessly (due to previous preparation) and there will be a great deal of energy available for the right things. But we have to stay grounded, channelling our vision into the minute details of our material structures - into our work, our interactions with others, into every aspect of ourselves.

Uranus uses our spines like lightning rods, and it can also knock us on our asses if we’re not careful. Think about a lightning bolt of insight and vision, full of information and energy designed to take you far into the future, coming through the top of your head, travelling through your body and communicating with all parts of it until it reaches the point where your feet touch the earth, grounding the charge so we don’t short out the system. This is how we bring the vision and insight into the material day-to-day and live them. And vice versa - we communicate the realities of our material, day-to-day existences on the planet to the realm of spirit, focussing on the details and communicating about what is necessary here.

This revolution is a practical one, bringing it in from the fringes into the mainstream. It will be so common sense that no one could argue - except those profiting from the old system. But even some of them are getting it together. T. Boone Pickens, a Texas oil tycoon and the most capitalistic of the capitalists, is now promoting wind energy. Even people who created and were made financially wealthy from the old structures want to be part of the solution. (Mostly because they can now make money and get press with new technology and green power, but hey, whatever gets us there, I guess.)

These are our challenges and this is how we build a world in which we all want to live.

We have to learn from the 1960s (the last time Saturn - Uranus oppositions occurred - in the opposite signs: Uranus in Virgo and Saturn in Pisces) and embed this revolutionary spirit and vision, the possibilities of what can be, in our daily lives. We can’t let our hopes and fantasies get so huge, so beyond the day-to-day mainstream reality, that the crash back down to earth and accompanying disillusionment completely destroys the momentum for change.

So yeah, folks. This means even though right-wing, Bush-loving Stephen Harper won again in Canada, and even if McCain - Palin win in the U.S, we are still responsible for taking up the challenge in our own lives, for bringing about the changes we wish to see in our own day-to-day lives, in our own mindsets, in our own ways of living. And if Obama becomes president and turns out to be yet another upper-upper-middle class establishment-type with *ahem* certain blood ties or can’t bring about the changes he promised due to structural opposition, well, we’re still not off the hook.

The revolution isn’t going to be led by anyone but us. You and me, comrades. The Aquarian era means holding no superiour. Being your own leader, guide, boss. Living by your own code and joining forces with a tribe of people who are working for the same things.

As the hierarchies continue to rot on the vine, as their stench becomes so overpowering that no one can turn a blind eye, we won’t be surprised. When people are shocked at the dirty dealings coming out into the open over the next 16 years of Pluto in Capricorn, we’ll be forewarned and better prepared.

Don’t participate in things that are not acceptable to you. Don’t put your personal energy into things that lack integrity to you. Make your service to the planet a sacred thing and answer to a higher power than the business/money hierarchy. Answer to yourself.

Saturn in Virgo combined with Pluto in Capricorn shows us that it’s the small changes that will create the necessary structural adjustments. It’s each individual worker choosing “right action” in their day-to-day lives and service that will bring unjust hierarchies toppling down, and business will have to do better from that point on.

Jupiter in Capricorn trines Saturn in Virgo November 21 (with Saturn still in opposition to Uranus in Pisces and Jupiter sextiling it). We see how the further expansion in business (Jupiter in Capricorn) is shaped by the holistic health of the structures as a whole. The whole system has to get better. Power and rewards have to be more equitably distributed.

Really, the only way capitalism can work sustainably is if everyone receives their fair cut of the pie (while working within natural laws - yes, the environment does matter). Right now, the energy is moving from the ground floor to the top where it becomes concentrated. Top-heavy and consistently eroding those who make up the foundation (workers). So eventually, a stiff (Aquarian) breeze will bring the whole thing toppling down. Well, let me tell you, Pluto is more than a stiff breeze, so all hierarchical structures that are operating out of integrity had best take heed.

As my Dad put it: They’re feeding all the oxygen to the big fish and leaving the little ones to go belly up.

The big fish don’t seem to understand how reliant they are on the little fish or that they only got to be big fish because of the little fish.

Still such flippance about working people in Canada and the U.S. Such sickening classism, accepted to the point where most people don’t even know they’re continuing it.

Both Neptune in Aquarius and Uranus in Pisces turn direct this month (Neptune on November 1, Uranus on November 27) - another indicator that we’re moving forward on all fronts now, so we have to have things in order.

Neptune and Uranus are in mutual reception and will not be completely out of this configuration until March 2011. Mutual reception means that each is in the sign the other rules. (Neptune rules Pisces; Uranus rules Aquarius.) This mutual reception is the big indicator of the Pisces to Aquarius transition - ending of astrological Piscean era, beginning of Aquarian. These two bodies have been working together on the hand-off, with the completion of one era and the beginning of another overlapping. They are making sure that the lessons of Pisces are well learned, well-understood and well-integrated before heading into Aquarius, but also that the tail-end Piscean energies don’t hold onto tenure too long and sabotage the virility of the Aquarian push to the future.

A smooth transition is trickier than it looks, and the retrogrades of these bodies were ensuring nothing would trip this paradigm shift up. Now they go direct and we get this show on the road.

Pluto heads into Capricorn November 26 for its 16-year stay in the sign of business, prestige, public image, money and achievement. Pluto exists in whatever sign/area of life is most in need of purging and transformation. It’s an area that, without this transformation, will lead to the death of the species. (No joke.) So here we see how “to the brink” we’ve pushed it with things like consumer capitalism, corporate control, the rule of money over all else, business/finance and governments becoming one and the same, working for the “market” and for other financial bigwigs instead of for the people, achievement at all cost, excess masculine ravaging feminine.

I seriously hate myself every time I buy a coffee in a disposable cup. And then I start thinking about all the cups used at that Starbucks or Second Cup or indy coffee place or wherever I am, and then I think about all the cups used in the entire city or in New York City or in the entire world in one single day. And then I think, this goes on EVERY day. And I start to see just how far gone we really are.

I think during Pluto in Capricorn we’ll start to see how sick our mainstream societal concept of success is. And the misery people, animals, and the environment have to take on to allow for certain individuals to portray that image of success. Many people at the top of the current capitalist hierarchical echelon have gotten there on the backs of others and to the detriment of the environment. Maybe we’ll start to see the abuse, control and oppression of other people and resources that went into those rich, shining superstars on the society pages of the local paper.

Western society has a tendency to look only at the “winners.” To hold them up as pinnacles of human achievement (Capricorn) to be admired and emulated. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that the history books were written by the winners? Well, thankfully Scorpio (where we have a concentration this month) knows the truth of the “losers” and holds it equally important (if not more so out of sheer neglect).

Scorpio bears witness as part of its spiritual course. It sees the ways that abuse, oppression, domination, coercion, however subtle, are used to the benefit of some and the detriment of others. It looks at the ugly parts of history, life, self…the parts that are usually denied, glossed over, swept under the rug, and demands that they be brought out into the open, into the air.

It looks to the roots that are sustaining the glossy surface-level situation, and when those roots are connecting to a past of abuse, torment, oppression, injustice, lack of integrity, coercion, what’s going on on the surface is not actually something to be held as a pinnacle of human achievement to be admired and emulated. To Scorpio, the applause and congratulation, in those cases, should be turning stomachs.

Scorpio holds awareness until such a time that the collective is willing to look at and integrate these dark and twisted parts of the situation on Planet Earth. Until we look at the ugly motivations that have driven and continue to drive human beings. Scorpio’s been waiting for a whole long time now. It’s been holding consciousness for the collective for almost too long, battling to stave off poisoning itself and sometimes failing. The longer the collective refuses to take on its responsibility for this awareness, the closer those who bear Scorpionic consciousness of the situation come to destruction. The closer they come to a level of hatred toward those who refuse to see and know. And the closer they come to extremism, fundamentalism, and violence in an attempt to force people to see. (Suicide bombers being a prime example of this, I think.)

As I said, with everything going on this month related to “the future,” the Scorpio energy will make it impossible to skip over the aspects of reality we wish weren’t there.

And as Pluto re-enters Capricorn, (remember, it was already in the sign between the end of January and end of June 2008), we are already in a different situation as far as “the economy,” business, government, money, etc. goes. We’ve had the first unearthing where we started at the roots of the structures in our material world and began to make them visible. Capricorn rules the 10th house of the birth chart and the most visible, public point, the Midheaven. So we see how all this will continue to be confronted in a visible, public way throughout the transit as part of the massive transformation. We’ll look to the roots sustaining the structures to see where they’re coming from, what they’re made out of. Anything that lacks integrity will crumble and be transformed into something better and stronger. Anything being propped up with Band-Aid solutions involving dishonesty, coercion, fear, oppression, suppression, abuse will have its fatal flaws come out into the open in a very public way. (As stated, we’re seeing this with the U.S. banking industry and various corporations lately.)

And there’s really so much fear and coercion around the business/work world these days, isn’t there? I often think, if people weren’t so freaking scared all the time, things would be so much better. None of this garbage would even be going on. If people weren’t willing to allow the suppression of their creative drives, their personal morals, their emotions, their humanity, in general, because of fear of losing their jobs, losing their livelihoods, losing their status, losing their image…the world would be a much different place.

Well, Pluto should be forcing us to confront those fears and hopefully this will purge them in a big way within the work structures.

The entire mainstream view of “success,” what makes for a “successful” person or a “successful” business, will be deconstructed, and we’ll be forced to ask the question: Is this really something to be admired and emulated?

Our hierarchies. “The way things are.” The way we set our world up so that only those who can function in the typical workplace and the typical work structure are considered “successful.” The push for homogeneity…making personal diversity into something embarrassing or pathological. Our businesses, our governments, our work/home set-ups, all institutions (prison system, court system, police, health system, education system, money system, etc.) Our concept of time. Watching the clock at work. Having to “look busy” when you’re not. Ideas of external authority looking over our shoulders.

And, because Cancer is the polarity point of Capricorn, it will have to do with honouring emotion, the feminine and inner guidance in our structures. This brings a transformation of the family unit and the way things are set up there.

All these things will have their structural problems brought into the open for core-level change/transformation. All structures that will no longer sustain humanity in its evolution will have to be gutted and transformed into something more suitable.

There is no more “way things are.” Thank God. Because the way things were was driving humanity on this planet to destruction.

We need a new set up. We need a new form of leadership - a natural hierarchy in which true leaders with real personal integrity, expertise and a vision for all rise to positions of power. Not just people who know how to work the old structures to their benefit - with money and connections (family or otherwise) too often determining who our “leader” is.

How can we respect the leadership when we know that we have a superiour vision and understanding than those claiming to be our leaders?

My Dad said to me recently, when I was talking about proportional representation rather than the majority rule system we have in Canada, “Do you ever notice it’s the losers who want to change the rules?”

To me, this pretty much says it all about the way things have been set up. Winners and losers. So if your perspective isn’t in the majority, you’re a loser and you don’t count. Fatally flawed system, that is. Undemocratic, actually.

And it really just never made sense to me, considering I think the majority of people aren’t really deep thinkers and aren’t all that informed about things going on outside their personal lives. But by this logic, I’m a loser because I don’t think like the mainstream. If I don’t fit into a structure created by and for these mainstream people/thinkers, then I’m a loser. It’s not that the structure was made too simplistic, too homogenous or too lowest common denominator. It’s that I’m a loser. That’s that.

Hmm…all righty then. Thanks, Dad!

The Aquarian paradigm is about going beyond winners and losers, beyond hierarchy, to an egalitarian system where win-win is the only way to go. I win because you win. I benefit because you benefit. It’s a system that has moved past the idea that I win only if I can make you lose.

Within the Aquarian paradigm, personal diversity is a bonus, not something that makes you a loser. When we’re all using our individual personal genius, things are at their best for the collective. All perspectives are taking into consideration…not just those that the “majority” of people have.

Makes sense to me. So let’s getter done!

10 comments:

Wayne Smith said...

When Jean Chretien was out of office, he wanted proportional representation. So did Stephen Harper. When they get elected, it slips their mind.

Under our current voting system, most of us are "losers", in the sense that most of us vote for candidates who don't get elected, and we end up "represented" by people we voted against.

Actually, all of us are losers under a system that doesn't give us the government we voted for, offers us few real choices or none at all, and discriminates against women and minorities.

Elections are not about winning and losing. They are about choosing our representatives, and we are ALL entitled to representation.

Anonymous said...

As a person with a fully loaded pisces 12th house and fully loaded virgo 6th house ------ I imagine these oppositions are extra strong for me? True........ :)
ashevillehealy@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

Once you divide the world into winners and losers its pretty easy to decide who you wish to be associated with - winners, of course. Trouble is, if you only side with the money and the power but have neither yourself, you're just trying to convince yourself you're a winner. That isn't an idealogy, its idolatry. A working person parroting the typical right-wing rhetorical pap of most media is nothing more than a type of oral fixation, like sucking on a limp, milkless breast; nourishment is sought but only an empty solace is realized. So since 98% of the participants in this game are losers, the pretend winners end up looking silly trying to convince others that they are winners because they idiotically choose to espouse compliance and conformity. Thus, they are always smirking and smiling on the outside, even though they may be crying on the inside. Who is it that is known for that ... smiling on the outside, crying on the inside ... oh yeah .. clowns.

Roger said...

Willow,

The following is internet trash that is not worthy of being regurgitated and something from 2003 certainly says nothing about today -- your claim is thus false.

(And for anyone who insists that yes, we are already in utopia…again, take a look at what the U.S. army has been up to lately with depleted uranium munitions in Iraq and Afghanistan: http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/DU-Baby2003.htm. Careful! It’s not nice.)

It is also false propaganda -- to learn about what DU is and more importantly what it is not, start at www.depletedcranium.com and then go on to http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DUStory/message/88 where you can read the actual UN and IAEA reports.

The photos that Willow wants you to look at have nothing to do with DU. Some of them depict Harlequin Fetal Syndrome (Harlequin Ichthyosis) an extremely rare (1 in a million births) recessive genetic skin condition that used to be fatal which was first observed in 1750 nearly a hundred years before the discovery of uranium as an element. These grotesque photos began as Saddam Hussein's propaganda. He needed powerful propaganda since he had gassed thousands of his own people in Halabja.

Roger
DUStory-owner@yahoogroups.com

Willow said...

Sorry, but world scientists claim you're wrong, Roger. I've done my research on this one, and I stand by what I've learned.

Yes, the photos on mindfuly.org are out of context in a way...all put together like that into one group.

I would ask everyone to watch this short documentary on the subject and make up your own mind.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5146778547681767408

Again...let's listen to the people who are actually being exposed to this stuff...something the "party line" doesn't bother with.

You know...the actual PEOPLE...not just the official line.

Willow said...

From July and another depleted uranium denier:

"So I just got a comment from someone who claims the concerns about depleted uranium are a big hoax...that it's not deadly and that I just don't know any better than to listen to a bunch of quacks...

Well, one person who would beg to differ on that front would be Captain Terry Riordan of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Well, he would beg to differ if he weren't dead from the effects of depleted uranium poisoning.

Captain Riordan served in the Gulf War and came home to Canada in 1991. Unfortunately, he was ill from that point on from the effects of the radioactivity he had been exposed to. Really fun stuff like headaches, body pain, oozing rashes, exhaustion, violent mood swings and...oh yeah...burning semen that would cause blistering.

His condition progressed to the point where he had no fine motor co-ordination. By 1998 - 1999, he lost most cognitive function entirely and was lucid only a few hours per week.

Shortly before Captain Riordan died, he was tested for DU (depleted uranium) by Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and former professor of Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University. It was found that he had 100 times the yearly maximum "safe" level of DU in his body...He died three days after finding out the results of his tests.

There are hundreds of thousands of sick soldiers from the first Gulf War. Many have died. Many have had children with severe birth defects and chromosome damage. And still there is denial that "Gulf War Syndrome" even exists.

Call me gullible if you will, but the stories of the people affected don't lie.

Here is a link to an excellent short documentary about the effects of depleted uranium. Again...showing the real people affected...not just spouting the official line.

http://dprogram.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-doctor-the-depleted-uranium-and-the-dying-children/ "

To the people making the comments about depleted uranium being a big hoax, I would like to ask:

What is Gulf War Syndrome? And why is the U.S. government insisting that no such thing exists? Why did tens of thousands of soldiers become ill and many die after the first Gulf War?

Why are all these people, including doctors, soldiers and reputable scientists, also spreading this "false propaganda" about depleted uranium?

If depleted uranium is not being used/is safe, what is the cause of sickness and birth defects, not only in Iraquis, Afghanis and Serbs...but in British, U.S. and Canadian soldiers and their children?

Why have doctors and scientists who speak out about the effects of depleted uranium been intimidated or fired? (This is covered in the documentary I posted. In addition, Dr. Asaf Durakovic reportedly had his specimens destroyed and was relieved of his position after testing veterans for radioactivity.)

If you can answer these questions without simple denial or parroting the party line, let's talk. Otherwise...please don't waste my time.

Willow said...

This is really a most boring broken record, Roger...as you've just parroted the same comments that the poster in July did - same references, same suggestion to "read the U.N. reports"...so I, too, will repost what I posted then:

From the BBC...November 2006 - shows exactly how suspect "official information" can be...

UK and US forces have continued to use depleted uranium weapons despite warnings they pose a cancer risk, a BBC investigation has found.

Scientists have pointed to health statistics in Iraq, where the weapons were used in the 1991 and 2003 wars.

A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2001 said they posed only a small contamination risk.

But a senior UN scientist said research showing how depleted uranium could cause cancer was withheld.

The UK Ministry of Defence said that there was no evidence linking depleted uranium use to ill health.

Depleted uranium is extremely dense and hard, and is used for armour-piercing bullets or shells.

Fears over health implications led to a study by the WHO in 2001.

There is no scientific or medical evidence to link depleted uranium with the ill health of people living in the Gulf region

UK Ministry of Defence

Dr Mike Repacholi, who oversaw work on the report, told Angus Stickler of BBC Radio Four's Today programme that depleted uranium was "basically safe".

"You would have to ingest a huge amount of depleted uranium dust to cause any adverse health effect," he said.

'Risk from particles'

But Dr Keith Baverstock, who worked on the project, said research conducted by the US Department of Defense suggested otherwise.

DEPLETED URANIUM
Has a reduced proportion of isotope Uranium-235
Less radioactive than natural uranium and very dense
Military uses include defensive armour plating, armour-penetrating ordnance
Can be inhaled as dust or ingested in contaminated food and water near impact sites
Used in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia

He described a process known as genotoxicity, which begins when depleted uranium dust is inhaled.

"The particles that dissolve pose a risk - part radioactive - and part from the chemical toxicity in the lung," he said.

Later, he said, the material enters the body and the blood stream, potentially affecting bone marrow, the lymphatic system and the kidneys.

The research was not included in the WHO report, and Dr Baverstock believes it was blocked.

Mr Repacholi said the findings were not corroborated by other reports and it was not WHO policy to publish "speculative" data. He denied any pressure was brought to bear.

But other senior scientists have pointed to worrying health statistics in Iraq, which show a rise in cancer and birth defects.

Prof Randy Parrish of the Isotope Geosciences Laboratory in the UK said environmental and health assessments were needed in Iraq to establish the facts.

Iraqi scientists trained by the UN are seeking to carry out such an assessment, but Henrik Slotte of the United Nations Environmental Programme said without clear information from the US on what was used and where, it was "like looking for a needle in a haystack".

He said there was "no indication" this information was forthcoming from the US.

A spokesman for the UK's Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, told the BBC that there was "no scientific or medical evidence" to link depleted uranium use to sickness in Iraq.

He said the MOD was aware of recent research into the effects of depleted uranium at cellular level, but that it had to be guided by "the professional advice of the Health Protection Agency and the International Commission on Radiological Protection".

Asked why he thinks the study was, as he claims, suppressed he replies: "It is naive to think that in institutions like the United Nations one is free from political influences - the member states have their own agendas."

Willow said...

And I would ALSO like include this little tidbit about your precious U.N. from November of last year:

Late last night the UN First Committee passed, by an overwhelming majority, a resolution highlighting concerns over the military use of uranium.


The resolution entitled 'Effects of the use of armaments and ammunitions containing depleted uranium'1 was passed by 122 votes to six at the UN First Committee in New York; with 35 abstentions. The resolution urges UN member states to re-examine the health hazards posed by the use of uranium weapons.

Unknown said...

good day willow . . . i "stumbled" upon your blog searching for more of my north node in aquarius scorpionic self early this morning . . .and i must say that it makes me smile to read your thoughts and careful research. . . i am intuiting your truth. . .and i speak from a personal standpoint of becoming the change that i seek . . .with every morsel of my being i live this life knowing that regardless if anyone else believes in what i see . . .i must continue to see the beyond and move in that direction . . .change is here! i could go on and on just appreciating your presence and your words. .however i will just say keep on shining the light in the midst of darkness . . .it makes the world a much brighter place to grow and soulfully expand into our most authentic selves!

Willow said...

Depleted uranium munitions are munitions that have depleted uranium at their core so that they are hard/dense enough to penetrate tanks. Despite the name, the uranium is still radioactive. When the munitions hit their target, they turn to dust. This dust is then breathed in or ingested by people coming into contact with it. It is spread around in the air and water currents and can travel long distances.

Contamination from depleted uranium has caused devastating ill health (including cancer) in many NATO soldiers and in the people of Iraq, as well as in other countries that have been on the receiving end of it. This has also caused horrific birth defects in the offspring of Iraquis and NATO soldiers, as well as chronic ill health and shortened life spans. Entire genetic lines have been destroyed by the use of depleted uranium munitions and bombs. The women of Fallujah were told by doctors to simply stop having babies because the birth defects were so common.

Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0SFM7Oho4k
Part 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEY-q7mJOy4
Part 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frh_tbsNFLM
Part 4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-Vt2fSRkOo
Part 5 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qx7ECfyqMQ
Part 6 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owsgmPQktsA